Photos

For anyone interested, I've started up a Picasa account and have put some more photos online. Please feel free to see the results of my beloved new camera here. (At least I hope so - let me know if the link doesn't work!)

Yes, Google is slowly sucking me into its lecherous grip. I honestly had no idea how many different websites and programs they were in charge of until I signed up for a Gmail account for work recently and suddenly found myself prospectively signed in under that account name on all manner of different websites and services, from blogs to Picasa to maps and on and on. It might seem handy to have all your website accounts combined under one username and password, but I'm not sure I'm happy with finding myself pre-registered with websites I've never used before, or with everything having to be interconnected.

Not to mention how annoying it is when like me, you have two different accounts - personal and work - and can't use any of these damn websites at the same time with different names. So I can't let blogs or photos slowly upload in the background (I'm in Africa, remember) while I work away on my work email, for example. It tends to get in the way of my sneaky use of internet at the office for things I should be doing on my own time!

Privacy? What's that you say? Let Google buy Facebook and their plan for world domination shall be complete.

Bety Cariño

I learned just this morning that another colleague of ours from Front Line died tragically yesterday. Bety Cariño was a courageous human rights defender from Mexico, who came to Dublin just over two months ago - with G who I mentioned last week - to take part in the Dublin Platform. Yesterday she was shot and killed while travelling in a humanitarian caravan which was bringing aid relief, food supplies and teachers to a small town blockaded in recent months by paramilitaries in Oaxaca, Mexico. The caravan was ambushed and fired upon; an international observer from Finland, Tyri Antero Jaakkola, was also killed. Others were wounded and many remain missing. No one knows if they too have been killed or kidnapped, or if they are hiding in the bush.

Being a human rights defender from Mexico is a particularly difficult, even deadly, profession. Bety faced the additional risks that came from her belonging to an indigenous community, and from being a woman. Both the indigenous and woman are particularly vulnerable, mostly thanks to economic disadvantage and the threats of stigmatisation and violence they face from the authorities and from society itself. During her time in Dublin, she spoke so eloquently about the problems facing her indigenous community in their struggle for autonomy and access to their lands and resources that her testimony was truly poetic. At a party at the Jameson Distillery late on a Friday night, she took to the stage and held the whole room spellbound as she sang a song from her community. I took some pictures, one of which you can see above.

You can read Front Line's report on Bety's death here or read more about the attack in which she was killed here. It is reported of the caravan in which Bety travelled that:

The caravan was carrying food, water, and other basic necessities to San Juan Copala, which has been subject to a paramilitary blockade that has prevented anyone from entering or leaving the community since January. In addition to carrying much-needed supplies, the caravan was meant to accompany teachers who were returning to classes after paramilitaries denied them access to the community nearly five months ago. The caravan included representatives from the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), Section 22 of the teachers union, the Center for Community Support Working Together (CACTUS), Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Liberty (VOCAL), two reporters from the Mexican magazine Contralinea, and international observers from Belgium, Finland, Italy, and Germany.

I hardly know what to say.

Mbale II (the rest of it)

Road outside our hotel with Mt. Elgon in background

Mbale was an interesting trip – it was great to get out of Kampala and see some of the rest of the country, even if there was very little time to really see the town or the countryside because we were, of course, working. Hence what I saw was limited to the view from the window of our car, or from the bus that my colleague Sharon and I took to get back home. Even still it was fascinating – I hate to use the term “real” Africa (the urban being just as “real” as the rural and home to far more people), but Mbale and the long road from Kampala conform to the image of Africa in the West. There were red roads and green fields, laughing children, women with bundles on their heads, poverty, chickens, cows, goats, and yes, grass-roofed huts.

This was all a bit of a contrast to Kampala – a cosmopolitan and sophisticated city with every modern convenience. Everyone has a mobile phone, internet access is everywhere (and although its slower than home, its not as bad as I had expected), and I couldn't tell you how many flat screen tvs I've come across. Everyone is glued to the British Premiership, a fan of either Man Utd, Chelsea or Arsenal, and crowds gather in bars and outside shop fronts to watch the games screened live on satellite from South Africa. The girls who work in the guesthouse are glued to Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, American Idol and, hilariously for me, Latin American telenovelas with names like “La Tormenta”, gloriously melodramatic and dubbed in bad English. Kampala's nightlife is hopping and four wheel drives are ubiquitously gridlocked in the horrendous traffic, driven not just by the ex-pats – muzungus, white people – or their drivers, but by locals.

All of this is camouflage. I've seen the shanty towns and the slums from the window of Margaret's car, and the children selling Chinese-made rubbish at traffic lights, and the marabou storks rummaging in the litter. When we left at 6.00AM to go to Mbale, I was shocked at the crowds of people already out on foot on the roads, but as the others explained to me, those who live hand to mouth on daily labourers' wages start working as soon as it gets light in order to make their day as long and their earnings as substantial as possible. But its so easy to forget all this when you live in Muyenga – which I could easily compare as an equivalent to Foxrock or Dalkey in Dublin – and work and meet with Ugandans who have university degrees and masters, often from abroad, and successful businesses and careers. I've been to two or three houses which would rightly be regarded as mansions in Dublin. I've been chauffeured around by private drivers, and have come to think of armed guards at the door as normal. And Muyenga isn't even the high-end area of Kampala; no embassies here.

Mbale was not like that, and it was refreshing. There was an affluent side to it – we hung out in the evenings at a swishy country-club style hotel with excellent food and a swim-up bar – but it was not the norm. The streets were heaving at all hours but there were very few cars, and rather than the hoards of boda bodas which buzz eternally around Kampala, bicycles with a padded seat over the back wheel were the most common form of public transport. Everyone else was walking. Street markets were not limited to certain places and corners as they are in the city, but lined all the roads and streets, and most of the shops – narrow, dark and concrete - spilled outside and did their business on the pavement. Men were gathered in groups almost everywhere, either bored or shiftily looking out for an opportunity. Women were working. Children were running around. Goats and chickens wandered around the main streets. In some places the road was almost choked with pedestrian traffic, and was usually unpaved. Everything was happening all at once.

