The weekend

This weekend I:

• Went to a Full Moon (dance/rave) party at an outdoor paintball yard
• Happily and pleasantly watched the sun come up in an infamous bar universally known for its working girls
• Helped a five year old search for an asthma inhaler at 7am
• Baked cookies
• Petted a chicken
• Was pleasantly surprised to find I like Tanzanian moonshine
• Held an entire conversation that consisted of saying "egh!" in different tones of voice
• Gatecrashed a birthday party where I met the President (Museveni)'s daughter
• Went to my first Ugandan wedding
• Dressed up in a traditional suka
• Was run off the road by Ban Ki Moon (the UN Secretary General)'s massive security convoy

You might guess that I'm somewhat tired. Dammit I love this city sometimes.

Jinja

View from the campsite

I spent last weekend in Jinja, known internationally as the source of the Nile, and known locally as backpacker central. I've come to the conclusion that Jinja – specifically its whitewater rafting – is probably the single most popular tourist attraction in Uganda. Not that many tourists in the traditional sense of the word flock there (the upmarket safari types probably aren't interested in staying in campsites as opposed to eco-lodges, for example) but I have yet to meet a single volunteer, intern or backpacker who hasn't been there, or didn't recommend it. For most of them, Jinja seems to be on the agenda for their very first weekend in Uganda. And now I am one of them too. It was wonderful!

It's not every day that you get to say you've spent the weekend on (and in!) the River Nile, particularly crashing over its youthful rapids and waterfalls, taking frequent dips (or being violently thrown) in its green waters, eating pineapple while floating along and admiring the view of papyrus, fish eagles, fruit bats, women washing clothes, boys paddling wooden canoes, and of course, the massive new concrete damn that will flood the whole of this stretch of river within the next year or so. I'm usually not the adventure junkie type (my idea of watersports on school trips was a run on the banana boat in Castlegregory) but when in Rome, one must assimilate with the other muzungus somehow. It was good clean fun (bar one good fright on the last run, and some terrible sunburn which I'm still tending five days later) and truly superb exercise - I expected sore shoulders from the paddling but my whole body ached the next day. Taking up canoeing when I get back home would be such an appealing option if it didn't involve mucky grey Irish mornings on mucky wet rivers.

Jinja itself is a lovely spot. It's small, it's quiet, and the only real nightspot is the bar at the campsite full of your fellow muzungu rafters. But what a campsite – on a cliff overlooking the river, with decent food, cheap drinks, secluded safari tents, the nicest dorms I've yet seen in Uganda and an up-market sister next door who rents out her pool to poor backpackers like myself. One (hungover) Sunday of chilling out and enjoying the place wasn't enough, and I wished I could have stayed a few days more with nothing but a good book, swimsuit and possibly a bicycle to keep me occupied.

The campsite was in fact a small island of the West in a sea of Ugandan countryside. A small village selling chapati and crafts for the muzungus had grown up outside the gate, but a short walk beyond that was “the village” itself. Maize, huts, dirt paths, chickens, children and nothing else. Belgian Anke, Australian Elsie and I went for a walk on Sunday afternoon, just listening to the quiet of the countryside and looking around.

Backpackers from the hostel must walk down that same road every single day, in search for “Uganda” or “Africa”, just like ourselves. Did the people living there resent or distrust the three white girls who, no matter how well-intended, must have looked at them like a tourist attraction, like a cultural exhibit? Did they feel invaded by what must be an inevitable, daily stream of girls just like us? Do they never get tired of white folk in their four wheel drives and trucks and quad bikes, tearing up the dirt roads and raising clouds of dust?

Do the villagers have any comprehension of why so many people would pay so much money just to throw themselves down the river on little rafts? It must seem like the most pointless – and unnecessarily dangerous – exercise imaginable to people preoccupied with feeding themselves, caring for flocks of children, washing clothes in the river, continuously patching up their wattle-and-daub clay huts. But did any of them look at us with anything like the irritation that I will honestly admit to frequently experiencing while living in touristy Kerry? Not in the slightest. Women waved to us, children followed us, men made jokes and teased us but in a good natured way so that when we joked back, everyone just laughed.

"Muzung food" mmm...

Nathan outside his mother's craft shop, pretending to paint the pictures in the background

At the end of the rafting course, everyone piles into an open-sided truck to be driven back to the campsite, perhaps 10 kilometres away. The bumpy dirt road runs through villages, past shops and schools and churches as well as through farm land. There were at least 20 people in our truck, all of us exhausted after a day of exertion which in a typically western way achieved precisely nothing (except to make money for the English-owned rafting company). There must have been a minimum of three or four trucks passing along that evening. All these trucks bump past every single day of the year, possibly twice a day, so although the villages are not exactly on the main road or even relatively near Jinja town, the villagers aren't exactly unused to seeing white folk passing through.

Yet the excitement as the trucks bumped past was electric. Children lined the road almost the whole length of the journey, waving and cheering, wagging both their arms vigorously in the air, while their mothers and teenaged compatriots, less visibly enthusiastic (as if not to look uncool!) but as if they couldn't help themselves, joined in. For a brief moment the circus had come to town, and the clowns, the jokers, the jesters were on parade with their cast of local guides – harlequin interlopers - stacks of red rafts, curious kayaks and court robes of life jacket and helmet.

It made me feel ashamed and humbled, all at once.

Why the hell shouldn't someone come over here with a good commercial idea, run a wildly successful business and make money from it in a way which harms no one? Why the hell shouldn't I decided to spend my hard-earned (and being honest, meagre) allowance enjoying myself? To think otherwise – that only aid workers and teachers and other categories of saints have the moral right to go to the villages, that making a profit on something in Africa poses a moral challenge, that tourism here is insensitive – is simply patronising.

The moral complexity arises from the lack of cyncism and the lack of resentment. I feel sometimes crushed by the inequality of living standards and wealth and privilege, so I am upset and bewildered by the fact that many Ugandans do not. This says more about me than it does about them: about liberal guilt and the Western concept of life.

I don't mean at all to suggest that the villagers are saints, living out peaceful sustainable lives with the same innocence as their children. You only have to look to the anxiety about next year's elections or deal with civil society as we do at work, to see that Ugandans very much want more and demand better, and can blame politicians and society and other people for their woes, and are well capable of anger and frustration.

