MEDIA HUB - Closes shop in Uganda and melts away quietly - and, it is not news item in Uganda

MEDIA HUB – Closes shop in Uganda and melts away quietly – and, it is not news item in Uganda

Sam Mwaka-karama

For most of the world’s elite; those with the money, a good comfortable home is endowed with a sizeable home library.

Seasonal book buying is a must-do in those homes. A home that is host to several author’s works is a knowledgeable home. Children who grow-up in such homes are a university degree guaranteed kids.

However, a phenomenon is developing itself in my country – Uganda. There are no elites to support a bookshop. Foreign book outlets like the Media Hub get eaten up by local book vendors and street peddlers… only in Uganda is this possible! Media Hub went under and melted away!

National book activities are centered on the textbook industry. These local publishers, target schools, colleges, tertiary institutions and lay organizations. There is a myth about dis-interest in novels, especially the outright foreign ones…

The new generation seems to be middle of the road about fiction. There is a new kind of writers who appeal to these young; ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ or books on ‘Power of….’ Or ‘How to blah blah blah’ and those host of religious books by various world famous Pastors and Preachers.

Those have placed the lid on internationally known book vending shops. Media Hub just closed its shop which was situated on the upper floor of the Oasis Mall in Kampala. That typically international characteristic of book vending can only survive as a locally founded and owned enterprise or family business. Below that level is the street pavement vendors [whose stock you will never see] because they are a huge prey for the City Council. Often you will notice (Book Seller) notice on a small placard with telephone number and, perhaps some silent guy fidgeting on his cell phone.

Those are the piranhas who ate-up the Media Hub! And all those old international bookshops…

They will sell you a title you wouldn’t expect them to have! They turn and churn the belly of the top notch elites because even their English is subterranean – they might or might not lead you to where their stock actually come from; mostly they might just place a call and shortly someone walks by with the title in hand. You pay and get lost! For some reason it is all so clandestine… like dealing in contraband!

The big international gallery bookshops folding-up here and there seem to think – that it is the advent of the eBook era and the Kindle reading tabs that is changing people’s reading habit. So that the print book is getting out of circulation.

Which to me leaves one question unanswered – what has it got to do with the elite home library of print books the prestige home stock? When the Chinese created the Plastic flowers, did it wipe-out natural flowers?

The reason the African elite are not buying books is more cynical and mean than that! It is called the DEATH of the African Reading Culture. That is why; when the Media Hub closed shop in Uganda, the issue was not news worthy in the country. **

   

AFRICA - Disorganized Development and Development by destructive medium

AFRICA - Disorganized Development and Development by destructive Mediums

Sam Mwaka-karama

AFRICA – is certainly developing. There is no doubt about that one. What seems to pose challenges, in visualizing the scopes of its small advances, is the modality by which African developments are being forged.

To appreciate this enormous landscape and see clearly through the maze of reality and mythology, one needs to imagine Africa’s developments by blocks of country characteristics and, in the comparative analysis it is possible to make-out what slows African developments.

Prominently, two things appear; firstly the countries that are developing by ‘disorganization and forgery’ and the countries that are developing by ‘destructive mediums’.

This is the deep-end view that might not actually make sense to un-practiced random and shifty shallow thinking people.

In shifty and shallow appraisals firstly, the tendency is to look at Africa’s development from its under-development: by dwelling on donor Aid and Grant mismanagement as the sole base for the imperative analysis. This is mostly visible in what many of the newspaper writers discuss in their articles - daily.

It is of cause true that over the past five decades the developed world committed and often wrote-off huge sums of Aid and Grant funds injected in various African Countries for development purposes.

While it is also true that similarly huge amounts have been availed off the developed world to help Africa meet certain emergencies; both natural and also man made – but then as the usual African newspaper writers often digest – all these [aid and grants] inputs seem to disappear below the surface through the vicious sinkhole into the enormous [corruption-land] below the sea; where the ‘demons of economies’ consort with the fat Mafia Hokes and other strangers and ‘Duple Gangers’ and irate crazy nibblers. So that what actually takes place down there in the dungeon of the economic bottomless pit defies all manner of audit and accountability.

Development by disorganization

 Under this first ‘country category’ characteristics – defining those African states that are developing by disorganized means; most Ugandan newspaper writers often compare that category with previously [second world countries]; like Singapore and Malaysia or perhaps Bangladesh whose GDP were perhaps somehow at par with those of some East African countries like Uganda; way back in the 1960s as they decolonized and thus became Independent.

And today in the continued comparative analysis – the local writers often wonder how Uganda for example is left standing as; the Asian countries have leaped into First World status. Ugandans seen stranded in that comparative note and, the discussants can’t identify what makes the Asians move while Uganda is on ‘Mark Time’ and the ‘forward’ command is absent!

In my view, it does appear to me as if to explain this situation in answering the newspaper contributors’ questions - observed over a long time; we have to look back at the modalities of ‘skills and technology’ transfers applied after decolonization of most Asian countries – how did the Asians move?

 In the first instance, those Asian countries were catapulted into second world status by factors of European ‘Industrial technology and skills’ transfer that bolstered base Asian industrial developments.

Huge Industries were built under license, offered by the parent Industries from Britain and Europe; to many of the Asian countries including; India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and others… those European licensed Asian industries quickly developed outlets for their finished products in Africa.

Many of the African newspaper contributors also penalize Africa’s former colonial masters with undue exploitation of Africa! They seem to be convinced that the colonialists left Africa without Infrastructures.

They don’t remember for the sake of their younger readers that; for example East African Community EAC was colonially created between Kenya Uganda and Tanzania.

The character of the Community was modeled on logistical Infrastructure; Comprising the Railway and Harbor, Post and telecommunication, Airways and Air Traffic Control. To mention the main structures only – otherwise the Community had included East African Currency Board that capped and controlled the Banking systems with a single East African Currency. These Infrastructures were otherwise unfortunately dismantled by the Independent states of the EAC barely ten years after Independence.

For our local newspaper contributors to continually and repetitively claim that the Colonial masters exploited our EAC countries or left us without infrastructures - is redundant gossip: Uganda’s railway was cannibalized by Ugandans! While Kenya preserved and still runs its antique Locomotive steam Engine Trains; Ugandans ruthlessly scrapped the entire system and, were chopped-up and sold as scrap! Bought-up by foreign scrap buyers abroad.

