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Circumcision Circumcision Circumcision!!!
Related to country: Uganda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I took a trip to Mbale which is a district of Uganda located eastern Uganda on 28th/ June with friend to visit an orphanage which is deep in one of the villages surrounded by mountains. One of these mountains turns out to be Mountain Elgon which is quite know.
It was a long trip, probably the longest I have ever had on road. It was like 4 hours or so.
The tribe from this region is known as the Bagishu. One of the many tribes in Uganda.
Thats when I had a chance to get to know more about circumcision.
Apparently its their tribal policy that a man must be circumcised after the age of 19.
The policy is more of a rule and if any man tries to avoid it for any reason, his tribe mates will use force to circumcised!
Recently there was a case of one Mujoroto ( 60 years old living in Kampala the capital city of Uganda) who happens of the Bagishu origin who tried to run away from the policy. Guess what happened? He was mugged and circumcised in the public!

Now this is where my concern comes in. Isn't that humiliation?
A 60 year old Mujoroto appears on the front page of New vision newspaper being mugged. And the next day with his pants down with blood all over his trousers?
I mean this is sick.

I will criticize this with or without permission. I know the whole culture and tribe thing, but then, this seems to be primitivism of the highest order.
I was talking to one o the old people in Mbale and was asking him what his opinion was about this whole circumcision thing. He was not that open but I think he thinks there is a better way this can be done.

I was suggesting that if it must go on, why not seek to do it in a more modern way?
Like hospitals can help this using their qualified surgeons. You know?
For God's sake the Bagishu if you are hearing me now, you honestly need to reconsider your policy whatever the aim of issuing this policy was!

I mean people dont really give a damn about things that endanger their lives.
In the process of this kind of circumcision, some one can get hurt, or be exposed to diseases like cancer and HIV Aids itself.
I wonder whether you have considered this as well.

In todays news papers (New vision) still, there is a report reading, " soldiers in the Rwanda Defence Force will be the first men to benefit from a government policy to use male circumcision in the fight against HIV."
I dont think the government of Rwanda has considered what it means to circumcise a man! Apparently a man needs at least 48 days to recover once he has been circumcised.
And that means that he will have to take a break from work as he heals.
And then that means that their national security will be at sort of a stake. If you know what I mean.
But I dont think it is in the best interest of the soldiers to be circumcised considered they have to protect their country as well.
I will keep you guys posted on this.
You can leave me comments and let me know what your opinion is about this..
To be continued...

By Ssozi Javie.

And my next coverage will be on FEMALE GENITAL MITULATION.

July 9, 2008 | 8:44 AM Comments  1 comments

Tags:


Iguana
Related to country: Uganda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic


My past few days have been really great.
Hanging out pretty much with my workmate, her boyfriend, and a couple of other friends.
Going to bars every other night towards the weekend. Not many people happening but had fun anyways.
Some of the things that I love doing is watching people.
As in see how different people behave and things like that.
I keep my eye open pretty much all the time so I can look around. People drinking, smoking, friends having a good time, lovers chilling…. You know?
With this loud music in the back ground. A lot of soft rock, and African music..
Bunch of white girls, and guys probably on vacation.
And then Ugandan boys trying to go after the white girls. Bar tenders, both young men and women.
At Iguana it was a little different though. Apparently Iguana is a noun for an American Lizard. I dont know of any Iguanas in my country.
There was this white bartender! Its rare to find a white bartender in a low developing country like Uganda. However many whites do own bars here. She was quite impressive. She doubles as the DJ and cashier and serving some drinks across the counter.
Smoked a stick of cigarette every10 minutes. Jolly indeed from her looks I could estimate how old she was but maybe late 20’s I would assume. And then some guy who was her assistant looked more like a boy friend to her, looked early 30s.
That’s when I started wondering whether cigarette smoking does not contribute to global warming. This last bit may sound like criticism. Sorry.
But this question is been crossing my mind from time to time. Everyone is coming up against global warming. A few people have come up against smoking. Pretty amazing.
Smoking is bad to be straight forward, we all know that.
And global warming is affecting us all. The sooner we realize we are miss using our beautiful countries or world, the better cause to me it feels like its getting late.
Remember: everyday counts!
We don’t want to make the world, weather, nature and life itself complicated.
So why not stand up now and get rid of things we can get rid of for a better of tomorrow?

