Uganda presents a unique chance to look not retrospectively at the issues the oil curse raises but introspectively at how they do.

………………………………………………………..

A child who washes his hands clean enough gets to eat with the elders- African proverb

One of the peculiarities of African governments with long-serving leaders is that whereas they are led by aging men and women, their public institutions are pubescent. Like minors everywhere these institutions tend to be easy to abuse and harder to control as the spell of paternalism wears off. Not surprisingly where such tensions exist the fear that leaders may die intestate or depart without setting their affairs in order are real. Without the political equivalent of a will or succession plan the prospect of chaos is as real as the evening sun.

The Ugandan political class is undergoing some handwringing over similar concerns. The charismatic leader of the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, Yoweri Museveni will have been 30 years in power- more than half the period that Uganda has been independent, when the next elections are scheduled in 2016.  Asked recently at a party conference if he would be partial to the discussing his own succession Yoweri Museveni reportedly left the room for a bathroom break.

Party conferences like the one in Kyankwanzi in January have become necessary to keep the ruling NRM from tearing itself apart. This one the fourth in a series since the last half of 2011- when just months after winning re-election, a season of dissent descended on the NRM.

And it is fair to say that pressures from the uncertainty about a future after Mr. Museveni and inheritance of the family jewels- Uganda’s newly discovered oil wealth are driving some of the bickering.

Outside its tea and coffee, and roast meat bonding jamborees street protests, protests from organized groups including teachers, health workers, traders and students rage at the door of change. Inside, finger pointing over allegations of corruption centered mainly around bribery claims in Uganda’s oil sector have led to calls for the resignation of the Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, the Foreign Minister and brother-in-law of the President, Sam Kutesa, and former energy Minister now head of Internal Security Hilary Onek. Besides being ultimate insiders, the two men, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have all been associated with the succession “queue”.

If successful these family quarrels are obviously meant to re-arrange the so-called succession queue or impose a different form of succession within the party.

Last year parliament, packed with a majority of young Mps many of them fresh to the gallery surprised the President by convening a special session at which they sought to stop the government from signing any new oil deals and launching an all out reform package in the extractives sector. They also picketed government Ministers over other cases of corruption, which in Uganda is like closing your eyes and pointing at any member of cabinet to jail. Each may yet have their turn. A Minister for the Presidency Princess Kabakumba Matsiko was forced to resign after allegations her radio station was using broadcast services of the national broadcaster for free. Waiting in line are three or more others.

It is anticipated that unless the President manages to reign in his Mps through the “re-education camps” where he has met them with lectures on ideology with an emphasis on party unity things may well and truly fall apart.

Many analysts have weighed in about on relationship between oil and corruption, which makes sense perhaps for a country with a history of graft parodied elsewhere as a bad episode of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

However perhaps emphasis should lie on what state the politics of succession or if one would put it beyond the NRM, political transition, will leave Uganda’s public institutions?

Firstly it is to recognize that the present chaos within the ruling party is maturing not because of oil but in spite of it. The seeds of the present crisis were sown at the 2006 NRM party primaries- the first elections in which what was previously a no-party system in Uganda was became a competitive multi-party system. These elections produced the first set of “independents” or candidates who failing to win the party ticket, ran anyway and won the election on their own individual merit. Resentful that the old authority structures that persisted within the new “party” these Mps and their supporters formed the nucleus of the new reform movement within the NRM.

In the 2011 elections independent candidates mostly NRM leaning outnumber the official political opposition and could, some fear, form the second largest party within the parliament if they had a leader. In effect the oil debate, seen as the vanguard for democratizing the state, was no less than a parliamentary coup whose aim is the uprooting the old order.

Secondly, the very same institutions currently arbitrating Uganda’s political transition (or succession) are the same ones that will usher Uganda into its oil-producing era. And it could be messy.

When the oil debate revealed allegations of corrupt payments- it put on hold a 2.9 billion deal for oil production by a consortium led by UK’s Tullow Oil, Total and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Since then the government has sought better terms from the companies and fast tracked oil laws to be debated next month- in part due to the public outcry related to the scandal. But these are some of the better outcomes.

Mps have also dangerously sought to approve all contracts. Its possible that a Parliament (close to 400 members) with an elevated role in the extractives sector in a country where elections are a vote-buying exercise may be no-worse when oil comes than an Executive that may well seek to bond them in a common enterprise of emptying the treasury. It may deliver party unity but augur badly too.

What is important to observe now is that NRM’s inchoate transition as well as Uganda’s incomplete transition to oil producer are occurring within the same time frame and applying pressures on the very same institutions.  Uganda is to policy makers and analysts the new Mecca to study the effect of natural resources on hybrid regimes.

Perhaps finally for now, the point above is important because Uganda sits at the fault lines of a fragile region which is equally resource endowed. Its public institutions are therefore not merely matters of internal concern alone. The oil fields it intends to exploit are shared with Democratic Republic of Congo while it is the direct neighbor of South Sudan. Internal political reform is thus a matter of regional policy and international security- where Uganda an ally of the West will face increased scrutiny. If its institutions do not survive its leaders or if the pressures from oil prove too much- the consequences will be felt in the next homestead.

Original draft above submitted to African Arguments – Royal African Society and published here . The photo of the young girl is by Edward Echwalu.

Question:  When do you hope to come home? What has serving in Somalia meant to you personally?

 Answer:  My tour of duty ends in May this year. So, I should be back home by mid this year. We live in a communicating world. Whoever does it better takes the day. Somalia has put me on the international stage and as such, it has helped me to sharpen my skills at strategic communications, in the setting of peacekeeping

 Question:   Could you describe to Ugandans what this deployment means to the UPDF soldiers? What personal stories do they tell?

