Donors should be at least consistent

Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014

The assent to the Anti-homosexuality Bill by President Museveni has generated much debate, controversies and a mixture of reactions. The most unusual, and yet very strong reactions to the Act emerged from donor community and the usually docile and insensitive tribe in Uganda called the “Elites”

I think the donor and international community must be consistent in their responses to policy development in Uganda. If their strong reaction to the Anti-Homosexuality Act is due to human rights concerns then they have let us all down. These donor communities have been feeding this ogre for so many years to the point that it has matured beyond a pet they thought they were breeding.

For many years, the US and EU countries have supported the regime of President Museveni even when they know he rigs elections and blatantly violates human rights. They pampered it with money and protected its corrupt officials. Sweden, Holland, USA and Denmark have never condemned the many human rights violation that the regime has afflicted on the opposition with decisive actions. The donor money has been used for procuring instrument of repression and for recruiting and sustaining a politicized police while these donors just look on.

Many of us have wondered why Sweden’s foreign policy towards Uganda has been very deliberately anti-change. We understand that Sweden provided citizenship and protection to President Museveni’s family and many current NRM officials. However, since the NRM came to power, Sweden, and most of the EU countries have never taken strong measures to admonish the regime against its human rights excesses.

Human rights preservation is crucial for every human being irrespective of culture, creed, sexual orientation or association whether one is gay or not. And yet, these very same standards are not upheld when our opposition politicians are being humiliated by the Police or our people are dying senselessly in Northern Uganda.

The donor community did not threaten this regime with stern action or withdrawal of assistance when the regime enacted the draconian Public Order Management Act, 2013. The donor community watched with glee when the likes of Hon Otto Odonga, Hon Ibrahim Ssemuju Nganda and others were whisked away like ruffians from Parliamentary chambers

I am definitely not in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Act categorically on professional and humanitarian grounds. As a member of the medical fraternity, practitioner of public health and Global Health, I know better that discrimination against minority has profound long term implication on public health systems. However, I am also sensitive to the dominant culture of Uganda which views the same sex relationships as objectionable and alien.

The Buggery Act of 1533 criminalized gay activities in Britain which it considered sinful and punishable by death. Gay rights and activities only gained prominence between 1967 and 1982 and has just been consolidated by the Equality Act of 2012. The ultra-conservative section of the North American society still views gay marriages as improper and a violation of the institution of marriage. And, of course, the devout mainstream religious following also consider same sex relationships as a deviation from the religious norms and teachings. In the US, only 17 States of the 50 have fully legalized gay marriages.

As global leaders, we must learn to be tolerant with people who are different from us and cognizant of their stages of development and of mainstream cultures which shapes their conscience. The celebrated American, Rev Jeremiah Wright once counseled that being different does not mean being deficient at all. Take for instance, US, Canada, UK and EU countries criminalizes polygamy and yet some cultures here delight in it.

My second discomfort with the anti-homosexuality Act, outside of human rights concerns, relates to health inequities and access to other pertinent socio-economic services. Our social services are not capacitated to accommodate vulnerable groups such as women and persons with disability. Likewise, in the 60s and 70s, most medical experiments and drug tests were geared mainly to male related illnesses and conditions. This made it very difficult to contain women specific illnesses and conditions such as cervical and breast cancers.

Therefore, coming purely from a professional perspective, we have learned that discriminating against minority groups generate inequalities, institutionalizes exclusion from social services and yet, exclusion does not imply extermination of such a group.

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Strong imagination critical in post conflict Acholi

Latanya, Pader

My Global Health practicum in Kitgum and Pader has given me unimaginable opportunity to traverse this huge district. In my sojourn, I have been humbled by people’s resolve to self mobilize so as to build their communities from the debris of over 25 years of anarchy.

In Latanya subcounty of Pader District, deep under the mountains, an impoverished community is silently struggling with an aspiration and a priority to start a secondary school. It has resolved to grow the secondary school to the point where government may take it up. In the whole of Latanya, there is no secondary school and yet there are so many Primary schools. 

The lack of a nearby secondary school also means that the children from these impoverished rural peasantry households are limited to primary school education. This Latanya Community seed secondary school represented by two small buildings peripheral to Wiliwili government primary school, is all that CARITAS and USAID sponsored for them. 

This year, senior three is to be introduced, which means they may not have a classroom to accommodate this growth. It is amazing how community members are willingly donating land for the expansion of this school.

Listening to the narratives of the parents, the principles of community empowerment and community networking comes alive. However, the lack of imagination and concrete realities of poverty strains such resolves.

Beyond Latanya’s community initiatives, I was taken aback at the amount of alcohol being consumed here. Residents have complained of crude waragi being imported from Lira called Gur and other crude drinks in sachets. 

Here, death occurs by the sachets. In one week, over seven funerals had been associated with deaths from alcohol. Drinking alcohol has potential negative implications across these communities. It is lessening the workforce as would-be able-bodied folks turn to drinking the moment they are awake. This behavior sets a wrong tone for children and youths who may have to grapple with bad role models. Domestic and gender based violence are on the increase. Cases of murder resulting from petty quarrels at drinking joints are rampant here.