But within the microcosm of the village, on a Sunday afternoon walk, that fades away. It's not even the poverty itself that shocks me: it is the attitudes surrounding it. We see poverty as something to be corrected. They don't see it at all - it just is. I realise that I am shocked and surprised when I don't see cynicism, jealousy, resentment or blame. Really, this tells me little about the villagers.

What instead does it tell me about me??

Some pictures of Jinja town itself...

Food

Papaya tree at the office

Everyday we collect “local” food – i.e. Ugandan, or “African” as they call it here sometimes – from a lady down the road, Mama Brenda, who cooks everything outdoors over charcoal, partly shaded by a thatched shack. I can never finish it, rarely need to eat again in the evenings and it costs under a euro. The chickens running around her garden will be in the pot in a few days' time, and the vegetable patch out the back is the source of most of the plantain, potatoes, greens, maize and onions. For no other reason, I like to support her initiative: she's running a successful business which she provides for her family. Moreso, the food fulfils the holy aspirations of western eco-foodies: locally produced, in season, organic, sustainable, and almost totally oil-free: everything is steamed or boiled, other than meats which are stewed.

But... sometimes I'd give anything for some brown soda bread with a bowl of tomato soup. Or a salad. Or anything else, in fact. Not even because I want them that much, but just because I'd like to choose something else. The same food five days a week, after two months, becomes monotonous. As choice goes, Mama Brenda has plenty to offer, but I will quietly (ssssh) that all African food more or less tastes the same.

You pick two or three of: matoke (steamed banana/plantain, Uganda's most ubiquitous staple), posho (a stiff, thick sort of porridge or dough which is more well known as ugali – a variation exists in almost every African country), potatoes, cassava or rice, with a potential chapatti to go on the side. There'll be a spoonful of steamed greens, and then you choose between beans, chicken, fish (tilapia – the local speciality from Lake Victoria. Large, thick, meaty white fish – very good grilled but a lot of bones to negotiate) or “meat”.

“Meat” is beef, but not in the sense we'd know it at home. Beef here is just a generic piece of cow – they don't butcher in different cuts the way we do. Slow beef stews aren't bad, it's usually chewy and tough. Also I've seen how the meat is bloodily delivered to market uncovered on the backs of trucks and even bodas, where it hangs amidst the sun and flies outside a butcher's shack all day before being sold. I'm not generally a fan.

I really do like tilapia – its a tender, beautifully translucent fish – but Mama Brenda usually cooks it in groundnut sauce (another ubiquitous local speciality) which I'm not too fond of.

Chicken is universally the most expensive option in Uganda. Mysteriously, chicken breasts do not exist here. Where do they go?! Do Africans really throw away the meatiest part of the chicken?? If you ask for chicken, you receive a drumstick or the wing-bone with meat attacked, both of which require lots of messy deconstruction and picking for very little return in fatty meat. The others in the office see chicken as a luxury – I'm the only one who ever takes it – so between all of that I don't have it very often.

Which leaves me with beans. Lots and lots of beans. Fresh local beans are stewed so they literally look like the dog's dinner, but they don't taste bad. With rice and a sweet potato or matoke, usually. And that's about it, five days a week.

Mama Brenda's menu sounds like a lot of choice, but now you can see why at times, I'd give away my right arm for a toasted special or slice of quiche. I can't help it - I'm getting so sick of eating 85% carbs every day. Meat and veg are very much side dishes here. Every day I ask for the steamed greens which are the only vegetables on offer, but Mama Brenda never gives more than a large teaspoon. It looks so little on top of a mound of starch that to me, it's almost laughable. People generally eat very little meat here – its too expensive for most people. A portion of chicken is a drumstick; a portion of meat perhaps two or three small, stir-fry-sized pieces. The star of the show here is the starch: a small mountain of carbs to fill your lunch box.

There are some things I'll genuinely miss when I'm gone: I've become particularly attached to a brand of flowery, fragrant Ugandan green tea, and the fruit here is honestly and truly out of this world. To give you an idea, the pineapples we get at home are half the size and sweetness of what's available here. Mangoes fall out of the trees, avocados grow in the bushes, and my latest habit is to slice open a passion fruit and tip the pulp into my cereal in the morning. Yum. Pity I don't like bananas – 30 different types grow in Uganda, and they're absolutely everywhere, included in every meal. My personal favourite is gonja – a type of green banana which needs to be cooked, which is roasted on little charcoal fires by the roadside. Served hot, gonja is savoury, sweet, morish, and costs about 15c.

Mangoes growing on our tree at the office

More often than not we talk about food while eating at work. Immaculate, our other intern, is always curious as to what I think of everything, being the token muzungu in the office. Today its pumpkin; Mama Brenda has started cooking it only recently and Sharon's been the first to try some. Do we have pumpkin in Ireland? Everyone is surprised to hear yes, but confused to hear that it's only available in autumn. Seasonal food has limited meaning on the equator – the weather changes so little that most of the staples down here grow all year round; they stagger the planting to have food available all year.

Anyway – in Kampala I have European food several times a week in the evenings or weekends, and I can buy almost anything I want in the good supermarkets in town. I complain but in fact I have lots of choice compared to muzungus living upcountry in the “the village”, and compared to Ugandans who can only afford to buy local food from the market. I do bring lunch from home at times, but we don't have a fridge, a microwave or even much cutlery (if the office is busy a few of us revert to teaspoons) so it's not always an easy option.

But god help me, I'm putting on weight. And people are happy to tell me so.

I was standing at the counter chatting to Sharon the other morning when Immaculate walked in.

“Tara, you are growing fat!” she exclaimed cheerfully.

“Ergh, thanks Immaculate. You look nice today”.

She shrugged off the compliment, oblivious to the sarcasm. “Yes, you are definitely getting fat”, she said happily, tilting her head to examine my figure.

At least I've been here long enough to know that this is not glee at my misfortune or a particular form of feminized politics. In the village, size is a sign of prosperity and the blessing of sufficient good food, but here in Kampala amongst people who are well off, we often chat about diets and weight and the same things women do back home.

