UgandAshis 59 Musings

UgandAshis 59 Musings

September 19, 2009

Dragonfly

Dragonfly
Why?
Do you dip your wings?
In puddles of water
Are they flaming things
Tell me later

Yogi meets a dragonfly
Snap
One less dragonfly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly
And they are predators that eat mosquitoes.
One should love them

Less is more!

Pondering peace
Wondering who is
Going to take the first step.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Ata_Declaration
Health for all by 2000 declared in 1978

OK

Now

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
The assessment, launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Geneva, warns that, despite many successes, overall progress has been too slow for most of the targets to be met by 2015.

Same, same but different?

Namaskar,

Ashis

UgandAshis 58 Congolese dancing stick

UgandAshis 58 Congolese dancing stick

September 19, 2009

The local mosque has a muezzin calling for the evening prayer. It is almost Eid and many of the people around Kansanga are Muslim. Because of Ramadan and the riots last week night life in Kansanga and Kabalagala has been very quiet lately. The one thing that interrupts the silence are Premiership Soccer matches, then pubs are full and people are cheering.

As I dangle in the yellow hammock I can see three lizards working their way through a cloud of mosquitoes in a stalking yet distinguished style. If only there were more lizards and fewer mosquitoes. Our green yellow black eyed friends are working hard but the odds seem insurmountable.
The black kites were circling the house in pairs today. Wondering what they are messaging? And I recall the title of this story; ‘Congolese dancing stick’. It is a wooden carving from Beni, eastern Congo about 80 years old. I am to trace the history of the artifact but holding it in my hand gives a feeling that it is a powerful symbolic tool. The face is Cubist (but from a pre Cubist era), the hairs are made of beads from Germany, the end of which have Cowry shells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowry). The body of the lady is made out of blue and white beads and her legs are covered in a leather dress.

One can imagine this magnificent carving being the middle of elaborate dance ceremonies. Congolese love to dance. Perhaps it has a role in fertility rites? If only this lady could sing her song. What she has given me is an appetite to study her history and more general the history of wooden carvings in African. In fact she is the ‘core’ and for now ‘only’ piece of my collection. Given the fact that the Congolese market is around the corner I am bound to start buying more of these lovely pieces. A great thank you goes to my compadre Ecke who is a German bead expert with a collection of several 100.000 beads. As I always joke he can tell you were a bead comes from by smell only.

Given my passion for birds I am going to shop around until I find the right bird mask for the right price. Another thing that I am looking in to is much more practical: seats for my house. There are beautiful carvings waiting to be part of my house. Then as a last area of interest I am looking at artifacts related to medicine. For example I saw a beautiful wooden sculpture of a man representing the small pox. It are questions I would love to ask my students in the course culture and health at Mountains of the Moon.

Enjoy the photo and let me know what you think. Artifacts are still available but are getting harder to come by. It is a good time to start collecting therefore. Always great to learn and embrace art.

Namaskar,

Ashis Brahma

UgandAshis 57 Riots in Kampala II

UgandAshis 57 Riots in Kampala II

September 13, 2009

Friends around the world have commented about the fact that so little about what has happened over the last couple of days has made it to main stream media. True there were stories on CNN and BBC. So information did trickle down.

When you Google ‘Kampala riots 2009’ of the first 30 entries only ten are from traditional media (Daily Monitor 3, New Vision 1, Independent 2, BBC 1, RFI 1, France 24 1, Guardian 1. It seems that finding up to date information your best bet is to follow links through Google or on Twitter (#Kampala, #uganda) or bloggers and blog sites.

Google ‘Kampala riots 2009’ news and you get 246 results, ‘Serena Williams US Open 2009’ news 7356. Yes tennis popular and yes having a tennis player shout at a lines woman brings back memories of John McEnroe but really is it that more important?
http://www.techmasai.com/2009/09/11/what-the-african-cyberspace-is-doing-to-monitor-the-riots-in-kampala-uganda/ gives all kinds of information about what has happened in Uganda over the last few days. It seems internet is the place to be to get citizens reports, pundit opinions, gossip, facts, back ground history, academic information, factoids and all other forms of information.

Then again relatively few people in Uganda have access to Internet therefore blocking a radio channel (the prime form of information transfer in Uganda) or filtering Ugandan television channels is extremely effective in giving a ‘rosy’ picture of the events of the last days.