Bicycle taxi stage. Next to the guy in yellow in the centre is a hanging hunk of cow - a normal Ugandan butchers

Everyone was hawking everything, nowhere more so than at the bus park, where a slow procession of men, women and children circled the bus and our windows in unwinding repetition. They sold everything: food (chapatti, samosa, mandazi (doughnuts), grilled chicken, bananas), newspapers, mobile phone credit (this was quite a handy one, I thought), books (most of the book sellers had only one or two sad, lost books each - if you looked but didn't like what they showed you, they would return a few minutes later with a different selection), and then all kinds of random rubbish which had no place on a bus. I saw nail clippers, combs, hair accessories, cheap kitchen accessories, razors, plastic jewellery, bars of soap, and all manner of plastic Chinese-made tack, which men carted around on their backs on huge wooden display cases which towered over their heads, so that they would reverse up to the windows of the bus for potential customers to have a look.

We drove down country roads a few times on our way to various places. Every road off the main street is a country road. As the bush generally begins directly behind the row of buildings which line the road, most of the streets of Mbale felt like a street scene erected on a film set, with nothing at all behind the front, falsified walls. The country roads are busy, but not with cars. People are coming and going, to and fro, all taking their time. Its true what they say, even in Kampala – no one, and I mean no one, is in a hurry in Africa. I walk as slowly as it feels physically possible for me to walk, and I'm still overtaking everyone before me.

Human traffic (guy on mobile phone on the right!)

There were children everywhere. This is the case in Kampala too, but in Mbale there are presumably less children in school, and nowhere else for them to go but their homes and the roads. The children in school wear immaculately clean, brightly-colour uniforms and both boys and girls have their heads shaved (this is in fact a requirement of school uniforms here. We thought we had it bad not being allowed to wear jewellery!). The children not in school are generally grubby and happy, playing outside together. “Hi muzungu”, they call after me cheerfully. “Muzungu how are you?” The very smallest ones wriggle and dance with excitement and squeal “Muzungu! Muzungu! Muzungu!!!”

Three children hanging out in the grounds of a local college, quietly looking after themselves

These guys were lined up playing on their fallen tree, and started waving when we drove past, so we stopped and waved back

Kids who presumably should have been in school play outside an abandoned house while a maid from the hotel next door serves lunch on trays from a restaurant across the street

The house had not been finished but was full of women doing laundry and possibly families squatting

People are tending the small plots of land outside their homes where they grow frilly green rows of cassava, potatoes and banana trees (which supply both the sweet bananas we eat and the unripe, larger ones like plantain which are steamed to make matoke, as common here as spuds are at home). The plants grow on raised mounds of earth so that the gardens look something like egg cartons. Chickens are pecking at the growing plants for bugs. The houses are tiny, sometimes shacks, sometimes tin-roofed, but in truth no one is ragged or dirty – clothes are bright, colourful and neat, and no one takes a blind bit of notice of our four wheel drive bumping past on the way to somewhere else. No excitement, no resentment, just getting on with it.

Malaria

Tomorrow (April 25) is World Malaria Day. Normally this wouldn't have meant much to me - if you're signed up to as many mailing lists as I am you start to realise that every day is the World Day of something or other - but as I have just moved to a country where malaria is a serious risk, I have started to see it quite differently.

Last week a colleague of ours passed away quite suddenly. He had come to Dublin in February to participate in the Dublin Platform, a conference run by Front Line every two years which brings together over 100 human rights defenders from around the world. G was from Burundi and was a brave, articulate activist working on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights - not at all an easy thing to be in Burundi or indeed in Africa. He set up and ran Burundi's only LGBT organisation and was also worked against AIDS/HIV, that African scourge. He was funny and mischievous, so he stood out amongst the many participants and I have good memories of him (including one slightly scandalous anecdote that I won't repeat here!). He was a young man, and last week he died of malaria, a treatable, preventable disease. Needless to say I was completely thrown on hearing the news.

Only a few days later, one of my colleagues started feeling unwell while we were in Mbale - a terrible headache, nausea, stiffness, fever, weak. The poor thing was a little scared and emotional, not knowing what was wrong with her and being so far away from home, facing a long, stressful journey by bus back to Kampala - and on top of all of that, she had to look after a rather green Irish girl on the trip! It turns out she too has malaria, and is convinced that she contracted it by sleeping without a mosquito net for one night while away on a previous training workshop.

Both of these incidents brought home to me the imminent and serious danger of malaria out here. I've been eaten alive by the mozzies once or twice already (we have a love/hate relationship: I hate them venomously, they love me unconditionally) and since these incidents have been hastily swallowing anti-malarials and obsessively tucking and re-tucking my mosquito net in at night. But not everyone can afford malarials or take them on a permanent basis, and there are plenty of people - including Joan, who I mentioned here previously - who cannot afford nets or repellent, even for their children.

Project Blackout are running a campaign this weekend asking you to change your Facebook profile photo to a black square to mark World Malaria Day tomorrow. Its only a small gesture but it doesn't cost anything or take up much time. You can access the Facebook page here or else copy the picture above.

Mbale I (the professional bit)

I spent the last three days in Mbale, a large-ish regional town in Eastern Uganda. This was my very first trip to “the field” (not just in Uganda - ever), or as everyone so charmingly puts it, “up-country”, which altogether makes me feel rather colonial. The purpose of the trip was to put in an eastern stop on a training and dissemination program which the Human Rights Centre is running for the month of April, during which they have organised a series of workshops across Uganda.

The main aim of the workshop is to gather together local human rights defenders and activists and to tell them about the laws and mechanisms available to them to help them in their work, specifically the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, the international system based around the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, as well as a little about local laws and provisions. The reason there is only a little time spent on local provisions is of course because there aren't many.