The Asian countries often cited by the Ugandan newspaper contributors had very long history of advantageous Diaspora life – with their citizens as early as the 1800s and for others even earlier migrating to Britain, Europe and the United States, Canada and Australia where they engaged in serious skills and knowledge developments including University Education and, Industrial Apprenticeship working in Steel Industries and various other manufacturing and fabrication or building construction industries; accumulating knowledge and skills that became more than just handy back in their Asian countries after decolonization.

The building of the Harbors in the East African coastline and, subsequent building of the railway tracks from Mombasa to Kampala – labored for by the Indians under the British Engineers clearly confirm the knowledge and skills transfer factor am talking about; that we Africans picked these things along the way as the Colonial authorities involved us in the works; step by step!

While many of our Diaspora migrants now living abroad, are learners and Apprentice in the software skills and mostly engage in teaching or lecturing jobs. The difference is; while the Asian Diaspora of pre-decolonization eras went for the heavy industries, our own Ugandan Diaspora fellows of today are mostly into the software.

So that comparatively, we are not likely to get values in human resources out of our own now living in the Diaspora. This is why we might not merit well in the next level of our African developments: Oil Industry, Steel mining and processing, the next levels of buildings, roads and railways construction.

With our brands of Diaspora migrants abroad whose sole interests are grounded in white collar jobs; Barristers, Economists, Educationists, ICT, Managers, Cinema Music and entertainments, Hospitality and many other social driver professions.

It is certainly true also that back home in Uganda for example, these white collar trainings are hugely in the works also with graduates coming out in droves annually.

So that, the heavier industries will perennially remain our skills and expertise deficiency point – where the heavy industries will remain a difficult economic works area, if at all established, like Oil is in Uganda, what might be driven by the foreigners. 

Developments by Destructive mediums         

Though Somalia is an extreme example, it is also the best under the circumstances; because, despite the constant war, internally the country has been forging forward even if it has been a [Bomoa na Kujenga] with the rebuilding element much-much slower than the destroying element. So that the country could have actually been in a state of progressive stagnation.

Otherwise Somalia has a huge human resource in the workable Oil and heavy logistics industries – mostly developed in the African Diaspora. Somalia’s overseas Diaspora Immigrants are probably the richest in the World.

However their wealth mostly belong to the [end thing justify the means] dirty money and blood money of the laundering type category. It is also these often questionable massing of dirty money and the means by which they were made – that breed the negative human resource responsible for the laying of the state to waste… as failed state.

Here I would imagine that religious extremism; which actually only plays the catalyst to the ‘destructive medium’ - is more the opportunistic ailment that take advantage of the actual genesis of crime-driven vicious circles of conflict and bloodbath. The extremist religions only take opportunity of an existent characteristically self destructive genetics in the people of a particular country… 

African analysts writing in the newspapers only apply [cosmetics and perfumery] analysis and avoid the genecology of country characteristics and, its role in rendering the host or mother or maybe father country dysfunctional, obsessively violent or xenophobic and self centered.***          

The kids lost in the Chocolate toffee and biscuit streets of life

LETTER TO:

The kids lost in the chocolate toffee and biscuits streets of life

Sam Mwaka-karama

Once upon a time - there was a round box of Mackintosh toffee and chocolate sweets popular during the Christmas seasons – yes! In the childhood colonial Nsambya and Katwe Police; the colonial officers packaged them as Christmas gifts for the Policemen and families.
The 1950s design on the box had [Barbie doll and Policeman] sort of chivalry soldiers in red tunic and white pants. Carrying long rifles, with fixed long bayonets and a rectangular back-pack. Riding the horse drawn carts.
Set against a snow white background with tall trees torn bare the previous fall – whose sweet fruits were the content of the Mackintosh box; mama’s white lie… you a child stared at the pictures fixedly as you savored the bulging cheek contented sweetness. For a while it is a daily event. A story is forming in your tender mind. An interest is developing in you. A desire to know a foreign world is planted and germinates. To grow and someday blossom.
One day you suddenly salute a colonial officer; he salutes back – you are hooked! You had booked a flight seat. The bizarre Mackintosh box doesn’t leave you now or ever, when the sweets are wiped, it becomes a container for sugar! Every morning at breakfast you look and then look; staring at every detail of the scenes around the box – you are actually reading the picture like a book.
The generation of the 1970s and 1980s; your own children, are still far away in the balls… one day you will meet the women; one at a time, you earnestly look into their eyes and, there is stirring in the balls - a decade apart – the diapered bugler stands at the exit down by the long pipe and blows the bugle. Whole lot of diapered kids suddenly wake-up as the pump-job begins… some lanky tall boy beat the rest to it and dives into the York jelly! He makes the hazardous nine months in the red slippery fairy tale chamber.
About ten years later – you meet some young hard nut; she is un-broiled raw and wild with her own imaginations; this time some four piece rock group wreck the goddamn havoc; the diapered wildest girls on two simultaneous occasions beat the rest to it. They too, make the nine months in the red slippery fairy tale chambers.
But unknown to them – they are hooked! The bizarre Mackintosh sweet streets has a hold on them you don’t know!!!

"The [Buddy-can-you-spare-a dime} Depression"

“The [Buddy-can-you-spare-a dime} Depression”

Sam Mwaka-karama

The Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan Chase and others – were said to have been at the eye of the spiraling down the MF Global’s - Financial Crisis of 2008/2012… also known as the’ Global Credit Crunch’ is a phenomenon that still challenges the world’s leading ‘Schools of Economics’ to this day.

The staggering ‘Wuthering Heights’ reached its pinnacle point of eventual total collapse in September 2011. When the World’s original massive mustard had come down.

The causes of the greatest global financial crises were analytically defined by leading economic analysts as being massive unscrupulous money transfers:

 “It took huge taxpayer-financed bail-outs to shore up the industry. Even so, the ensuing credit crunch turned what was already a nasty downturn into the worst recession in 80 years. Massive monetary and fiscal stimulus prevented a buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime depression, but the recovery remains feeble compared with previous post-war upturns.”  Wrote The Economist

The cause factors that broadly included European banks trading in US Bonds and, roofless credit hand-outs that were also ill regulated bank activities - at a time when there was a curious housing boom that created the bubbles – is anyway not part of this blog entry discussion.

