Having a Uganda-free weekend

I figure after two months I’m finally ready to break out of my Uganda bubble. So I’m off to Kenya Friday through Tuesday for a fun weekend with friends.
Have a great weekend, all.

A lesson in non-verbal communication…

The scene: Outside work, heading to the gym. A boda-boda pulls up beside me.

The conversation:

Boda-boda driver: Raises his eyebrows while making eye contact with me.

Translation: “Would you care for a lift to your desired destination, sir?”

Chris: Raises eyebrows while making eye contact with boda-boda driver.

Translation: “That would be splendid.”

Chris, uttering the only words that would appear in this exchange: “Garden City”

Translation: “I am heading to Garden City. Let us now embark on a pleasant back-and-forth negotiation of this trip.”

Boda-boda driver: Raises three fingers

Translation: “I would be pleased to drive you there for a meager three thousand shillings.”

Chris: Raises his eyebrows in mock horror, and raises one finger.

Translation: “My good man, I know this trip costs only 1,000 shillings. I will have none of your shananagins.”

Boda-boda driver: Smiles

Translation: “Ahhh, you’re not a muzungu who I can take advantage of. Darn.”

Chris: Smiles

Translation: “No, no I am not.”

Boda-boda driver: Raises eyebrows

Translation: “Shall we begin our journey?”

Chris: Raises eyebrows

Translation: “Yes, let’s.”

Moral of the story: I’d have a killer six-pack if my abs got half the work-out my eyebrows do.

A Day in the Life of a Failed Thief

• Man gets caught stealing cellphone or wallet in Kampala
• Angry mob quickly forms and beats failed thief to within an inch of his life
• Police arrive on scene, take thief to hospital
• Thief receives free, government-funded, medical care at hospital
• Police take no action against criminal, figuring that severe beating is enough punishment
• Thief is released
• Repeat, beginning with Step One

Looking at human rights in a different, mud-soaked, context

I can’t say with certainty exactly when it was during this most recent trip north that I thought back to the debate over human rights that we had in Toronto before the 10 of us journalists headed-off for our various posts throughout Africa.

It might have been in the hospital where we met a young boy who had been shot in the abdomen by cattle raiders. His friends hid him in the bush so no other raiders would find him while they went off to get help. All in all, it was four days before he finally made it to the hospital, and we met him a month in to his stay— three surgeries later, still in hospital and almost surely physically disabled for life. He won’t be of much to use to anyone when he is released, and he knows this so is in no rush to be discharged.

Just as likely, it could have been in the very next building at the hospital, when we toured the maternity ward and I asked the doctor there how many of their premature babies survive. “Between 10 and 20 per cent,” he said— this, in the hospital to which premature babies in a region of nearly one million people are sent.

Mostly, I think it was a few days later as we toured flooding in the Teso region to the south of Karamoja. We took a drive to one of the IDP (Internally-Displaced Persons) camps that have been affected by the floods. (They have been grouped together in a camp because it’s more secure against the threat of Karamojong warriors raiding cattle than if they were scattered about the region). There, we met dozens of wonderful people who were more than happy to show us their homes— and I use the word ‘homes’ strongly, because I made the mistake, while crouched inside one man’s mud hut looking at his water-soaked mud floor and the one white tarp that constituted the entirety of his furniture, of asking him whether he was worried whether his ‘hut’ would collapse because of flood damage.

“This is my home,” he answered, in a friendly, but very direct way. To him, this was no ‘hut’. “If I lose this, I lose everything.”

I was staring at everything he owned. This soggy mud hut with cracked, and cracking, walls, a grass-thatched roof and a white tarp he somehow found in an attempt to stay dry at night since his dirt floor now squished underfoot.

It must have been then, though I didn’t realize it at the time, that the debate we all had in Toronto about human rights came back to me.

Amongst other things, we talked, and argued, about the notion of universal human rights and the tricky case of westerners ‘imposing’ their notions of human rights on nations that may put different weight on what we think of as being rights that should be available to all.

There is a lot of legitimacy to these debates— many cultures view things like gender rights, religious beliefs and democracy differently than you or I. But none of that mattered in the flooded IDP camp.

This isn’t right, is all I could think as we toured that camp. Their health centre hasn’t had medicine in weeks; their latrines are overflowing so the bush is being used as the bathroom; their well was surrounded by standing water that had no place to go because the ground was already so saturated with water— not a good thing when that water can so easily become contaminated by livestock droppings, among other things.

What I was seeing was beyond any abstract debate about human rights. These peoples’ lives were being put at risk because they lacked such basic things that you, me, nearly everyone, takes for granted. A few sandbags, a shipment of the most basic medications, a bit more food so that they could have more than just one meal of beans a day and the ability to better-construct their homes and these people would be able to cope. They’d still be heavily affected by the flooding, but they’d at least manage okay, and probably come out of it without any of the dozens of diseases and viruses they’re now being exposed to.