The Declaration was passed in 1998 by the UN General Assembly. It is not legally binding but it basically gathers together various rights and protections guaranteed in other human rights instruments which are binding and puts them together in a way which is geared towards getting States to recognise that defenders are legitimate actors in society and that they are entitled to protection. The Human Rights Centre recently translated the Declaration into seven local Ugandan languages and the training program is one of the main thrusts by which they're taking it out to the communities. A human rights roadshow, if you will.

Incidentally, the training program has been funded by Trócaire (for those of you not of the auld sod, Trócaire – which the Ugandans pronounce tro-care as if it was French! - is one of the main Irish development aid organisations, and enjoys a very high-profile presence at home as one of the traditional recipients of popular charity donations). When I inquired about the arrangements for the hotel and expenses for the trip, my colleagues told me not to worry because the hotel would be covered by the funding for the program. So I found myself in the strange position whereby the money that I myself had thrown into the Trócaire box last year had come back to find me in Uganda so that I could teach Africans about human rights. Brilliant!



In fairness, I did have a similar feeling last week when I learnt that the Human Rights Centre itself is largely funded by Irish Aid, the development wing of the Dept. of Foreign Affairs. I would have been chuffed to see where my tax-payers' euro were going, except that in recent years my poverty-stricken choices of employment have meant that I have yet to qualify to pay tax. A charity case employing a charity case, if you will. What can I say; I'm happy to do my part to cut down on social welfare bills. Thank me later.

The training was quite a success, at least to my innocent eye. With 30 participants we were at full capacity, and the distribution was good in that we had a cross section of civil society: journalists and radio broadcasters, students, health officers, clergy, an elected official and a representative of the police, in addition to the employees of human rights and community organisations. They varied in age from their twenties to their seventies, and not all of them had degrees or training or human rights 'careers'. But all of them were receptive and keen to learn, happy to debate and constructive in their ideas and suggestions.

Spot the muzungu in the corner...

In the afternoon the participants split into three groups to brainstorm. The three separate identifications of the key problems and difficulties, and their suggestions for change and initiative, were remarkably similar; its not that Ugandans don't know what's wrong with their society or how to fix it, or that they don't have a vision for what they'd like to achieve. Neither did anyone romanticise the whole thing - no one mentioned the words 'change' or 'hope' or 'dream', or wrung their hands. But no one knows where to start.







By the end of the afternoon many participants looked visibly satisfied at having this confusing muddle of half-information and misunderstanding set right in their minds; hearing about the avenues of entry into this remote and distant international system is stimulating, but far more thought-provoking is the prospect of using this new information and sense of authority on the subject the next time the authorities come knocking. If defenders haven't heard of the Declaration previously, neither have the police or the local heavies. An authoritative-sounding defence can be very useful, even in a remote town like Mbale - particularly when the laws are written clearly in your own local language. All our booklets of the Declaration were snapped up on the way out the door.

Afterwards we went to a local radio station recommended to us for its political discussions and topical shows. Radio remains the predominant means of communication in Uganda, at least outside Kampala, and each of the training workshops so far have been followed by an hour-long phone-in talk show. I had been impressed initially by my colleagues' savvy media connections, getting on talk shows all over the country. They laughed at my enthusiasm – time on air here is paid for, and we had essentially bought an hour's advertising in a talk-show format. Still, it was fun to sit in the booth with our headphones on, even if I couldn't understand a word of what was being said. True to our policy of maximum engagement of the community, the broadcast took place primarily in Luganda (one of the most common Ugandan languages, dominant in Kampala, which my colleagues speak) with the presenter translating a lot of the comments into another language more common in Mbale – to my shame I must admit that I can't remember what it was called. I make a bad reporter!

My colleagues Robert and Jacques with the radio presenter. In the background is a poster of one of the Tribal Kings

The talk show will be followed by a series of ads encouraging people to know their rights and to contact the Human Rights Centre, which will run in three different languages.

It all might not sound like much, but its remarkably simple to carry out, once you have the funding to do it – and in relative terms there's very little cost involved other than travel, accommodation and hosting expenses. If the funding is there for follow up – for coming back in six months or a year, for staying in touch with participants, for arranging other meetings for them to organise together and take their ideas further, to draw other participants in – it could be the start of something.

Stay tuned for the non-professional bit of Mbale to follow...

Night Storm

My afternoon's plans have been disrupted by a passing thunder shower. I sat on the terrace after breakfast dipping my toes in the sunshine, enjoying the return of good weather and remarking to Cassva about how much hotter it was today compared to the damp of yesterday. I went to take a shower but when I emerged into the sitting room half an hour later, the angry darkness of the sky was reflected so fiercely in the mirror that it leapt out and grabbed my attention. I was supposed to go to view a house about 20 minutes walk away, but one look at the darkness over my shoulder in the mirror told me otherwise.



The rain seems to follow an identical pattern which I've seen repeated at least four or five times during the last week. Naturally, the first time it happened was in the middle of the night, so that I woke with a fright, disoriented and clueless as to what was happening.

First comes a dramatic drop in temperature, and wind; a strong-willed breeze entirely at odds with the placid calm of the good weather here. We don't have panes of glass in the windows in the guest house; instead, there are horizontal slats of glass which work in the same way as a Venetian blind. They're almost permanently kept open – it truly amazes me that the climate here is so stable that houses can be built without need to provide for even the hypothetical possibility of bad weather – but even when closed they obviously don't seal. Hence the noise of the wind in the middle of the night was much the same as if I had been sleeping outside – and because of the density of leafy foliage surrounding the house, the wind makes quite a noise. Almost exactly the same noise, in fact, as crashing Atlantic storms make in the tossing, towering eucalyptus tree outside my parents' back door; I was instantly back in bed as a child, cowering under the blanket during a storm. Which in truth was almost exactly what I was doing now.