Africa: lessons not learnt…

Roughly six years since the crisis that nearly collapsed the Global Financial Systems – Africa still largely show signs of not learning. It is not that anybody might be against practices that challenge foreign investors in say like, in my country Uganda – no! Far from it!

It just simply is not right to allow certain financial practices to take place in a small poor country like Uganda – such practices that have affected Global finance and, created crisis of the proportions above.

It is true that the collapse of World Trade – especially foreign trade factors whose finances were regulated by ‘Documentary credit’ – now replaced by telegraphic and other digital cash transfers systems, might seem insecure in countries of Africa. Africa still needs the documentary credit trading systems.

Collapse of World Trade – created several other trade zones; new mustards – the biggest being BRIC and other countries who seek to maintain perhaps what they envisage as the more secure modalities of trade – since even seen from a lay perspective; unregulated trade and logistics actually eats into the profitability of trade. Holding most economies in in-direct stagnation.

Shipping Costs and Insurances…

It is a blatant lie – to claim that Global Maritime Shipping rates worldwide are realistic. Trade volumes have over the last thirty years increased more than tenfold: example if Uganda imported 100 vehicles per month 30 years ago – today it is much-much more than 300 hundred cars a month.

Ships on the high seas were less in number than they are now. The models of ships have more than doubled in capacity than they were 30 years ago – however, a car shipped say from Nagoya to Mombasa or Dar es Salaam that time was freighted at US$ 800= while the same cargo today is freighted at US$ 1,500 or 3,000 for higher capacities or containerized US$ 4,000 and above…. Here very obviously, the shipping rates are unfair!!! The economics do not tally hence; some of us stick our necks to tell the powers that be that – World Maritime Logistics and [Insurance] by and large eat into the profitability of the trade. It has posed tremendous challenges onto the viability of the African Export trade – hence the enormous trade imbalance and despite tremendous increase in Agricultural output, the actual benefit to the local citizen is nonexistent. It is the value adding industries that benefit… though shipping rates dig into the profits.

I have said it – if you thought I was waging whatever against the beloved foreigners living in my country – you are mistaken! - ‘East or West Home is Best’. A good foreigner in a country can be seen – a bad foreigner in a country can also be seen. A bad law can be seen and a good law can also be seen. It is Ignorance that always prescribes JAIL for critics... The problems still remain Global!!!

                The writer is an Independent Thinker, Author and Blogger  

Kite Spirit - talking about my next Book; what is it all about

Kite Spirit – talking about my next book; what is it all about…

Sam Mwaka-karama

Currently I am writing ‘Kite Spirit’ a novel inspired by the violent death of my daughter Daniela Mwaka 26 who fell plummeting down from an upper floor of an apartment block, in Berlin Germany, on the night of the 4^th January 2014 – an apprentice fashion model who worked with a Berlin fashion designer  and  a German photographer.

My Daughter

My book is not about the occasion of her death; why she died, how she died, who might be the bearer of the blame for her death. No, that is not the content of this book - But rather – Kite Spirit is more to do with the story of the background causes of her death… identifying the spirituality involved and, how this spirit moved and acted - is the purpose of this book.

In the stoical backdrop is a vast story that picks-off from the day in my own early childhood when a bird; the Kite that was flying-by suddenly descends upon me and snatches a ‘Mandazi’ [doughnuts] I was about to take a bite on… this avian robbery lives with me from that day as a toddler and throughout my life. There are a litany of events for over sixty years that evidence the moves and acts of this spirit. Kite Spirit does not even cover a half of that – only picking along.

Till that day 4^th January 2014 – it had never occurred to me that my loss of that Mandazi to the Kite was also what made me a constant loser of everything valuable in life… I begin to study the entire scope of my life experiences.

In my younger years, I was a straggler – and certainly though strained and subdued by that Avian spirituality, which had become the causes for my failutes – actually, some of my business ideas paid-of well enough to afford me a livelihood that included a woman, and a family life, where my two girls were born and, my small success complete with a car – back in the 1980s. Was also eventually to be shattered by an act of war! Apparently, I had over-grown and surpassed the limit-line imposed upon me by that Kite Spirit; snatching that Mandazi had placed a stopper over me and any progressive trends and development potentialities… what I had surpassed!

Therefore deflected deftly by that act of war and, fleeing into exile in Germany 1986/88 – where my daughter  Daniela rip was born – I also realize much, much later that the Kite Spirit that snatched my childhood ‘Mandazi’ had also strategically triggered my flight into exile!!! Where it created the nucleus of the stigmatization conflict…

Our Spiritual Tow to Germany

First, it was a French/German girl from Koblenz [our spirituality tow into Germany]. About 16 years old that time early 1980… with only a Passport in her small handbag, and a frock and little else she secretly flies to Uganda of the post liberation war days. Within one week or so, we linked-up spiritually; in Speke Hotel’s veranda coffee shop and that convenient weekend – Lakery and her sisters travels with my father-in-law to their up-country home in Lira Northern Uganda. Somehow that morning in Speke, she had not noticed the impact of us meeting the Koblenz girl, who was having breakfast.

That night the French German girl and I had the one night stand – the Kite Spirit had secured the tow-line that would hang-glide us to Germany…. Next morning outside an old hotel near the Rail Way Station in Kampala; the German girl is picked by a convoy of German and French Embassy diplomats accompanied by a plain clothes detective and whisked-off to Entebbe Airport.

Three years later Lakery who was on campus Makerere University gets pregnant and, Debra is born 1^st June 1984 – the year of her graduation.

Two more years later 1986, we were living in Germany. The girl from Koblenz forgotten and, she existed only in some remote corner of my mind, I didn’t like visiting much – Lakery, to this day knew not anything about my Koblenz girl.

Secondly the Kite created the blame factors; things happen that were spiritually designed to create conflict and my stigmatization: like, as we are settling in Schwailbach, on the Esborn line in Frankfurt;  Daniela’s mother tells me that our German exile lawyer was making certain love advances towards her… so my old senses are alerted. I become watchful and suspicious.

