Have we reached a state of “Ichabod”??

I had an extremely enlightening conversation today, surprisingly, it was with my mother.

You know how I was bitching about how messed up the system is and African politics is in my last post?
Well, Willpress had rightly mentioned in the comments that: “Unfortunately the most important term in African politics is "the grassroots".”
That’s true, and the reason I thought someone like me, despite how passionate I am about the matter, would never have a chance to ‘fix things’ in politics in my own country.
However, after talking to my mum, I suddenly realized that the situation may not be as hopeless as I first thought it to be…although it could just be my mother talking (you know how mothers are, with their comforting lies).
She stated that perhaps the biggest reason African politicians are as selfish and apathetic to problems of poverty and corruption is because they know it all too well.

Most African politicians, especially here, are from humble backgrounds and have experienced poverty, on a personal level, so that once they are in power, the do as much to disassociate themselves with it. They reach a point where seeing their people suffer in familiar poverty stricken situations, it simply no longer touches them! It sounds absurd at first (seriously, these are the people who should know very well what issues the common man is faced with) but it makes perfect sense if you think about it.

Its like how we (well, the TV generation) are apathetic about things like violence, because we see it all the time on TV, from a young age, such as in cartoons like Tom and Jerry (which is an extremely violent cartoon, amongst others children find delight in), pre-teen slap stick comedy (I never found the humour in this by the way) to adult action movies, so by the time you see a dead person on the road in the midst of an accident or mob justice scene, its (sometimes) shocking at first but you forget about it after you edge past the small crowd and commotion!
By the time you reach home you’ve most likely forgotten about it! No big deal, after all you’ve seen worse and more dramatic on TV!

I often laugh at my mum when she gasps in shock when watching an action flick, or when she crys during a sad true life drama! LoL, I mean, its not that I don’t feel the moment, its just that I’ve seen too many to make me jump or shed a tear. I’ve become used to it. Apathetic, even. ( I now have to watch horrors and thrillers at night inorder to feel the least bit spooked!)
It’s sorta the same thing with our current politicians.

Perhaps then there is hope; for the new generation of educated suburban youth (like myself), who are just acquaintances of poverty. Who have always had what they wanted (in moderation of'course) so they are not greedy once in a position of wealth, who are still shocked and horrified at stories of famine, most importantly who have new green ideas on changing and redirecting their nations!?


Today’s headlines read:
“FAMINE KILLS 35, Three million on the brink of starvation as crisis deepens” (Daily Monitor July 8 2009).
And to think, I skipped dinner today because I was full…

As expected, these areas were in the north and east, I say this because where I’m from (the west) people may not be that wealthy, but they always have food to eat. I also can’t ignore the fact that the big shot politicians and people in government (President included) are also from the west. You just can’t help but get the feeling that they don’t care…which is a damn shame and beats the point of having a government! I mean really, if a government cannot deal with basic need such as hunger, then really what are they doing?

Some claim the problems lie with the locals of that area, or that the harvest seasons have not been good due to climate changes, but that is not the real cause of this.

My mum was telling me how when she was at university, brimful of ideas and concepts (much like me these days) she did her final thesis on appropriate land use, focusing on how the locals could use the land, and various soils to grow different commercial produce to sell and make a living. Great idea, no?
Well, at the end of her project, an irritated muzeyi enlightened her that despite her concern and ideas, it wasn’t gonna change much. He assured her; “Don’t you think we’ve tried that? we have, and produced a lot of produce but it all perished! Look at our roads! Which pick up will bother to travel this far to collect our produce to take to sell?”
And rightly so pointed out that the REAL problem was not with land use but with the lack of infrastructure and available markets, which really is something they can’t do much about!

The issue of climate change too can be blamed on our governments!
The rate of deforestation and use of unsustainable methods of living is not given enough importance, yet it’s so vital!
Even more saddening is that Africa still hasn’t really caught on to this! I’ve heard people blame the big European countries and USA for causing global warming, and although they have greatly contributed to it, so have we!

When are we going to stop blaming the white man (I admit, there is indeed a certain thrill about doing so) and take responsibility! I mean we can continue to blame them, but it’s not like they will be tried in the international courts of justice (for one they run the courts-lol), and at the end of the day, they are still way better off than us!
In the recent past, Africans have taken up the role of their white masters and yet still continue to rape Africa! WTF is up with that?
Before the independence era, many of our ‘white masters’ thought we wouldn’t be able to run things without them, sadly, it seems we keep proving them right!... But that’s another topic for another day…

So back to the issue at hand, there are numerous sustainable environmentally friendly methods the government can use to battle famine and poverty, for instance instead of cutting down firewood, like in most Asian countries like India, they use biogas digesters, which turns human excrement, cow dung, or kitchen garbage into fuel that can be used for cooking or generating electricity.
I mean if the government could afford to buy brand new expensive cars for CHOGUM, they surely can afford giving each village household a cow and these biogas digesters?! Its cheap, sustainable, and environmentally friendly, it not only tackles the issue of producing energy, but also is an excellent way to deal with waste (Which is another problem most African countries face). This would help reduce the rate of deforestation, which would stabilize the climate too.