The air rushed and burst in through the window in the sitting room and out through the window in my bedroom, and then back the way it came. Back and forward, pushing and pulling through the rooms so that my mosquito net swung like a hammock on a rolling boat and the curtains billowed madly, giving shape to the wind. I heard thunder booming distantly away to the west and knew what was coming next. I thought the first faint flashes of lightening were just my eyes flickering in the dark, but one or two big ones set me right. I counted madly, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four... almost as a mantra to keep me safe. They were mostly very far away but as the storm progressed, the thunder rolled for a while at a steady eight one-thousand before peaking at a few brief, bright four one-thousand booms.

Lightening in the company of other people and electric lights can be exciting and a little thrilling. Alone at 5am, it is a different matter. I've never really lost a primitive child-like fear of lightening, an inherited condition like some ancestral awe of the inexplicable. Lightening and storms were the only thing that scared me witless and rigid as a child – they heightened the terrible loneliness and isolation of the night, the encapsulation of each individual in the darkness. The whole world takes on a different contour in the small hours; depression and anxiety magnify, we admit truths to ourselves which are inadmissible in daytime, time itself slows down and crawls. As adults we comprehend this as feeling like the only person left alive in the world. As children, we only know that there are terrible and eternal truths about our condition revealed in the dark. As a child I only woke at night and trembled during storms, and thus storms still take me back instantly to that primordial place of fear.

The rain began pelting down. Buckets of it, gallons of it. It sounded like a waterfall was passing overhead, like the whole River Nile was falling out of the sky. I suddenly realise that the windows are open – no rain is coming into the bedroom but the sitting room could be getting soaked for all I know. So I summon up very great courage and get out of bed and tiptoe to the next room, fighting the urge to cover my eyes with my hands.

I tip-toe, because fear always generates the bizarre but all-powerful instinct to make as little noise as possible. Who am I afraid of waking? Why don't I just turn on the light to reassure myself? I have no idea; these very obvious observations never cross my mind until I wake the next morning and laugh at the strange dimension of what passes during the night.

Nothing is getting wet – unlike home, the wind falls when it starts to rain so that the water drops vertically as arrows. I suppose its better to close the windows regardless; I open the mosquito screens which shutter the inside of the windows in order to tilt the slats of glass, gingerly, the way you might if a dangerous wild animal lurked outside. I gasp at the first burst of lightening but then start to notice the peculiar, murky purple light of the storm, and the glow in the sky from the lighted city under the rain. It is dream-like and almost beautiful, a subterranean twilight of a colour that doesn't exist in daylight. Lightening keeps flashing but not in forks; it simply lights up the sky for a moment as if explosions are taking place in the clouds, sometimes the whole sky, sometimes in small puffs which pick out a fluffy white cloud in the midst of the featureless gloom. I run back to bed, somewhat awed.

After half an hour of the deluge, the rain gradually softens and trickles off. The lightening grows very faint and although thunder continues to gently roll across the night for some time, it is only a lullaby to wash me back to sleep. The whole show is over within an hour, and the light from the window is no longer underwater twilight but the blue light of dawn. I feel soothed.

The same pattern took place twice during the working day at the office, and again the morning after that. By the time it came to Thursday night, when I was woken by rustling curtains and heavy rain, instead of straining every nerve to watch for the first coming flash with the frightened twitch of a rabbit, I just hoisted my blanket higher and turned over and went to sleep.

Capable of making a rational decision to sleep through a storm? I feel as if one of the great milestones of becoming an adult have been passed.

A Brief Means of Introduction

I arrived in Kampala, Uganda just over a week ago. About three weeks' ago I had very little idea that this was going to happen. There were lots of people who I didn't get to speak to before I left, and there are lots of people who have no idea what I'm doing here (I've been getting some very shocked reactions on Facebook). So here goes as a brief means of explanation – those of you who've already heard this tale of delay, denial and confusion can skip down a few paragraphs...

In September last year I began a 12-month contract with an international human rights organisation in Dublin called Front Line (FL). Front Line works on and with human rights defenders; people around the world who work in various capacities to improve the rights of others, and who face risk as a result of speaking out or challenging vested interests. Not all defenders are the civil and political activists so beloved of student unions and celebrity endorsements, and not all of them are people who work for human rights organisations. Defenders are journalists, lawyers, trade unionists, teachers, academics, writers, doctors, community activists and village leaders – many of them don't even know themselves that they are human rights defenders. You'll hear me banging on about defenders quite a bit here – once you become aware of the concept you begin to see the defenders all around, behind every newspaper headline, within every volunteer and within every community initiative.

The arrangement was that I would spend a total of 6 months in Front Line's Dublin office, but would also be seconded abroad on an internship. This was originally intended to take place in Geneva. Front Line had previously been sending interns to the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, essentially a special expert on the topic appointed by the UN, which operates with the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), with a staff of three (“the Mandate”). As two specialised agencies working in this field, the Mandate and Front Line have a relatively close working relationship.

For reasons I won't go into, plans changed and things were delayed. It was nothing personal, just bad luck that it happened to take place around the time I was supposed to leave. Fast forward three months and I was still in Dublin waiting to see what would happen. This actually worked out pretty well for me. Work was good; I was involved with an international conference hosted by Front Line - the Dublin Platform - which was an amazing experience, and went to Geneva for a week to attend the Human Rights Council and assist the Mandate during one of their busiest weeks. I stayed with a succession of kind friends who gave me various welcoming homes, treated every week like it would be my last, and saw Dublin for what it really is: a social city which needs to be discovered with a bit of time, effort and a few good friends.

Margaret Sekaggya herself (the SR) is in fact based in Kampala, Uganda, her native city. As Special Rapporteurs are working experts in their field, most if not all of them have many commitments and full-time positions, whether as lawyers, academics or otherwise, and they travel so frequently that its usually not feasible to have them based full time in Geneva. To cut a long story short, Front Line have seconded me to assist the SR in her office in Kampala. Given that a few months had already been lost, we didn't waste any time about it. I had my vaccinations, booked my flights and left within two weeks.