 Answer: Peacekeeping is a new dimension in the UPDF doctrine; I mean the practical part of it. Soldiers got the opportunity to disprove those who thought we would make many mistakes. Soldiers now know how to fight in built up areas, a completely different form of warfare from the familiar jungle warfare. We all stand proud to have served successfully in an international mission.

Question: Uganda has been leading efforts for a “troop surge” in Somalia? What would extra-troops accomplish for AMISOM? What are the key challenges to AMISOM’s mandate and goals that a troop increase would address?

Answer: Al shabab is in several regions of Somalia. In order to further stretch them, AMISOM will in the coming phase deploy in sectors outside Mogadishu. The territory will thus expand. Troop surge will therefore be necessary.

Question:  Until recently Uganda and Burundi have been doing the heavy lifting in Burundi. When you look back since the first deployment of UPDF troops- what have been your successes and losses? What has the UPDF learned from its duties as part of AMISOM?

Answer: The key success has been the final liberation of Mogadishu. Secondly, Somalia is now accessible to the international community as AMISOM secures the airport and seaport. Importantly, for the first time in many years, there is a government in the country, courtesy of AMISOM. Government institutions are beginning to offer services, including the army. However, this did not come on a silver plate. We have lost some guys along the way. May their souls rest in peace.

Question:   A key reasoning of Uganda at the Security Council in 2009/10 was that there was no peace to keep in Somalia. For example, Hon. Ruhakana Rugunda (Ugandan Permanent Representative) told me in an interview that the case of piracy off the coast was basically because hostiles controlled land bases. Is AMISOM’s long-term strategy the occupation of the entire width and breadth of Somalia to deny Al Shabaab and other groups room to operate?

 Answer: The TFG military which we are helping to train will do that.  In the short term however, given more troops and other resources, AMISOM will seek to expand its foothold in the entire country.

Question: What is the difference between the ideology of Shabaab and that of AMISOM and TFG? In trying to win the support of Somalis how would you rate AMISOM’s performance?

Answer: Al shabab kill civilians indiscriminately, and this is what terrorism is all about, AMISOM doesn’t. We offer free services – medical, clean water etc. Importantly, we have provided security to the people. That’s why over 95% of Mogadishu residents are in government/AMISOM controlled areas. These contributions endear us to the people.

Question: Given the conditions in Somalia including the recent famine, how would you describe the humanitarian challenge? Where is it most severe?

Answer: Famine has subsided in most parts. The international community delayed to respond after several warnings from agencies. In our view, famine is still a real challenge and the on-going efforts should instead increase.

 Question: Two other forces, Ethiopian and Kenyan, are participating separately in the fight against Al shabab. What is the relationship of AMISOM to these efforts administratively, operationally and politically?

 Answer: Kenyan forces are poised to re-hat (join AMISOM). So operationally it will be one force. Politically, we all have an interest in defeating terrorism and create a stable Somalia. Ethiopian forces have a bilateral understanding with the Somali government to assist. IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) also asked them to support peace efforts in Somalia but they are not under AMISOM.

Question:  Does the UPDF envision a withdrawal from Somalia or is this an open ended deployment? If there was a withdrawal what would be the minimum conditions to support it?

Answer: Obviously, Somalia mission can’t be open ended. But you realize that this is a political not a military question. When Somali government institutions become firm enough to support stability and delivery of services to the people, AMISOM will no longer be necessary. I can guarantee that one day UPDF will be out of Somalia.

Question:  What is the aim of the current operation? Is it to secure Mogadishu or is it the beginning of a push outside of Mogadishu?

 Answer: The forces have started a break out. A move from the built up area that is cumbersome operationally. Extending security to the environs of the city has effectively started.

 Question:  Who funds and supports the Al shabab? Are they the only hostile group in Somalia?

Answer: Al shabab is currently the only violent force fighting against us and the Somali government. Al qaeda network funds their terror. They also have other sympathizers across the globe who fundraise money.

Question: When the Somali deployment begun the Ugandan political and military leadership said the aim was to provide security so that Somali political engagement could occur. So far does the military see progress within the Somali community and clans as progressing towards that goal?

 Answer: Again, this is a political question. However, we have noticed some serious dialogue under the framework of the TFG Roadmap. Several consultative conferences taking place in the country have fostered this spirit.

The story is still alive in the news and getting heavy play on social networking sites. The New Vision and Daily Monitor have offered different backgrounds of George Agaba something that will not surprise dedicated readers of either paper. Perhaps less explored still is the context within which these killings occurred. Hopefully the weekend editions of the major newspapers will dedicate space to it.

When events like those in Luzira happen, or the A4C rallies that have set up potential clashes between protestors and the police, occur, emotions headline news and the pace of events dominate the perspectives of most observers. These often stop at res ipso loquitor , that the “facts speak for themselves” even if facts are what they are because of their interpretation and who interprets them therefore matters.

Sometime in November 2011 at the meeting organized for political parties by the Freidrich-Ebert Stiftung on multiparty political transition I argued some of the difficulties for journalism in times of political transition referencing the difficult era of Uganda’s immediate post independence political competition.  The paper is here(The Role of the Media in the Transition to Multiparty Politics  (3) a full version is yet to be completed and submitted).

However I wanted to speak to some of the perspectives that will never be fully covered ( and there are many) by journalists even about their own coverage of active news.