One journalist had been arrested immediately after he blasted the government in a live talk show on a big television station. Arguably one has to consider the incitement that a radio/television station can create (remembering that the conflict will be solved rapidly and that loss of life and goods will stop. It takes only a few bad men to spoil all people in one area. Cohesion intra and inter tribes need to be addressed and media should be given a free AND fair platform remembering the role of the flaming hatred that Radio Mille Collines incited in Rwanda during the Genocide in 1994.

Through my Facebook, Twitter and g-mail account get tens of requests if all is ok and that people are praying for Uganda, my family and myself. That I am fortunate with that is crystal clear.

Images speak more than a thousand words. I can write for you that we saw the police station in Ntete burnt down to the ground. Up to a certain level of violence can be manifested through descriptive idioma. Yet when one realizes that the Batwa (pygmies) are set to suffer from in-equality nothing is doen . There still will be a up-hill battle awaiting those people that have a migratory (hunter gathers versus agriculturalist versus pastoralists)

Awaiting the results of free and fair elections is the story. As for today I think that the violence has reduced significantly and that more or less due to the heavy military presence in town the riots may well sizzle out.

Let us hope

Namaskar,

Ashis Brahma

UgandAshis 56 Riots in Kampala

UgandAshis 56 Riots in Kampala

September 10, 2009

Fairly recently I decided to leave war and conflict ridden countries behind and I settled for Uganda. True it had a patchy recent history in the Northern part of Uganda where the Lord Resistance Army had been terrorizing by a child soldier army and a sex slave army. However compared to my last posting near Darfur in Chad it is night and day. So much that as I type this piece my parents are with me in the car. They have been able for the first time in 5 years to visit me in a project where I am working.

Uganda is an amazing place, kind people and in many ways it reminds me of India. Today a darker side has come to the fore front. As I may have written about in the past: Uganda consists out of about 56 tribes so of which historically have a king or a chief. None of the tribes has more than 10% of the total population and the largest tribe is the Buganda. It is in their heart land that Kampala was built next to their capitol called Mengo.

Today the kabaka (king) of the Buganda was set to visit a neighboring district. There had been some minor riots so the trip was disallowed. That sparked violence and riots between supporters of the kabaka and the police. So far 5 people have been killed. Tear gas has been used in several neighborhoods and cheap elements have taken advantage of the situation to go rioting.

Here we stand stranded 5 kilometer outside of Kampala waiting for the police or military to clean up road blocks to proceed to go home. Underlying the riots of today has been a steady increase of irritation between the government of Uganda and the cabinet of Buganda. One of the core issues is the fact that Kampala has been built on Buganda land and the Buganda feel politically marginalized so that they demand an own city state for their kingdom’s capitol.

If we go back in history all kingdoms were abolished under a previous Prime Minister Milton Obete. Under a lot of discussion kingdoms were reintroduced by the current powers that be. It seems that creating strife between tribes is the common way to keep the current regime in power. Here a group called the Bunyala was supported in their opposition of the Buganda.

It is sad to see the endless manipulation of good people. Some here feel that this situation will fizzle out and others have expressed that this may be the final nail in the coffin of the Buganda kabaka ship. On the radio however all club nights are announced it will be business as usual. The riots have been displaced to the poorer suburbs out of city center. And it quite well understood that the military will step up if the rioters do not stop with their road blocks. Awaiting the cat and mouse game.

Namaskar,

Ashis Brahma

UgandAshis 55 Marabou hits electrical wire

UgandAshis 55

August 28, 2009

Marabou hits electrical wire

Just as I wonder about a title for this piece I see a Marabou stork fly in to an electrical wire. As he dangles up and down for a moment or two his weight is finally too much and he manages to release himself from the wire. Slightly ruffled yet ever elegant he flies on.

This piece will be about what has been in the news the last week:
Slightly ruffled yet ever elegant he flies on.

This piece will be about what has been in the news the last week:
Universities raise their tuition fees by 40% after not having done so for over 15 years. Students promise to go on strike

A former Under Secretary of the United Nations Mr. Otunno is back in Uganda after 20 plus years to see if he can run against the incumbent president Mr.Museveni.
Droughts in the North and East lead to many cases of adult and child malnutrition. The minister for emergency and disaster does not make a good impression while munching away at a banana and meat claiming those people in Arua and Iteso are lazy.
We reached home and I left the piece as it was
Namaskar,

Ashis Brahma

UgandAshis 54 - Lecture 1 Half Moon Monkey Mountain

UgandAshis 54

August 28, 2009

Lecture 1 – Half Moon Monkey Mountain

Tuesday evening and I am sitting in the office chatting away with the head of the public health department. Convinced my first lecture is Wednesday evening we are talking about our new students at the long distance learning program. It is quite an enterprise and exiting to be part of. Students in 5 countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sudan and Burundi) I stroll to the board and to my amusement I see that the lecture times have changed. Instead of Thursday I am lecturing on Tuesday. In fact the third year has just missed 3 hours of lectures.