So here I am. I am now Research Assistant to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders (try getting that mouthful out after a few drinks), and will be here for three months, until the start of July. Although I'm working with Margaret in her capacity as SR, I'm hosted in the office of the NGO which she runs in a leafy suburb of Kampala; the Human Rights Centre Uganda. The Centre also works on human rights defenders, although solely in a Ugandan context.

I had in fact toyed with the idea of blogging once or twice before, but never had a good enough excuse to indulge myself in inflicting my unsolicited views on the rest of the world. Now that I'm away and without the kind of implanted internet access I'm addicted to, it seems like the easiest way to stay in touch. Before I left the amount of people who also inquired and actively encouraged me to start writing was both encouraging and exciting. It seems like some of you might actually read these aforementioned inflicted views! And if not – well then they'll stay safely out of your way here in cyberspace.

I'll also use the opportunity to thank everyone for the alternatively well-wishing, encouraging, kind, helpful, shocked and confused emails and messages I've been getting lately from people near and far, especially from those folks I haven't talked to in a while – its always touching to see you're still making the effort to take an interest in my wanderings. I haven't had time to write back to everyone but take it that I was delighted to hear from you, and will try and drop you a line soon.

That's it, introduction completed! Find below a few things I've written since I arrived. Some are a bit long, but what can an over-excited new blogger do...

Joan

At the Human Rights Centre, a young woman lives within the office compound with a newborn baby. I found out more about her story today.

Her name is Joan. In January, the night guard brought her to the office, introduced her as his sister, and asked if she could help out. She's been there ever since.

The night guard is a policeman who works full time during the day, and then comes to guard the compound overnight. After a few mishaps hiring private security guards, Human Rights Centre now pays the police to provide a guard, and this one was sent to us after volunteering to work extra hours. We usually leave around 5.00pm, and he doesn't arrive until about 8.00pm. Compounds or properties are rarely ever left without someone on the premises, so he suggested to Margaret that Joan could watch the premises for the few hours in the evenings before he arrived, and in addition could clean the office, work in the garden, and do other odd jobs around the place. It seemed a good solution to what had been an awkward problem for the Centre, so it was agreed that she could sleep in a room attached to the garage and use the Centre's kitchen.

Joan had only been there for a few weeks when it became obvious that she was pregnant. There was no husband, and when they asked why she was not with her family, the guard told them that her family were in the countryside. It was obvious that she didn't have anywhere else to go, so they didn't turn her away.

About three weeks ago, Margaret arrived at the office one morning to hear that Joan had gone to have her baby. When she felt the baby coming, someone took her to the hospital on a boda boda, Kampala's ubiquitous motorbike taxis. They're the cheapest and fastest way to get around, but they are infamously dangerous, ramshackle and rusty, swerving, thrusting and weaving through traffic, bumping and jolting over the city's cratered roads, and generally driving chaotically in all directions at top speed. Imagine a woman in labour travelling pillion. This was at about 10.00am – and at 2.00pm that same afternoon Joan arrived back to the office with a baby boy.

The baby had come early so she had not been prepared and had not gathered anything that she would need. She had no baby clothes, blankets, nappies, bedding, towels or anything else. She had only the few pieces of clothes for herself which she had arrived with, and a mat on the floor with a sheet where she slept. She brought the baby back from the hospital (presumably also on a boda, although I didn't get that detail) wrapped in a bed sheet and gathered to her chest inside the t-shirt that she herself wore. She had had stitches but had no pain killers. When they went in and out that afternoon to see how she was doing, she mentioned that she was dizzy, and then they learned that she hadn't had anything to eat all day. She had no idea why her breasts were so sore, or how to make herself more comfortable, or how to wash the baby or what to cover him with or how to do anything. And she was alone, in a room attached to a garage.

They brought food for her and made her tea. One of Margaret's daughters has young children, so she asked her for their unwanted baby things and brought Joan a basket, baby clothes, some blankets, towels, and a mosquito net for the baby (crucially important in a malaria zone). They showed her how to look after the baby and the things that she needed to do for herself to recover. Eventually Margaret took aside the night guard and warned him that he needed to start buying Joan plenty of proper food and soap and the other things she would need. When he didn't seem to take the warning too seriously, Margaret told him that if he didn't start looking after Joan, he would be fired. After all, if anything was to happen to either her or the baby the Human Rights Centre or Margaret herself could very likely be held responsible.

No one has ever heard the full details of the story, but this is what they have more or less worked out. Joan of course is not the night guard's sister. She is from the countryside and had probably come to Kampala for a job. The girls in the office guess that she might be around 28; not particularly young. We presume that she met the night guard, but in any event she became pregnant, and must have lost her job as a result. The fact that he brought her to the Human Rights Centre rather than to the police barracks (where policemen and their families live) suggests that he already has a wife and possibly a family.

Some time after the baby was born, Margaret asked Joan where her family were (“In the village”), and whether she had told them about the baby. “Maybe I will some day,” she replied. Obviously she is afraid to go back or to tell them. She doesn't visit friends in Kampala and doesn't have any visitors, so it seems she doesn't know anyone else. She remains entirely dependent on the night guard; without him she wouldn't have any money, or any food, and the police are paid very little in Uganda so that if he really does have another family, he cannot have much money to give her. Other than the staff in the office, she doesn't even see anyone else; she rarely even leaves the compound. The guard doesn't seem too perturbed. A few weeks before the baby was born, Margaret told him that he should get someone to come and stay with Joan for the few hours each evening that she was alone at the compound in case she went into labour, but this never happened. And in the end she had to threaten him with dismissal before he began to take care of Joan properly.