In the New Vision followup, one of the women who was evicted from Luzira named as Erina Asiimwe, a mother of four, said she could not reach her husband who was a soldier training at Singo. This is one of the military colleges of Uganda which when I looked up was focused on “Urban Warfare”. That the wife of this unnamed soldier was a victim of the evictions and now at the mercy of wellwishers is also not new. The condition of the police and other security forces that find themselves at the frontlines against political forces advocating change through protests is not pretty and that is a fact. Ugandan journalism has long reported this issue- as a case of the conditions of the civil service (the police is a civilian force) but it has also been put to use by political forces in the Ugandan opposition as a reason to mock the ‘support” the security establishment displays when protestors are clubbed, pepper sprayed or otherwise brutalized.

However like Erina Asiimwe, many Ugandans, journalists included, have relatives serving in the police or the larger security establishment. Soon after the Luzira story broke alongside a story in the Daily Monitor displaying the faces of plain-clothes security men in action at a rally- several journalists complained of being targeted. One senior journalist believes he was being followed. A suspicious car was parked outside his house on Sunday night.

During Monday’s rallies the Chief Sub-Editor of the Monitor Don Wanyama reported on his Facebook page that a photo journalist Isaac Kasamani had been shot at.

“The bullet though missed him. We can only speculate but the story by Sunday Monitor that exposed this new “terror” outfit with their pictures might have unfortunately placed our journalist(s) in the line of fire. I have heard that some journalists have been singled out as targets–and their crime being that they cover events of the opposition. Whoever is behind these evil schemes should know that we are only doing our duty”, he said.

There have been appeals on FaceBook for the men to be named.However these “handmaidens” of the state are rarely covered except as brutalizers rarely as victims themselves. This even if they are probably brothers, sisters, drinking mates, fathers and mothers and sources of news.  In Uganda’s asymmetrical security system where command and control structures are fluid- a decision to deploy lethal force is not exactly always clear. The men on the ground who make these violent decisions act on orders and have to evaluate them at hostile venues and in hostile conditions. Once exposed public outcry often ensures a long prison sentence, ostracization and a life in hiding. This was the fate of Gilbert Arinaitwe  seen dragging Opposition leader Kizza Besigye above. Even if their immediate bosses offer protection it is limited by bad options especially where the offending act is recorded in full view of cameras. In the case of Arinaitwe, who is sitting out an indefinite disciplinary process in the police, social media sites sought him out and personal events where displayed for all to see who this “monster” was.

When I discussed this dilemma yesterday with a seasoned editor – himself afraid of a backlash on reporters and what he claimed was a dirty tricks season for their editors, he used the catchword “impunity”. All of this brings to mind now famous episodes of the same question from Guantanamo to Iraq and now Uganda of how evil is perpetrated by ordinary folk, “good boys” and “family” men.

But first lets consider the dilemmas of the Arinaitwes in the context of superior orders which as we said in the Ugandan system may come from multiple sources (last I checked Santos, according to the New Vision was said not to be a police officer quoting the Police Chief Kale Kayihura even if he was reported earlier to be a policeman), its one of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. As multiple authority centers exist so do multiple and some would argue weak accountability systems. The backlash on journalists may not at all be official policy and does not need to be for it to continue. These are dangerous times for journalists as they are for their would be victimizers who at the end of the day may have very thin administrative or legal protection for their actions.

Whenever such issues arise, and as a journalist with experience of the same, I am reminded of the work of Professor Phillip Zimbardo on how takes effect. In particular his assertion that evil “ the exercise of power to intentionally harm, hurt, destroy or commit crimes against humanity” occurs not necessary as a pre-meditated action but as the consequence of a blind obedience to authority.  In his book “ The Lucifer Effect” he offers as the basis for analysis that we look not only at the “Who” in a situation , where impunity produces horrific dehumanization, BUT also the “What” (the culture, system of rules and their operation).

Hopefully future stories will elucidate the latter as well as the former.

That is why the place was apparently named “Middle East” after the warring sides. In the bad years gunshots were a regular after dark and by dusk, as the soldiers would be returning to their homes. The flats are presently being gentrified of course. They are now the private property of residents when their owner, the National Housing and Construction Corporation offered them for sale. Gated communities are established here with manicured lawns and private security guards to watch over the expensive cars in the allotted parking spaces.”Good will”, a market charge for the opportunity to be a tenant runs into the tens of millions.

The market itself is one of the better-managed ones in Kampala- after a deal with old stall operators to have right of first buy – like the flats. The nearby community now has expanded. A popular restaurant right across the market is Bamboo Nest, which as journalists will tell you is nowadays a hangout too for security personnel from the nearby Military Headquarters and lately the head offices of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence. Next to Bamboo is a Super Market and hospital. Banks, ATM’s, hotels and spas make this area much sought after for Kampala’s up worldly mobile classes.

There may be armed men about- but this is not Middle East of old.

Few of the old families still live here or but mainly in  nearby  Mutungo, Luzira and Port Bell. This part of Kampala is where most “northern” families lived and perhaps best illustrates their relationship to the military in previous regimes when political power in Uganda was dominated by northern tribes. In the nearby Our Mary of Africa Church- baptism rosters are full of northern names from the previous years of occupancy of the mansions around and the flats below.

Changes of government in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa come with the re-distribution of opportunities amongst co-ethnics, from the vanquished to the victorious. It is a touchy subject less alive in the language of public policy. In Uganda there are laws to restrain sectarian or tribal utterances or organizations particularly for political purposes. However Kampala’s various market riots and their elevation to some sort of social struggle by politicians, activists and pundits have at their base- well a tribal society. This often creates a politics of neighborhoods if not issues.