And the moment eventually came one day; during the endless [come back again tomorrow, come back next week] for the endless, always postponed interviews, consultations, talks; till the day the lawyer suggested openly, that I should have a separate file from that of my wife and daughter – instantly tempers flare out and we get physical and, I pick my child and storm out with my wife – on our way out I tell the man pointing at his two pretty and young German secretaries in his outer office…

           “What are those two aren’t they women? – What do you want with my wife? – You think there is anything my wife won’t tell me? – You are no-longer our lawyer! – ‘Sozial Amt’ will notify you”.

We had another lawyer within a month… that was April or May 1986.

And about five or six months later we were called to Nuremburg in the South where that particular event was carefully and very closely audited in a long probing interview, by a very senior federal government official.

            “Why didn’t the lawyer call the Police after the eruption in his office?”

I was cleared, when it was established that the German lawyer had not called the Police immediately… he was guilty! He wanted my woman! 

Actual spirituality driven occurrences [including that shit lawyer’s advances at my wife] that came during my stay and later after I had left Germany May 1988 - obviously were spirituality settings and Traps for my stigmatization – and they had all happened then in Germany.

Those and a church event had laid the ground for my stigmatization and international pursuit – when I finally had left Germany. When I tried to raise a case with the human rights lawyers in Gulu; they corruptly denied I was telling the truth. So I knew that German Lawyer was there somewhere at the background - besides everybody believed that I was the cause and source and carrier of the HIV.

These were the sort of [Sam is telling lies] claims by corrupted human rights lawyers in Gulu - that caused me to leave my home District Gulu in 2007 – came back to Kampala to complete writing and publish my book “The Water Trap” leaving my home and town where already I was poisoned a number of times and survived by making use of instant poison neutralizers – it so happened that time

came that a corporate employed young woman collapsed in a Gulu restaurant and was diagnosed to have died of ‘Synide’ poisoning…

Alarm! I didn’t need the brain of a professor to realize that snake poison was out of it… it was ‘Synide’ and I knew its history and fundamental origin – I heed the warning signs and left my District in a hurry. Knowing full well that it just takes an innocent young stupid woman to access the Kitchen out of which my food was prepared to administer fatally – that professional killer drug!

Esther and Gabriel

Towards the end of 1992 nearly a year after I had abandoned what became known as the HIV/Aids War; Esther, a young Acholi woman had mothered for me a son, Gabriel – the birth of the boy at the height of the HIV/Aids stigmatization brought-out the worst ever hatred out of a score of people. So many people were dying of the virus and, I was the escape goat! Irate looking desperate people plotted the death of my son – it was a mad period!

One day I was informed by my mother, that my child was in hospital and I was needed… on arrival I found Esther, who was living with her mother, seated in waiting and my child naked, was on the Doctor’s table and the doctor had just quietly walked out minutes before I came into his office… I walked away after about 30 minutes, the doctor had not returned! Perhaps an hour later my mother, with my son strapped on her back and trailed by Esther tells me Gabriel had died on the doctor’s table!

We buried my son. And perhaps three months later; Doctor Basil dies and I attend his burial at St. Moritz on Kitgum road in Gulu – it was during his burial that I gather from tit bits and stray fragments of the general noise and conversations, comments, the hue and cry and peoples’ stare or glances at me! That Dr. Basil, who was obviously one of the earliest victims of HIV/Aids and actually died of it, may have murdered my son Gabriel - and in a strange circumstance my son’s mother Esther and later her sister,  also dies not long after.

Death of my son Gabriel and his mother Esther drives the massive warning… to all and sundry! Sleep with the HIV/Aids stigma at your own peril – I walk in a daze. I am frustration. I am dejected. Women avoid me – I am insulted openly. Four times I am remanded in prison and four times I win the cases!

The book Kite Spirit – I am writing in an Omni-narrator perspective is a small fictionalized novel. It is finally intended to highlight the role of the Kite Spirit in my life and how the litany of losses it rendered to me, over a sixty year period, also reveals how we humans often don’t understand the actual world of the spirits and, how they en-trap us in acts designed to kill us – that we are involved in initiating under extreme spirituality control.

On two occasions; once in Germany and on another occasion in Gulu after my return from Germany – the extremism of the Kite Spirit, sends me to sit on a throne. An inexplicable experience…

In my understanding, much later as I think-out the book manuscript; both acts were doubtlessly spirituality triggered. And the reason?

Well what comes to mind as probable reason for the spirituality placing me on the thrones – could only be as a spiritual trap! As an act of demand for my Mandazi; the spirituality that snatched my Mandazi, also used me to spiritually impose myself on the Church! And to me that could only have been possible as an agitation for what I have lost all my life along with that Mandazi… from an innocent age.

Writing Kite Spirit is a most challenging, frustrating and complex undertaking; it has brought me nearer to understanding that the world of the spirit is also biased and ridden with outright injustices! This time, I’ll have to make use of an editing expert.

STRANGE

One shocking thing though is that; my first book “The Water Trap” went live on Amazon’s Kindle Direct as eBook in November 2013 and randomly sold few copies – till 4^th January 2014 – and from that date of my daughter’s death to today as I write this blog entry – six months! There is not a single sale! It defies the law of random chance… meaning that at the very least there should be recording of at least five book sales in one month. I am beginning to hear some alternative – also given the Douglas Preston issue - “THINKING MUSIC”.*

    

  

Hoodies: Historical and Contemporary...

‘Hoodies’: Historical and Contemporary…

Sam Mwaka-Karama

Mediaeval Europe – due perhaps to excessive cold first came-up with the clothing design; Cowl and Chaperon. Hood!

Monks then wore long robes with large and floppy Hoods that covered the head and shaded-off much of the face.

Early labor clothing designs of the Industrial and construction masonry age might have influenced the attachment of the hood on to workers coveralls and overalls – this mostly due to winter conditions.

By the 1930s – American outdoor clothing company: ‘Champion’ rolled-out the first workers hooded fur-lined jackets and popularized the hood. Tough clothing and dungarees for ‘Hell Jobs’ and sports like mountaineering and Ocean Whale hunting and mining or old fashioned oil rigging.   