“Well you know, Immaculate, I keep telling you about how I'm not used to the food down here. What else can you expect eating matoke every day,” I mutter.

She beamed with pride. “Ahh I told you you'd get to like matoke - you'll even miss it when you go home!”

I do like matoke, but it's highly doubtful that I won't be able to live without it. Immaculate's not the first person who has proudly suggested I'll miss good honest African food when I'm gone. I'm just too polite to tell them otherwise.

“You'll go back to Ireland and tell everyone how good our food is!” Immaculate added.

So the truth is that 'getting fat' is not itself the good thing – my putting on weight is a compliment to the food itself, rather than to me. Immaculate means matoke is “good” because it is effective – filling, nutritious, fattening. She's delighted that I'll go home and tell everyone that our flimsy European bread has nothing on their African staples. It couldn't make me put on weight like the matoke did, even if I tried! This, in fact, is patriotism and ethnic pride.

How simple life would be if this concept was the norm at home – if we congratulated ourselves on the fine density of our spuds and scoffed at outsiders with their light, easily-digestible alternatives. Uganda is so lush and fertile, so abundant with food even in poor areas, that I don't mean to disparage that which truly is a blessing – Uganda's ability to feed itself, unlike so many poor neighbours. Even in Kampala, food is visibly growing everywhere: on trees and in the ground, in gardens and on road sides, and in tiny triangles and corners of free land. It is indeed something to be grateful for, and proud of, and it's inevitable that this becomes embodied in the culture.

Maize which Joan is growing behind the office

Perhaps this leads to the spirit of generosity embodied in food. Sharon and I both feel the portions Mama Brenda gives us are too big; we eat too much and then up throwing away the rest. Its not that Sharon doesn't ask for smaller portions when she goes to collect lunch for everyone – the problem is that Mama won't give her less. As in, literally, won't allow her to take a smaller portion. We'd happily pay the same amount for less food, but the nyabo won't hear of it. Whether she thinks we need to eat more, or whether she's afraid that we'll be unhappy customers, we don't know. We just aren't allowed to have small ladies' lunches.

Similarly there was an outcry when Sharon and I recently got lunch from the Italian supermarket down the hill rather than from Mama Brenda. We collected lunch as usual for the others, but looking for a bit of variety ourselves we went across the road to the supermarket's lunch counter, where metal dishes of food are laid out in a glass display and optimistically called a “buffet”. For 5,000 shillings, as opposed to 3,000 shillings (about €1.50 rather than €1) we could have sweetly spiced pilau rice, multi-coloured vegetables cooked with tomatoes, peas (instead of beans), different types of potato, and a few other dishes which Mama Brenda never makes.

Back at the office, the others peered over their lunchboxes to look at our food and sniffed at it appreciatively. They begrudgingly looked impressed, until they asked how much it was. “5,000!” they exclaimed. “For so little!”

It wasn't at all little: it was a big box full of food, and it was more than enough. But we only had a choice of two dishes instead of three or four. So the others scoffed at it – none more loudly than one of the girls who usually makes a point of eating half of what Mama Brenda gives her, before throwing the rest away.

Is this patriotism, or stinginess, or loyalty to Mama Brenda? Or the just the fussiness of people who very rarely eat different types of food? (I know plenty of those down in Kerry, after all.)

Who knows. Either way, it's not going to help me fit back into my skinny jeans when I get home.

A Day in the Life

I actually wrote this a week ago; due to a few things going on in work which I mention, I thought it best to leave it until now before posting.

It's a bit of a long one - you've been warned! ....but there was no other way to cover the full range of unpredictability in a Ugandan day.

Thursday evening in Kampala. I'm sitting outside an internet café with my laptop balanced on my knee, watching the bustling Kabalagala evening pass by, just down the hill from Muyenga. The upholstered bench I'm sitting on looks exactly like the benches they place beside departure gates at airports, and given that it's probably been reclaimed from somewhere else, its entirely plausible that's exactly where it used to be found. On the other half of my bench sits a Ugandan woman who runs the clothes shop next door; it's more or less a hole in the wall hung with brightly coloured dresses and shirts. On a plastic garden chair beside her sits another local woman; the two of them are probably in their twenties or thirties. Business is slow this evening so they're gossiping and chatting, sometimes doubled over in laughter. Funny how you can identify flirting and salacious gossip even in a foreign language.

People cluster around the mouth of the internet café, where I sit tapping my laptop and admiring the view. Thumping African music is playing quietly on a speaker inside so that all you can hear is the bass and the rhythm, and people waiting for computers sit outside the entrance on other benches, so that the people wandering up and down the road stop and congregate. A man wanders by with a closed Tupperware box balanced on his head and a scoop in his hand; the box is full of deep-fried grasshoppers, stripped of their legs and wings, a speciality this time of year which people snack on like popcorn. He stops to say hello to the two girls, they all know each other. He scoops them a palmful of grasshoppers each as a favour and wanders off. He'll return in twenty minutes when his circular meandering brings him back this way.

It's the fine hour of a Ugandan evening. Humidity falls away so that the evening air is as soft and warm as the buttery light of sunset. Dusk – every day – is absurdly beautiful. The sky changes to baby blue and the clouds turn ivory and gold, whipped as softly as creamed cake batter. The light turns dusky, as if you were looking at the world through a veil or a mosquito screen. Suddenly there is an almost imperceptible moment of twilight perfection; so short that its over before you've even recognised it. Twilight lasts mere seconds; on the equator it turns from evening light to blanketed dark within a few moments. At ten to seven it will be the sunset hour of leisure, but by seven it will be uniform night.

A cable snakes out of the café underneath a doorframe, and reaches for my laptop. Hence, my outdoor internet connection. An hour costs about 30c euro. I watch the boda bodas whizzing up and down the road, and the passage of human traffic that is as much an evening stroll – people out to see the neighbours – as it is the route home. I'm waiting to meet a friend to go for a bite. I met Niamh from Fermanagh at Murchison Falls last weekend; both of us turned up alone and joined the same tour group. She'll arrive about an hour later, along with some people from her hostel – two I'll have met before and two I don't know, all of whom I'll most likely never see again. Sharon, a friend from work, will wander past and find me outside the internet café, so she'll end up coming along with us, and Paul, another friend who I very randomly got to know not long after I arrived in Kampala, will also drop by. We'll sit in a garden bar lit by lanterns on tables, and have a couple of beers – Kenyan Tusker or Ugandan Bell – with plates of nyama chomo - slowly-cooked, barbequed meat, with a bit of coleslaw and fries - chipsi. Around eleven, we'll have our bill added up three times before they eventually charge us the right amount, and then drift outside to laboriously negotiate with taxi and boda drivers to get home. That's how most Ugandan evenings go – food, drinks, random people, spontaneity, overcharging.