'Women's rights' and 'gender-inequality' are annoying terms you hear in newspapers and op-eds and policy documents and politician's promises, near-meaningless but politically necessary buzz words, abstract concepts demanded by irritatingly outspoken women. But the whole point is that what happened to Joan could never happen to a man. A man won't ever have to even worry about the mere potential of a trap like this. I don't mean the inconvenience of having children come along and disrupt a perfectly middling life. I don't mean the economic pressures of trying to provide for an unplanned or additional child, or the damage to social reputation. I don't even mean the health risks or the pain or the very real dangers of giving birth and then recuperating in such conditions. I mean the isolation: the very real scenario of a young woman with a day-old baby entirely alone in the world, no means of obtaining an income, no idea how to care for her child, and almost without a roof over her head. The sheer aloneness of the girl in that situation. More than half of the world's population is female; for this to be the reality that the rest of us are lucky to avoid is unacceptable.

Joan called her baby boy William. He is about three weeks old, and he is beautiful. Joan is tall and strong, with a pretty smile and a shy bashfulness. The only real sign that she's just had a baby is her slightly stiffened walk; a trace hobbled. You wouldn't really notice it unless you'd heard the word 'stitches' (it gives me nightmares). She potters around with a floor brush and a mop in the mornings, sweeping floors that don't need to be swept, always cleaning Margaret's room first. Her feet hardly make a sound in her plastic flip flops. Most of the time you wouldn't know she or William are there.

So now, when they order lunch to be delivered to the office they sometimes order a little extra for Joan, and give her any leftovers. An NGO's budget is tightly planned and outlined in advance, but Margaret is hoping to be able to redistribute some money so that they could give Joan a small allowance for her work as a housekeeper.

We lock the office building every evening and leave Joan to her room facing onto the yard behind it. This evening when we were ready to leave, Alex (Margaret's driver) mentioned that Joan had gone to the market to buy food and said we should wait until she returned before locking up. She would be back shortly, he said, and then gestured to her little room, where a light showed through the gap where the uneven door didn't meet the frame. The baby was in there, he gestured.

“Alone?!” I gasped.

“No no, I watch him”, Alex said.

Alex is reliable and trustworthy, a skinny, gentle man who doesn't speak much English but who appreciatively nods and smiles and gestures when I talk to him. But he had been hovering near the car all evening, sheltering from the dense tropical rain which had been falling for over an hour, as if afraid to go near the baby in case he would hurt it. I ran over through the sheets of rain and looked in through the window, peering through the net curtain: no movement in the basket.

Margaret needed to go, she had an appointment. It would only take Alex a few minutes to drop her and drive back to the compound, so I offered to stay and wait until he came back. As soon as they'd gone I pushed the door open and tip-toed in to make sure that the baby really was all right. The room was tiny, not much bigger than an en suite bathroom at home. There was a plain concrete floor and a smell of damp and rain coming in from outside, and absolutely no furniture in the room other than the baby's basket. A mat with some sheets lay on the floor beside two or three neat piles of clothes and towels, and one or two filled plastic bags. A few bits of clothes hung drying in the window. I carefully pulled back the mosquito net a little to see William; he was sleeping. I tip toed-back out again.

Joan came back a moment later, while I stood in the kitchen door across the yard, watching the faint glow from within her room and breathing in the fresh smell of warm rain. She had an umbrella and was swinging a small plastic bag of food, looking somehow light and breezy, tripping in from the murky evening. She grinned at me and waved hello; when I asked if she'd got wet – gesturing wildly to explain – she laughed. In the evening light, darkened and gloomy with rain, I watched her wring out her dress around her ankles and use a wet cloth to quickly dry the floor inside where the rain had come in under the door. And then she swung the door closed behind her, and I heard her exclaim with gentle excitement as she bent down to the basket and her baby. She speaks Luganda, but the tone of tenderness with which she talked and cooed to her newborn baby was universally unmistakeable, and didn't need any explanation.

My Media Day

Today Margaret was giving the opening remarks as guest of honour at the opening session of a Young Leaders Training Camp run by the Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), and took me along with her to sit in. FOWODE was set up about 15 years ago to encourage women to become involved in public life in Uganda. About three years ago they hit on the idea of reaching out to young women in order to encourage them to become involved in public life and to work on behalf of their communities and society, with a particular emphasis upon encouraging them to work on women's issues and to tackle gender-based inequality and discrimination. They began running residential training workshops. Three times a year they take a group of about 30 young women – recent university graduates, searching for jobs, who have already been involved in community work or activism – and keep them for two weeks, running a program of academic lectures, practical workshops, debates, discussions, cultural exchange and so on. During the third week they undertake four or five days' work experience with an NGO or community organisation somewhere in Uganda, usually linked to their own particular interests.

It seems like a great program and provides a great opportunity to learn and gain work experience (it's aimed at girls much like myself, and after going to the opening session I would love to attend the next two weeks!). It also seems like great fun – a gang of young women with a hectic schedule at a comfortable, isolated hotel outside Kampala.

FOWODE's particular interest lies in sensitising the girls to gender issues: there is a serious lack of awareness, even amongst women, of various gender issues. At the extreme end of the scale you'd be amazed by how much active opposition women themselves sometimes put up against the introduction of gender-sensitive initiatives. Women's rights are sensitive and controversial: to campaign on behalf of women is to face accusations of breaking up families, of destroying cultural practices, of attacking the principles of religion, or of basic disrespect.

Thirty girls, all about my own age or a little younger, sat on plastic chairs, while a waiter handed around tall, cold, glass bottles of soda with long straws. He was the only man in the room other than some reporters and a camera-man, who clustered at the back. Pictures of previous training camps were hung on the walls, along with posters which declared, “Women are good leaders. Support them”.

FOWODE's Executive Director, a board member, and one of their members – a university lecturer in International Humanitarian Law, who described herself as “a grass-roots and grass-tops woman!” – also spoke during the session. They were all good speakers – lively, entertaining and uplifting. They were also all Ugandan women. FOWODE was set up, more or less, by a group of women who had worked on drafting Uganda's fourth constitution in 1995, a process which was marked by lengthy and extensive public consultation, the result of their work being a constitutional document well-known in Africa for its particular gender awareness.

