Camp Pa La Dee Da

So over half a year since I returned, and about as long since my last, I have finally got around to putting up my last blog. I have also managed to write up some of the entries I had in notebooks; it feels like some kind of closure. For anyone thinking of doing anything similar, I would recommend writing as a form of keeping your sanity and adjusting to a different life. The longer I was in away the less it became a necessity and more a pleasure but it always offered a way of releasing scrambled, often contradictory, thoughts. Even if it didn't always make sense of them, at least seeing that they were not as weird and ridiculous as they had seemed in my head offered some consolation. Whilst I have bleated on for ... read more

Death is hard to ignore in Uganda. It is everywhere. Differences in the way people view death first became apparent to me as I watched people testing for HIV/AIDS. How could people, who had a good chance of being told that they had a terminal disease, breeze through like they were going for a regular check-up? Having tested, I could feel the sweat on my palms as I awaited the results, despite being almost certain that I was negative. “I don’t know how they do it.” I observed to my friend Junior. “Ah for us it is not important; if it is not AIDS then something else will get you.” …and ‘something else’ usually does. When you ask where someone is, a common response is “they have to go to the village, they have lost someone.” ... read more

When I visited a Kampala bookshop recently I was almost bowled over by the number of books on aid, nearly all were negative – ‘Dead Aid’, ‘The Trouble with Aid’. What I find more remarkable is that these books are not really aimed at Ugandans, only the richest would spend the amount of money required to buy a book published in the West, but international aid or development workers. As I now work for a bigger ‘development agency’ (charity is a dirty word) I have come across this criticism of aid and development more firsthand. I can understand why those from outside the industry would be critical; it is quite easy to find evidence of the damage caused by billions of dollars of Western aid. I just find it strange that the very people who dedicate ... read more

Try as I might I have not found anyone who can translate ‘thank you for having me’ into Luganda. People look puzzled. It was eventually explained to me (after it had become quite apparent) that there is no gratitude that you should show your host in Baganda culture. The emphasis is on the host to show gratitude. For a Bugandan, when a visitor first comes to your home you say you are pleased to see them (whatever you think of them), give permission for them to enter and the command them to sit. Command is an important part of Luganda, it has its own tense and forms a large part of everyday speech, which initially comes across to Brits used to asking everything. Then follows the introductions, a series of questions in which you ascertain that ... read more

Throughout this blog I have lazily used ‘Ugandan’ to refer to everything and everyone. I do it because it is easier but it ignores the rich diversity of cultures and customs across the country. Of the many tribes in Uganda (I have never got the same answer as to how many) I could only really claim to know the culture and customs of one of these moderately well. I started my stay in Buganda with a Baganda family and was quickly rechristened David Katumba Cousins of the Nkima (monkey) clan. There are around 75 clans amongst the Baganda, mostly named after things in nature and a sexual interclan relationship would be viewed in much the same way incest would be in England. The clans can be traced back to the beginnings of the Baganda kingdom and ... read more

Throughout my time here I have watched people, come, go and stay. Apart from the few travellers and purely ‘holiday tourists’, nearly all have been passionate about ‘helping people’ and many have been quite certain about the best way to do that, though few think that they have any ideas at all. As I have reflected on my own mistakes, it seems you need a unique set of skills to be successful (by success I mean helping people rather than reaching the top) in development. Be quiet, listen and observe – this is possibly the hardest thing, though it seems the easiest. I have never been around people that have sought or valued my opinion so much. When asked for advice, I would give in to the pressure and offer it, even though often having no ... read more

When I was asked recently, “What is the status of women like here? I’ve heard it’s quite bad,” by some Irish visitors we were hosting I was pretty taken aback, and not just because I had always thought that as I was born with something hanging between my legs I was unqualified to answer such a question. My response probably made her realise that she should never ask a man such a question again, “ermm…..yes it’s bad....but then it’s a bit more complicated because they have lots of women MPs.” Hardly the cutting insight she was looking for into the position of women in Ugandan society. What I was trying to get at, however, was that gender relations can be looked at in many different ways. In the home and the community the position of women ... read more

As a former social researcher and current monitoring and evaluation person I should be the person that defends research and statistics. Sometimes, however, I find it difficult. It is undoubtedly the trump card in a wide range of arguments. “How can you say Arsenal are weak in the air when only 12% of the goals they have conceded have been headers?” or “you say Africa is catching up with the rest of the world: more people live on under $1 a day than in the rest of the world put together.” For charities desperate to raise funds and for Government agencies desperate to show success, statistics have become the holy grail. Now I don’t think I am boastin when I claim that the organisation I work for has one of the best monitoring and evaluation systems ... read more

Having now been in paid work for months I am starting to look back with some fond nostalgia on my time volunteering. I can, however, still remember the feelings of frustration, boredom and confusion that seem to affect volunteers in Uganda. I was reminded of this was when I was helping to run a debrief for the International Citizenship service programme. This programme, a brainchild of David Cameron, aims to make young Britons ‘globally active citizens’ and reduce poverty. Our organisation had decided to run this programme by pairing our young UK volunteers with a Ugandan volunteer, train them, and then place them in a civil society organisation (CSO) to build the organisation’s capacity in organisational management. In brief, it was a small disaster due to a myriad of factors which left some very disgruntled volunteers. ... read more