Things have changed. We've been fucked and have fucked up too, and we need to fix it; originally most indigenous peoples (all over the world) rarely would stay in one place for long, because it would deplete the resources of the area, so they would move around, give the area time to replenish itself, and so a balance was kept. Now that civilization has forced us to settle, you find that people over use their land and do not give it time to replenish itself, and by altering this system, we cause problems such as famine. Now we need to fix it.

Its not rocket science. Hell if I can see this, I wonder why they can’t. Or perhaps they do, but just don’t care?? …Famine in Uganda? How? When the solution is so clear…?

You know I would rather live under an effective dictatorship for a few years than a so called democratic government that doesn’t do much. I know this is random but despite Hitler and Stalin’s harsh policies and crazy ideologies, they did what needed to be done, and neither Germany nor Russia can deny that they wouldn’t be where they were if it wasn’t for them.

Is it just me or is Uganda messed up?
Perhaps we need a dictator, not as absolute or crazy like Hitler or Stalin, but an enlightened dictator …like Paul Kagame…

Are we (yes you and me) really that helpless or have we just gotten too used to the way things are?

Have we reached a state of “Ichabod”??

(Yeah, new word 4 your ass!)
I know I've been blogging some long-ass-heavy-shit recently, bare with me as it get it outta my system! i shall be back to my triva shallow self soon...lol!
*Bless*

The "P" word / From Poetry to Politics...

Ushered at Justice Ogoola’s launch of his poetry anthology this past Friday (had nothing better to do, naturally) and couldn’t help noticing that the higher the status of the person(guest) the ruder and uncivilized they were! I found it embarrassing how a Judge or member of parliament can complain about standing in a queue to register before being escorted to their seats, exclaiming that they “weren’t used to such order”, WTF?! What do they do in parliament or court here? Scrabble for seats? LoL! And these are ment to be the "well traveled, intellectual, learned and cultured" group of Ugandans!

I have a lot of faith in politics, I believe and often quote the saying that everything (well most things) is political, and I’ve noticed that in Africa ,to bring about great change, one has to get involved in politics at one point or another, whether they like it or not. Also I believe there is a “great politician” in most of the greatest people in the world…but politicians like ours shoot down my whole concept of Politics! (I don’t blame President Obama for choosing west Africa, Ghana for his first visit to Africa over East Africa, Kenya!)

Although there is no academic consensus on the exact definition of "Politics", to me Politics is (or should be) the best method of collecting, organizing, using and governing a country’s resources (inclusive of manpower, natural resources etc) for the betterment of the people of that nation. Unfortunately, people have taken politics to be more of the the skill of gaining and maintaining power, which I personally feel beats the whole point of it. Power comes with leadership, which is merely a means of bettering the nation. Ideally, politics should be Righteous not Sleezy!
Yet again, so should being a religious leaders, yet these days when you think priest you think homosexual pedophilic molester! …damn, the world really is coming to an end!

A while ago I had wanted to do law, and get into the work of governance of my nation. Then I grew a little older and wiser? Tainted? Jaded? Not quite sure, but I thought against it.
Too often I have noticed that although people get into law and government for the right reasons, they quickly compromise their morals due to the crafty corruption riddled nature of African politics today. They go from being a man/woman for the people to becoming fat, egotistic animal-farm like pigs! Even if I was to join a big organization, like the UN or World Bank, the ridiculous level of procedures and in-between-stuff debase their efforts to a little more than nothing. They are simply not that practical, and you often find that their efforts are intercepted midway by this or that which prevent people from really benefiting from them.

During my GCSE’s /O Levels I joined and participated in the model united nations, which is held evry year at the UN quarters in Nairobi. (I was the Environmental delegate for Colombia) Basically its run entirely by teenagers and runs exactly like the actual real UN.
We wrote proposals, debated them out in the different chambers, a press corp. that produced a daily newspaper (also student run), dressed up, learnt all the proper UN debate lingo and procedures, (I even got my badge clipped for chewing gum! LoL) we even had pretend emergency situations in which we would be required to quickly think up of solutions!
It was fun, an unforgettable experience, but I realized that all the UN do is talk, draw up proposals, argue over the smallest most times insignificant things, are biased more by nation interests than the betterment of the world as a whole, and at the end of it all, they don’t really take effective action!