The part that put me over the edge? The roads to these camps are in terrible condition— flooded, muddy and difficult to cross because of the flooding. We got stuck several times in an over-sized Land Cruiser (always helped out by villagers who dug and pushed until we were on our way again, in return for a few thousand shillings). The only roadwork going on is being done by local villagers who are putting logs and rocks on the road to give vehicles traction in the mud. They ask passing vehicles for a donation for their lunch that day because no one is paying them to fix the roads.

The district has a road crew, and the vehicles needed to fix the roads. But when we visited the officials there they explained that the vehicles were sitting idle because the government hasn’t given them money to put fuel in them. That was the only thing that was stopping them from doing basic repairs that would make these isolated communities reachable.

I’d like to someday have another crack at that debate we had back in Toronto. Given a chance to do it over again, I would throw away all the laws and documents and UN declarations that are so often used to argue for or against the notion of universal human rights.

Instead of declarations, I’d use concrete examples. Like how that boy should have a right to graze his cattle without fearing raiders who will shoot him; or how a pregnant mother should have access to even the most basic medical care to give her child a chance of surviving; or how the people in that camp have a right to more than one meal a day, dirt floors that are dry and maybe, just maybe, something more than a white tarp to keep them dry in bed when it does rain.

Marketing 101

Now I’m no marketing genius, but I seriously doubt the effectiveness of the billboard I saw today. It was an ad for a rice, billing it as the most ‘fragrant’ rice on the market.

There are certain things that should be fragrant. Cologne should be fragrant. Perfume should be fragrant. Heck, shampoo can even be fragrant.

Rice? Rice cannot be fragrant. Effective rice marketing campaigns should use catchphrases like “bland” and “nondescript”.

But I could be wrong. I’ll be sure to take a good whiff the next time I have a rice dish.

Schools fill with everything but students during Uganda flooding

KATAKWI Clouds rolling in from the north, whose threat of rain looms over the area, obscure the late afternoon sun as Michael Malinga emerges from the library of the primary school at Ngariam IDP Camp. The schoolyard in front of him should be filled with children, considering this week marked the start of a new term for students. Instead, the yard is empty, and the school is closed. The flooding that has plagued much of northern and eastern Uganda, especially Teso region, for the past month, has forced many of those who live here to move into the neighbouring primary and secondary schools. NO ACCESS: Several roads have been rendered impassable by the floods that have swept off some bridges. DISPLACED: Mr Malinga in the library of Ngariam IDP Camp Primary School, where he and is family of nine have been living for a month. Photos by Christopher Mason The situation here is being played-out across Teso – huts are collapsing, people sleep on water-saturated mud floors, latrines are sinking or overflowing due to flooding and schools are full of people crammed into every corner. Mr Malinga is no exception. He normally teaches P3. But today, and for the past month, he lives in the tiny library, along with his nine other family members because the interior walls of his house collapsed. “We stayed as long as we could, but when the walls started falling, we had no choice,” he said. So far, the flooding throughout north and eastern Uganda, and much of sub-Saharan Africa for that matter, has been about numbers – how many affected, how many schools closed, how many cases of sickness and how much aid required – so much that the people behind those numbers, who fall under the “affected” category, get lost in the chaos. Residents of the camp said most are fortunate to get a single meal of beans each day. The camp’s health centre ran out of medicine long ago. “We have a situation where we have no medicine, where we are at risk of an outbreak of malaria, dysentery, cholera or any of the viruses people can get during heavy flooding,” said Thadeo Ariko, a clinical officer in charge of Ngariam Health Centre. Across Teso, it is the IDP camps established for those escaping LRA violence and Karimojong raids that have suffered the most during the flooding. Initially, the district identified two IDP camps that were waterlogged and unsafe for living. But now, district officials say some 25 camps are uninhabitable and need to be resettled because of flooding, a scenario that would require massive mobilisation efforts and funding, to pull-off such a move on short notice. Regardless of whether such action is needed, international aid organisations and the government are mobilising relief efforts as officials begin to realise, a month into the flooding, the full extent of the damage. Unicef and its partners plan to reach a total of 210,000 people in Teso with safe drinking water and mosquito nets. About 120,000 of them will also get water jerry cans, blankets, tarps and tents to help restore safe living conditions. The traditional image of flooding does not suit the current situation in Teso. Villages have not been swept away by surging water, but instead, are fully saturated by a water table that, in places, sits five centimeters below the surface. It means that large-scale evacuations have generally not happened. Rather, people have to do what they can to stay healthy in mud huts whose floors squish underfoot and whose bricks are quickly deteriorating in damp conditions. In the coming days, tents will be set-up at schools to allow for classes to take place outdoors, temporary latrines are to be brought in and local health officials plan to intensify immunisation efforts in an attempt to stave off any major disease outbreaks. Government efforts to provide relief have been criticised by many local residents and officials in the affected regions. In Katakwi District, many roads have been washed-out by flooding. District officials say they have the equipment and manpower to do repairs, but are not able to do the work because the central government has not released money to put fuel in the vehicles. During a drive through the region on Monday, repairs were underway on several flooded roads, not by district or central government employees, but instead by local residents who asked passing vehicles for donations to pay for food or soap as payment for their work. Most repairs consisted of drainage ditches being dug and rocks or logs being laid across the mud. Katakwi District has been without either of its two ambulances for the last week. The funding provided to the district’s health department for vehicle maintenance is the same amount the district used to receive when its ambulance service consisted of a single motorcycle, according to Dr. Simon Omeke Ichumar, a medical officer in Katakwi. “Over the last 10 years, the money we get from the central government has not kept up with changes,” he said. “So in a health crisis like this, we can’t get to the communities.” Aid organisations plan to put fuel in road maintenance vehicles and to pay for ambulance repairs, but the situation has led to grumblings that the central government has not responded well to the emergency. “This country is not a failed state,” said Jeremy England, the Eastern Uganda Region Manager for Unicef, in arguing that international aid organisations should not be providing support for services the government is capable of supplying. “The vehicles are here, the crews are here, the capacity is here. All the central government needs to do is release some funds to allow the districts to do their job.”

