07 Monday Nov 2016
Posted in Photography
Tags
Alden Paul Mvoutoukoulou, Daudi Karungi, Elise Atangana, Elsadig Mohammed, Gosette Diakota Lubondo, Immy Mali, Julien Creuzet, Kampala Art Biennale 2016, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Makerere Art Gallery, Matt Kayem, Nomo Gallery, Ronex, Sajan Mani, Shelia Nakitende, Stacey Gillian, Uganda Railway Station, Virginie Yassef, Wolf von Kries, Xenson
This gallery contains 20 photos.
28 Saturday Nov 2015
Posted in Poetry
No soundbites, no soundbites, NO soundbites. The words of Rafeef Ziadah replay in my mind. Her poem continues to resonate with the disconnect between trauma and media.
When tragedy rocked Paris, again, on the 13th of November 2015, my solidarity was lost. International news had caught me in-between — high on hopes for Myanmar and still mourning for Burundi. Fresh from conversations about about Russian downed planes, I froze momentarily in the anxiety of an unknown.
Not connected, yet linked in. Ideally, our globalized existence should allow informed compassion, but it is easy to be detached from bombs in Beirut sitting behind a computer screen.
As Facebook friends inked profiles with red, white and blue, I wondered if allies were more important than lives. My solidarity got lost somewhere in-between the hate speech and knowing too much about undocumented suffering. Searching for an uncluttered strand of conscience I checked to see that my people in Paris were ‘marked safe.’
The fear-machine tells us that we are never really safe, that there is always some terrorist or pathogen lurking in the shadows to claim us. The soundbite of today is cloaked in a notion that the threat is brown-skinned and prays to Allah.
My reactions stayed lost, but slowly my solidarity returned. It came with a backlash about Nigeria and Lebanon and a reminder that Syria is not the problem, extremism is. It came one small smile at a time, humanly, after seeing a woman wearing an American flag headscarf or watching online videos that made it all seem absurd. I finally felt close once individuals and media started to join the rally cries and critically reflected on what I had been thinking.
And then Bamako was hit. Flashbacks to Westgate and my uncertainty returned. There would be no ‘marked safe’ or solidarity; that is until France remembered it’s role in Mali, post colonial it lit up the Eiffel Tower in red, yellow and green.
Now Brussels is on high alert and I fear this poem will never end because fear and violence has haunted our humanity for as long as history can remember.
What I fear most is the ignorance of a world tinted by red, white and blue colored glasses.
Lest we forget all the past conflicts fought for ideologies. Our amnesia will not bring us any closer to peace. `
Lest we forget yesterday’s crimes against humanity. For there will be a new one tomorrow and our compassion fatigue might be exhausted by then.
Lest we forget who manufactures weapons of mass murder, who pays for the tools of slaughter. Some even purchased at the neighborhood Walmart.
Lest we lose our capacity for solidarity and know that They are not the other, and that We participate in this global order. Our allegiances don’t go unseen and our insistence on liberté, égalité, fraternité might always be challenged. That is after all is what we are fighting for.
Listen Here:
16 Tuesday Jun 2015
Tags
BART, Chico, Fern Canyon, Friendship Trail, kitorchi, Oakland, Oregon, pay as you go, The Bay
“What? You don’t have a phone!” They exclaimed.
Technically I did have a phone, but it only worked in parts of the world that chose to open their networks, unlike the USA and Canada. That’s right my stupid phone that works all over Africa and Europe (with two sim-card slots) was not welcome in the wild west. I tried to investigate options of new communications, and refused to pay the $120 required to ‘set up’ a line in the country of my birth. Note even chinatown had a cheap solution.
In November and December of 2014, I stuck to my principals and abandon the reliance on this form of communication. Turns out it’s not that hard. And, I can do the clever African trick of technology: skip a step. With occasional internet and a leap of faith I was lifted from the binds of mobile-phone communications. There were no text messages to check or send, nobody calling me to interrupt a moment with loved ones.
There is something nostalgic about getting in the car, driving and just showing up. Like arriving in Chico and seeing a note on the door. Winding down the Rouge and towards a gulch. Or heading into The Bay from southern Oregon with just an expected arrival time. My online messages would read, “leaving now, see you when I get there.”
