Hungry people see everything in a room and in the vicinity. I have a friend who visits me often and I always know when he is hungry for his eyes move restlessly about the room, over my person, into the corners and become downcast. And even though I know it is food he is seeking, (we both know) he never says he is hungry. While I always ask him if he’s hungry, it’s at these times that it’s hardest because he knows he has to say yes. The pride it must take when you haven’t eaten all day not to tell your close friend that you are hungry is immense. I cannot imagine. Indeed he has asked me if I could imagine.. what it’s like not to have a shilling, a piece of bread or the option to eat or not eat.. I cannot. I do not want to and it pains me that he can.. in fact that he lives it, and I despair that I must soon go and leave him to some hungry days. But I know him and he is resourceful and will survive as always.
One thing I’ve learned is that I am only a stopgap, not a saviour and not the answer to anybody’s problems. But these are truly the times that bring the bottom billion home to me, that they are no longer theoretically abstract, they are my friends and they would give me their last crust of bread and more if I needed it, and I cannot say that for any one friend I have at home, as dearly as I love them and they me. We do not understand this sense of community that poverty breeds for survival. We also cannot imagine what hunger is, what it is to try to find a dollar – less than – to stave it off. I no longer have to imagine. It’s all right there in his eyes.
And it’s politics man. Hunger is politics. In a country of bounty, of fruit and fertility and cassava and minerals .. there is no need for that hunger. West Nile is a punished region.. starved for representation, starved for power, starved for industry and employment…starved. Chock full of idle youth and lapsed programs without political will for wealth sharing, Arua is interesting on many fronts. It’s close to the Congo and Sudan borders, a trucking trade route – a lot of things going for it, but it’s largely ignored by the capital and the ruling NRM party. It feels like “let them eat cake” in this region and there is a simmering here. There is hostility and there is political activism and there is palpable anger at the unfairness of the system. And at the heart of it are the youth, young men mostly, as women’s roles are pretty strictly defined with days spent serving men and babies.. who has time for activism when your day starts at 4am and ends after midnight? Yes, it’s the boys, hungry boys, who idle away, who plot and complain and follow every political campaign truck that throws them a shilling to march along. And the pent up energy and frustration and anger emerge as they make their way through the streets seldom knowing just what it is they are advocating for or against. They just want food and work and self-determination.. they want someone to help them realize their own potential to channel that energy into prosperity. Isn’t that what we all want from our politics?
This has been going on in Uganda for the past 2 months and the momentum towards the elections on February 18th will hopefully be positive and violence free. But I can tell you, like Egypt’s long sitting Mubarek and Cote d'Ivoire's Gbagbo, this leader does not want to leave and intimidation factors are mounting. Last week the headlines read: “Police arm heavily ahead of elections” and went on to say that traffic came to a standstill as a convoy of teargas vans snaked through Kampala. Officially the line is that the trucks (12 teargas, pepper spray and water cannon vehicles) were ordered (as part of a consignment of 50 plus vehicles including troop carriers, high tech – anti riot gear etc.) and budgeted for “some time back”.. right .. timing is everything. The message is clear.
Yesterday Dr. Kizza Besigye, the biggest competition in the presidential race was in Arua to campaign. Hundreds of supporters crowded the streets, boda-bodas revved and raced up and down, people sang and danced and marched by the hundreds past my door. I took a tally.. the majority of revelers and noise makers and truck chasers were under voting age and male. A harbinger perhaps. Research in Kenya and post election violence in 2007 evidenced the majority of offenders were under voting age young men.
An aside on this .. at the same time as FDC leader Besigye was scheduled to hold his rally, the NRM party purchased 8 cows (to feed the crowd) and took them to a local hotel and rounded up local musicians to stage a party to pull supporters away. It kind of backfired though as people attended the rally and THEN showed up for food..
African politics – never boring. While I’ve had a pretty tough go lately with my NGO, research difficulties, health, and a few other issues, I am hanging in here until the elections are done. Having a front row seat to the spectacle, the tactics, the power struggle is priceless and well worth the dime.
There’s a nasty African wasp flying around my head as I write this. They are ugly and menacing and I have 3 nests of them living in the window alcove between the screen and me. Bugs.. they like me. Malarial mosquitos, typhoid bacterium, mango flies and any number of spiders, flies and miscellaneous, they’ve all had their fill of me .. and me of them. These I won’t miss, nor the scorching heat of the dry season nor the sudden silence as power cuts steal the food from the fridge and the cool from a fan.. or the Afro-pop that ceaselessly pounds through the night and into my dreams. I love the music; it’s the never-ending-ness of it that irks.
Winding down to head home at the end of the month, there is much I will miss… greetings everywhere, from everyone. The “if it’s broke, I can fix it” attitude - nothing is thrown away – all is salvageable for one thing or another. The colours and the sauntering gait of the women as they make their way to the market and home with gravity defying merchandise perched on heads supported by strong, fine necks. The expression: YOU ARE WELCOME .. always, always – said with heart and feeling. My dear companions, supporters and friends.. Monday, Ben, Bosco, Sally, Beatrice and all the wee kids who make sure every day that I am fine and that I have food and comfort and am included as family.
And mangos, and red sunsets and wet season when the earth shakes from thunder and the rain is a solid sheet of water soothing the dry, red earth, and bananas and boda-boda rides and riders and the flowers and honey and babies and night skies full of stars uncuttered by electric interference, and the way that one day can seem like 5, and the bicycle traffic and the spirit of survival and progress and passion .. and so much more.