Speech habits that make me go what? Make me go crazy

Sentence structure is very important to a journalist– not just in writing stories, but also during interviews. Time and time again, someone you are interviewing will say something that expresses a sentiment that is perfect for the article, but they structure it in a way that makes it totally unusable.

Usually you can work through this. Maybe ask the question in a different way or, at times, straight out tell them that you find what they just said very interesting, but perhaps it can be expressed in a different way.

Regardless, there is usually always a solution. But here I have run into a new and different challenge.

For whatever reason, it is very common for people here to ask a question in making their point.

Example:

“The government’s inaction during the floods has made us what? Made us very frustrated.”

It’s about that time during the interview when Chris develops an eyebrow twitch. Staving off homicidal tendencies, I re-ask the question.

The interviewee nods and responds, “It’s true, the lack of government presence here is what? Is a travesty.”

And so it goes… I’m not sure if it has something to do with the language structure of the local languages, but the pattern occurs throughout Uganda, and yet there are over 30 local languages throughout the country and they can’t ALL have the same structure… right?

This morning I was walking down the hill to the main road by my house to get a matatu (taxi van) downtown, when Joseph, my boda driver, pulled up beside me and shot me a friendly glare, but a glare nonetheless. I’ve been a bad boda customer of late– I’ve been out of town and also taking fewer bodas, so haven’t been calling Joseph for rides as often as I used to.

As I hopped on his motorcycle he kept on talking. “I wondered why Chris didn’t call me anymore. He has my what? He has my number.”

I patted him on the shoulder as we drove off, glad that I wouldn’t be quoting Joseph any time soon.

What’s with this newfangled Inter-web?

Back on internet for the first time in a week, so trying to remember how to use this darned thing. Karamoja was very, very interesting. Kidepo Valley National Park was great (complete with lions walking past us a few feet behind our heads during dinner– “Follow me!” one of the guys who runs the lodge said as we all chased after the lions as they wandered through the lodge) and have spent the past couple days in the Teso region taking a look at flooding. I’ll be flying back to Kampala later today, and will post an account of the trip when I get a chance.

Karamoja on my mind…

Back to Karamoja I go. I leave Tuesday for a week in Karamoja. Tuesday through Friday I’ll be doing reporting in the area. Then Friday I go here (http://www.safariuganda.com/apoka_lodge.htm) for the weekend to do a travel story, before reporting on flooding Monday and flying back Tuesday.

All this to say things will be quiet here until I get back since I would be shocked to find an internet connection while I’m up there.  Have a good week, all.

Things that go buzzz in the night

A dead-on description from “The Shadow of the Sun” by Ryszard Kapuscinski about his travels in Africa. P 62;

“In one room I have a table and chairs, in the other a bed draped with mosquito netting; its festive presence— it resembles a white, trailing wedding train— is meant more to reassure the tenant than to deter mosquitos: a mosquito will always manage to slip through. It almost seems that these small but insistent aggressors establish each evening a battle plan meant to exhaust their victims, because if there are ten of them, say, they do not attack all together— which would allow you to deal with them all at once and have peace for the rest of the night— but one by one. The first to take off is, as it were, the scout, whose reconnaissance mission the rest closely observe. Well rested after a good day’s sleep, he torments you with his demonic buzzing, until finally, sleepy, and furious, you organize a hunt, kill him; you are just lying down again, confident of returning to sleep, just turning off the light, when the next one begins his loops, spirals and corkscrews.