Modern

Hood otherwise properly took-off in the 1970s; In Europe the ‘Yuppies’ and in America the ‘Hip Hop’ set the trends that was picked up by ‘Windbreaker’ designers of sporting wears…

Then came Rocky and several of the Stallone movies to guarantee the place of the hood in the sports and Blockbuster action clothing design…

The hidden characteristic of the spirituality which is its root – religion; was glamorized in Star Wars. That element of anonymity in the brooding life of the monk was glimpsed in science fiction then.

In Christianity, ancient clothing seem always to have a drape over the head – as is seen in most artists works of Christ.

The Hood, clearly divine – is therefore attractive to people who like to be anonymous. Perhaps that is why most dread-locked Rastas… find it trendy to have their heads covered in the hood.

So that the obvious psychological factor associated to anyone who constantly maintain that hood dress code is known as a ‘Hoodie’. A person who is hiding his true self. A person who may be of double personage. A character who is Hateful.  A person who is dreadful.

A negatively humble and unpleasing deceptively quiet person is also a ‘Hoodie’ or even worse a ‘Hoodoo’.

‘Dupel Ganger’ characters are mostly spiritually manipulated people. Unknown to themselves, they are unfree…

Most Africans “Hoodies” living abroad are highly ignorant persons, who don’t have an idea what or who “Hoodie” or “Hoodoo” really are!***  

Book Extract - For Blog

Book Extract – for Blog

The Water Trap by Sam Mwaka-karama

THREE

Pre IDP Camp

In the villages then, in the early 1990s, the protected spring wells installed by the NGOs were a new technology in most areas of the deeper rural areas: giving double-assurance for safer water in the villages, was certainly something new, however within that short period before the war displacements that created the IDP Camps - villagers had also spotted a little problem with the new spring wells...

      That is to say, those in the various areas where old repaired and new wells were built, several withered off! So to say.

       As what was enough water to sustain villagers in particular areas as un-protected spring-wells, for years upon years, had suddenly sort of dried down… now really triggering laments and wonderment among the people.

       While in some other areas, the built-up wells began delivering water more effectively only in the rainy season.

       And through those large pipes (normally four-inch diameters) the 24-hour day free flow of water virtually reduced underground water levels much faster.

      Such that, when rain goes the water dwindle was felt immediately.

      Villagers resorted to lamenting that the protection of the spring wells in some areas, actually opened-up the out-flow tracts too large to amount to over-delivery - resulting into wastage of the meager underground water reserves. 

      For the grandfather - grandmother generations, this lamentations were much deeper felt than the younger people would have ever gotten

anywhere near to understanding: Acholi land is vastly by and large, flat grassland.

      With young vegetations and naturally sparse forests composed of mostly non-timber trees.    Acholi land could easily fit with the definition of ‘savannah grassland’ in most areas.

      The Panorama is often breath taking alright; however the valleys and hills aren’t deep or sweeping and or steep… as in undulating.

       So that the geophysical composition as far as natural underground water reservoirs were concerned, it is naturally tricky in some areas… underground water was always meager, though the land is bestowed with so many small

and medium size rivers and score of streams.

      And that was the village experiences with protected spring wells and shallow wells in some areas of Acholi land.

      Where apparently the underground water table wasn’t deep or perhaps potty enough; in such areas the pipes over opened the tracts much too large.

     In certain areas of Kitgum district around Payiira in a place called Agula this situation was at one time complicated by serious absence of natural spring wells.

     And people dug holes in the ground in valley areas that were waterlogged overnight.

     And in the morning villagers drew this water for home consumptions.    

     The complicating thing was the presence of Guinea Worms in the sandy-earth, which throughout the 1970s and 1980s affected villagers in the entire what are now collection of Kitgum districts.

      As a matter of fact, this worm disturbed the Kitgum people for over four decades actually dating back to the 1950s or even there earlier.

      Untill the Jimmy Carter Foundation studied the worm and the peoples living ways, and came-up with the solution in a ten year battle against this water born worms. It was elimination of the ‘vector factor’ that finally did it… and in a way the IDP encampment contributed in breaking that vector cycle completely.

                        .           .           .           .           .

There was once a dream project in Gulu: Commissioned by Amin regime Minister of Lands and Water Recourses and former Inspector General of Police Hon Erenayo Wilson Oryema rip.

      The Tochi River Water Pipeline project was a reality…

      Partially implemented; this is visible on the Gulu – Custom corner – Koch to Anaka road…

       At AworAnga stream. (Also view pictures)

Along this road perhaps a hundred meters down from the Railway Crossing, is the solid concrete pipeline breather valve pillbox…

      And from that point the pipeline is well laid on its way to Tochi River, not quite ten kilometers down the road.

      It wasn’t quite clear as to what was the cause for the abandonment of the dream project.

      But to-date the aborted project remains an irremovable technological proof

that a major water problem in Gulu was considered as eminent…

      By the time I began writing this book, the indefinitely stalled project lay overgrown with wild grass and creepers visible by the road side at AworAnga, about a kilometer down from Custom Corner roundabout.

      What is to me a validation of the writing of this book…

      The one indicator that the need for an additional or outright alternative source of harvest water was long since visualized by alert local government officials, who collaborated with ministry of that time.

      And if the officials and councilors of today (during the seventh and later eight parliament) failed to see this, then they are the ones who might be in the wrong jobs, considering the lack or scarcity of water, even with much rain!

Tochi – the then target alternative source of water is a river that runs west to east then south, crossing Koch Goma – Anaka road, and the tarmac road to Kampala - at Palenga.

      It is possible that this now defunct Tochi River Pipeline Water project could still be revive-able …

      However the entire Tochi river project plan could certainly need

comprehensive revalidation and re-evaluation.

      Certainly it does appear also that, compared to its original setting over thirty years ego, the project site – the river Tochi itself – has also gradually changed today.

      Over the past number of decades since this project was initially conceptualized and partially implemented, Tochi has considerably dwindled. The river right-now isn’t what it was then.

      This new situation gives vent for proper re-study of the river, to re-determine if the project was possibly still viable… 

      It is also otherwise clear that tree planting which has been very aggressively promoted…

      Has seen an enormous lot of highland and valley acreage in various areas growing with Pines, Eucalyptus and other types of hardwood and non-traditional trees.