I pondered about pay phones. Did they still work? I clocked all the emergency roadside phones, with the lingering mindset that perhaps I wasn’t in a new Mazda sports car. Instead, I imagined I was driving one of the 1980’s Land Cruisers I’d become accustomed to, with the consistent breakdowns that accompany decades on bad roads and encounters with dubious mechanics. USA highway-driving is too easy. Besides, how is a car with 5,000 miles on it going to fail?
Not having a phone made me look up on the platforms of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). I allowed eye contact with the tenderness people shared on the streets. Sometimes I even had to ask a stranger the time. I saw more by looking up at the skyscrapers as opposed to being warned about potholes by a smart app. One evening the sun darted into my eyes, I cocked my gaze toward the blinding reflection and was slapped with the sight of a perfect triangle marking the time exactly across the 40ft antique clock.
I would scribble the directions from Google Maps, glancing down as I crept into neighborhoods looking for my desired destination. Climbing up staircase terraces in San Francisco I met up for wine and a long overdue catch up. Not seen since Cambridge-days, we were on her turf. Our love of food and escapades in Africa had bound us. Overlooking a rising moon, she revealed a scrapbook, all inclusive of our youthful wanderings in Tanzania.
Getting lost is half the fun. Now smart devices prohibit a wrong turn down that alley or up those stairs. Take the Friendship trail to Fern Canyon and towards the sunset.
This is not an advocacy piece, designed to encourage abandonment. It’s simply a reminder that we can remove ourselves from the dependency of phones. Most importantly it shows that being stubborn about ‘principals’ can teach us more than just to validate some middle-class self righteousness.
Of course my life in Uganda couldn’t exist without a phone, with multiple lines. In fact, many of my friends here have two phones and four lines. Some sim cards are bank accounts and others used to play the economy of pay-as-you-go. Fortunately, we have not yet surrendered our greetings to a technology application.
As I look forward to a life in Europe, friends are waging bets on how long it will take before I breakdown and buy a smartphone. For now I will stay with my dual-sim kitorchi and relish my memories of times without a phone. Those joys are void of selfies and full of real people in magical places.
07 Sunday Jun 2015
Posted in Writings
Tags
aperitivo, arancini, Bring Back Our Girls, cannoli, Duomo, EXPO15, Italy, Maurizio Cattelan, Milan, Milano, Nigeria, Roma, Rome, swahili, Tanzania
Reaching altitude of 30,000 feet I looked out my window to see a snow capped mountain range. “We are now preparing for landing.” The copilot calls over the intercom. Milan.
From the damp humid metro, the air perfumed with spring flowers to awaken my senses. In what most would consider a quickie for such a grand city, I surrendered to deliciousness. Sometimes it is important to say yes to invitations. Of course I’ll walk along the canal and zig-zag across for spontaneous Opera in the gelateria known for hand selected market-fresh ingredients.
My feet, bound in Ugandan tire-soled shoes, sauntered up and down Milano streets. I peaked into hidden gardens with towering magnolia trees, eager to know her secrets. Perhaps a door would open and disclose what’s behind the facade of archways; or tell the mystery beneath the steal that’s cast in a man’s eyes. There would be no true unavailing from this industrial city where Maurizio Cattelan’s marble sculpture gives a goliath middle finger to face the stock exchange.
It was a cherry picked experience, with actual cherry picking alongside mamas in the park. Sure communication was limited, since I spoke no Italian, but they were hardly concerned with the foreigner joining in their delight. The flavor was the same, sweet with sunshine.
Wandering without an itinerary or a map allowed a kind of aimless way to stumble upon places or follow streets that beckoned me. Pizza shops nestled beneath doorways with graffiti ink climbing up paint-crumbling walls to meet verandahs covered in blooming jasmine. At the Duomo, live radio streams played into a crowd of thousands. Hawkers called, “Ciao Bella” to women with gellato melting onto camera lenses slung beneath their bosom. The sun beat hard, forcing streams of sweat to spoil selfies. I was curious about what this holy site that brings pilgrims for a celebration of “Sacred Mysteries” was thinking of this EXPO15 modern molestation happening beneath her spires. I left the world’s affair to gawk at street performers and crossed the police barricades to exit the precious piazza.