In the case of this area the exodus of its tribal elements to nearby neighborhoods including into Luzira-Portbell will no doubt feature in the days to come. Often hordes of private security guards – those who have northern and eastern roots still choose to live in these parts. Unlike say Kalerwe or Natete, adopted neighborhoods or what I heard recently referred to as ethnic territoriality has remained fairly consistent amongst Kampala’s many hills. This is so even if wealth creation and distribution amongst the lower classes has faced pressures from government policy or a lack thereof.

During the “Buganda riots” in 2009, it was clear that many people who participated in the actual rioting were not always ethnic Baganda. In the slums and ghettos to be a Muganda may have taken on a more class meaning than the rhetoric of Buganda nationalists on various radio stations at the time. Government response then was also directed at the seat of the Buganda government and its politics and focused less ( as I argued it should) on the urban poor as a constituency.

Indeed my own opinion still is that the language of the ghetto being Luganda, contributed to this feeling of affinity with the Kingdom at that time and may still bind the lower rungs of Kampala’s restless, slum dwelling, petty trading societies. The ghetto protested the establishment not because of its politics but its policies. Government handlers however may have been spooked quite rightly with some of the overtly tribal violence in which people with “western” features (seen as the privileged class of today from the President’s home area) were attacked and government vehicles burnt as a rejection of the “establishment”.

Where government policy has struggled in the city (provision of water, electricity, planned neighborhoods etc), the view that out of its incoherence is a more coherent if not deliberate redistribution of wealth amongst specific ethnic groups is a major challenge for policy makers.  This is one of the first areas that I and my colleagues attempted to tackle at our Think Tank project- mainly because it is a major distraction (ETHNICITY AND ECONOMIC WELL-BEING IN UGANDA 2009 )if a convenient one for politics.

It is however a failure of sub-municipal, municipal and national politics that interest groups congregate not on the issues of interest but other identities.

Lately Kampala has been torn between an elected and populist Mayor Elias Lukwago and a state official Jennifer Musisi. Lukwago’s power base is ultimately the city’s poor (and Baganda both class and ethnic meanings emphasized). Now comes the killing of two residents of Port Bell at what was an eviction exercise by the Kampala Capital City Authority, which has been trying to establish its authority over the Kampala City Council-, long a heavily political body whose power base is the same as Mr. Lukwago’s. It would appear that the strength of clashes between “security forces” and “protestors” in Kampala often vary with the volume of ethnic residences in the city’s various settlements. Its virulence mapping into politics of the territory in question (so Kalerwe may be different from Kawempe as would Nakawa and Port Bell. One dead in Luzira has co-incidentally been identified as Onyango).

This fragmentation may well be what is keeping the city safe.

In other words no one “political” identity has won the day. However there is a danger that the frequency of these protests is slowly marketing the battle lines in the wider sense of the divide between the poor and the rich as well as  the old and frightening prospect of how this will be ethnically interpreted. If the clashes become larger and an extended case of lawlessness, violence and chaos erupts and leads to some sort of political crisis- the ethnic bogey will complicate any discussion of accountability and policy. It also presents a challenge to both sides competing for power.

The Opposition movement would rather see itself as waging a legitimate class struggle but could be caught in the expediency of more evolved political identities. The government on the other may as its defense argue the importance of law and order only to have it complicated by the ethnicization of violence against it- thereby leading to a siege mentality amongst its elites. Either way an escalation may well come by way of ethnic politics entering the arena of policy contest currently underway- something that is best avoided.

On the face of it the slaying of the Luzira Two is simply a criminal act. The bodyguard of the deputy director of KCCA Mr. George Agaba who led the exercise opened fire on the crowd – in full view of the cameras rarely firing in the air to scare. However sadly, Mr. Agaba is becoming the center of the story (it may not matter that is guard is reportedly called Santos Komakech or Makmot, a Northerner).  Who is he really is being questioned on social networking sites? Why did he have a plain-clothes guard armed with a pistol and an AK-47? Which agency was his guard working for? Who issued his weapons?

What is the logic behind the Luzira demolitions? Why Luzira and not the many other areas of obvious infringement of city building rules? Is this government doing development or is it extending the privileges of its elite?  Such will be the complicated tapestry of the debate in these trying times.    If the days of “Middle East” are to be avoided how should government policy negotiate the tribal quarters of Kampala’s ghettos and their appeal in the power struggles of the day?

The local evaluation officer with whom she had done the four year bureaucratic dance which involved hiring her own surveyors and numerous unofficial charges that involve this kind of quest eventually travelled to Kampala. At her request, I accompanied him to Umeme’s headquarters opposite the New Vision newspaper, to make her case to another official. Why I asked this man, who claimed he had shown my mother as much kindness as she had shown patience all these years, was the old woman being asked to buy her own transformer? Does it mean it would serve only her? How can she own a stake in a public utility?

“ If she wants power there is no other way,” he responded. “What about the Rural Electrification project,” I asked. I could vaguely recall covering such a thing years ago. What had they done?

These interactions with officialdom often strike me as surreal. Often my real distance to the issues is microphone length, or laptop close or pen and notebook cozy. It is a fragment of my journalistic and intellectual pursuits. True as a good son my mother – who probably thought company officials- may be partial to her son a “big shot” journalist and muckraker- may have been onto something here. Social capital is essential to competition for public services. But being ridiculously close to policy “failures”can quickly add to one’s appreciation of the stakes.

Just weeks before I, and several other talking heads, had been invited by the Electricity Regulatory Agency to a “roundtable luncheon for top executives and representatives of key trade organizations at the Kampala Serena Hotel to discuss current developments in the electricity sector and the measures being considered to address the current power supply and financing situation”.

