Uganda

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I recently took a two week trip to Uganda. I had been looking forward to traveling to Uganda for a while, as I have learned a lot about the country over the past few years. Joshua and I gave a donation on behalf of our wedding guests to a World Vision program in northern Uganda that reintegrated child soldiers into society as our wedding favors. I wrote a paper in graduate school examining the political situation in the country, particularly the factors that enabled such a protracted and horrific conflict in the north. And I greatly admire a bishop of the country, the Rev. Dr. Zac Niringiye, who I had the opportunity to meet and hear him give a lecture series. So, given all of this, I was quite excited to finally visit the country.

The reason for my trip was to meet with CARE staff from Uganda, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Myanmar and Nepal who will be working over the next five years on a program focused on empowering women in their various contexts by improving their economic status; role in decision-making processes at the household level, in the community and nationally; reproductive and maternal health; and addressing gender-based violence such as rape, sexual trafficking and domestic violence. The program is quite exciting, and it was incredibly interesting to work with staff from so many different contexts and learn about the situation of women in each particular society. So I spent most of my time working with them in the city of Entebbe, overlooking Lake Victoria.

A few examples of what we discussed: in Nepal, many remote villages still uphold the traditional practice of isolating women and girls who are menstruating in a hut far from the village, and tigers are coming and killing them. In Kenya, unequal property rights force widowed women to give up their land, often leading to homelessness or sexual exploitation. In Uganda, most women in the northern region have been widowed by the war and are now finding themselves the head of the household, trying to recover from the brutalities they and their children have suffered while figuring out how to provide for their families. And it was quite interesting to hear from Myanmar staff about the particular issues they face doing this type of work under a restrictive military government. Women in Myanmar are particularly victimized by the government because of the role that a woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, has played in challenging the government. She’s an international hero, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring democracy to her country – click on her name to read more about her, it’s a fascinating story.

Suffice it to say that discussing these issues with staff, and working with them to plan what they’ll be doing to create change in each of their countries, made for a very interesting and stimulating trip.

I was able to do a few touristy things while I was there as well. I spent a few days in the capital, Kampala. The one thing worth mentioning was a visit to the Kasubi tombs, the burial grounds of the former kings of Buganda, which was a large kingdom prior to colonial times and is the largest ethnic group in the country. The kings are buried in an enormous thatched hut, apparently the largest in the world, which is surrounded by smaller huts dedicated to the wives of the kings. To this day, the female descendents of the wives take turns staying in the huts throughout the year to symbolically care for the kings.

I had a great guide who explained about each of the kings and their role in regard to the external influences of Islam, Christianity and colonialism that at various periods of time influenced their kingdom. When the Muslim traders came through, the primary reason that the king at the time decided not to convert to Islam was because of the issue of polygamy: Islam only permits having three wives, whereas the Bugandan king traditionally had 52 wives, one from each of the clans that made up his kingdom, as a way to not show favoritism to any one clan. Another king burned 22 young men to death for converting to Christianity, enraged by their allegiance to 'another king.'

Also, the man I was working with there took me to dinner with his family, who are Ugandan, and I had an interesting conversation with them about the political situation in the country. I asked their opinion about the president, Museveni, and the debates around his change the constitution to extend the term limit so that he could stay in power. We had a long discussion about the political history of the country and about their concerns about rising corruption, restrictions placed on the freedom of the press and their overall concern about the future of democracy in their country.

Over the weekend I took a ferry out to the Ssesse Islands in Lake Victoria, an archipelago of 84 islands about 4 hours off the coast of Uganda. It was absolutely stunning – an undeveloped paradise of lush forests and small fishing villages. I went with a woman that I work with and we stayed in a small bungalow on the beach, which was really nice despite the lack of electricity or hot water. There was only one other tourist there, a UN worker in Sudan who was taking a vacation for the week in Uganda. We met several islanders who took us hiking, gave us a boat ride to watch the local fishermen and to see the other islands, and built us a campfire on the beach at night.

The islands are known for the huge variety of water and forest birds, and it was fun birdwatching with a friend’s borrowed binoculars and having a local guide point out the different species. It was also swarming with monkeys, walking around and jumping on the tables, and we saw two enormous “lake rats,” a local species only native to these islands that look somewhat like large alligators. So the wildlife abounded, including some very large and interesting looking insects that I stayed away from.

The villagers have traditionally relied on the abundant fish in Lake Victoria for their livelihoods, both for feeding their families and to sell to the mainland. But the fish are now almost gone, so their entire way of life is having to change. They are now cutting down the island’s trees, hauling the trunks over to the mainland in small canoes and selling the timber. People have to rely on natural resources to survive, but in the process the islands could become deforested, leaving them much worse off. There’s a lot of talk right now about better collaboration between organizations that focus on ‘saving the environment’ and those focused on poverty alleviation, recognizing the importance of considering both the human and the environmental aspects of development.

One of the nights sitting by the campfire watching the stars I said, “This is paradise” to Michael, a young Ugandan engineer from Kampala who was spending the week on the islands setting up solar panels. He laughed and said earnestly, “No, this is no paradise. The United States – now that’s paradise.” About an hour of conversation later, his entire image of the world had been shaken because he learned that there were actually poor people in America, and even people that live on the streets, and we had talked about good aspects of his culture that Americans could learn from. I find that in learning about the worldviews and cultures of different people around the world, and in sharing my own with them, both of our perspectives and opinions are broadened and become more nuanced. Which is one of the reasons I enjoy my travels so much!