“After years (or rather, years of nights) spent observing mosquitos, I reached the conclusion that this creature is possessed of a deeply seated suicide instinct, some uncontrollable need for self-destruction. Witnessing the demise of the predecessors does not discourage them, instead they hurl themselves one after the other, clearly excited and desperately determined, toward an inevitable and quick death.”

As if to drive the point home, while typing this quote, a mosquito larger that my thumbnail began buzzing around my head in my darkened bedroom. A swift blow didn’t so much kill it, as leave it only momentarily dazed. A mini-tape case finally did it in. When compared to the mosquitos back home, the ones here sometimes make you feel like the undersized combatant in a high school parking lot fight whose strongest roundhouse was just brushed off by the school bully.

I can still see at least three more of them buzzing about the room. I sometimes wonder whether mosquito nets are meant to protect against the insects, or whether they were dreamed-up by the mosquitos themselves as a way to keep their quarry in an enclosed pen for a midnight feast.

Lakeshores, back roads and maniacally-laughing boda drivers

There is little room for compromise in the competition between man and nature.

On the one hand, you have cities and suburbs where man dominates while trees stand meekly in their curbside cells.

Vast landscapes are leveled and then covered in homes, each allotted their two maples and three landscaping rocks.

Lakeshores, too, are negotiable, depending on the imperialism of a city. Think Toronto, where Front Street was named as such because it was once the city’s last line of defence against Lake Ontario, but is today a 10-minute walk from the shore.

On the other hand, you have rural areas where man lives at the whim of nature. Small towns carved into forests, houses that are the exception to the otherwise wild landscape.

An individual uses his own experiences to ground otherwise abstract theories.

For me, man’s penchant for shaping nature is manifested through Toronto’s development. While living there, I read history books about the area that included artists’ sketches depicting the landscape as it appeared before anything more than a village occupied the city site. It wasn’t the abundance of trees in the paintings that struck me, so much as the rolling hills and valleys that suggested a much more topographic setting than exists today.

To think that man not only cut down trees and diverted waterways, but also leveled hills and filled in valleys in building a city, to me, indicates the manner in which a population can grow completely independent of, and in some cases contrary to, the surrounding landscape.

Of all the rural settings I have seen that represent the opposite end of the spectrum, it is the back road where I grew up, leading from the beach to the elementary school I attended, that I think of in representing how our lives can carve through the surrounding environment.

It’s that road that comes to mind because, while walking that road to school when I was 10, I used to imagine what it would be like walking to school if the road wasn’t there. Take the road away, and I would have been walking through a dense forest with few signs of other development.

A couple years later, a friend and I were biking down a nearby road. We came across a dirt track that ran deep into the forest. We both lived in the area and knew the roads well, so whether or not to explore the track was not a question, so much as the instigation of a competition between us over who claimed to know the track best.

Soon enough we were completely, utterly, lost. The track disappeared and, being 12-year old boys, we got off our bikes and walked deeper into the forest instead of turning back.

“You know where we are?” my friend asked me. “Psh, yeah. Do you?” I answered, defensively.

“Yeah, just wanted to make sure you did too.”

Neither of us had any idea.

We emerged a few hours later, with darkness falling, at the edge of a farm that sat, oh, about 300 metres down the road from where we had entered the bush. Both us were sheepish, and each exchanged the keep-this-between-us looks of two young boys with illusions of reputations to protect.

But we both also had a newfound respect for the bush that lay beyond the roads we knew so well.

All this is to say that often the debate over man vs. nature becomes a debate over urban vs. rural. In cities, man rules. In rural areas, man lives at the whim of nature.

Not so, here.

Saturday, I was at the clinic picking up medication when it started raining. Really raining. I stood at the wide, open doorway of the clinic, watching the palm trees lean closer and closer to the ground as the rain began crossing horizontally in front of me. I hadn’t seen rain like this since I’d arrived, which says something given that there is at least 20 minutes of rain nearly every day.

After half an hour or so, it let up. Now’s my chance, I thought. Storms leave as quickly as they come around here, so it seemed like a safe bet that the rain would not return. I walked down to the main road and flagged down a boda-boda driver. We negotiated a price to take me home and I hopped on.

We don’t need to get too specific, but it might have been 20, okay 30, seconds into the trip home before the rain started up again. And by “started-up” I mean even Noah and all the other animals on his ark would have been wearing rubber boots.

Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! The hail felt like pennies being dropped from a skyscraper.

This, despite the fact that I was wearing a ball cap. Eventually I realized that if I was having such a hard time withstanding the barrage, my hat-less boda driver couldn’t be faring much better. I’d rather not be driven by a blinded motorcycle driver so I took my hat off and plopped it on his head, which he answered with a dripping-wet thumbs-up.