I took it seriously and went to make two cases that I scribbled in my notebook. They are the products of the last 8 years of covering the energy and now the oil/mineral sectors. One argument was that instead of abolishing the electricity subsidy (this meeting was one of the motions towards this goal), that the government re-directs it to rehabilitating the electricity grid. Major losses from the grid had been scaled back but I did not see private investment being a good replacement for public money to air-out the grid, which is most congested in Kampala, Wakiso and Entebbe. Cutting down these losses are a major source of immediate savings for available power which, was in short and expensive supply.

A second argument was that government policy dedicate itself urgently to generating electricity from Uganda’s crude oil. Having been an opponent of the investment that Uganda made in so-called “emergency power” during the shortages of 2005 when containerized generators were procured, I had spent considerable time understudying and promoting Heavy Oil Generators. This effort, Uganda’s procurement nightmare notwithstanding, was beginning to pay off. Countless hours spent with officials from the Ministry of Energy, Finance and my Think Tank buddies making these two propositions did not, I felt, mean I could not make the same argument to this industry group.

The whole affair went like most luncheons do.

I took notes – and was at one point mildly reprimanded for my enthusiasm by the Board Chair of ERA- Richard Apire- when I veered to discussing what electricity provision meant in terms of the country’s social compact. Another pillar of Uganda’s energy policy that I wanted to debunk is the tyranny of big projects.

Bujagali this and Karuma that.

In fact looking at electricity consumption today, a significant portion is from small, off-the-main grid generators (We were lucky that heavy rains helped generate some 40MW from dams like Ishasha by Christmas).  It goes without saying that under-investment in energy infrastructure is more than an inconvenience to mothers and sons. Months later Umeme protests broke out so that is that. What is rather disturbing is how much more serious the energy shortage is.

An argument has been made, along with some misguided tongue lashing of Uganda’s intellectual class, by my friend Andrew Mwenda about how the electricity policy is an urban and middle-class fix. In fact another way to look at electricity shortage, the stunted grid, and the inconveniences to customers, is to calculate the full cost of not having cheap sources of power. Uganda has millions of boarding school pupils and students who consume tones of wood fuel every year. Add to this the army, police, prisons and other institutions. Its growing populations and rapidly urbanizing countryside is doing so in conditions where cooking fuel is basically wood fuel. The stresses on land for trees and farming are now a common source of conflict as pastoral and cultivating communities eat into gazetted forest and so forth.

The vision of the Rural Electrification Agency of complete coverage by 2035 is laughable under these conditions not just because of its own underwhelming record (my mother is witness or victim) but because by then the crisis would have come full circle. The cost of not having alternative power can be calculated by looking at the cost of repairing the tree cover, attending to conflicts related to climate change, and other associated nightmare scenarios including water shortages et al. It is not just the short-term business cycle that is suffering.

One challenge for energy policy that is not being discussed is how it is critical to human security- in helping Uganda avert the seemingly ever present danger of environmental disaster posed by a changing climate. This goes beyond the argument about middle-class comforts etc.

Maybe I should end this post by saying that at the end of 2010 negotiations with a Norwegian firm for generation of electricity from Uganda’s crude oil had collapsed. Ugandans need to seriously activate cheap power from local oil sources urgently if only to buy time for large projects to come online. Also under-served populations would benefit from a focus on smaller sources while the government can do itself a favor by investing in a clear and rational grid. Maybe then someone else’s mother will not be asked to buy a transformer.

The announcement that the “Buganda Kingdom” was gifted this “New Year “with a son- the second male son of the reigning monarch Ssabasajja Ronald Muwenda was a pleasant surprise. This is mainly because healthy babies are a pleasant surprise anywhere. In the case of Prince Richard Ssemakokiro- he would have been last year’s surprise except that the Kingdom’s Prime Minister (Katikiro) chose January 2012 and not July 2011 to make known his existence.

The timing of political announcements always has significance and this one is as political as they come. It’s not clear why the Kingdom waited over half a year to make the Prince’s existence (and his mother’s clan Nsenene) known. This subject, of the prince and the circumstances of his birth, will therefore be part of the lugambo or gossip for much of this week and thereafter hang around indefinitely.  The Kingdom could have delayed the announcement even further. It can only be that some sort of controversy was brewing to force the announcement – facts of which will never really become clear or if they do will be blurred by contestation and spin. What is clear though is that the buzz about Prince Richard is something to be embraced. Judging from the online debate his birth raises a couple of complicated social and political issues- and it is just as well that he was born on the eve of the 50^th anniversary of Uganda’s independence.

There will be two camps in Buganda that emerge from a controversy such as this one – if in fact the royal birth can be examined as something beyond the cheer of his parents and the joy of the subjects of the King. There are the traditionalists who will support the birth of a male heir even if the King has an official wife. Polygamy is not quite an issue for Kings but much less for commoners in Uganda, where serial monogamy or the its sub-cultural cousins like the so-called “side dish” are quietly condoned. What will irk the modernists is not polygamy but the symbolic commitment of the Kingdom’s monarch to monogamy. A “moral debate” of sizeable proportions is about to rage over the His Highness Richard Ssemakokiro. And this is not because Uganda is a moral destination. It is in spite of it by and large.

A part of this is very political for the Kingdom. Ever since Apollo Milton Obote overthrew the constitution that placed Buganda second as the political authority in the territory, countless supporters of the Kingdom have hoped to restore it to its heyday. Many of those will fall within the camp of traditionalists when it comes to the newborn. They want to see a revival of the Kingdom in the mould of its old institutions centered around the absolute powers of the Kabaka including of course- his right to procreate as he chooses. The old guard at Mengo, no doubt will use this episode to defend the Kings right to do so.