But I don't know any of that yet. For the moment, I'm happy to observe and subliminally type as I wait outside the café. I'm recovering from a day at work which stressed me out more than usual.

A typical day? There's no such thing, but this one had the hallmarks of trouble. It started when I woke before 7.00 to the sound of Jojo complaining to Mama Sharon downstairs; it sounded like he wasn't too happy about eating breakfast. I couldn't hear Mama's soothing reply from upstairs. I press snooze until 7.45 out of sheer laziness. Sarah and Jojo are already on the road to school. Throw on clothes, then down to the kitchen. Fight with flimsy matches to light the gas grill and throw in some bread to toast. It will take too long to boil water in a saucepan for tea so I don't bother. Shake my hair out and scrape on a little foundation by the mirror in the dining room while watching so the toast doesn't burn. Mama Sharon watches me, amused. Still biting down the toast when Uncle's waiting for me at the gate.

Uncle is my boda driver - he's Tata Sharon's brother. He picks me up around 8.15 and for 30c takes me over the hill to work, bumping through the stone quarry, twisting through the billowing morning dust, free-wheeling downhill on the other side to save fuel. I let myself in through the hatch in the gate and head into the office, where Joan is mopping the floors with a wet cloth, bent in half at the waist and laying her hands flat on the floor. I hook up my laptop, then later unhook it and move to the other side of the room while she mops around my desk and wipes down the table. I check to see if there's hot water in the Thermos; if not I put on the kettle and will fill the Thermos with what I don't use. Instant nescafé and two spoons of brown sugar; if we're lucky we'll have powdered milk, but we haven't had petty cash to buy more since we ran out two weeks ago.

Work; check emails and headlines. The Guardian and Irish Times are the two obligatory first-looks, but depending on what's happening in the world I'll look elsewhere later. Half my emails every day are usually from mailing lists – I've signed up to as many as possible to keep up to date on things, but it means that I'm bombarded with press releases and urgent appeals and reports.

Except this morning we don't have any internet. Ronnie has tried to call the internet company but he can't get through; this means that they're being bombarded with calls and complaints, so the whole network must be down. This is ironically a good thing as it means that we don't have a problem with our server, our account or the line into the office. The cut could last for an hour, or all day. We'll see.

In the meantime, I start typing up notes I took yesterday while talking to a human rights defender who has been in trouble this week. I met him at a training workshop we ran in Kampala, a follow up to the session in Mbale a couple of weeks ago, and the last in the current run of workshops. I won't name the defender or mention anything about his case, except to say that he'd been in detention for two days before I met him, he was bruised, had been threatened, was fleeced for bribes, and is staying with friends - essentially homeless - because they know where he lives. “They” are state actors; I won't say what kind.

We chat for half an hour between ourselves in the office, and I start looking at information I'd downloaded for research on various different things. The internet eventually comes back before 11.00 – miracle! - so I go back to the case notes and send them to an organisation working locally on human rights defenders who might be able to help, as well as to Front Line. I also check my emails, finally, and find that a press release has been issued last night in which Margaret and three other UN independent experts have condemned the recent killing of Bety Cariño in Mexico, called attention to the deteriorating situation for defenders in the country, and demanded an immediate investigation so that the perpetrators can be brought to book.

The issuing of the press release is great – the timing is bad. The press release was issued yesterday, and it's already lunchtime. I've lost valuable hours to try to send it to newspapers, journalists, bloggers and NGOs who might be interested – the most influential of which have deadlines and don't want to hear about yesterday's press releases. I start copying and pasting and emailing. In breaks between various bits of the training session yesterday I had begun listing sources which had previously reported Bety's killing as my first targets to push the press release; if they've been following the case and are interested, they're more likely to follow up.

The entire afternoon feels like a race against time, and I don't think I've been very successful. Finding contact details for the individual journalists who might be interested is maddeningly difficult. A couple of bloggers respond and thank me for the release, asking me to keep in touch if I have other information in future. At least a few potential partnerships have been made, but by 6pm this evening a search on Google News shows the statement appears on only four websites – and two of them are UN sites. I feel crushed.

The whole thing will take on a new dimension tomorrow when the Mexican government responds to the press release, criticising it as unfair and unconstructive. Of course this turns our statement into a story in a way that wouldn't have happened if they had just ignored it: most of the Mexican media report on it. Success, from our point of view. But I don't know about any of that yet, and this evening I'm tired and disappointed.

In the middle of all of this, my contact at the local defenders' organisation replies to me and tells me she has worked previously with the guy I wrote to her about, and wants to try and help. But she has been ringing his mobile phone and it's turned off; this is unusual here and she's very worried. I start trying to call him; it takes a while but I get through. He's fine, but more state actors patrolled his house all night last night, presumably to make sure he doesn't go back there or else so they can pick him up again. He is happy to hear I've been talking to the other organisations, which he will call tomorrow. I have some other ideas for things we can try to do, but they're for tomorrow.

We break for lunch quite late today, after two. Sharon goes with lunch boxes to collect food from a local lady who cooks outside her house over charcoal fires, partly shaded by a thatched shack. A meal costs under €1 and is so filling that usually I don't eat much in the evenings when I go home. The food is plain and weighted towards starches but tastier than you'd give it credit for. I'm liking it more than I would have expected although the lack of choice does get to me some times. There are days when I'd basically kill for a toasted special. Due to a combination of my having been out for a drinks the night before and it being later in the day, I am ravenous and I practically inhale my food. Today its beans, rice, greens and sweet potato – not the orange yams which we call sweet potato, but a sweet, waxy version of white potatoes which I haven't come across elsewhere.

