Villages in Action is happening this weekend in Kikuube, Uganda. This unique conference is in response to the Millenium Development Goal summit in 2010 where world leaders and experts came together to discuss the plight of the poor – but forgot, yet again!, to include them. Villages in Action brings this community front and center as activists, facilitators and organizers.

Personally, I was quite struck by a series of Twitter Q&As on @tmsruge’s handle. A number of young girls from the Kikuube community were given access to the Internet and had the change to ask questions to other young women around the world. Their concerns and curiosity – from both the girls in Uganda and those responding in other areas of the world – are touchingly similar: innocent questions from a young woman in rural Uganda to another in D.C. I’m hoping they will be published on the Villages in Action website later so you can read them as a whole.

During my final day in Entebbe, the girls running the hotel we stayed at grouped around me for a chat (travelling with a partner has been interesting. The moment I’m alone, I suddenly get approached in large numbers). The young woman, who had just finished her business degree at Makerere and was managing the hotel, was asking me about school and life in Canada. You will generally hear Ugandans saying that it must be ‘easy’ and everything is ‘free’ for foreigners. Perhaps the copious amount of tourists and NGO workers that roam the country with all kinds of gadgets (of which I’m guilty) and purchasing power create this impression.

However, it’s hard to explain to someone that nothing is ‘free’ in Canada and that a tremendous amount of work goes into making ends meet. Or that most of the disposable income I have is borrowed, and I do not have the means (yet) to pay it back. Or that I actually hold down one or two jobs during the school year to help meet my basic expenses and mitigate growing debt (this she seemed impressed by). I don’t think the girl at the hotel was convinced by the rest though.

My partner later commented that he wanted to bring some of his Ugandan family to the US to show them how much time he spends working in order to provide them with extra support and what the cost of living in a city like D.C. is. This reminded me, once again, how mobility is important to economic development and changing mentalities.

For example, a Ugandan friend of mine just returned from working in the US. She went there to help set up micro lending programs for poor American women. What a role reversal! It was fantastic hearing her speak about what it was like to be there. The organization dropped them off in their respective cities, gave them some cash and told them to work out everything from transit to finding a place to live and how to navigate a demanding 9am-8pm job.

These are challenges even for persons used to American-style transit systems or the difficult rental market. She was also impressed by the work ethic and kept mentioning how much people work in the United States compared to Uganda. This, she felt, was something that needed to change in her country if the situation is to improve. She also noted how she was permitted to question and challenge her boss, something she would not have done in a Ugandan organization. Finally, she noticed that the ‘poor’s’ mentality was similar to what she had seen in Uganda. The women she worked with were hesitant to work hard, preferring to rely on welfare checks. She’s had similar challenges trying to motivate members of Women of Kireka to start thinking for themselves and how they want to foster an income stream.

Heading back to weather fluctuating between -5 and -17 celcius and countless pages of readings and essays to write in just under 48 hours. I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve entered and exited Uganda. However, this – albeit brief – trip has been unique. Christmas celebrations in a small village near Masindi. Just a dusty road lined with a few shops; not marked on the national map. Welcomed into a home for meals of matoke, posho and beans cooked over the kitchen-courtyard fire. Greeted by the wider community not as a foreign NGO worker but – perhaps – more as part of the community itself. Refusing to take boda-bodas after an accident a few years ago, I mastered the matatu system far better than times before. The stubborn heat, sweat and noise of Kampala for a week. The debauchery of the Ugandan middle class over New Year’s weekend – from never ending parties on the shores of Bugala Island in Lake Victoria to iPads and glasses of wine in Entebbe’s beach bars. The middle class is growing, the country is getting richer and – at least since 2007 – there seem to be some improvements. Yet, the same frustrations of fluctuating power, difficult access to water and a failing health care system remains. Will 2012 bring any changes?

A boat carcass dressing Hornbill Camp’s beach. Bugala Island.

The sun setting over Lake Victoria.

Uganda’s ‘middle class’ enjoying food, wine and a swim in Lake Victoria on New Year’s Day.

In response to Jina’s inquiry about how one’s Christmas on the continent was spent, I thought I’d share a few words.

This year, I spent my first Christmas in Kikuube, Uganda. Kikuube is a small village located about 20 miles from Masindi, the closest town, and about five hours from the capital city, Kampala. My partner’s family has small house just outside the village surrounded by fields of matoke, potatoes, maize and groundnuts. About 1/3 of the family comes home from Christmas with about seven to fifteen children, parents and visitors hanging out at the compound.

