Brian is a student of Computer Science at Makere University in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. He is also a part time boda-boda driver. Brian lost his parents at an early age. Now, at age 20, he supports himself and his younger sister by driving a boda — or motorcycle taxi — several days a week. In the absence of family support, Brian insists that it is his friends that have helped him succeed.
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Project Summary:
We worked in three areas of Uganda. First we worked in Kampala, the capital city. We stayed there from July 6th to July 27th, and worked with children in two organizations – Focus, an after-school program for kids in the slums of Mulago; Cornerstone, a house for street children - and with children at Bishop’s Secondary School in Mulago (an area right outside of Kampala). Then we worked in Lyantonde (down south) for about two weeks with an organization called PARDI, an orphanage/outreach program for AIDS orphans. Then we went up north to Gulu for the last three weeks of our project, staying at the Gulu Cornerstone house and working with the children there. We left Gulu on August 28th.
Continue reading ‘Reflections on the Summer: Project Evaluation’
In the small village of Lyantonde, it’s the hum of trucks passing that first wakes you in the morning. Not the birds. Or the kitchen. Even the large woman sweeping briskly in the courtyard. No. It’s the trucks that wake you.
The entire main street is hemmed with them. At all hours they come whistling past, brakes trembling, horns babbling, cargo thrashing. Scattering children, goats, they slip into empty slots and join the assembly line of matoke, petrol, cattle, grain. More petrol. Roadside buildings cower under these looming behemoths, their windows wincing in the plumes of red dust that spew from weary tires, their walls perpetually cast in a rusty pallor.
One, perhaps two drivers step out. A man emerges from the cargo hold, sneezing.
Ojok Tony is 16 years old. Originally from the rural village of Koro in Northern Uganda, Tony was forced to flee northwards to the city of Gulu with his family after the village was attacked by Lord’s Resistance Army rebel forces. When he arrived in Gulu, tensions with his stepmother heightened and Ojok wound up living on the streets of Gulu. He now lives in Cornerstone, a boy’s group home run by David Laker, where he lives with other boys his age in a communal setting and is able to attend school. Ojok is extremely witty, a leader among the boys and excels on the football pitch. This is the story of his sister, Peloya Jacqueline, who was captured by the rebels.
In Uganda, all movement halts for the rain. Life pauses, patient, watching raindrops fall, droplets that land with a ting on tin rooftops and delicate splashes into growing, red puddles, with a million soft thwumps into the grass and the maize and the soft, fertile orange-red earth. Life pauses, patient, and takes a few slow, even breathes as it rests beneath rooftop overhangs and crowds into shops and homes. Huddled, life watches the rain.
In Uganda, rain is a perfectly good excuse for schoolchildren to be late to school. Kampala businessmen caught at lunch by a storm sit for hours over long cups of tea, unrushed, unworried, all appointments and deadlines put to rest for the rain. Taxis, even, cease to run: Boda men abandon their bodas to crowd beneath trees or into small, corner-side shops – they must be bribed with extra-high payment to venture out to the wetness.
Nabayego Evelyn and Namayanja Maxmiriam are best friends. In the early 90s, they both lost their parents to AIDs. Today, at sixteen, they attend Bishop’s Senior School in Mukono, a district just East of Kampala. This is one of a few interviews we conducted in which the participants were the primary interviewers. In this piece, Maxmiriam interviews Evelyn about her life as an orphan, as a friend, and as a role model for other teenagers. Both girls hope to one day attend university. Maxmiriam is interested in journalism and nursing, and Evelyn hopes to become a doctor.
This blog is for Mickey, as I never pass a food stand without thinking of him!
Chapatti stands are ubiquitous in Uganda. At any point of human traffic, whether by foot or by bus, along dirt or cement, among building or trees – in any place of human congregation, chapatti stands spring like mushrooms.
I have never yet seen a woman chapatti vendor. Usually they are boys, between 13 and 25 years, and often a crowd of friends hangs around the stand, chatting and milling and haranguing passing muzungus to “Jangu, jangu, you first come – you come and you buy!” Most of the boys are school dropouts – or rather, force-outs, or fee-outs, as the case may be. Perhaps some of them hope to rejoin classes once they have raised a little money at the stand. Perhaps some of them work selling chapattis in the evening, and go to school during the day.
We sit in a small, darkened room before a stern, middle-aged man. Besides us kneel two of his children, estranged since his second marriage, and a friend of ours and the girl’s. Daylight noises call through cracks in the walls and the window – children, roosters, washing and shouting – but only their ghosts slip through, curiously out-of-place and dampened by the dark air. Adorned in a long, bark-cloth robe, the man sits straight up, an expression of ominous dignity on his shadowed face and a long wooden pipe in his hands. By lighting this pipe, he tells us through our friend’s translation, he will call the spirits into his own body, and they will speak with his own tongue. Call them, urges his young daughter, light the pipe and call them! What is it, we ask, this mysterious substance that calls forth spirits? Marijana, he replies heavily, and we mold our faces to match his own serious expression.
This church is small – half a dirt floor and half cement, a red clay stage and four walls of multi-sheeted tin, held together by long wooden beams. A stained-light window of dappled sky and trees peers in from above the curtained stage, a triangle of light and warmth that meets rivers of sun streaming through cracks in the walls, lighting the congregation. Inside the church dwell a few potted plants, plastic chairs set neatly in rows, a worn black speaker held aloft on a rusty pedestal, and one surprising corner of musical instruments – a small drum set, an electric guitar, a keyboard, and microphones that stretch to the stage.
After a whirlwind two and half weeks in Kampala, we are setting off for Leontonde in Southern Uganda for the second leg of our project. In our first stint at recording, we were able to capture some great narratives and youth interviews, all in the midst of meeting with Uganda’s most esteemed Parliament Member (a big climate activist), visiting the tombs of the late Buganda kings, roaming around Nakasero Market, mastering boda rides, eating large amounts of great local food, having a few run ins with a chicken, meeting and interviewing a witchdoctor, attending two church services…generally just having a fantastic time.