During the afternoon I'm still trying to send out the press release, fighting to find journalists and trying to track down the troubled defender when Margaret reminds me that I was supposed to have talking points ready for her for a speech on Sunday. She's been asked to talk about employer-employee relations, not human rights related at all, and given my lack of managerial experience (!) quite a challenge for me to write about. I've been struggling with it for the last week, trying to come up with various ideas. She was happy with my initial draft but asked me to interview the others in the office so as to have a few different people's perspectives, experiences and anecdotes. I haven't been in the office for the past two days so I haven't started this at all. The problem today is that everyone else is as busy with other things as I am, and trying to pin them down and ask them dry questions about what they “most value in the workplace” takes most of the rest of the afternoon.

At this point its 5pm, normally the time we finish – I'm lucky in that people are staying late to work today. I don't have my own keys for the office so I normally finish up when the others do, usually dragging myself away from the internet connection. Working late means that I'll have time to input the answers to my workplace-related questions into the talking points. Margaret checks emails at home in the evenings and very early in the morning before coming to work, so I need to send them to her this evening. She's just heading out the door to cross town and get to a radio station in time for an interview at 7.00pm when I press send. She'll read them and can make suggestions which I can work on tomorrow before she gives the speech at the weekend.

I realise everyone's waiting for me so I frantically pack up – my laptop, charger, phone, notebooks, sunglasses – and rapidly spray on some mosquito repellent. It goes on every evening between 5 and 6pm, regardless of whether or not I'll be staying indoors, regardless or not of whether I'm wearing long pants or sleeves. I get bitten anyway, no matter what I do, but I make a show of fumigating as if it'll make me feel better. Alex has the car waiting for Margaret – I ask which direction they're taking and take a lift down the hill into Kabala. We schedule half an hour together tomorrow to review progress regarding various things – research, review projects, compilations of references from UN reports, flights to be booked - which I'm supposed to be working on. Nothing I did today was scheduled (at least not before yesterday); the two days before that, I was out of the office. As you may imagine, getting around to the longer-term projects I'm supposed to be working on is somewhat difficult.

Outside the Italian supermarket I say goodbye and jump out of the car, and decide that to kill time I may as well take a seat outside the internet café across the street, and watch the evening go by...

Mukasa flowers

Embracing my inner botanicals at the new house...

And finally, the weird and wonderful jack fruit.... has anyone ever seen these before?! You can't really tell from the picture but they're fuzzy as velcro, neon green, and almost the size of watermelons. They look absolutely alien hanging out of the trees

Home

I have moved from the guesthouse to a more permanent home. I actually moved the week before last, so I've been in residence for about ten days now, but owing to the Murchison Falls trip and a generally busy week (i.e. an accelerating social life!) I felt as if I hadn't spent any time there until this weekend.

I haven't moved far – Kansanga is only on the other side of a steep hill from my old stomping ground in Muyenga, about 45 minutes' walk from work or a ten-minute, 30c boda ride. I'm renting a room from Sarah, an veteran English ex-pat who has been living in Uganda on and off for at least ten years, and her five-year-old, Jojo. She's currently working as a freelance NGO consultant and I got to know her through some contacts at the Irish embassy.

Also resident are the family I call the Sharons; their eldest daughter is called Sharon and the rest of the family seem to take their names from her. Mama Sharon and Tata Sharon take care of the house for Sarah, and Uncle Sharon comes to pick me up on his boda every morning. In addition to Sharon, who is nine, there's four-year-old Chris. This amuses me no end. When I first heard Sarah refer to Mama and Tata Sharon, I presumed that they were names used for the children and for Jojo, in the way parents call each other Mom and Dad at home in front of the kids, but no – they later introduced themselves to me as Mama and Tata. As an eldest born myself, I must say I quite like this system. I could certainly get used to all the O'Learys being rightfully christened the Taras!

I fell in love with Mukasa Close when I first saw it – the garden is huge, one of the biggest I've seen in the city's compounds. For anyone who's been to Knockeragh, its certainly not far off the size of my parents' place. We have bright flowers, fruit trees, a vegetable patch sprouting maize and chickens. Apparently they started last year with only a handful of hens but they're up to about 12 now, so in a few weeks we should have a regular supply of fresh eggs. They're occasionally a bit of a noisy nuisance – last night it was still dark when Peter, the cock, began a screeching cacophony of noise for no particular reason – but chickens here are so much sturdier and more colourful than their plain brown Irish cousins, I quite like having them running around. Not only sturdier but unafraid of asking for good treatment – as soon as he saw me eating breakfast on the terrace the other morning, Peter came over and patiently begged for crumbs in exactly the same manner as spoilt pet dogs at home.

Peter, dressed fetchingly in white, and friend

Add in Ellie the dog, who usually waves me off at the gate in the morning and welcomes me back at night, and I'm starting to feel like part of the family. Pet dogs are rare here – no one except muzungus keep them for pets. Ugandans usually don't keep pets at all, but if they do have dogs they're bred to be angry and dangerous so they can guard compounds. Ellie, on the other hand, is a sweetheart and loves posing to have her photo taken. She very patiently sits and waits and looks into the lens, with the flattered vanity of a sitter for a portrait painter.

Ellie

The house is lovely – old and simple but airy and comfortable. In my room, a square mosquito net is draped over four high bedposts, so that I feel as if I'm sleeping in a four poster bed. I've heard lots of muzungus talk about how they had to get used to sleeping under nets, but it's never bothered me. If anything, it makes me feel as if I've finally got the princess canopy bed that I always dreamed of when I was small.

But above all, Mukasa Close comes with two unimaginable, incalculable luxuries: a washing machine, and a coffee pot.

You never do notice the rock-solid foundations upon which the world turns until they've been taken away from you. You never realise just how much underwear women have to go through, for example, until you've spent a month perfecting your technique at washing knickers in the sink (a bit of shower gel does a great job if you've run out of detergent, you know). You never realise just how stupid make up is as a concept until you've blistered and torn your knuckles scrubbing Clinique out of one of your only two good work blouses. And you never notice how often you bitched about doing housework until you realise you'll never complain about doing laundry in a machine ever again. Washing machines truly are modern luxury - most of the people who can afford them find it better value to just pay a washer woman to do it for them by hand. Hand washing is so ubiquitous that guestrooms in Uganda generally come supplied with a plastic basin for the purpose, which I made great use of in Muyenga. A washing machine, and Mama Sharon, mean liberation.