Then there is the new guard- people like Daudi Mpanga, an intellectual, lawyer and family man. As the Kabaka takes a bashing from moralists, evangelicals or even the very conflicted Catholic church- the Mpanga’s of this world will be feel the most unease. This is possibly because young Baganda have to live side by side with fast changing values and probably lean toward the realization of a genuine cultural monarchy with social ambitions and not just political ones. What this means for Buganda is unclear yet. However the birth of the prince may shape some of the contours of this argument.

Is the King above the laws of Uganda?

Some of the principles of the new constitution of Uganda reject practices that discriminate against women for example. Women are legally at the same legal level with men. If so, who guarantees the status of the King as above the law? By supporting a monarch who will be accused of philandering by some women activists- are Baganda endorsing his actions or simply showing their affinity with him? If it is the latter it is very understandable but many young Baganda will be soul searching for a long time like the rest of Uganda on the meaning of marriage itself- a defining issue in our so-called modern times.

I will emphasize with the modernists. A strict conception of the monarch in the institutional form of the 60’s is unhelpful as is a vision of a monarch as absolute. The picture released of the Kabaka holding up his son- is that of a loving modern man after all. However a new vision of a modern Kabaka will have to come to terms with some of the moral and other dilemmas of marriage today including how it treats the rights of women within it as one of the many cultural surgeries it must undergo.

Over all there are also political ramifications which, I have in the past shared with some of my friends in Mengo. The failure of a viable cultural monarch to emerge is problematic because it has maintained the old fault lines of conflict between Buganda and the center. It has also held back Buganda from projecting a moral and social voice on behalf of other Ugandans. This is despite the fact that most Ugandans are part Baganda speaking the language and embracing its other cultural practices. Luganda is a powerful example of the emancipating power of Mengo. The language is the lingua franca of business and lately the spoken tongue of social and political activists protesting some of the obvious limitations of the government in power. The potential of Buganda unleashing its cultural assets positively cannot be overstated. Uganda has a state being re-made in these modern times can maintain its current political institutions but at 50 years these institutions are no competition to the influence of 300 years of culture and tradition that the King embodies. This is the same with other elder institutions like the church. The elder institutions considered by some like me as the “real” civil society will be crucial in the healing that needs to be done in the country today by giving national unity its meaning and purpose. So far they are absent or bystanders.

Controversies like the Prince’s birth if not properly resolved within this environment risk alienating the cultural goods Buganda could offer and with it the social and civil leadership Mengo could foster. And so it is with pleasure that we welcome the Prince because by the time he turns 50 and if he is ever heir- he would have lived through the redefinition of the Kingdom and the country with it.

I turn the argument over to you.

Firstly, it confirmed the obvious that most strikes end up with a talk from the President and promises thereafter. This should not be surprising. After it has happened so many times over the years – teachers, students, nurses before them- one would hope that Kacita knew the strike would end up before the President.

The central role of the President of Uganda as an arbiter of last resort comes however at a high cost- another common lesson about the Ugandan system. It disempowers institutions and allows them -where they are deliberately negligent or even criminally so- to pass the buck. The Ugandan phrase that captures this practice is “orders from above”. In other words organs of government and their minders may well operate with impunity if the decision to do so is attributed to the higher power- the Presidency.  Recently the Presidency itself has objected to being an alibi for corruption- at least unwillingly.

It is also true that sometimes regulators or regulation is simply absent for things that need regulation.

And with this I have observed over the years regulators tend to be weaker than those people or institutions they regulate. As with Kacita – there were many institutions between the President and the traders on the issue of interest rates and bank charges.

Of course  it would be nice to have a Consumer Services Regulator that could intervene where bank charges ( long a rip off) or revised interest rates are dumped on the consumer. But then one thinks of say mobile banking. Services for this billion shilling business has suffered recently. However mobile phone companies are not banks and the regulator for mobile telephonry has often been a lobbyist for the interests of the industry. A consumer protection body exists for the ICT sector in Uganda known as the National Information Technology Authority (NITA). Have you heard of them?

The main regulator for financial sector is the Central Bank. However the recent relationship news between the Bank of Uganda and the Executive itself exposed the institution and its management as weak kneed against political pressure or even complicit in some potentially criminal activity. One of these actions is related in fact to the Kacita strike. BoU in 2010 attempted a currency reform which ended up circulating two currencies concurrently. One government economist told me this was tantamount to printing money. However the same institution is now tightening access to credit to “mop up” excess liquidity it ostensibly had a hand in creating. That BoU is one of the more independent organizations in the country says as much.

This is probably why Kacita attempted to bully BoU by creating an eyesore in the usually busy business district of shut shops and potential clashes between traders and the police. They knew that ultimately to politicize or better securiti-size this issue would get then an audience with the President ( who carries a bigger stick) might help their cause. It was basically a shake-down.

I like the phrase “organized hypocrisy” when it comes to governments and public policy. So maybe we should leave it there save for one final thing.

At the end of their strike one of the suggestions that “came out strongly” as we Ugandans are wont to say is that Kacita should “divest” into exports. Uganda has an export promotion board (it is not a regulator but has similar powers) but investment for export does not happen overnight and if one considers the nightmare that industrial production in Uganda is – this random statement to the street mob also rings familiar.

If you do not have bread – eat cake maybe?

If you read official government policy positions Uganda was never meant to be a trade dependent economy. The floors of the Ministry of Finance and others are filled with “export led economy” papers. How then did trade become a “monopoly” and traders associations a body to contend with?