But it wasn’t just the rain. Water was flowing down the roads in every which way. I was on a motorcycle and the dark brown water was up to my ankles. I could feel the rushing water push against our motorcycle as the machine struggled up the hill.

Going down hills, we skidded left and right as my boda driver laughed.

Laughter while careening into oncoming traffic is mildly unsettling.

I would have closed my eyes had they not already been in such a state to protect against the rat-a-tat-tat hail that was machine-gunning my glasses.

* * *

Yesterday afternoon at a pub, I was with one of the foreign correspondents here chatting over beers when a friend of hers walked in and the three of us fell into conversation. This friend had been taking a boda-boda to work last week when the flooding on the road became so bad that the motorcycle lost contact with the ground and began floating. She had to swim out of the flooding and walk the rest of the way to work.

The fact that this degree of flooding happened on a busy road didn’t even rate as news in this city. It’s par for the course when it rains.

* * *

And now, finally, we get back to the theme that connects my aimless walks to elementary school with life here in Kampala. Nature rules here. Nature, in fact, kicks ass. No amount of roadwork, landscaping, drainage work or other infrastructure work could protect against the temporary devastation that accompanies heavy rains.

In Canada, man vs. nature often becomes urban vs. rural. Here, it’s just man vs. nature, and nature wins. Every time.

* * *

Saturday, when I got off the boda after our drive through the rain, I walked over to a local take-out restaurant to get some food since I needed to take my medication with a meal. I got some chicken and waited under an awning for the rain to let up, even a little bit, as the water in the parking lot was up to my shins.

I stood with about a half dozen others who had likewise sought shelter. All around us, pods of people huddled under whatever shelter existed in the area. I noticed chicken eggs floating in the murky water that had filled the parking lot. Within a few minutes a teenage boy, knowing an opportunity when he saw one, waded out to collect the eggs and disappeared into a nearby shop.

The rain eventually let up a bit, and I decided to set off for the rest of the walk home. I hopped from shallow-ish water to shallow-ish water, trying to avoid anything that was deeper than my shins. Eventually I got to a stretch of sidewalk where the water was easily knee-deep.

People stood under shelter on either side of the flooding, rather than navigate the murky waters. Holding my dinner in a hardly-waterproof plastic bag, I was tired of waiting for the rain to decide when I’d get home so I stepped in and, cheered on by people on both sides, waded through in my sandals and khaki pants.

Emerging on the other side, to much laughter, I caught eyes with a young man in the group. I gave him a wink and a smile, as he nodded and smiled too, and took his first step into the water.

Amoeba: A man’s best friend

“You’ve got an amoeba,” the doctor said as he passed me by. “The nurse will give you medicine.”

I gave the nurse a confused look. I had returned to the clinic Saturday to check in on the tests they’d run. “You’re fine, but we’ll just do tests to make sure,” the doctor had said Friday.

An amoeba? The last time I crossed paths with an amoeba was in a high school biology textbook. None of the captions under those diagrams ever said anything about amoebas making me sick. (Granted, I did spend more time in biology class setting things on fire with bunson burners than reading the textbook—part of the reason I now spend my days in a newsroom and not a lab.)

“How did I get an amoeba?” I asked the nurse as she handed me an alarmingly large stack of pill-filled boxes.

She took on the amused expression of someone who knows too much about how the human body works, taking pity on someone who was, until a second ago, quite happy living in ignorant bliss.

The nurse told me how I likely got it, while explaining that it’s a form of parasite.

I’d rather not explain, but let’s just say there are a few restaurants I ate in during the days leading up to getting sick that won’t be receiving me as a repeat customer.

Rain, rain go away. Come on back another day…

Rain holds incredible power in this part of the world. Outside Kampala, when it rains crops grow, people have drinking water. When it doesn’t, people go hungry and wells run dry. (Of course, there is also the problem of too much rain, when roads are washed out and isolated villages become entirely unreachable).

Here in Kampala, rain has a different, but still significant, effect. In a tropical climate, much of everyday business is conducted outdoors. And why not? That’s where the people are, but also outdoors is where the breeze and the sunlight is. There is no reason to sit inside a stuffy and dark building or hut.

Rain poses a significant challenge to this lifestyle, especially considering Kampala is built on seven hills and utilizes a drainage system designed by someone with a skewed sense of up and down.

Today was a perfect example. It had rained heavily overnight, so we all woke up to a wet and muddy city. On days like this, you pour yourself an extra cup of tea in the morning, thinking maybe, just maybe, those extra five minutes will make the trip into work just a little bit drier.

By the time I got to the clinic it had started raining again, though luckily it let up a bit as I was leaving. I took a boda-boda to the market near my house because I needed some fruits. Walking home in these conditions means not so much dodging the puddles, as choosing the shallowest one to walk through, while feeling the near-constant squish of the red clay mud that soon begins climbing your pant leg.