As for coffee, well, I did in fact have a pretty decent prior appreciation of just how precious a regular supply of the good stuff can be, after spending time in a few jobs at home where people distrusted me for the offence of seeing myself as too good for Nescafé (far from espresso I was reared, after all). Brewed coffee in any form – filter, cafetiére or espresso – is a speciality here, a novelty item available only in a few cafés run for the muzungus where Ugandans might go for a treat or to have a nice lunch at the weekends. These cafés are only located in the city centre, and as I work in the 'burbs I only have access at weekends, drastically limiting my supply.

Ugandans don't drink much coffee in general – it's all about tea down here because it's so cheap – but when they do, its instant, served from big rusty metal tins that resemble leftover Soviet food rations. Star Coffee, the “leading” Ugandan brand name, even has a military red tin with a big red star for its logo. This is doubly heartbreaking because they grow so much good coffee here – the locals can't afford to drink it, so almost everything is exported.

I'm a coffee snob - I hold my hands up unashamedly and admit to the world that I had not touched a drop of instant coffee in about three years before arriving in Kampala. I searched for coffee pots – any kind of coffee pot – in supermarkets and shops all over town, but “coffee pots” here are metal tea pots in which they mix up the instant stuff to serve more politely to guests. Six weeks in, if I had not acclimatised by now to a glassy brown mug of this stuff every morning, I feared I never would. And then I moved into Sarah's house and saw the stainless steel Bodum glinting at me from the back of the cupboard. Tears almost rose in my eyes. I actually exclaimed out loud and thanked her – thanked her! Coffee had been given back to me. She'd brought it all the way from the UK to satisfy her own coffee snobbery, and she offered its use to me wholeheartedly. With this small gesture, the foundations of comradeship were laid.

In all, it was an excellent weekend - I think I had about eight or nine mugs in the last two days. Bliss comes black in a cup :)

Human rights defenders continue to pay with their lives in Mexico, warn UN experts

Bety Cariño and Margaret Sekaggya at the Dublin Platform, February 2010

We've released a media statement, along with three other UN special experts, about the recent killing of Bety Cariño and her colleague Tyri Antero Jaakkola. The experts call for an immediate investigation and draw attention to the brutal situation for defenders in Mexico.

This was the first press release I worked on for the Mandate. It is also available in Spanish.

Vea abajo la versión en español
Spanish version, see below

Media Statement

12 May 2010

Human rights defenders continue to pay with their lives in Mexico, warn UN experts

GENEVA – A group of UN independent experts* warned about the deteriorating situation for human rights defenders in Mexico, strongly condemning the recent killing of human rights defender Ms. Beatriz Alberta (Bety) Cariño Trujillo and the international observer Mr. Tyri Antero Jaakkola in Oaxaca, south east Mexico.

“Defenders continue to face significant threats to their lives in Mexico as a result of their work,” said Margaret Sekaggya, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. “We are deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation for human rights defenders in the country, including women and human rights defenders working on issues related to indigenous communities.”

On 27 April 2010, Bety Cariño and Tyri Antero Jaakkola were part of a mission to monitor human rights in Oaxaca when they were ambushed by paramilitaries and killed. Several other human rights defenders and journalists suffered injuries. Four other members of the mission, including two journalists of the magazine Contralínea, spent two days in a forest following the attack, before being rescued by the police on 30 April.

“The situation in Mexico is extremely complex and no-one could doubt the gravity of the challenges confronting the Government in its fight against the drug cartels” added Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. “But there is no justification for failing to take strong steps when human rights defenders, journalists and others are killed. Human rights must not be permitted to be a casualty in the fight against drugs and crime.”

"The increase of armed clashes and violence in the community of San Juan Copala over the past few months is affecting not only the armed groups involved but also the population of the district, most of them women and children belonging to the Triqui indigenous community,” stated with concern the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, James Anaya.

On his part, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, Frank La Rue, urged the Mexican authorities to protect the right to life and guarantee the right to freedom of opinion and expression, as stated in articles 6 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “The role of journalists is crucial in reinforcing human rights as well as the enjoyment of all rights and freedoms of all persons.”

The group of UN experts called on the Mexican Government “to take all necessary steps to protect the right to life and security of human rights defenders in the country against any violence and any other arbitrary action which may be a consequence of the legitimate exercise of their activities.”

“We urge the authorities to initiate a prompt and impartial inquiry into the mentioned events so that perpetrators are identified, brought to justice and appropriate penalties are imposed”, they said. “The international community will closely follow the response of the Mexican Government regarding such events.”

Ms. Sekaggya had met with Bety Cariño in February 2010, at the Fifth Dublin Platform, a meeting of over 100 human rights defenders from around the world. The UN independent expert praised the defender for her tireless work campaigning on indigenous, environmental and women's rights. Bety Cariño was Director of the Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos CACTUS (Centre for Community Support Working Together).

(*): Margaret Sekaggya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial or arbitrary executions; James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people; and Frank la Rue, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the rights to freedom of opinion and expression.

ENDS

Check the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm

Visit the Special Rapporteurs’ websites:
Situation of human rights defenders: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/defenders/index.htm
Summary, extrajudicial or arbitrary executions: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/executions/index.htm
Situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/rapporteur/
Promotion and protection of the rights to freedom of opinion and expression: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/opinion/index.htm

OHCHR Country Page – Mexico: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/LACRegion/Pages/MXIndex.aspx

For more information and media requests, please contact Dolores Infante (Tel.:+ 41 22 917 9730 / e-mail: dinfante@ohchr.org)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Declaración a la Prensa

12 de mayo de 2010

Defensores de los derechos humanos continúan pagando con sus vidas en México, advierten expertos de la ONU

GINEBRA – Un grupo de expertos en Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas* advirtió sobre el deterioro de la situación para los defensores de los derechos humanos en México y condenó firmemente los recientes asesinatos de la defensora de los derechos humanos Beatriz Alberta (Bety) Cariño Trujillo y del observador internacional Tyri Antero Jaakkola, en Oaxaca, sureste de México.
“Los defensores continúan haciendo frente a graves amenazas contra sus vidas en México como consecuencia de su trabajo”, dijo Margaret Sekaggya, Relatora Especial sobre la situación de los defensores de los derechos humanos. “Estamos profundamente preocupados por el deterioro de la situación de los defensores de los derechos humanos en México, incluidas las mujeres y los defensores que trabajan en temas relacionados con las comunidades indígenas”.