      Environmentalist frenzied tree-planting phenomenon that really has this very positive echo-system and forestation impact, is also creating this

reduction in upland underground water table levels.

     This in turn causes the reduction on flow of the streams and tracts that feed Tochi… as a result eventually of these acreages of pine and eucalyptus growing…

     The level of the river has tremendously dropped barely two decades after the water pipeline was half-way installed, and the project abandoned altogether.

      This factor certainly has eventually indicated that the dream pipeline project might not be viable anymore…

      In view of the fact that given another decade of significant progress in the district’s forestation tree-planting drive by entrepreneurs – tree planters targeting global warming funds - the level of Tochi might eventually reach dry river bed…

      Well, certainly large bodies of trees will also attract rain fall, but it is doubtful that this rainfall might – in view of climatic cycle changes and the influences of global warming – be adequate enough to out balance the water consumption of the forests thus planted.

      So that Tochi might remain low and minimal, what would more certainly not adequately pressurize the pipeline enough all year round to

fill the reservoirs of Gulu.

      

        And as the Kabedopong raw water dam gets more and more silted, the district might more certainly be headed for a major water scarcity – ‘the water trap’.

        It is therefore otherwise arguable, that if the dream pipeline project must be revived, then another source of water body be identified.

The Acholi land county-side, which is very much grassland, superficially is endowed with hundreds of thousands of water tracts, streams, swampy wetlands and rivers throughout the sub-region.

       However, all this natural environmental endowment is threatened by the search for progress, development and even dreams…

       Apart from the tree planting currently taken-up by a score of the land inhabitants under the much-hyped NEMA and Forestry – Global warming “forestation campaign” now being vastly promoted… (as I write this part of my

book in 2008). There is every indication that, with the much awaited signing of the comprehensive peace agreement between the Government of Uganda and the Josef Kony LRA Rebels, the interests of the entire Acholi people, and those of prospective investors are centered on this land…

      The ‘Garamba peace talks’ dispersed however, with little or no signs of anymore follow-up events… even then with little or no signs of hope from the rebels, world economic trend is also influencing people into larger investments on land.  

      And many already lobbying in the corridors of local power – are brandishing these sophisticated plan portfolios mostly hatched in foreign countries and the Diasporas…      

     Good mechanized seasonal and perennial crop farming, cattle ranching, and breeders… are barely waiting for that ultimate peace indicator – it all sounds so threatening good...

      Lots of knowledgeable men and lots of machinery will (as might) descend upon the land.

      What is pretty much obvious though, is fact that first to go inside of the first ten years after the Government/LRA peace pack – if ever - would be the natural endowments…

      The land’s face will change; vast hectares of woodland, agro perennial crop plantations and modern structures will spread-out.

      Now this means that natural land water sources might within twenty years probably disappear…

      Or very surely carry contaminations refuge, debris, garbage and all manner of dumping.

      The clamor for progress in the Acholi sub-region, after the repressive twenty years of war and displacement, encampment and wringing of hands or burying the dead… would most certainly impact on the natural water environment.

      More so highlighting the actual lack of it, than anything else. All the more, enhancing the need for modernization of the water sector beyond urban town water supply, as we know it today.

As it is obvious in this narrative build-up…  On the broader scale; African urban water supply – if perhaps this ‘Acholi homeland water trap’ – could feature in its analysis coherently throughout, and clarify that, it seem on the far-off side that water engineering in all its varied facets might be the ultimate challenge to African development... 

Here in the great lakes region - what is already happening to Lake Victoria is enough evidence that African water development and management is on the poor and backward side.

      First it was the sudden rapid spread of the creeper water Hyacinth early to mid 1990s, a decade ago – then the current embarrassing sewage, garbage drainage and filth that is contaminating Lake Victoria.

      Highlighting the failure of the ‘water and sewage’ engineering and processing respectively… this could very easily become an indicator for the entire Africa urbanization process, save for South Africa perhaps and the Arab North.

      For example – not very long ago depicting rural development challenges and constrains as the bigger causes for people migrating to towns… was actually once upon a time a worrisome viewpoint.

      However, high-tech, the net and web, internet, cell phones, the lap

tops and tablets and smart phones - have made village life now workable dreams; more and more people now go easily practical in contemplating personal development from the rural perspective… this wasn’t so barely twenty years ago.

       Not only that, agricultural research have also created faster maturing and high yield fruit-trees and other perennial crops that begin to pay-off inside of five years from planting - if well cared for…

It is like - just as people were beginning to worry about village-to-town migration trends – suddenly high technology is making it plausible for individuals to approach rural development with even more hope!

     Because one didn’t have to live in town or big cities to access communication for anything – what remains the problem point is now certainly local government leadership… Africa’s ‘bondage to poverty’ that has this traditional element to it actually in terms of the men who find themselves in the local leadership, seen from the traditional perspective – the retardant of the rural people has always been dominant and anti-progress village-tyrants!

      Those ancient bullies who used to fervently hold the rural people in under development by raucous booing and bulling to effect ‘bondage to poverty’ are no-more…

The village-tyrants stuck-rooted to traditionalism are no more. But they are still represented by another replica…

      Both at central and local government levels and at legislative representative levels as well. These often fit within the characteristics of the ancient Kraal home – village tyrannical men.

      Men who ‘breathe hot air’ and bear-down over everything and everybody – you only realize they were wrong long after things have gone beyond maintenance and repair.

      Fighting and subduing every indication of new progressive ways and methods being introduced.

      The ‘bondage to poverty’ by leadership characteristics that demean all else, is still alive in Africa. The younger generations have it.

       Masquerading as hard campaigning elected local leadership…

       Maneuvering around as those in opposition – the village tyrannical men of the old Africa are all visible in these younger more obnoxious political characters in contemporary leadership - in the ruling party, they are referred to as the ‘rebels within’ the old ‘bondage to poverty’ African leaders are still alive and well in the younger generation... And the parliamentary conducts of the Ugandan legislators reveal it all!

       Projects like the dream water pipeline at Tochi River hatched actually well over thirty five years ago.

      And partially implemented perhaps some twenty years ago is one of many projects - failed by those tyrannical type men.