This is not because optimism is difficult or that pessimism is some kind of default for an observer of this region. After all the New Year begins with South Sudan as an independent country, a formality with far reaching consequences. At its very best, the decision reached by South Sudan’s leaders to initiate an entry into the East African Community, will in the years to come be perhaps even more consequential. In the last 50-60 years, the attempt to forge a political and economic community by East African countries, whether it succeeds or not, is the single boldest act of state building beyond the actions of colonialism before it. Which is perhaps why, watching Jonglei, and other teething problems of the new South Sudan, one is restless on the chair.

The country, if one can call it that, is at many difficult crossroads.

If Jonglei matures into something worse, more precisely, that ethnic nationalism overwhelms both the elite consensus in Juba and the institutions of state- particularly the ability of the SPLA to remain neutral and effective in protecting civilians- it will set back the clock to the pre-conflict days, when Khartoum was not yet a clear foe. Ironically Khartoum, which is presently fighting a war at the borders, may yet make it possible for the South to re-unite. Southern politicians often use this as a default themselves perhaps too much to deflect from serious internal schisms that are simmering today.

It is possible to be patient- building a state takes time but there are some important issues to consider- not just for Southern Sudanese but for her neighbors as well.  Insecurity in the South is a major test for the foreign policy of the EAC, a struggling proposition considering the recent decision by Kenya to enter Somalia without much consultation with the region’s organs.

Here is why; internal strains within South Sudan are the traditional weapon of the North against the South. In the present environment where the North is actively undermining the South, and is on an offensive at the borders it is doubly distracting.

Khartoum is sadly still mainly a military problem.

If the SPLA/M is to defend its borders properly around the old alliance that includes sympathetic members of the EAC it has to stomp out as quickly as it is feasible the internal insurgencies underway today. The EAC will find it less attractive even more dealing with separatist movements within the new South, a possibility that is not far-fetched. Internal strife complicates executing any strategy against Khartoum especially military ones. It seems rather clear that the timing of border clashes reflect a desire by Khartoum to ensure that the institutions of the South particularly the army remain weak or distracted.

There are also important security concerns for EAC member countries particularly Uganda and Kenya.  Conflict in the South jeopardizes trade and investment worth nearly a billion dollars or more annually. For Uganda, farm-gate prices for beans, maize, vegetables, poultry and livestock will be hit hard if the problems in South Sudan spiral out of control. This will make things very difficult for the government in Kampala, especially sensitive about the status of border communities in northern, north-western and north eastern Uganda. These communities bore the brunt of the “northern Uganda war” in part an extension of the hostilities between North and South Sudan. However they have also been the most affected by a return of peace to South Sudan after the CPA was signed in 2005. Khartoum’s surrogate – the LRA decamped from the North to parts of DRC and the Central African Republic. They however remain a serious problem at the spine of the borders of Sudan, CAR and DRC. A resumption of hostilities opens up the Ugandan border for instability by the LRA or even hostile Southern Sudanese groups. As it is the Ugandan military is stretched having to worry about its border with DRC – where its petroleum program is a major asset-and deployments in Somalia amongst others. Far worse any instability in the northern border communities will re-open the wounds of the 20-year conflict there.

If Jonglei is a harbinger of these scenarios an investment, especially a regional strategy that is honest and sensitive to the challenges that South Sudan is facing will be necessary. But first the SPLA/M must show that it is capable of imposing its will on the worst tribal violence in the region in the last few years. It is always curious how thousands of people can die- without this being a much larger issue, internationally, say compared to the post-election violence in Kenya or the violent suppression of protestors in Uganda earlier in 2011.

Happy New Year

What do you think Okot p’Bitek  would make of the impact of the  internet, web and the information age on global culture?

As a person of his generation, as we are of ours, Okot p’Bitek would probably see through the fact that real knowledge is not contained in the technological gadgets, however fancy they may be, but in the meaningful interactions we have with each other.  That said, I couldn’t say he would embrace it wholeheartedly. I imagine he’d check it out as some of his age mates have tried to.

The internet is a long way away from the dubbed music cassette tapes we used to mix and sometimes copy from the radio as kids when he was alive.  He was interested in what we were doing, and sometimes he danced and sang with us when we played the music.

Its impact on global culture?

Depends on how one defines global culture.  If it’s the access that a few of us have spread over long distances, then not much has changed.  Too many of us believe that we’re connected more, and that we have more information at our fingertips through the internet.  If the connectedness doesn’t empower us to make any meaningful changes, how relevant is it?  I think that Okot p’Bitek would be able to see through that fallacy.

Do you think that his portraiture of the uniqueness of his own Acholi culture, as culture in transition in his works like” Song of  Lawino” , and “ Song of Ocol”.

These dealt  with the pace of change that perhaps is maturing today?

I think that one can read Lawino and Ocol purely as products of their own time within the couple of decades after independence, but Lawino and Ocol are alive and well in a differently unique Acholi.  The change that has happened in northern Uganda – war, post war, rehabilitation and fallout from that war in terms of widespread lack of education, poor habitation and nutrition says little about the resilience of the Acholi culture.  It survives and morphs and lives on.  The pace of change in Acholiland in general is different from the rest of the country, and I bet it’s been faster than in most places as people are eager to get over the trauma from war.  But the nodding disease, outbreaks of various forms of hepatitis and other challenges seem to suggest that there will continue to be a setback in recovery of the community as a whole, but culture, as I understand it, is an ever changing facet of our lives.  If we believe that it has matured, then we’re holding ourselves back and that’s not fair for the generations that come after us.

What lessons can we learn from his view about that change and its place in society?

I think that we should not rest upon our laurels, whatever we think we have achieved. There’s much work to be done, and much more to learn and achieve.  Even though, as Okot p’Bitek says some “have fallen into things,” the weight of those things, the comfort, the easiness of it all, can be hypnotizing and distracting from what we have to do for ourselves, our children and for generations after.