Walking through the markets, people who moments earlier had been selling watches, are now hawking umbrellas. Those who normally ply the streets with shirts for sale, suddenly have a fresh supply of rain jackets on sale. It’s as though everyone has a sealed “Plan B” envelope marked “Open Only In Case of Rain” that allows them to immediately spring to appropriate action.

As I maneuvered my way home, I heard my name. I turned to see Joseph, the boda-boda driver I use most often, pulling up beside me.

Allow me to digress a moment— Many boda-boda drivers seem to work mostly in certain sections of the city, so after a while you begin to recognize the regulars, and they begin to recognize you. As you walk past, those who recognize you will shout out somewhere they’ve driven you before in the hopes that, upon indicating your shared experience, you’ll hop on. Of the boda-boda drivers who hang around outside the Monitor offices, there is one I usually take. He’s a young guy who drives a scooter more so than a motorcycle. It’s a clunky little thing that struggles up most hills. But I get a kick out of the driver. He smiles and laughs, and wears a bright yellow ball cap that’s way too big for him.

But around home, Joseph is the guy I usually hop a ride with. I have his number in my mobile, which I ring 30 minutes ahead of any time I need a ride somewhere. He drives a true motorcycle that absolutely flies through the streets. He’s a big, strong guy who plays up his “bad” image with a black leather jacket, dark sunglasses and a constant look of indifference. Basically, he’s the guy you’d find outside a diner in the 70s, leaning against his bike with a pack of smokes rolled up in his sleeve.

“This is no weather to be walking around in, my man,” Joseph said as he pulled up alongside me. He had a point, but I was fresh out of cash and told him as much while mentioning that my wallet had been stolen.

“No worries, man, hop on. How long till you get your cards back?” he asked.

Probably sometime the week after next, I said.

“No problem. Any time you need a ride, just call me. If I’ve got fuel in my tank, we’ll go. You pay me later.”

It’s full-out, or flat-out

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as feeling “under the weather” here. You either feel like a world-beater, invigorated by the incredible fresh fruits and vegetables and near-total lack of processed ingredients, or your body feels as though it would rather turn itself completely inside-out, thank you very much.

This week, my body was apparently fed-up with feeling invigorated. I went to bed early Wednesday night, not feeling all that great, though nothing to be concerned about. But what a difference a couple of hours can make, because I woke up a short time later with a spiking fever and a body that had just issued an “Everybody out! This is not a drill!” order.

Whatever it was that had set up camp inside me increasingly revealed its presence with each time I got up over the course of the night. Shortly after midnight I was running low on drinking water and so stumbled into the kitchen to boil some water (I have a constant rotation of my two Nalgene bottles—one being used to drink out of while the other sits in the freezer, cooling the boiled water). It wasn’t until I struggled with two hands to lift up the kettle that I realized my strength had been nearly entirely drained.

Later on in the night, feeling very feverish, I was walking back to my room when suddenly my field of vision started closing in. “What the…?” was about all my half-asleep mind could muster before I fell against the wall and hit the floor hard (like most homes here, the ceilings, walls and floors are all made of concrete, so “hard” is about the only way to fall).

It went like that through much of the night. Each time I got up I would have about five minutes before the darkness would return and my legs would begin to wobble, so getting back to bed was a race against the clock. Fortunately, the clock won only once more that night.

I had a busy day planned Thursday. Interviews Thursday morning on an analysis piece that was to be written by the end of the day (“How much have you written so far?” my editor asked Wednesday. “Nothing at all,” I told him, with a smile that probably didn’t comfort him), an interview in the afternoon with Canadian MPs visiting Uganda for an article in Friday’s paper and a follow-up on a story I’d written the day before about some football (soccer) players who had been stranded in Kenya. But there was no way I was making it into work, so I sent messages into the newsroom and stayed in bed most of the day, waiting for the fever to go down.

In the end, it left as quickly as it came. I’m still feeling a little off, but the fever broke late yesterday and today’s lunch of pineapple, banana and crackers was the first solid food I’d eaten since Wednesday. The doctor at the clinic this morning just smiled when I recounted the experience. “Sounds like you’ve had a fun go of it,” he said with a laugh. They suspect it was a bad bug, possibly food poisoning. They’re doing tests, but for now we’ll chalk this one up under the “Who really knows how, or why” category.