El 27 de abril de 2010, Bety Cariño y Tyri Antero Jaakkola formaban parte de una misión de observación de los derechos humanos en Oaxaca cuando sufrieron una emboscada por parte de los paramilitares y fueron asesinados. Otros defensores de los derechos humanos y de periodistas sufrieron heridas. Cuatro miembros de la misión, incluidos dos periodistas de la revista “Contralínea”, pasaron dos días en la selva tras el ataque antes de ser rescatados por la policía el 30 de abril.

“La situación en México es extremadamente compleja y nadie puede poner en duda la gravedad de los desafíos a los que se enfrenta el Gobierno en su lucha contra los cárteles de las drogas”, añadió Philip Alston, Relator Especial sobre las ejecuciones sumarias, extrajudiciales o arbitrarias. “Pero no hay justificación para no tomar las medidas necesarias cuando defensores de los derechos humanos, periodistas u otros son asesinados. No se debe permitir que los derechos humanos sean víctimas de la lucha contra las drogas y el crimen.”

“El incremento de los enfrentamientos armados y la violencia en la comunidad de San Juan Copala durante los últimos meses está afectando no sólo a los grupos armados involucrados, sino también a la población civil del municipio, en su mayoría pertenecientes a la comunidad indígena triqui”, señaló con preocupación el Relator Especial sobre libertades y derechos fundamentales de los pueblos indígenas, James Anaya.

Por su parte, el Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la promoción y la protección del derecho a la libertad de opinión y de expresión, Frank La Rue, exhortó a las autoridades mexicanas a proteger el derecho a la vida y a garantizar libertad de opinión y de expresión, tal y como se contempla en los artículos 6 y 19 del Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos. “El papel de los periodistas es crucial tanto en el fortalecimiento de los derechos humanos como en el disfrute de todos los derechos por parte de todas las personas”.

El grupo de Expertos de la ONU hizo un llamamiento al Gobierno mexicano “a tomar las medidas que sean necesarias para proteger el derecho a la vida y la seguridad de los defensores de los derechos humanos en el país contra todo tipo de violencia y acción arbitraria que se produzca como consecuencia del ejercicio legítimo de sus actividades.”

“Exhortamos a las autoridades a iniciar una investigación pronta e imparcial sobre los hechos mencionados con el fin de que los culpables sean identificados, puestos a disposición judicial y se impongan penas adecuadas. La comunidad internacional seguirá de cerca la respuesta del Gobierno mexicano en relación a estos hechos.”

Margaret Sekaggya había conocido a Bety Cariño en Febrero de 2010 durante la Quinta Plataforma de Dublín, una reunión de más de 100 defensores de los derechos humanos de todo el mundo. La Sra. Sekaggya elogió a la defensora por su trabajo incansable en favor de los derechos de los indígenas, las mujeres y el medio ambiente. Bety Cariño era Directora del Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos (CACTUS).

(*): Margaret Sekaggya, Relatora Especial sobre la situación de los defensores de los derechos humanos; Philip Alston, Relator Especial sobre las ejecuciones sumarias, extrajudiciales o arbitrarias; James Anaya, Relator Especial sobre libertades y derechos fundamentales de los pueblos indígenas; y Frank la Rue, Relator Especial sobre la promoción y la protección del derecho a la libertad de opinión y de expresión.

ENDS

Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos: http://www2.ohchr.org/spanish/law/ccpr.htm

Visite las páginas web de los Relatores Especiales:
Situación de los defensores de los derechos humanos: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/defenders/index.htm
Ejecuciones extrajudiciales, sumarias o arbitrarias: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/executions/index.htm
Libertades y derechos fundamentales de los pueblos indígenas: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/rapporteur/
Promoción y protección del derecho a la libertad de opinión y de expresión: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/opinion/index.htm

ACNUDH, página por país – México: http://www.ohchr.org/SP/Countries/LACRegion/Pages/MXIndex.aspx

Para más información y solicitudes de prensa, favor contactar a Dolores Infante (Tel.:+ 41 22 917 9730 / e-mail: dinfante@ohchr.org)

Coffee time photo break

Lots of things happening the last week, most of which I'll write about about later.

I'm just back from a weekend in Murchison Falls National Park, happily acting like a tourist for the first time since I arrived, hanging out with other muzungu backpackers, soaking up the 'African wilderness' and touring around to see the animals. The park is stunningly beautiful,camping was great, and although I'm not generally a wildlife buff, seeing the animals up close and personal was amazing, and a world away from trooping around zoos or nature parks at home.

I'll write more about it later, but for now I'm so excited about some of the photos I took that I'm shamelessly publishing some of them here, while I sip my morning cup of coffee and listen to metallic rolls of thunder banging away outside, beating against Kampala's hills. Its funny to hope that someone out there might enjoy them on their own coffee break, a world or half a world away from here...

Sunrise on the Victoria Nile, 6.30am

A rain cloud passing over the Nile, and the park goes from light to dark

Victoria Nile south of Murchison Falls

Water buffalo after a mudbath

Faith

Gate to a Muyenga compound

I've been feeling the faith down here. You don't have to look for the church to see or hear about it everywhere; the gospel songs on the radio, the programming on the television, the features and columns on faith issues in the newspapers. Women wear headscarves or crucifixes, and there is a whole street lined with stalls of bibles and rosary beads opposite a church in town. Religion, faith and morals are in the air, in conversations and in questions.

More correctly I should talk about the churches. There are many. The majority of Ugandans are Christian but this group is divided between Protestant (Anglican), Catholic and a host of other churches including a significant new movement of evangelicals. Everyone seems to have a religion and identifies with one church or another. Its normal, widespread and notably prevalent amongst youth, which for me is unusual.