Another major challenge here is that men are not actively seeking health care services. This means that women have become the gatekeepers to healthcare, nutrition and to security for the household. Women in the post conflict Acholi have become the pillars of homes and communities, which is unusual because in Acholi tradition, men have always shaped social and economic discourses, while women played supervisory and support roles. Today, women are doing it all while the men are drinking.

It is disheartening that women are the ones actively seeking for HIV tests and HIV care. The men, who are most likely to have multiple partners, acquire and spread HIV, TB and other diseases, are not involved in healthcare seeking. You will only find women at antenatal clinics. Stories have been told where some men living with HIV have the audacity to forcefully grab the ante-retroviral medication from their wives to share the dose.

One of the major problems of this post conflict Acholi region is the lack of imagination among local leaders. As pre conflict leadership now yearns for a transition to post conflict societal engagement, there is a huge vacuum of leaders with imagination. Here, people vie for leadership position as routine job seeking venture.

There is need to eliminate from society the obviously unhelpful symbols of past conflict. People need to be re-connected and wired to a hopeful future. The dusty and bumpy roads that confront us daily are definitely a major setback to this imagination and economic development. The environment here is rapidly diminishing due to inadequate deliberate preparation to contain extreme weathers; flooding during rainy season and prolonged dry season. Communities should be prepared to build water reservoirs to harness the excessive flooding during dry spells.

In short, post conflict Acholi is badly in need of characters with imagination to catapult this region to a new economic order. These leaders ought to mobilize the bludgeoning resolve of the people and harness it to spur development, to break from the traditions of fear and pessimism. Unfortunately, everything here is linked with politics which renders most elected leaders ineffective.

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Thematic Curriculum benefits Dure Primary School

Dure - Pader, Uganda

A couple of MPs have been fuming that the thematic curriculum is responsible for poor performance of some pupils in the just concluded Primary Leaving Examination. They argued that the introduction of mother language at formative years in school makes it impossible for the pupils to score good grades in English. They blamed the thematic curriculum for this poor performance and yet, the problem lies elsewhere.

While these MPs are genuinely concerned as parents, they exhibited total lack of knowledge on how education success and scores are measured.

The basis for introducing mother language in lower grade school emerged from scientific evidence from many years of studies by scholars and UNESCO. 

Consistent evidence illustrated clearly that the overall quality of comprehension and articulation in scholarship are significantly enhanced when a child has mastery of mother language or the first language spoken at home.

The incoherence that we witness in Uganda is embedded in this assumption that mastery of the English language is a superior indicator of being educated or intelligent. 

This serves to illustrate how dominated and subjugated we are and how unconsciously we now accept this explanation that our intellect is defined by our ability to communicate in the English language. And yet, one of the most unfortunate things ever to happen in Uganda is that this colonial tool of dominance called English has not inspired any advance in any field relevant to human civilization.

Take for example in my village of Dure. This year, pupils at Dure Primary School in Latanya sub-county of Pader district have posted tremendous improvement in their PLE results. Two students passed in first grade and 39 passed in second grade, 4 pupils passed in division three and 3 students passed in division 4 category. So far, this has been the biggest school grade achievement of this village school in its post conflict recovery.

Dure Primary school is a rural community school which suffers from challenges akin to rural schools in Northern Uganda. However, this dismal and yet celebrated performance at Dure Primary school provides an evaluation opportunity for those with keen interest in the education of our children beyond English scores. The thematic curriculum has huge promises where the benchmark for our intellect is not judged by one’s scores in English but math and sciences alike.

Here in Dure, we have children who lack in every facility and are heavily disadvantaged in comparison to children in urban schools and in Western or Central Uganda generally. These children may be already heads of their families at tender age because their parents are either dead or immobilized by HIV/AIDS. Most of them live under squalor with grandmother or relatives who are impoverished with very little to eat.

Pader, like most post-conflict Northern Uganda communities endures alcoholism and HIV prevalence which have horrendously devastated homes and livelihood. Children study and compete with their counterparts elsewhere without preps or doing homework because they have no source of light to study after school.

So, the Universal Primary Education is an important asset and any incremental performance in these rural schools becomes a source of inspiration and hope for many guardians. Children here have little prospects of advancing past primary schools because Universal Secondary Education has become costly. Even the six (6) USE facilities are distantly spaced. Small additional costs, such as transportation, basic secondary school requirements and the roles that these children hold in their families, always become major impediments to advancing to secondary school education.

Therefore, these MPs must be taught that performance of the thematic curriculum is not measured only by scores in English grades in examination. There are many factors involved, for instance, how well has Ministry of Education invested in improving the quality of teaching workforce to meet this peculiar UPE challenges? Has the Ministry and UNEB considered revising PLE examination standard to reflect the current English instructional level for candidate classes?

Let’s give the thematic curriculum a chance to gain traction.

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