During the final leg of the all-day walkabout I glanced up at a wire mesh hanging with hundreds of dolls. Bring Back Our Girls. Nigeria was on my mind.
But then Milan tempted me back for another bite of the classified world. Eat up at the Jewish restaurant where everything is for sale. Just hope the purchase of your plate waits until you are finished. Like the city it would offer only a meager taste, yet satisfying. In recollections of a time to remember, Milano flavors will again sweeten my lips.
Hustle to catch the train. No time to think about the last stop. Roma was calling. She wanted to braid another destination into a global friendship. You see, Adia and I go way back. Back to a day when girls became women. For the last decade we have been spinning threads of experience to weave our story. From Tanzania — England — Uganda — NYC, now Italy. I knew this Italian extravaganza with a sister from a different mister was going to be epic.
We caught up on news and pondered the world with long coffee mornings. Each day included what my cousin refers to as a “death march”, whereby you walk till you die. In our case we would walk until it was time for aperitivo: the Italian relaxation technique where you buy a drink and the nibbles are available for your eager consumption. Grazie.
Both foodies, she made me eat arancini (aka fried-goodness) for breakfast and cannoli for lunch. We agreed that gellato could only happen once a day and in the meantime we would cook with delightful ingredients from Europe’s breadbasket.
In our city-conquering we saw sights, spoke swahili and danced through hoards of tourists like stirring a spoon in molasses. Overwhelmed by the grander of history and numbers of people I became eager for the pause in a boutique or to listen to street blues. In those points of downloading I was continually perplexed by the seeming contradiction of authenticity in this Italian place. Perhaps it was my own sensory association of frankincense inside churches with Ethiopia and not Italy. Or maybe the righteousness around coffee that also fit in East Africa. I think it was most likely confusion induced by a subtle guilt that I was delectably devouring a country thousands were dying to reach. Their mortality seemed so fresh when looking at the crypts in churches or the exact moment I was face-to-face with a skeletal pirate. Would the seaside tomb of the unknown be erected for them?
I left melancholic thoughts in my notebook and jolted back into the whirlwind of food, sites, food, walking, drinking, and taking pictures. I realized what happened in those overly full days and drunken nights was a tapestry of friendship. Grateful for my ever-loving guides and partners in crime I felt assured in my mantra: “travel in places where you know people.” It can let you glimpse into a part of our world unavailable in guidebooks. Inevitably it will leave you wanting more time to explore rather than having specific agenda points not ticked. Or in my case it can be filled with so much humor, passion and inspiration that it takes you out of the cerebral and into the experiential.
MORE PHOTOS
Full Image Album (Rome-Roma)
Full Image Album (Milan-Milano)
06 Saturday Jun 2015
Posted in Photography, Uncategorized
06 Saturday Jun 2015
Posted in Photography
24 Sunday May 2015
Posted in Curatorial Work, Photography
13 Wednesday May 2015
Posted in Uncategorized
11 Monday May 2015
Posted in Writings
Tags
Badah badah badah, bop, pop. The drumbeats called in the full moon. Nalubale’s waves were making the acrobats fly and the fire spin. Lake Victoria and the five-acre farm had lured us under a dubious sky.
Spit spit spit, crack. The fire blazed on as bare feet kicked dust into her embers. Get on the xylophone Remi and show us the woman’s way to beat-out tunes. Blast the talking drum from Senegal and spin house out into the village.
Dj remix that, I’m not feeling you as much as the live show sweating away. U,G, UG, UU-GG Waragi. Yes please. Pizza prepared, and moringa curry for round two. Of course we’ll eat from a banana leaves, community style. So many flavors sprinkled around one could taste new friendships baking.
Red hibiscus in my hair, I grooved into the night until that full moon stalled overhead. She electrified the world of revelers. Beckoning us to stay, we left the party in her cleavage. Winding down windows and through headlight nights we would remember her. Nalubale and her full moon sister might even call us back if they didn’t think we were too misbehaved.