On Sundays, the human traffic along the roads is scrubbed clean, dressed in Sunday best and carrying a solid, textbook-sized bible. The girls have their hair done and wear pretty dresses which would look nice on a night out. Services go on for a few hours; you usually don't see people coming from back from church until after lunchtime.

To be honest I'm impressed with the variety and range of religions down here. The overall atmosphere is of a remarkable open-mindedness and lack of judgement about religion; people chat casually about who belongs to which church, and what the differences between the churches might be. Families go together on a Sunday but I have the impression that it is very much a free choice as to which church to attend, and that young people in their twenties go along because they've become interested and gotten involved. Which is quite a contrast to a lot of the people I see at home getting dragged along to mass by their parents, hungover of a Sunday.

Religion is important to Ugandans and – to my limited knowledge – is detached entirely from the State and the general education and health system (more or less; there are of course religious schools and at least one Islamic University). The churches are detached from the political context, although Church leaders preach on public issues, the influence of which I wouldn't discount.

“And what religion are you? Do you attend church?”

It comes up very early on in conversations with Ugandans, a polite enquiry. Its neither nosey nor presumptuous, just curious and interested. To me, as a question, it represents a touching presumption of faith; it implies a faith that you must have a connection to some religion, because everyone does. To me, this seems almost like a faith in faith itself.

In response, despite the local tolerance about these things, I have always identified myself as Catholic. It simply seems like too much trouble to explain that I'm not very religious and don't often go to mass, although I was raised Catholic and christened and attended a convent school. Its not that I'm afraid that people will disapprove, just that they wouldn't fully understand, and would want to talk it out. And for me there isn't a lot to talk about.

Some colleagues at the office, when I explained recently that Ugandans' casual interest in the topic is somewhat unusual for me, responded that it's a normal question just so new acquaintances know where they stand.

“It lets you know what you can put on the table”, explained Ronnie, the eligible bachelor of the office. It took me a few minutes to realise that he meant this literally – that people want to know about your religion so that they know what they can offer each other to eat and drink! Uganda has a minority but strong Muslim community, and – I hadn't know this before – members of several of the evangelical Christian churches also don't eat pork.

So in one sense I'm pretty impressed by the tolerance. Perhaps religion isn't an issue because Ugandans focus far more on a sense of tribal identity and loyalty, which is a source of real and potentially divisive tensions. Tribal identities are ancient and ancestral; in contrast, all religions in Uganda are relatively new and at one point or another were a matter of choice. Nowhere more so is this element of choice visible than in relation to the growth of “new” churches such as evangelicals and Jehovah's Witness, business for which is more or less booming. This is particularly the case for youth; many of the converts are young, possibly choosing the new churches over more established ones which their families attended.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. The driving force behind this new movement is mainly American, and I think what I dislike about it is how commercialised it seems. To give one example, the channel with the best reception on the three televisions I've used since arriving down here has been an evangelical Christian channel which broadcasts free to air. I've never seen a black or African face on air. All of their programs are American preachers giving sermons, Christian talk shows or gospel concerts, which are shown in short segments between very long ad breaks, which only seem to promote expensive, mail order Christian tapes, books and DVDs.

I was amused and entertained by the bible bashers who stand on roundabouts around Kampala in the clouds of exhaust fumes, gesturing wildly, thumping their bible and roaring the word of God above the grinding and beeping of rush hour traffic. At home they would have a sign warning us that the END IS NIGH, but at home they're always middle aged or older. Here, they are usually under 30.

“How long do they stand there?!” I asked Margaret once, in the car.

“Oh, all day,” she replied. It turns out they're paid to preach, although no one seems to listen. Raving at roundabouts is literally a full time job.

This kind of active marketing or recruitment to religion makes me deeply uncomfortable, although I'm not sure why. Add in rumours of American evangelical influence in supporting and triggering the current (and if you ask me, horrific) Anti-Homosexuality Bill (although thankfully some leading church figures such as Rick Warren have now publicly criticised the Bill), and I cannot shake off my doubts.

What's really funny for me though, if I'm going to be honest, is how people talk about it.

Margaret's driver Alex was taking me home a couple of weeks ago, and we mentioned a particular guy both of us knew (who is, I think, in his twenties or perhaps early thirties).

“He is Saved,” Alex said solemnly, in a very matter of fact way.

“Oh he is religious?” I asked.

“Oh yes”.

I tried to be respectful and absorbed this information as best I could. “Are you Saved, Alex?”

He smiled ruefully, amused by this question. “No, no”, he replied.

“Do you go to church?”

He laughed openly. “No!”

This amused me no end. To talk solemnly about people being Saved, as if it was a tangible state of being or a concrete fact like membership of a political party, would only make sense to me if I shared the same view. Detached observers down here do not poke fun at the church. The slightly pitying tone used by non-believers back home when talking about religion is absent. Ugandans lack the implied cynicism with which people discuss the church in Ireland; a cynicism so pervasive that I had never noticed or identified it until I was surprised by its absence.

A few days later I was taking a boda home and the driver was chatty. We were whizzing through Kabalagala at the time, an eternally chaotic, buzzing neighbourhood full of bars and markets and food being sold from street stalls. It was a Saturday evening and traffic was busy, the roads full of people heading home after their week's work.

“You are born again?” he asked me casually, over his shoulder.

“Am I what?!”

“Have you been born again?”

“Oh no, no,” I replied, trying not to giggle, and hoping that he would stop looking over his shoulder at me and watch the road instead. “Which church do you go to?”

“Jehovah”, he replied. In a Ugandan accent it richly sounds Jegh-oww-vahh. “What church are you?”

“Catholic”. He looked sceptical. “Almost all Irish people are Catholic,” I explained. He didn't look like he believed me. “So you go to your meeting tomorrow?” I asked, trying to change the conversation.

“Oh yes. You come with me? I pick you up and take you on boda.”

It was getting harder not to giggle. “Oh, no, thanks.”

“No? Why not? You should try. You would like.”

“Oh, I don't think so. I think I'll stick with the Catholic church, its ok for me”. He opened his mouth to continue and I was beginning to sense the commencement of a campaign. “My mother would be very upset if I changed,” I added hastily.

He nodded sagely and turned back to the road. He understood. The matter was out of my hands.

Who says women are powerless!