FOWODE receives its main funding from the Ford Foundation, an American funding organisation, but it is not run or administered by anyone from the west. The organisation is not an aid project or a charity or the brain child of a philanthropist; I was the only foreigner in the room. FOWODE is up and running because a group of strong, articulate, well-educated African women who were already active in society basically decided to encourage other young women to get up and out and do the same. They are not sitting around expecting someone else to make the changes they want, government, charity or otherwise. They're just doing it themselves, and they're going to particularly constructive lengths to educate and support others to join them.

The university lecturer finished her remarks with a quotation, which she instructed everyone specifically to write down. “When the world is sitting, you, as a young woman, stand up. When the world is standing, be outstanding. When the world is outstanding, be the standard”.

As I sat and listened to these rousing women, who in a third world country believe that anything is possible, I thought: we need more of this in Ireland.

Margaret was greatly complimented on her remarks – she spoke for about half an hour. The audience was really receptive, and broke into applause spontaneously once or twice. Margaret is a good speaker, with a pleasant habit of breaking off from her text to add in personal anecdotes or to relate what she is saying to remarks made by others earlier on. Later on, outside, I was chatting to some of the organisers and the ladies from FOWODE who had themselves spoken, all of whom individually mentioned how much they had enjoyed the speech. The university lecturer asked me if I would forward her a copy, as she thought the speech was useful and she asked if she could use it and work through the issues mentioned with the participants during sessions later in the week. I promised her that I would, inwardly smiling: I had written the speech. It was the first speech I had ever written for someone else, and I had hammered it out that morning in about an hour and a half, panicking that I wouldn't have it ready on time. So it was a small personal triumph, if only because I had so much enjoyed hearing it delivered (I hadn't expected to attend the event myself) – it certainly sounded much better coming from Margaret than it would have from me.

Afterwards, Margaret was interviewed by some reporters who were present – and so was I! The group was milling around outside when I randomly found myself in a conversation with a middle-aged man standing alongside. I've found it indescribably easy to randomly find yourself in conversations with strangers in Uganda – people will happily chat with anyone who happens to sit alongside them in a bar or in a shop or in this case, the garden outside the hotel. He asked me what my involvement with FOWODE was – I mentioned that I was working with Margaret Sekaggya. It led into a conversation about the UN, about human rights defenders, and then about Uganda.

Like many Ugandans, he's interested in talking about the country and the way things have changed there. Uganda to me so far seems a very up-beat place. Things are far from perfect and people are happy to talk about the bad with foreigners (everyone's pretty resigned to the fact that next year's elections are going to be rigged, for example), but people are also equally pragmatic with getting on with things (the elections might be rigged but the country is politically stable as a result and hence opportunistic). Even more so, they seem keen to emphasize the dramatic positive developments during the past 20 years. This gentleman described to me with a determined edge to his voice of how not very long ago soldiers did anything they wanted to, and dead bodies in ditches were a normal sight. He repeated this two or three times – about how he had lived through an era in which it was normal to see dead bodies in ditches.

“We had one radio station, government-owned”, he said, “but now we have more than 200. In only 20 years!” I asked him if they were mostly independent – he nodded yes. This change is indeed dramatic – in the early 1990s Uganda had one of the highest levels of HIV transmission in the world (30% of the population was infected) and it had been devastated by 20 years of dictatorship and war. Today Kampala is leafy, cosmopolitan and full of children – apparently 60% of the population is under 18!

He felt that the large international presence in Uganda today is related to its remarkable stability (relative to the Great Lakes region) and relative prosperity; there is still terribly poverty but the economy grew at over 6% per year for most of the Noughties. “Uganda is a test case now”, he said. “Its a good model”.

Only then did I notice that the large box in his hand, about the size of an A4 page, was a tape recorder. It was ancient and solid, with a curling leather strap – I hadn't seen a model like it since we had one for learning hymns in primary school. I would swear he had been trying to record what I'd been saying. Then I noticed his shirt – it said UBC. It turned out he was a radio reporter for the Ugandan Broadcasting Commission, the government-owned station. He disappeared not long afterwards, but about ten minutes later I was talking to FOWODE's Communications Director, who was giving me her card and telling me to get in touch if I'd like to call to the office sometime, when he came back, the tape recorder hoisted high up on his shoulder. He was on a mission. He asked me to tell him a little about the Mandate on human rights defenders and before I knew what was happening he had hoisted the tape recorder onto my shoulder and I was being interviewed for the radio.

He asked me some questions and I answered them as best I could, and the whole thing probably lasted for five or ten minutes. The questions were mostly about women's rights and UN – what was the UN doing about women's rights? Given that it was “an organisation dominated by men”, how did I feel working there? What would I like to see in terms of women's rights in 100 years time? What about areas of work that were traditionally dominated by men, such as the police and the army? Would I like to see my daughter working for either of them? God knows what I said in reply – within minutes I already had no recollection of what I'd said. He played me back a little of it afterwards, more to prove that the recording had come out clearly than anything else I think, and of course I had that horrible squeamish revulsion where you think, that can't be what I sound like! I didn't ask him if or when he might use the recording – I don't have a radio so I didn't much see the point. But a first speech and a first radio interview – not bad for my third day on the job!

First, Second and Third Impressions

Flight uneventful. There's something particular about long distance flights, in that they seem eternal whilst en route but all memory of them magically vanishes the very moment the doors are opened upon landing. It's as if the entire experience collapses into one brief sensory recollection; perhaps the view from a window, or a bad film, or the annoying person you had to sit beside. Then again, my brain always shuts down entirely during a long flight, no matter how good my intention to use the time to work productively or to read the heavy book I've lugged all the way with me for this very purpose. No sooner have the seat-belt signs been turned off than I've been reduced to a state of such complete mind-numbed inertia that I find myself watching some terrible film that I would never contemplate wasting my time on at ground level, staring into space for long periods of time, and obediently eating everything put in front of me on a tray. I blame the altitude.