Well, I know you will not get rid of your car though it emits a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which is not healthy since you need it pretty much.
But for God’s sake where does smoking take you? Nowhere!
Lets learn to live by the most important things in life.
My mom once told me: “cigarette smoking leaves you with nothing.”
I mean you pay for the cigarette, but in the end what do you get? Nothing at all!

You would say I am mean but trust me I am not. How much time do you take on smoking per day? Start from when you feel you need a smoke, look it up, get a much, smoke it.
Like in my course (computer science) we study a course unit called “Artificial Intelligence” in this course we get to learn many thing basically how robots perform their tasks. There is a part which measures time and in this one every action counts. So from that experience I have learnt to calculate my time not by minutes or second but by number of actions I need to do putting the feeling itself in mind as time consuming.

Otherwise my past few days have been really great.

July 9, 2008 | 3:40 AM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


Iguana
Related to country: Uganda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

My past few days have been really great.
Hanging out pretty much with my workmate, her boyfriend, and a couple of other friends.
Going to bars every other night towards the weekend. Not many people happening but had fun anyways.
Some of the things that I love doing is watching people.
As in see how different people behave and things like that.
I keep my eye open pretty much all the time so I can look around. People drinking, smoking, friends having a good time, lovers chilling…. You know?
With this loud music in the back ground. A lot of soft rock, and African music..
Bunch of white girls, and guys probably on vacation.
And then Ugandan boys trying to go after the white girls. Bar tenders, both young men and women.
At Iguana it was a little different though. Apparently Iguana is a noun for an American Lizard. I dont know of any Iguanas in my country.
There was this white bartender! Its rare to find a white bartender in a low developing country like Uganda. However many whites do own bars here. She was quite impressive. She doubles as the DJ and cashier and serving some drinks across the counter.
Smoked a stick of cigarette every10 minutes. Jolly indeed from her looks I could estimate how old she was but maybe late 20’s I would assume. And then some guy who was her assistant looked more like a boy friend to her, looked early 30s.
That’s when I started wondering whether cigarette smoking does not contribute to global warming. This last bit may sound like criticism. Sorry.
But this question is been crossing my mind from time to time. Everyone is coming up against global warming. A few people have come up against smoking. Pretty amazing.
Smoking is bad to be straight forward, we all know that.
And global warming is affecting us all. The sooner we realize we are miss using our beautiful countries or world, the better cause to me it feels like its getting late.
Remember: everyday counts!
We don’t want to make the world, weather, nature and life itself complicated.
So why not stand up now and get rid of things we can get rid of for a better of tomorrow?

Well, I know you will not get rid of your car though it emits a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which is not healthy since you need it pretty much.
But for God’s sake where does smoking take you? Nowhere!
Lets learn to live by the most important things in life.
My mom once told me: “cigarette smoking leaves you with nothing.”
I mean you pay for the cigarette, but in the end what do you get? Nothing at all!

You would say I am mean but trust me I am not. How much time do you take on smoking per day? Start from when you feel you need a smoke, look it up, get a much, smoke it.
Like in my course (computer science) we study a course unit called “Artificial Intelligence” in this course we get to learn many thing basically how robots perform their tasks. There is a part which measures time and in this one every action counts. So from that experience I have learnt to calculate my time not by minutes or second but by the number of actions I need to do putting the feeling itself in mind as time consuming.

Otherwise my past few days have been really great.



July 9, 2008 | 3:07 AM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY!
Related to country: Uganda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

He is a man.

He has two eyes and a smile as big as ours.

He eats, sleep, goes on walks and watches tv.

He gets upset when his superbowl team loses, and

over flows with joy of watching the younger generation in a park.

He is a man.



He is a leader.

He stands before us, lets us know as one

where we should head

as a nation

to be successful in goals

and new ones to overcome

He leads us into security

to enjoy a free country

and a warm blanket to come home to.

He’s the one in control and stands still

when the ground quakes.

He is a Leader.



He is our President.

He puts a dent in our country with lies

and dead soldiers.