      As a result - Tochi river pipeline project stalled to now be stranded along the road at AworAnga not far from Gulu’s custom corner - even conspicuous as it is the project haven’t caught the attention of the local representatives:  even as both local and national parliamentarians move along that road and don’t even see the stranded Tochi River project - confirms that ancient tyrannical-characteristics factor.

                        .           .           .           .           .          

     Up till the time I submitted the first edition of this book to the USAID and

later to the President’s Office, in seeking of funds for organizing that proof-reading edition for major editing and printing production - local leaders and legislators in the area had never openly spoken of this particular water project.

     Though some speeches emanating from the (eighth parliament) and Gulu local leaders about ‘Tochi River Project’ eventually materialized much-much later – in discussions there, after ‘The Water Trap’ was out.

      It actually took me a little bit of time to realize that I shouldn’t have approached USAID with my first edition (imperfect) book material. I am not saying this because USAID refused to fund my book – No!

      I have in my life read lots of materials written by ‘deja vu’ characters hating it all... why in the first place they blundered into America at all. Many foreigners naturalized in the US are virtually walking around in circles with scarf-bands tied over their eyes... and mouths stuffed with all manner of the goodies – I think ‘going to America’ is a great concept, but I also think it is a challenge to the individual; why for instance do people who re-migrate back to their own homeland after long-life in America, turn bitterly against the US?; it does seem to me that something often goes all wrong after living in the USA for a while - I have since resolved to try theoretically to help Africans remove that blind-band from over their eyes! It is reason enough for me regretting having ever sought official funding from a US agency – which help was denied me isn’t the issue.

      The dire reality is - my type of book are what the Americans might fight against - because in it there is a Ugandan African writing language they will never like! To them the good African book ‘must’ be loaded not in the sense mine is, but, in a way of being packaged with opposition-ism and, attack on incumbent governments or, misguidedly addressing human rights from the state machinery versus the ordinary wanainchi point of view. To me that is not our literature!

      The Americans want our analysis perennially quagmire-ed in the 1970s and 1980s perspective that created Museveni’s resistance - this time around the Americans want us Ugandans - turning that old garment inside-out and dress ourselves in them... I think that is the real bull-crap! It is for the center for African studies perhaps... me I don’t like that packaging! I can’t blindfold Africans with that sort of fancy crap! We have to visualize our problems from the more realistic point of view – based on the premise that someday, we won’t need foreign aid and grants anymore. That is when local government will become the focal-point of our development everything.

.           .           .           .           .

The wrong traditionalist kraal-home village tyrant mentality – where the elected local representative – also trapped between certain dubious situations; even if they had noticed the defunct project, long before my first edition of this book, would prefer matters to be referred and reported via the political campaign or security human infrastructure. Just like the old African tyrants used to wait for all matters brought up forward from below…

      So that, information on project matters (like Tochi) carried forward would have a political voter weight bearing – where upon the problem might be introduced during a political meeting…

      And matters thus carried forward with a heralding of provider stakeholders, who thus would foot the seminar bills.

      And the project matter thus discussed would as well become a political argument contention-point. Perhaps a challenge point at the incumbent! Needless to emphasize here, Ugandan oppositions for example have traditionally developed this overview that the incumbent President was always the culprit for all blames in his government.

      Here a legislator of the modern-day, would thus, prefer to look at the now politicized ‘project-matter’ from the standpoint of confrontation with the hitherto ‘unconcerned’ government authorities - preliminarily over the FM radio.

      Instead of the more progressive approach of perhaps calling the attention of ‘The Parliamentary Group’ in conjunction with the District Local Councils… over the issue of revival of the Tochi project – the naïve politicians rumble around over the radio – thereby misleading the people to imagine that government was malicing the people... like in “hidden agenda” so that, the failure of the project is ‘blamed’ on central government – actually the President initially.

       I am not in any way suggesting that central government is not to blame - for what often goes all wrong at local government level. And yet again seen very closely, central government has responsibility to a point - the major glitch there is certainly not at policy level, but more at the technocratic and bureaucratic (rotten-wood) corruption-able  levels - the ‘boom-town rats and the scrawny country rats’ – characterized by the satirical short stories as told by the cock and bull political analysts... in the Ugandan tabloids!

      And then the water management corporation or local engineering officers - have African traditionalist hiccups of their own.

       For example the local decision maker official might not hail from the district… so what he does is sit on the whole project till someday he is transferred away.

But then the legacy (of none-action) he leaves behind, continue to ignore the project, as a result another concept of traditionalism stayed the project say by yet another five or ten more years.

      Cumulatively as it would, this sort of mentality offset or cause to be delayed or often binds the matter onto unclear graying annuls of history - and eventually distorts and causes the loss of meaning, in particular areas of progress and development.

       An element of African ‘bondage to poverty’ by educated traditionalism would have deferred a vital program from being either created or accomplished.

       Low cost housing projects for up-country towns for example are not viable at all; in the first place, most councilors might not understand them and so plan and budget arguments in local council meets might turn into madness…

      Not only that - the amount of water supply needed to build one

Hundred housing units are massive, and then amount needed to maintain its occupancy – here; it is direct element of ignorance that deferred a vital program… so that habitat development as an organized municipality program is relegated.

                     

      Given that on the ground environmentally; Africa still seriously lack knowledge and skills development in the water and waste management sector – and that is the base-mark for stimulating growth and development up country; “create the habitat and you will attract local developers” and development participants from neighboring districts, the region and beyond.

        This little book is a serious proof of this unfortunate fact; that as much as the political class generally seem to think that development is personal to the Executive Head of State; a factor that wrongfully mislead the opposition thinking straying towards violence… the actual and real prospects are held at utility services that work!

        Even with the vastly widespread availability of land.

        For another example - the national water and sewage corporation NWSC couldn’t structure a safer and more viable facility for such a small town like Gulu in this age and times…

       Then how would we ever hope to build our small municipality into a city? Village criers have been shouting of prospects for ‘Gulu City’ a long time now - evidently in vain, as they lack the leader cadre-ship! They lack the vision and local government leadership principles!

       Pece River that runs south along the outer rim of Gulu’s east side down to join with Tochi river is sewage contaminated… and very seriously at that.

       All these factors point towards one direction – that yes! Tochi River water pipeline project was valid, called for and even timely. Back then.