The days leading up to Christmas were spent drinking countless cups of lemongrass tea and eating many, many meals of papaya, boiled ground nuts, posho, matoke, irish potatoes and steamed cabbage – all freshly picked from the garden. The days turned around a strict routine beginning with a long run past sugar cane fields and breathtaking views of blue-green mountains, followed by breakfast, lunch and dinner separated only by long naps in the shade and the occasional walk into the village center or to the garden to harvest groundnuts. Dinner was cooked over a bonfire in the kitchen/fire pit with the family gathering to talk, tell stories and drink tea.

Christmas Day itself had the same feeling of ‘busyness’ that I recognize from home. There is a massive meal to prepare: boiled meats, matoke, rice, millet, stewed vegetables. The girls and women are working over the fire in the kitchen as the sun rises, sweeping and tidying the house. The boys wash dishes and run errands. At around 11 am, everyone puts on their best clothing and heads to the church. A one room building made from mud and bricks at the edge of a large, overgrown field. The church houses 30-40 people. Sunday school children are sitting on a mat in their best suits and frilliest dresses. The women are wearing traditional clothing – all kinds of shiny silk and organza – or elaborate dresses with lace and flower prints and the men in smart shirts and suits. Toddlers wearing three piece suits drag their pant legs and sleeves over the red dirt.

The church service starts with an hour of singing, dancing, clapping and beating on drums. Individuals then stand up and say a few words about their health, their wishes for the coming year, and so on. Visitors from other churches or from outside the community introduce themselves. This is followed by a two-hour long sermon. The sermon was done in English (for our benefit, which was beyond considerate) with seamless translation into the local dialect. After more dancing and singing, donations are made and the service ends. People head to their respective homes and we move back to the house, gather on mats placed in the shade of trees and serve ourselves from massive pots of matoke, meats, rice.

After a long nap, we head to the village center. The whole village is out in their best dress and sprawled on chairs, mats, and benches. Children come by with their new presents: shiny bikes tangled with streamers and gift-wrapping. Others sip on syrupy sweet Mirindas and Pepsis. A woman with a baby tied to her back dances with a grandmother. The village drunk stumbles by. I’m sat on a bench and plied with gifts of Mirinda, groundnuts and sim-sim balls. The Christmas festivities continue long after sundown with a big dance behind one of the village shops. Massive boom boxes powered by a mix of generator and solar-power. When I run by in the morning around 6:30 am, the music has just ended and people are still hanging around drinking beers or slowly making their way home.

Overall, Christmas is a day of rest, reunion, and leisure for most – from rural farmers, to small shop owners, to the wealthy. From one continent to another, whether under sun or snow, that atmosphere of temporary rest after a long year remains unchanged.

An interesting article on the Public Order Bill in Uganda. The theme – the use of legislation to crackdown on government critics and to exercise greater control over people’s rights to assemble and protest – is familiar. While working in Cambodia over the summer, I analyzed and studied the Cambodian Peaceful Assembly bill, passed in 2009, which has similar provisions (see pages 10-11 of this report & an article I wrote a few months ago). In particular, the establishment of procedures is susceptible to abuse.

Mpagi, writing in the Ugandan Monitor:

According to the explanatory memorandum for the Bill, it among others “seeks to manage public order” and to “specify the procedure to be followed when organising an assembly, a procession or demonstration as well as the penalties and sanctions to be imposed upon those found to breach the proposed law.”

Mr Solomon Webaalearaali, a human rights lawyer with Street Law Uganda, says that alone means that government is seeking to take away what ideally is the essence of demonstration as a means of expressing dissatisfaction in a democratic society.

“Public demonstration has an element of spontaneity, but this law will seek to establish procedures like applying for permission to demonstrate and if you are denied by the police then you go through an appeal process and then a court process; that takes away the purpose of demonstration, imagine people wanted to demonstrate because they took a mother to deliver in Mubende and she was not attended to and she died, do they have to wait and go through all those processes?”

Of course, the rule by law issue is at the heart of the debate. Is the government using new legislation to consolidate its power in the face of protests while placing itself above the law?