To kill and make the green grass grow

with blood and greed

Needs and wants

hard to tell them apart

crime or justice?

same story

He is our President.



We are the People.

We have opinions

but do not speak loudly enough

or is it...

the tv is too loud for us to hear,

closed text books stacked about

dont know nothing but the present

We know all this

yet We still sit and watch

We let a deadman walk on our US soil

who has killed not ONE, but millions of us

but yet we still sing the national anthem with heart

We hand down wings to those who sin and lie

we sing with tongue but no soul

which one of us is next?

How many more people are going to die by the bombs we make?

how many more people are WE going to kill?

Suffer and die because of one Man and his repeated lies.

Do all the bad things knowing we have a plea?

Promised to be there for our country but all we do is shut our country out when it need us most.

Question is, Who is a good man?

One who does bad things and then says sorry, "For God and My Country"?

Or one who seeks to make the world better?

Hatred, corruption and betrayal are his major characteristics!

We have all the potential we need. So, choice is our:

WE shut out freedom and ourselves. Or try to leave some footprints on the sand by making the world a better place.

Walking ghost.

We are the people.

FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY.

June 25, 2008 | 5:54 AM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


A Working Dog!
Related to country: Uganda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

A working dog: Apac women crying for "a dog that can work"

A dog is needed urgently by women in Apac district. A dog that can go to the garden and farm, work to earn income to look after the family, cater for school fees and clothing for children, for medical care, and, in its excellent form probably help the women in doing household chores. Many women in Apac are willing to offer anything to get such a dog.



Margaret Olero, 46, is looking for a saviour in such a dog. Olero is chocking with the burden of looking after her 7 children, her husband, in addition to undertaking all the daily domestic chores, while her husband leaves everything to her as he has done for the past 24 years. Olero says her husband, just like many in Aminamong village, Akokoro sub-county in Apac is waiting for a dog that can work (go to the garden and earn money for the family) before he can get convinced to start working for himself and family.



"He always refers me to a popular saying by many men in this place that how can he work when dogs still eat free food. When I ask him how he expects me to get food and meet all family needs without his help, he asks me whether he is not more valuable than a dog which eats every day despite not working," Olero says.

Strange as it may sound, as Olero wakes up early in the morning to head for the garden, she hopes for a miracle to meet a dog that can work so that she can call her husband to see how the dog is working in order for him to get convinced to join her in the garden, or to go and work elsewhere to earn money to look after himself and his family.



But until such a dog appears, Olero will wake up daily, head to the garden alone to grow food for her and her husband, and their 5children still living permanently with them. Yet before leaving for the farm at 7am, she must have prepared warm food for the husband to break his daily hangover, and prepared food for the children to take along to school.



In this schedule she has memorized like the front of her palm, Olero has to return back home from the garden at 11am to prepare lunch in time for the children returning from school. Then at 12pm, she takes the goats for feeding as she heads to another garden to weed for the next one hour and half. Lunch between 1:30pm and 2:30pm is the break before she embarks on washing the family's clothes as well as going to fetch water and firewood. By 4pm, Olero must head back to the garden to do more digging. For she must ensure a steady supply of food and income, after selling some of the harvest.



"I have to return home in time to prepare supper. I would not mind all this daily work if my husband was also working hard to look after family needs like school fees, clothing and buying soap or salt," Olero says in an interview with Ultimate Media.



This situation is confirmed by an April 2008 research by the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) which found that rural women in Apac district, northern Uganda are bearing all household responsibilities, in addition to the usual household chores.



The research on the information needs, information sources and concerns of rural women in Apac found that many men don't work, According to the research report, the few men who do work mostly to get money for drinking-a sort of mandatory duty for men in Apac.



"Only two women of the 283 interviewed said their husbands take care of their usual duties (like buying soap, salt, sugar, clothing, etc). Eight said they do it together with their husbands, while 273 women meet the needs single handedly," the report says.



In areas like Bar Opok village, Adyang parish, Akalo sub-county where poor soils do not favour agriculture, women have taken to brick making, an activity that is traditionally associated with men. It is from bricks that most families earn a living (by the women).