To make it worse, the comfy job which often offers the opportunity to work abroad and a fat salary eventually get to people, and they no longer care whether what they are doing really is helping people on the ground, back home. I don’t want to be caught up in that, that’s why I often say wherever life takes me, I will always come back home, and constantly remind myself not to get to comfy, there’s a lot of work to be done!

Still amidst all the bullshit, certain individuals manage to get things done. For instance today on the African Voices show on the BBC, they interviewed an African woman I have come to admire; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. She’s the former Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria, current managing director of the World Bank. Despite the big titles, she seems to be a humble yet passionate Africanist lady. I did some more research on her and I‘ve found her inspirational. I admire her for two reasons:

1) She left her comfy World Bank job in Washington to come back to better serve her country as finance minister (2003-2006)

2) During her time as finance minister, she introduced some economic reforms which enabled greater fiscal transparency to combat corruption (a great problem a lot of African nations are failing to solve) Her reforms basically introduced the publishing of government spending/budget/allocation of money basically, which this enabled the people to see how much money was allocated to their local governments, and hence give them grounds on which to question why there were still pot holes in the roads, why the public schools were so under equipped, why their salaries haven’t risen and the general standard of life is worse despite the money being pumped into the area. This also puts pressure on the local governments to perform, and makes corruption harder to cover up. Excellent policy isn’t it?
After all, true change often comes from the bottom up, from the inside out...

So perhaps there is hope for politics, especially in Africa, although we are far from reaching the political ideals I mentioned before hand…

I was just wondering, whether it would be worth getting into politics.

Being a young African woman, who feels more comfortable speaking English than her own mother tongue, suburban born and raised…sometimes I feel helpless in the struggle to build and improve Africa, even in my own country.

Sometimes I wish I was born in the freedom fighter days, (born conveniently as a man) when all I had to do to join the struggle was to pick up a Gun.

Me Myself and I???

The issue of identity has been one I’ve thought over the majority of my teenage life. This rebirth I talked about in my new years’ theme is once again linked to this, in a way it is me pealing layers of myself to find who I truly am. I’ve learnt along the way that these layers are actually part of and to an extent make me who I am, however some of these layers are not qualities I would like to have. Others are formed by external influences (eg. Other people’s perceptions, the media, culture and society etc) which have forged me into a person, that does not connect with the inner me, hence is not truly me! do you get what i'm trying to say?

So in this search for myself I have become slightly obsessed with defining myself, in order to know who I am and hence less susceptible to the bullshit the world is constantly feeding us…

On this note, I had a very interesting History lesson about Nationalism. The ‘teenage phase’ of European nations during 18th-20th centuries, and I began to think about my own nationality as a Ugandan. An African. Most African nations and states were formed by European colonists who divided up the land for themselves, and somehow the boarders stuck, despite the fact that so many different tribes and people ended up in the same nation, yet didn’t speak the same language or share cultures etc, all that makes a nation united...

I know that before this happened, there were just many small territorial units under this or that tribe, and that the tribalistic nature of Africans (and mankind on the whole actually) would have made unification as a nation a very bloody affair (just like it was in Europe, the 1st and 2nd world war both happened in the era of nationalism, If Hitler and the Nazi era was a product of extreme nationalism, I wouldn’t want to know what would have happened in Africa! ).

Despite the possible hidden blessing the colonialists did for us by drawing out permanent boarders and creating states, although for selfish inconsiderate reasons, I still feel that Ugandans don’t have that nationalistic unity that we should have as a nation, especially compared to neighboring Tanzania, (Kenya is not the best of examples, they got similar issues when it comes to unity, but are still more nationalistic than us!)

Although it has gotten better, and more people feel more Ugandan, most people still find tribe an important aspect of their identity. I’ve heard my mother tell me numerous times how never to marry a Muganda, and how the Basoga are weird people with weird a culture, and not to even think of bringing a Northaner home! Or how the Bahima are lazy and love gossip, so that leave who? My people from the south west the only likely suitors/spouses? I thought we were all Ugandans!!

Like my country, I am torn/confused/divided about my identity! The majority of who I am, was formed by western ideas of what a young black female should be, through media, my school, my peer group etc…this was the age I used to listen to angry dark rock music, try to be sexy, strive to have straight long hair, thought local languages were ‘local’ (in the negative way, i.e. ignorant, not cool), found white dudes more attractive, even used to find my features awkward in comparison to what i thouht i should be and used to be! Thank God I opened my eyes and saw past these lies and insecurities!!