      On the other hand - that it failed was certainly regrettable, however also now that the actual project has been rendered non viable - by factors related to impact of tree planting and perhaps also influences of global warming…

      There might be time enough certainly to update the original water source concept plan. But do we have the ability to take-on that challenge?

       Meaning that the need is seriously there more than ever, to revive the defunct project but with a different water source.

       Something more realistically difficult to ascertain.

       Considering all these factual ‘bondages to poverty’ – that are inconsiderate mentalities that bedevils our African societies and communities.

Early morning – women rush for water at - Te-Gwana area…

Unprotected spring well where women converged near Layibi Central

Fencing poles for a fish pond seen at the background – near ACORD at Layibi Central

Line of Jerry Cans at a shallow well bore hole – in Te-Koo Tegwana…

An old cemented spring well near Te-Gwana …

Up near the Labor line in central Gulu town Suturday – washing…

At sunrise young women patiently wait it out in the long cue…

Our African political class is rooted in arguments over democratic theories contrived by practical experiences of the world’s leading first world countries – in ideologies experienced and written by people whose basic communities and societies were driven into development not by political personality, but rather by extreme climatic conditions and harsh environments that more and more destroyed their citizenry…

       Forcing their intellect to contrive ideas that made life bearable to the citizenry – this meant that the intellectuals created habitat that were conducive to guaranteed livelihood and continuity – in return the intellectuals won the (political) right to rule over the people, since the habitat environment they created called for a orderly, controlled  living by the citizenry.

      Most developed world democracies were cultured along that building

“Masonry” kind of principles and mentality!

      Those who built the conducive habitat environment got the democratic right to

rule over that metropolis!

       It is the orderly living – that drove the European intellectuals to develop the ideologies and, these were ideas that placed control over the life-style of the citizenry built and developed by the nobles…

       What our own African political class learnt in the classroom and evidently are failing all the time in correctly applying to our own communities and societies – so that it has become broadly necessary for foreign governments to expedite their arm into our countries here in Africa and create and supervise programs directly administered to our local peoples by their foreign government accredited and deployed NGOs… 

        What amounts to the passage for foreign NGOs to part-take in the planning and implementation of African rural development, and urban slum-dwelling human concern (health, shelter etcetera) developments and contribute to industrialization by, doing what our own political class actually fail to do - like in Gulu’s endemic water scarcity.

        The challenges to the African academic and intellect have never been more vivid! Real and glaring.

         People looking at themselves as well learned are beginning to slowly realize how actually ill equipped the African engineering experts, political legislators and project planners, managers and developers are.

         Projects fail and dilapidate under their very noses with huge piles of up to five/ten-year-old documents stacked (as pending etcetera) on their desks, and strewn right down to the floor of their offices and beyond.

        And young University graduates roam the streets as the jobless or

Hang around foreign NGOs picking a few thousand shillings as gatherers of research data for foreign students obviously researching for their own degrees – it is all so fake!

       Another bondage to African poverty.

       By absolute lack of open mindedness, at the top of every office in various areas of local human need...

      The absolute inability to fully employ the use of the younger generation – local governments adamantly refuse to expand their ancient offices, as a result they maintain the old inadequate office space and indeed its minimal employment – yet by contemporary advancements in all fields of humanity, they should be employing five to ten times the official workers they restrictively maintain...

      And the boys and girls are growing, hardening, and wasting away into un-moldable young people. Five or ten years on the (dole) jobless list are enough to harden the youthful graduate beyond molding.

      As even more and more are dispensed from the Universities annually, the youth are cumulatively more and more stranded.

      Local governments can’t create larger project work environments that can absorb them and still stimulate scores into the informal activities around – to expand Local Government administrative and management human resources and, enlarge the towns by creating larger habitats... LC 5 should for example have three deputies responsible for various areas of administration and that for development projects.

     Where these graduates might get absorbed.

     Yet there is so much emphasis on national quality education! This apparently is spot-on.

      But then these quality educations don’t seem to bear the quality fruits – obviously not because of wrong executive head of state… but simply because the decentralization, now largely in the hands of the younger people themselves, are trapped in the same legacy left by the older now departing generations!

     Okay, by and large the youth now running their districts are the ones who are not creating the projects likely to expand their playing fields.

     And the young are not doing it because it is the ‘norm’ “you don’t re-discover the wheel” - full stop. You follow the norm!

     If an LC 5 chairman and his local government fail to create the conducive environment for their own government’s work seat – then how would they ever get expanded? The administrative head quarters built by colonialism – can’t hold ten times the workforce it was created for, fifty years down the road. The only logical thing is to collapse it and build a plush new multi-storied structure on the site.

To plan for and build the physical capacity [municipality] for reaping even larger revenue… you would certainly begin by expanding your base – then employing enough human recourse to tackle the planning mechanism for structuring the estates development; with ample manpower to handle the district’s expunction projects… and certainly before you even think of estates, you would have water to tussle with.

      In view of this analysis as a means of driving-home the understanding that - yes! Uganda’s decentralization is still a new-born baby of President Museveni! Call it a grandchild!

      It is imperative to enlarge the perspective a little-bit, to create a much larger sound-boarding parameter that pulls in the central government... those in a hurry will always jump to the conclusion; that it is the ministers who are night-dancing paka-cini behind the Ugandans!  But then come to think of it...

       There is a whole body of qualified men and women in the main area of policy implementation, way down below the minister, the technocratic and bureaucratic levels - why blame the top man - by falsely and stubbornly insisting that “the fish begins to rot from the head” when you know very well that, the fleshy part of the fish is what begins to ferment out of water, if not exposed to either tremendous wind or tremendous sun-heat to accelerate the beginning of a drying process.

      Besides, nobody ever climb the tree from the top - to go-up the tree you have to scale it carefully up from the root, the trunk and, eventually you reach the branches and top.

      Uganda’s biggest problem is there! Central government technocracy and the bureaucratic work forces; while everybody attack the president and the cabinet ministers and, other top officials - most things get bogged-down at the middle of policy planning and implementation. The real ‘nibblers’ who fail the country are actually well known, popular and very smart individuals you won’t ever suspect. Because they are also the most likable people you will meet in Uganda!