Drought and aid organizations in Karamoja

Two stories published recently from the recent trip to Karamoja: Gun Culture Bites As Aid Groups Flock to Karamoja. Christopher Mason ONLY 24 hours earlier, Mr Akure Loyang had, like any other day, been working on his farm. But on this day, a recent Friday morning, he lay on a gurney in a hospital hallway with casts on both legs, talking in a voice that was barely above a whisper. Mr Loyang, like hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Karimojong each year, had fallen victim to cattle raiders who stormed his land, shot him in both legs and left him bleeding on the ground as he watched them take his livestock. Despite the ongoing disarmament efforts in Karamoja and a general return of peace to much of the north, this part of the country remains largely unstable. This, mainly due to a culture of cattle raiding and violence that continues to perplex government and international aid officials trying to battle a proliferation of cheap guns, near-constant drought and crushing poverty. Mr Loyang is not alone in the St. Kizito Hospital in Matany Trading Centre, Moroto District. Once he gets the X-ray he has been waiting for, Mr Loyang will join the 53 other patients currently residing in the hospital’s gunshot ward. “We usually have more,” one nurse at the hospital said. On the day Mr Loyang was admitted, he was one of eight gunshot victims to come into the hospital. It is not uncommon for 20 to come in on a single day. “On days when there is a gun battle, it is really a crisis in here,” said Dr James Lemukol, the hospital’s medical superintendent. Despite the debilitating violence and the fact that it is the most food insecure region in Uganda, Karamoja has been mostly devoid of international aid organisations largely due to the long history of violence and its remoteness. But of late there has been an influx of international organisations opening, or reopening, offices in Karamoja, bringing renewed hope that their combined efforts can bring to a grinding halt the downward slide residents here face because of unrelenting droughts and violence. Unicef and the UN Office of High Commission for Human Rights both opened offices in Karamoja in October. Fao was there by January, while the World Health Organisation opened an office soon afterwards. The UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-Ocha) opened an office in Karamoja just this week. These groups join a handful of smaller organisations and missions that have been doing work in the region for decades. The increased international presence is encouraging to an organisation like the World Food Programme (WFP), which has been working in Karamoja since the 1960s. “We’ve been here 40 years [and] wondering where everyone else was,” said Mr James Feeney, the head of WFP’s Karamoja operations. International donors flocked to northern Uganda when the region fell into a crisis in 2002. The influx of money and workers had little impact on Karamoja at the time, but now that the region is calm, some of those resources have been reallocated to Karamoja. Mr Jeremy England, the Unicef eastern region manager said, “Karamoja is very unique. But it was difficult to get attention for the region until we had attention to the rest of the north.” He added that after 2002, when the rest of the north improved, Unicef looked at Karamoja and felt it was still a part of the north but its indicators were far worse than anywhere else in the region. Despite an assessment earlier in the dry season by the WFP that said Karamoja is expected to have a better November harvest than last year, the same report said insecurity in the region could increase if poor rains in August and September damage crops. Local officials said recently that August was far drier than normal. Whether or not the increased international presence can limit the risk of civil unrest, and maybe in turn reduce the number of patients in St. Kizito Hospital’s gunshot ward, all may depend as much on a change in attitude towards the region. “It used to be that people wondered how long it would be until the Karimojong developed,” Mr England said. “Instead, people are beginning to look at it as a question of how long it will be until the rest of the country engages the Karimojong.” Dry riverbeds, failed crops welcome you to Karamoja

CHRISTOPHER MASON

MOROTODRIVING west from Moroto towards the Kidepo Health Centre, the road crosses one dry riverbed after another. At one point, a dried-up riverbed even becomes part of the road. “How are these roads passable when the rivers are running?” the driver of the Land Rover is asked as he drives over the parched banks of the Natumukasiko River. “We don’t have that problem very often,” he answers, laughing. It is unfortunately not a joke. Drought in Karamoja is no longer something to be talked about every few years as part of the climactic ebb and flow that destabilises the impoverished Karimojong in this part of Uganda. NO TRACE OF WATER: A dry river bed in Moroto (ABOVE) while children bathe in a shallow crevice filled with dirty water. Photos by Christopher Mason Rather, it is a constant part of life here, preventing families from stocking up on food and instead forcing thousands of people to rely entirely on international aid organisations, namely the World Food Program (WFP), for food to keep alive. “It has been 10 years since we had a good crop,” said Moses Kapolon, acting CAO for Moroto District. “The further we get from that good crop, the worse it gets.” Karamoja returned to the spotlight earlier this year when the WFP announced it was halting food distribution in the region due to a shortage in funding. Also earlier this year, a WFP driver was killed, leading to increased concerns about road ambushes. Security scares, food shortages and intense droughts periodically remind outsiders of the plight facing the Karimojong, but locals say the fact that severe food shortages here are no longer intermittent, but instead constant, leaves many lucky to get something worth a meal a day. “Very little food is imported into our region because the security protection they need make it far too expensive,” Mr Kapolon said on August 29. “And people here cannot afford what little food does come into the region, so we are left to rely on failed crops and the WFP.” The WFP’s head of Karamoja operations, Mr James Feeney, said, drought-wise, this year has been moderate. The fact that a “moderate” season still results in dried-up rivers and failed crops speaks to the constant instability facing those who try to grow their own food. “A drought used to come every five years. That was the rule of thumb,” Mr Feeney said during an interview near Moroto. “Now we get a really major drought every second year. No one is able to prepare for droughts.” During a recent drive through Moroto District, not one river was running. Dried riverbeds were now being used as thoroughfares for people walking, much the same way rail lines are used in urban areas. One otherwise dry riverbed had a shallow crevice where a small pool of dark brown water had collected. The pool attracted nearly a dozen people, who were bathing naked in the dirty water. In January, the WFP issued emergency food rations in Karamoja to help off-set the third drought in six years. The goal of these rations is to provide half the minimum daily energy requirements of 2,100 calories and build on what little, local people can find to eat. Mr Feeney said the WFP will carry out another assessment this month to determine whether the emergency rations would be needed for a second year in a row. The importance of food rations was evident earlier this year, when between March and July, the WFP cut its food assistance to more than 100 primary schools and 18 health centres. Immediately, school attendance fell drastically, as many parents only send their children to school so they can get food rations. Nineteen schools closed entirely because attendance was so poor during the stoppage in ration distribution.