Still, I have my doubts and uncertainties of who I am. I have conflicting identities in a way, for instance, I am very pan Africanist, afro-centric, proud to be an African and I would like to give back to my people and my country, my continent one day, yet I can’t speak any African language fluently. I am very liberal not just politically but in most aspects of my life, yet I cherish the old school, and agree with some conservative and traditional things. I find men very attractive, and I’m certain I’m straight, yet I find women so sensual in every aspect, and can imagine myself being intimate with fellow female. I’m a good poet, a very visual and artistic person, opinionated and confident in my work opinions and thoughts yet I have terrible stage fright and I hate sharing my poems or art pieces… The list can go on and on…

In a way I can identify with African Americans and their struggle of identity, the situation and circumstances I grew up in such as; living in the suburb, exposed to mainstream media, going to an international school yet living in Africa and witnessing firsthand the poverty and suffering of my people, being naturally lighter skinned than the average Ugandan ‘Black person’, etc have caused a lot of conflict and confusion in the development of my identity. I live in two parallel worlds, and as a result I am a mixture of both! (I’ve been mistaken for a mixed race person many times, most people find it hard to believe I don’t have a white parent!)

There is an undeniable strength in this however! The more diverse one is, the stronger, more intellectual, more talented, open minded, flexible, adaptive and even more attractive one is! Look at the animal kingdom for instance, the more diverse a species genes are, the more likely it is to survive. When people intermarry within a family/families as often happens in small villages, the more likely their children will be born with deficiencies and underdeveloped cognitive abilities! The more mixed a person, the more attractive they are, certain features are not over emphasized, and they tend to have an exotic appearance most people find attractive!

My mother has commented before that the future belongs to the ‘Obama generation’...

Knowing who you are is a gradual process I suppose, since we are ever changing, perhaps no one never really knows who they are!?!

...Yet there are people who have such a strong sense of who they are, and are at peace and are confident about it, they are not easily shaken by bullshit! They attract people simply by being who they are, themselves.

I want to be like that!

Hope 2009 will be a year of striping away the layers, purifying and enhancing the enssentials of who i truley am...

The Not-So-Great-Britain

I'm so glad to be back home! its only after i've spent some time abroad that i really appreciate Africa! We may be one of the poorest continents (according to western standards) but we are so rich in so many ways! we are blessed but just don’t know it, you cant get the perfect climate and easy going nature of the people and lifestyle anywhere in Europe!
well, i didn't completely hate London, i liked how convenient everything was...the transport systems, the vending machines, the Starbucks at strategic positions, the layout of malls and shops. shows you the big difference organization and planed living can make! Also, there is alot of variety, whether its a restaurant meal order (forget the variety of the menu, but the single order can come in so many variations its confusing, i even began to wonder whether what i got was what was described on the menu), to the variety of people one can see in the train, from pierced Goths to dreadlocked blonds...in Africa, they would have really stood out, but there, it was quite a normal thing! I liked that about London...

However, despite it being just autumn, it was freezing! as a tropical girl it was torture! Also, it was irritating how fast everyone walked! I'm used to strolling-even when i'm heading to a class that began 5 minutes ago-lol! Keeping up on the streets of London felt like i was in a walking marathon, but i guess since it's freezing outside, the smart thing to do would be to get wherever your going fast! Strolling and icily grey whether somehow don’t go hand in hand...
Although the sun was out, you couldn’t feel it! Being a tropical girl, it was a form of slow torture...i'm so used to feeling the sun, it really was on odd sensation...not that i've never been to Europe, i have, but not often, and every time i go, i still cant get over that fact!
I also really missed home food! i guess my palette wasn't used to the London taste, and i would probably get used to it and even like it after sometime, but during the past week i sort of lost appetite...the worst part about their food is that it looks so good, but tastes like...like paper! This however doesn’t apply to all western countries, food in Greece was good, and almost everything tasted so good in Manhattan...The only exception perhaps was the British hot chocolate and pizza hut...

I also don’t get why they chose to keep the old cottages and buildings in London...yeah, some are kind of cool, but most, especially in the middle of the city, are just plain ugly!! The British are so obsessed with antiques and holding onto the past...yeah, it mayb expensive to breakdown all the buildings and replace them, but i think its more than that...i think it reminds them of their empirical power, when they truly were Great Britain and had one of the largest colonies and were the most industrialized...well, sorry for the reality check but that time is long passed, now not even the old British work ethic exists amongst the majority of brit's, in fact most jobs are taken by minority groups simply because they work harder and at the end of the day they are the ones who deliver and perform...i guess its Not-So-Great-Britain nowadays! LoL

well, let me quit whining! I had a great week in grey London, despite the evident bite marks of the credit crunch (in just the week we were there thousands of people lost their jobs due to the effects of the world economic crisis) and the freak stories in the news of babies being tortured and black teens stabbing each other to death, despite the cold and tasteless food...it was a great experience, especially in showing me how much i love home and living in Africa!