11 Saturday Apr 2015
Posted in Writings
Tags
Compendium of Conflicts in Uganda, National Reconciliation, Pambazuka.org, Refugee Law Project, Transitional Justice
“Until lions write their own history, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
This quote, popularised by Chinua Achebe, highlights the enduring need for stories to be told from lesser known perspectives. That is exactly what Refugee Law Project’s (RLP) newly released Compendium of Conflicts in Uganda attempts to do. In the absence of a national truth-telling process, this more-than 300 page text invites the reader to see the state of a nation in transition, from the perspective of the masses. It comes out of a National Reconciliation and Transitional Justice (NRTJ) Audit conducted across 20 districts with nearly 600 hours of dialogue. This review attempts to give a sense for the text by outlining some of the many and varied episodes in Ugandan history which participants have covered in the making of this book.
In the foreword we are told by RLP’s director, Dr. Chris Dolan, that “Establishing the truth can only ever be a work in progress.” With this premise it seems daunting that those who informed the text identified 125 different conflicts, and that there have since been more. Fortunately, the publication is designed to digest such an enormous topic, illustrated with images, timelines and broken down into subsections. In this way, the reader sees conflict, not as an academic aggregation, but as a thematic and regional understanding of the past. This is not to say that all the notions, memories and ideas espoused by the public were taken as fact by the book’s collators, but they were triangulated through the support of external reviewers and supplemented by additional texts.
From the participants’ points of view, armed conflicts, conflict drivers and conflicts that result from structural or social imbalance all seemed to be associated. For example, issues of colonialism were not necessarily disassociated from current divisions between those who reside north of the Nile (primarily Nilotic) and those in the south (primarily Bantu), nor from unresolved conflicts over central territory between the Baganda and Banyoro groups. In addition, the text of course highlights an explicit link between political, ethnic and religious divisions. There is a sense of the nation as inherently disrupted by armed conflict, displacement, and disputes over resource commodities and land. Conflict and disruption further lead to discontent in areas of gender dynamics, wealth disparity and continued marginalization. Furthermore, the chapters chronicle a general sense of structural conflict whereby the state has failed to bring people out of poverty and instead focused national resources on militarising the government. These thematic associations show that tensions between groups and tensions that link seemingly disparate events persist today, so much so that conflict appears almost as a normal part of peoples’ lives.
Throughout the Compendium, the reader encounters a myriad of micro and macro conflicts dating back to the late-1800s Berlin Conference. To summarise each one would be tedious and incomplete. However, a key issue here is the number of conflicts that are not yet resolved. Numerous unsettled issues give an overall sense, amongst all the voices and events expressed in the Compendium, that there is not yet peace in Uganda. And this reality is in direct contradiction to the ruling National Resistance Movement’s campaign slogan “Peace, Stability & Security.”
Political allegiances, both past and present, have been known to create divisionism. For example, tension began in 1960 between political parties with religious affiliations, aligning Catholics with the Democratic Party (DP) and Protestants with the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC). Likewise, as the book’s participants highlighted, when Moses Ali was the first non ‘westerner’ to become General during Museveni’s almost thirty-year tenure.
Policies instituted when Museveni came into power in 1986 have fed in to an idea of a Ugandan ‘cold war’ which keeps people under military oppression. This is illustrated in the aggressive manner used by army and police to routinely silence protests. The impunity with which particular military officials act is now popularly referred to in West Nile as ‘the big man [Salim Saleh] in the forest’.
In the mid-1960s Idi Amin was accused of crossing into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to steal gold and ivory. This triggered a continuing conflict of military looting across borders that is yet to be resolved. Amin’s rise and fall is also seen as a source of continued conflict and targeted killings between the residents of West Nile (Kakwa, Madi and Lugbara) and the Acholi/Langi. Even though there was a reconciliation ceremony in 1985 it was considered one-sided, and therefore not complete. Ethnic tensions in the region are highlighted by the creation of district boundaries and the selection of administrative powers, as well as being structurally supported by a process of decentralization or ‘districization’.
What may come as a surprise to some when reading this book is the number of small, isolated rebel groups that have operated across the country triggering splinter insurgencies and wars within wars. Some of these include the Oyoro Boys (1979-80), Cilil (1986-1988), Vumbula (1981-1986), and the People’s Redemption Army (2001-present). The level of detail to which people in particular locations were able to describe virtually unknown insurgencies showed an expertise yet to be chronicled in any comprehensive volume on any region of the country. Participants also enhanced their telling of each conflict with a keen awareness of specific killings, which became historical markers in recounting the past. Two of these in particular included the killing of Chief Aliko by the British in the 19th Century, and the 1970 murder of Brigadier Pierino Yere Okoya.