"These bricks you see are our food store, our money store. It is from here that I have bee buying clothes for my 10 children, meeting school fees and food," says Jacinta Okwer, 45, who has earned her (and family) livelihood from bricks for the past 20years.



After her mother failed to pay school fees 12 years ago, Judith Okello, 29, got married to a young man who was earning good income from buying and selling produce. She thought unlike her mother, she would not have to earn a living 'romancing' mud every day. But two years in the marriage, and she had to join a group of women making bricks. "He was working, but we were going hungry. Making bricks was the only way I could make some money. That is what I have been doing for the past 10years," Okello says.



But why wouldn't a man who earns money use some of the money to look after his family. Many women interviewed in the WOUGNET research said asking a man for money to look after the family is one automatic way of a woman inviting a thorough beating. "Many women asked whether they have rights, and if they do, how respect for their rights can be assured," says the 46-page research report.



"Women need more sensitization to demand their rights," says Tommy Obote, a Counselor at Women and Children Advocacy Network, an NGO based in Apac. He says sensitization is also needed for men to respect their wives and meet their responsibilities.



But previous efforts by authorities to encourage men to fulfill their responsibilities and to stop beating their wives have ended in more burdens for women. In Aumi village, Bala sub-county for example, the LCs passed a by-law requiring all men to pay school fees and buy clothes for their children, or risk arrest. The police ad LCs in Adyang parish ordered for the arrest of any man who beat his wife. In both areas, arrests were made.



"But if your husband is arrested, it is you the woman to look for the fifty thousand (50, 000) required to get him out of cells. Our men are poor and they don't have money. In addition, it is a taboo for people to hear that a man was arrested because of you (wife)," says Margaret Otyang, 48, of Aumi village. She says that is why many women have resigned to their fate- submit to everything their husbands say, even though the women are responsible for generating all the resources that meet the household needs.

But the WOUGNET research shows that even for the women like Olero who have mastered how to raise money to look after their households and undertake all household chores, the challenge for the rural women become greater when a woman gets pregnant, sometimes with complications, and has to cater for self pre, ante and post natal.



A number of NGOs have been drawn into Apac to help women out of this situation. "While this is good, men have been left behind. Many programmes target women yet it is the men who traditionally have control," says Betty Amongi, Apac women MP. She says many men in Apac are suffering from psycho-social trauma related to war. The area was greatly affected by the 1980-85 war that brought the current government to power, while the early years of the Lords Resistance Army war had their own adverse effects on Apac.



"Men here used to have cattle and were in good control of their families. All the cattle were taken away during the wars. Because of the resulting poverty, the men could no longer take charge of their families. Many resorted to drinking. These men have psycho social problems that can be solved through counseling and sensitization," says Amongi.



The MP says that broader government programs like the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture, universal education and prosperity for all programmes need to take this fact into consideration and ensure counseling services are additionally given to men here.



"Our men need counseling," agrees Lillian Ebong, 28, the Secretary for youth in Owang Central, Apac Sub-county. "Digging with local hoe is very tiresome. We need to be helped with an ox-plough. We can share it among ourselves in the village group," says Phoebe Ojok, 65. According to Ojok, the ox (bull) costs about 350,000 shillings, while the plough 300,000shillings. "We also need our children especially girls to get education beyond primary school," Ojok says. But she is quick to add that even if girls are educated, it will not help if men here are not helped to change their "negative attitude".



Although many men expect the women to look after the households almost single-handedly, many men do not want their women to be empowered (read better off). For example, despite grinding out a difficult education here in Apac and graduating as a Grade III teacher, Cecilia Tonga, 30, says her husband hid her certificate to stop her from ever getting a job to teach. "When I reported him to Apac Police Liaison Officer, my husband claimed that he had forgotten when he placed my certificate", Tonga says.



Though the husband allowed Tonga to become a member of a local women farmers group, she always has to ask for permission to go to the meetings of group, where she is the chairperson. "Sometimes, you have to bribe him with 200shillings to allow you to go to the meeting. Our men need a lot of counseling," she says with emphasis.



It is this counseling that women are counting on to provide "a working dog" and thus encourage men to turn to work that helps in meeting the needs of their families.

June 19, 2008 | 5:07 AM Comments  0 comments





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