So Wednesday the students had a new chance. The topic was vaccination and the course is called ‘Control of Communicable Diseases II’. The first hour I am sure I must have flustered some of the students as I was talking of the opportunities of web 2.0 , pod-casts, vod-casts, digital epidemiological mapping of outbreaks, open source texts, pub med, power point and e-mails. Only 2 out of 6 that had showed up had an e-mail address. It is time to change that fact. The lecture we were in had about 15 computers and the next door computer lab has 50 computers available and a reasonably fast internet connection. Then again the lecturers share one computer from 1997 for the 9 public health lecturers as supplied by the university. It is why all lecturers tend to buy their own laptop.

Back to the class I had a blast talking about the constraints and opportunities of drawing up vaccination program point in case the refugee camp in Oure Cassoni Chad. We also discussed the failure of the eradication program for poliomyelitis in Nigeria. The third hour I had the students group and think of the different step to design and implement a vaccination program in a population of refugees. Their contributions were highly sensible and the exercise was fun and educational. As a group they are birds of all kinds of plumage. There are clinical officers, high school leavers, district medical evaluators and a teacher. First class had a turn-out of 50%. Their year (the second year) is 12 people.

With my parents and my house mate Liz we visited the new compound near Saca lake. It is stunning and it shall be a pleasure to be lecturing there from next year. In fact the compound shall be opened with the graduation ceremony of last year’s students. The total number of students should have been around 700 last year and this first year’s enrollment seems to be around 650. These numbers need to be confirmed but the university has a big impact in Fort Portal and the surrounding areas. For many students travelling to Kampala or Mbarara would simply not be affordable and here is a brand new university with a hortus in their backyard. What more could a student wish for?
Perhaps a sighting of a monkey on the mountain.

Namaskar,

Ashis Brahma

UgandAshis 53 A young patient with typhoid fever

UgandAshis 53

August 28, 2009

A young patient with typhoid fever.

Textbooks describe the progress of untreated disease. My young friend has been in the hospital for over 5 weeks now. Typhoid fever is a manifestation of Salmonella typhi. In the lymphatic nodes of the gut they multiply and can cause ulcers. These ulcers can perforate and that is what happened to my young friend. For about a week he stayed home without visiting a health worker when he finally came he had what we call a peritonitis. Stool and pus were floating in his abdominal cavity. Rapid surgery was performed and he seemed to improve until seeping through the abdominal we saw feces coming again. It was back to theater for our young man and again he did remarkably well. A necrotic part of his gut was taken out and the gut was repaired. This was a week ago.

Since a week he seemed to be improving very slowly until 3 days ago again the incision wound of the abdomen was leaking feces. This means there is another perforation. The surgeons in the hospital have 2 days they operate although for an emergency there will always be a place – so we thought - .

Over the last weeks we have been blessed with 4 new interns doing surgical rotation and 6 fifth year surgical students. One would say enough hands in the house to do all surgery. What you also need for a surgery are operation theater nurses and an anesthesiologist. So the last 3 days we have had surgeons checking in on our patient and pediatricians treating the sepsis and dehydration but we had no anesthesiologist available to do the narcosis.

It is a long time I have worked in Africa and I am sure that in certain ways my way of working has become pragmatic. There are moments that I do get itchy. Tracing the anesthesiologist and the senior surgeon (a complex surgery awaits) was not an easy job and I was not the first trying to do it. Yet somehow I have done my best. All are aware of the patient. Now to pray he is operated today and is not asked to wait till after the weekend. And then that the operation is a success.

Every morning when we do the round he smiles at us and asks us how we are doing. For the amount of pain he is in he hardly complains and his family takes care of him around the clock. At one point 5 of his relatives were admitted in the hospital. He however is the only one remaining. The others are home and healthy.

I have discussed this delay with many doctors and sincerely feel it is not a lack of will or interest. The bottom line is that the anesthesiologist (senior) works for obstetrics and surgery at the same time and he cannot split himself into two people. Patience for the patient is required.

Namaskar,

Ashis Brahma

Post Scriptum our young friend died yesterday of a sepsis.