Like many regions, Karamoja began to be militarized in 1926, and the text provides a coherent summary of this transition for a region which had been managed under martial law since 1911. Since militarization, Karamoja acquired more weapons after Amin came to power as well as enabling the proliferation of arms to the north. This in itself fed into cross-border cattle rustling with the Pokot and Turkana groups.
Also across the border, South Sudan’s instability contributes to a sub-regional and growing conflict over land and aid resources. Issues around land use, ownership and refugee camp settlements can be traced back to 2009. Conflict developments since the completion of research for the Compendium will no doubt show that this section is already outdated.
Well documented conflicts, as seen throughout the Compendium, notably continue to engender armed fighting on behalf of groups like the Allied Democratic Forces and the Lord’s Resistance Army, which in neighbouring countries show a residue of uncertainty and fragile peace. For those who are still in search of their loved ones who went missing due to conflict, there is a natural inability to see the conflict as over, which engenders yet more tension.
The issues highlighted above were taken with the intent to show the many layers of the Compendium. The themes and regional conflicts are sometimes repeated, based on the association given to them by the participants; thus in turn illustrating the nonlinear characteristic of memory. But it is through these personal memories that the urgency for reconciliation is truly expressed. The final chapter shows that participants are both ready for reconciliation, and equipped with profound notions of what is needed to heal the nation. Unlike politicians’ assertions that the only way to reconcile is a change of government, the authors of the Compendium welcome the public to engage the existing power structures in a sincere conversation.
The last section looks at the current framework of transitional justice, to see how these lingering conflicts can be resolved; and examined each angle of the justice framework in its possible application to the various, multi-layered and challenging conflicts of Uganda. Apologies, reparations and truth-telling formed the core possibilities in terms of accountability. Depending on the region, reconciliation was seen as possible through legislation, stakeholder engagements and traditional justice, and only when implemented in incremental shifts. Amnesty was seen as both positive and divisive, showing the necessity of a context-specific and dynamic application which adapts to each conflict. Formal justice measures were viewed as necessary yet selective and one-sided; thus supporting the impunity of government officials who may have committed atrocities during armed conflicts. Traditional justice provided a cross-cutting compliment to legislative measures, and created a more cohesive form of social repair. A significant section was dedicated to the theme of reparations, outlining the existing attempts and their significant limitations. Memorialisation was viewed as a form of justice for those whose cases will likely never go to trial, nor monetary reparations be paid out. Further to this, some warned of the ‘revenge’ incited by some memorials; thus, to avoid any negative impacts the process must be driven from the community level. Finally, the text shows a vocalisation of the need for institutional reform that directly responds to the needs of the masses.
The limited-edition print was launched at the first National Reconciliation Conference held from 15-18 March 2015. A shared space of nearly 300 politicians, cultural leaders, conflict specialists, donors and victim representatives showed, with their relation to the text, a meaningful step towards continuing the dialogue. What was clear, from the group’s engagement with the text, is that provided more familiarity than the quantitative data-laden reporting of NGOs. The archival images, timelines and block quotes are useful punctuation marks to what appears to be a thrust to force a national reckoning of Uganda’s past. This timely release allows participants of the NRTJ to be the authors of their own histories at a time when the Amnesty Act is about to expire, a draft National Reconciliation Bill is stalled in government, and the youth are still studying a curriculum that fails to address a fraction of the past conflicts that continue to shape Uganda.
There is a danger in committing a continuing dialogue to text and therefore concretising a past that is still debatable. RLP sees this as a necessary step to legitimise the local conversations, and to produce a work that challenges the assertion that industry ‘experts’ can best inform how to understand historical injuries. As such, the text is a work in progress and will be made available online for additions, comments and mass sharing.
* Kara Blackmore is a freelance cultural heritage consultant based in Kampala, Uganda. In 2014 she curated the Travelling Testimonies exhibition about war, peace and reconciliation. She can be contacted at: africaheritageconsulting@gmail.com
Publication and PDF Link Here
karablackmore 