And yet. First impression of Uganda, on a Wednesday evening in April at 7.30pm, was amusement at the sight of the Orange Mobile advertisements plastered all over the entrance of the airport. The second impression was of the outdoor evening, which seeped into the hallways through open windows; soft, draped tropical warmth, like the palm of a moist hand pressed against the skin, and even through the airport bustle the rich living sound of crickets seeped in like a fog. It was a bizarre sensation for an airport, going by Western standards, where crickets and fresh air have no place amidst the concrete and gasoline, but I had seen on descent that the airport in Entebbe is seemingly built in the middle of the countryside; none of the usual motorways or concrete car parks or corrugated warehouses. To emerge from the plane was to walk unannounced into a still summer evening, rich with a warm day past and lush with the greenery frilling around the edges of the runway.

This was Entebbe, the scene of events so convoluted it would be implausibly hypothetical if it hadn't actually happened; setting of one of the Israeli army's most outstanding feat of derring-do, if that's how you saw it. Entebbe, so beloved of the Law of Use of Force exam papers and subject of endless classroom debates at LSE. I strained my eyes in the dark trying to make out the wreck of the plane which I'd heard had been left here for the world to see, but if it's still there I couldn't see it. All I could make out were the first UN planes I had ever seen, sitting in a far corner like extras from a film set. It was the exact moment of twilight; dusky, musky, draped over the evening and fading rapidly. “Welcome to the Pearl of Africa”, the airport said.

I had noticed, while flying in, the darkness of the ground beneath. Unable to see Kampala or Entebbe, which lay ahead of us, we might as well have been flying over uninhabited emptiness; only a single, weak speck of light here and there, no stronger than an isolated star in the night sky, marked life. If there were villages, they did not have street lights nor any great number of lighted windows.

My third impression of Uganda: Margaret Sekaggya, who was waiting for me almost on the ramp leading from the plane, long before security or the baggage hall. A matronly, quiet woman stood beside her; Margaret mentioned something about her being a security guard accompanying her into the arrivals area, but the woman – whose name I never learned – did not wear a uniform, arranged my visa for me and carried my bags. We proceeded calmly past long, unmoving queues of passengers at passport control, all at least 20 deep, each composed distinctly of either black or white people but rarely a mix of both. At the top of a line an officer immediately produced an entry visa. “How long is it for?” Margaret inquired. “90 days”, he replied. “We might have to take you to get an extension if you're staying for longer than that”, she said to me. Later I noticed that the officer had neglected to fill in the space marked “Expiry Date”. How convenient.

This bizarre sweep through airport formalities was my first indication that Margaret might be more famous than we realise up in Dublin. When we were in the car on the way to Kampala she told me that she knew the queues at security were terrible; I could have been waiting for upwards of an hour, and by extension so would she. So she had decided not to bother with all that by going in to bring me out.

My new aspiration in life is a diplomatic passport.

The second indication that Margaret was well-known came today, when Sharon at the office called the Irish embassy at about 11.00am to inquire as to what kind of office hours they kept so that I could go to register. She kindly mentioned Margaret's name and I had an appointment to meet with the Ambassador himself at 2.00. He's very nice; we had a cup of coffee and he introduced me to their intern, who is about my own age I think. We being Irish, of course, we're practically related; he has family in Killarney. He also knows Fr. Donie Connor, a friend of the family who until last year had worked as a missionary priest in Uganda. He description of Donie made me smile; invariably on his bicycle on his way to the local coffee shop whenever they met, an eccentric with an infectious enthusiasm.

Kampala is quite beautiful, in parts as much a park as a city, full of empty spaces which are full of trees and bush. The greenery is extravagantly alive and bursting with the movements and sounds of life and living creatures. I think it is the texture of the greenery that makes it different; it is frothy, frilly, bulky, tough-ribbed, coarse. It bursts, drapes, droops, bustles, sprouts and climbs, layer upon overlapping layer.



There is a vividness brought on by the knowledge – incredible to my northern-hemisphere habits yet obvious when you think about it – that it is always this green. Not just for a month, or a season, or until September or until the end of the rainy season. It is always this green, because it is always this warm.

The permanence of the weather, for an Irish girl, is mind-boggling. I am truly awestruck by this underlying fact of life. The concept that it will be this warm and beautiful tomorrow, and the day after that, and next month, and next year, is breath taking – even the Mediterranean, for example, gets a winter, and Asia has a rainy season, and the Caribbean has hurricanes. In Kampala, 60km from the equator, they have a mildly wetter season (which is at the moment, April and May), and then the rest of the year is perfect. The thought that there is no end to this is immense; the thought that the good weather is, literally, eternal, makes me slightly light-headed. It is humid but not uncomfortably so, warm enough that a cardigan is unnecessary even in the evenings, but not so hot that I'm regretting my enthusiasm for the weather. It feels like there's not much different in temperature between evening and daytime, so that I lie on my bed under my cocooned drapes of netting with the sounds of crickets and lizards living through the night, and the t-shirt and shorts which I sleep in I might as well wear during the day.

I arrived at the guest house in the dark last night, trying to decipher the rich living noises of tropical night. When I woke this morning the sounds of dogs barking and roosters crowing, splashing from the yard outside, the crock-ing of dishes from the kitchen and the giggling of a small child did not sound like a large city. I swept aside the mosquito net and stumbled blinking out to the small sitting room which is attached to my room, and looked out on a large, square, solid garden, full of good thick rough grass and shaded by tall leafy fronded trees (I won't say what kind; I have no idea). We were surrounded by a thick wall over which I could see the raised red roofs and long outlines of other houses, red-brick and set upon high foundations just like the guest house. Behind the house beside us to the left I could see the roof of Margaret's office; its almost exactly next door. Beyond that more roofs, and beyond that the gentle hills on the other side of the valley. The hills are so heavily-greened that it looks as though there is very little built on them. From behind the red roofs you cannot see into the valley below, where the city is most dense, so that with the quiet country sounds and the woods all around you would doubt there was a city here at all.

I could get used to this...