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!