When stereotypes ring true

Scene: Newsroom, this morning

Action: Reporter walks by carrying a small yellow box.

Chris’s sub-conscience: “Timbits!”

Chris’s conscience: “Um, you’re in Uganda.”

Chris’s sub-conscience: “Oh yeah.”

On Language

Since arriving here I have been working on languages–mainly, Luganda which is the dominant tribal language in this part of Uganda.

It took a while for the new words, phrases and sentence structures to sink in, but I’m finally beginning to say “wabale” instead of “thank you”, among other everyday phrases. I’ve been especially motivated of late, witnessing a fellow Canadian friend, Roxanne, pick up Luganda at a ferocious pace. Despite being here less than three weeks, she’s conversing in basic Luganda while I wrestle with basic greetings and responses.

In trying to explain why Luganda has been slow to take, I’ll chalk it up to the mixed bag of languages that surround me every day. At the house, it was mostly Brits, Americans and Australians when I first arrived. But recently two Germans moved in, which spiced up the household banter.

They proved to be the calm before the storm, because the Dutch have now moved in. Boy, have they ever moved in.

I now have eight Dutch roommates. So in a period of little more than a week, English in the house has become banished to a seldom-visited corner of the house.

(Aside: It was amusing last week when we were all out at a bar playing pool and realized that amongst some of the Dutch, the Brits and me, we also shared a knowledge of French. So the rest of the rounds of billiards were played speaking our newly-discovered shared language– and also coming up with themes to describe the teams we assembled to play pool. At first it was the Commonwealth vs. the Rest of the World (or ROW), then Britain vs. the ROW, and finally the Pacifists vs. the Imperialists (Holland and Canada vs. Britain and Germany)).

One of the advantages of all these languages is that I figure to learn some Dutch, and probably some German, while we’re all living together. I haven’t managed to pick up any Dutch yet– when we’re all sitting together in the house, Dutch words fly around the room at a ferocious pace, while I and the British roommate, Steve, share baffled expressions.

But I have made some progress on German. I now know that “Dosenöffner” is German for “can opener”. I’m hoping to soon move on from kitchen implements to basic greetings and, if possible, complex philosophical theories.

Who needs a wallet anyway?

This is sketchy, I thought to myself.

I was in line yesterday to get into one of the big tents at the goat races (yes, goat races– don’t worry I’ll post pictures and details soon) when it occurred to me that I was in a pick-pocket’s dream spot: Thousands of fairly well-to-do people, mostly ex-pats, in a crowded outdoor area.

No sooner had I put my hand on my back pocket, just to be safe, when security pushed the crowd back, which knocked my hand away as I stepped back. In those, oh, two seconds, my wallet was gone. You’ve got to admire the efficiency.

But beyond that, it’s mostly just one big pain in the butt. I only lost about 25,000 shillings ($15-ish), so life goes on. But I spent last night using Skype to call the banks about my cards:

Chris (shouting) to the bank rep on the phone: “I can only hear a few words you’re saying, so I’m only going to ask yes or no questions! When you answer, say yes six times, or no six times so I’ll at least hear it once! Can you send my cards to Uganda??”

Bank guy: *static* *silence* *static* “N-” *static “-o!” *white noise*

Well, that settles that.

It’ll get sorted out soon enough, but in the meantime I’ll be living off the Bank of Incredibly Generous Friends.

And thanks to Katie, who lost $175 US and her purse on her first night in Kampala, for offering some context. “You knew it had to happen, just depended on where and when,” she said, with a laugh.

$15 and a couple weeks of peanut butter-and-jam sandwiches? For a lesson learned, I’ll happily pay it.