Critics of the Bill say these provisions effectively take away any automatic right for people to assemble and questions government actions or inactions. Those jittery about the Bill in its current form say they are concerned that government is increasingly resorting to rule by law rather than rule of law. They argue that the spirit of the new law is a panicky reaction to increasing public pressure on government expressed through demonstrations especially over the last six years.

Summer is coming to an end: I will be flying out of Phnom Penh on Monday, Hadijah, Women of Kireka‘s Kampala based business consultant, has started a new fellowship program in the United States, and Women of Kireka’s wonderful intern, Katie Gleason, is heading back to Harvard. Katie has posted a lovely set of photos from the summer on our website and Facebook. Despite all these departures, we’re expecting a busy fall: our partnership with Touch Jewelry is leading to some beautiful new mixed paper bead designs, Women of Kireka’s new intern and recent Yale graduate, Stacey Diaz, will be joining us in September, and I will be hosting a small Women of Kireka event in Montreal in a few weeks.

Cody, a former intern with WoK, holding new born baby Cody who was named after him.

A brief update from Women of Kireka cross-posted here.

I penned these “Seven Lessons Learned” with my co-workers at Women of Kireka and posted them a few days ago. What was meant to be a cathartic exercise has left me deeply unsatisfied. I think it’s really because they are only half the story. And, at the same time, transparency in the process of running the cooperative has always been one of our core values. So here goes:

This past week has been full of additional growing pains for Women of Kireka. We have been struggling to maintain a steady income stream off jewelry sales alone these past few months, and naturally, justifiably this has trickled down into the overall health of the cooperative. We have sworn off fundraisers (aside from the yearly marathon fundraiser, which is more an excuse for me to write about running in obscure places), pity stories, and other non-sale income streams. After all, we are a business, not a charity. We want to succeed – or fail – as a business.

Yesterday we had one of those impressive Cambodia-Uganda-United States Skype calls. The aim was to talk with Women of Kireka members directly to hear their grievances and exchange our points of view (we often communicate through our consultant or interns for the sake of efficiency, though this is a habit that I would put on the list of ‘things not to do’ and which we hope to change).

After a long conversation, it became clear that there is a lot of frustration. Frustration, of course, is not new in itself. Indeed, frustration can be a great motivating tool and we have collectively used such moments to learn and strengthen Women of Kireka’s foundations. But the frustration from this particular phone call was marked by a deeper disconnect in the “we” behind Women of Kireka. More specifically, what kind of a partnership we have (or failed to) establish(ed).

I think that’s the main point I missed in the “Seven Lessons Learned.” If you’re trying to co-run a business cooperative as a cross-border initiative, finding and maintaining a respectful “we” – i.e. building a conscious, fair partnership – is really challenging. A lot is lost in translation, the nuances of language and the difficulties caused by long distance communication. A promise to one party is simply an idea the other would like to consider, but is not sure will work. Soliciting new ideas to diversify the cooperative’s income stream and overcome funding issues does not sound like an equitable partnership to everyone. It’s really hard finding that balance.

Of course – in a stroke of luck – the international team made an important sale today. Cathy at Touch Jewelry continues to make absolutely stunning pieces with Women of Kireka beads and we’ll soon have Marie-Louise over in Montreal doing the same. A friend of mine just bought another necklace and commented that they were incredibly original and that even her brother, totally oblivious to jewelry, thought her purchases were pretty fantastic. Visitors to the workshop think Women of Kireka jewelry is so well made that they are interested in having some of the members train other groups outside Uganda. Hopefully these small successes will add up and push us through rough waters.

With the launch of our new website, there has been a lot of new activity over at Women of Kireka. We are planning on starting training in using metal and paper in our jewelry this week with Peter Corry, a Ugandan jeweller. We’ve been blogging a lot as well: profiling our new ambassadors and volunteers, featuring other Ugandan companies, design and colour inspirations, and telling more of the stories behind the Women of Kireka brand. Katie, our intern this summer, has been fantastic, but will soon be leaving and Stacey Diaz, a recent graduate of Yale, will be joining us in mid-September. Ronah, a Ugandan intern, also joined the Kampala team this summer and is bringing new energy. Finally, I continue to get up at 5 am to beat the heat in Phnom Penh (and more recently, in Indonesia) and train for the Montreal Marathon/WOK Fundraiser!

A beautiful set of photos featuring Women of Kireka beads. Thank-you Renee Manorat!