Exile was a huge part of Okot p’Bitek’s experience (and in some ways yours), what lessons do you think he brought into his work from his interaction with the world outside?

The quality of being from neither here nor there allows for a more objective and macroscopic lens on that part of the world that one comes from.  Mind, it also allows us, the people of the diaspora to be able to use that discomfiture that is a permanent “sense of being” to look critically at things people take for granted.  With regards to the lessons for Okot p’Bitek, I’d venture to say that living in exile, and having had the opportunity to return home, he was critical of things that did not work and was not afraid to so speak his mind about it.  He wasn’t afraid of anyone.  This remains the quality I love the best about my dad.

Is the experience of the diaspora a bridge or a defensive moat?

Neither.  I don’t think about being in the disapora in either of those terms at all.  Diaspora was the main theme of my Master’s thesis and I vehemently disagree with Salman Rushdie’s idea of falling between the homeland and the new home in the attempt to fit in both as the ultimate position of the diasporic person.  I think that diaspora is a psychological condition rather than a geographic disposition or description.  It only exists in the mind.  One can live for decades without ever returning to the homeland and yet retain a more closely authentic (to him or her) than the generations that come after.  One can also completely assimilate and ‘forget’ about that place over there.  In both examples, there’s no bridge if there’s no connection and no moat if there is no interest.

In your own experience how is a life outside Uganda shaping your own work as a writer? 

If there was ever an authentic diasporan, it’d be me.  I was born in exile to parents who talked about going home all the time, disabusing me of any notion that where we were, wherever we were, could be home.  I learned early to distinguish between home and house and abode.  In my writing, most of the time I feel un-tethered to any place, but I’m very emotionally connected to the country of my parent’s birth.  It’s how I mostly relate.  But I don’t write only about Uganda, and/or Ugandan issues.  I’ve learned to claim the whole planet as my home and to respect the idea of home as bigger than any one person, community or border.

Would you say Okot saw himself as a nationalist or a cosmopolitan artist with a more global view?

I really don’t like the binaries you have presented because they limit the scope of possibilities.  I think that Okot p’Bitek saw himself as a man who had much to accomplish and would not be chained or connected to only one thing. I remember reading about people who wanted to make him fit in one or another discipline.  My dad was a scholar, a soldier, an artist, friend and family man.  He was also a tortured man who had a hard time getting people to see what he was trying to present in his work.

Would you say  nationalism by artists and writers or that community of ideas is important today?

Of course it is.  How do you know who you are if it’s not by experiencing the work of the artists about you through storytelling and music and the visual arts, drama and poetry?  My dad tried to answer that question in his last collection of essays The Artist the Ruler, but he didn’t finish writing it.  Artists hold a mirror for us to see who we are and gauge the temperature of our efforts as we go about our lives.  They challenge us to think about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.  They also let us escape from the drudgery of our daily toils and return refreshed to keep going, or not.  I live in a country in which funding to the arts is continuously facing the axe, and yet, if one looks around, art is everywhere and this place would be nothing if the artists did not persevere.

If so, how would Okot p’Bitek have addressed some of the national issues we are facing now?

I think he’d have encouraged the musicians and writers and painters to continue to do their thing as he did while he was alive.  At The Centre, which I understand is now a church on Kampala Road, there were art exhibitions, live musical performances, international films, public debates, you name it, it was there.  At our house, wherever we lived, people came by and had lively debates about all kinds of things.  Many evenings I remember ended with loud singing late into the night.  That said, there are many creative artists coming out of Uganda today.  Some, as in other countries, challenge the status quo, others don’t.  The point of art, in its various forms, I think, is to get us to see the possibilities in ourselves.  I guess the thing is to get people to expect more and do more to change things for the better.

How important is an experience outside writing to contemporary writers? (Okot p’Bitek himself had a full life before devoting to writing)

Outside writing allows us to connect to other people who might present a different way of seeing things.  Chimamande Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun is stunning evidence that people can write of things and times outside of their personal experiences and yet retain the memory of such a harrowing time that shouldn’t be forgotten.  Her collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck illustrates how creativity should not be bound by geographical borders and traditional expectations of what African writers, or female writers for example, should write about. The late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish makes us all Palestinian exiles and yet is so specifically Palestinian that he died a hero in his country.  We have much to learn from them that can inform what we can consider contemporary writers.

In Okot p’Bitek’s generation (actually Ngugi W’Thiongo suggested this when  I interviewed him ) the background of colonialism, its evils and the idea of a new future inspired a flowering of writing and thinking ( in the 50’s and beyond). However since then despite wars, crisis and a wealth of experiences both good and bad, Ugandan writing has struggled. As a Ugandan writer, what do you think has changed? 

I think that many of us writers have ‘fallen into things’ and have become complacent and forgotten what it feels like to feel and to have compassion.  It is tempting to focus only on writing about beautiful things, but even that can be dangerous when people understand that indeed, their lives could be more beautiful.  That said, there have been some writers in Uganda who have dared to write what they think and gotten in trouble for that.  I’m thinking about Monica Arac de Nyeko and Olive Kobusingye, but I think that there other Ugandan writers as well.

What would you say you share the most with your late father in terms of his world view?

I think I share an appreciation of art and its importance in the world, but I get this from my mother as well.  My father loved reading as I do and encouraged us all to read for pleasure.

What is the one thing you would say the writing world, the intellectual society and his fans do not know about him?

I was very young when my father died, so my memory of him is of a daughter, not as a grown woman.  I regret not being able to talk to him now and exchange ideas of this and that.  I remember my dad waking me up one morning and taking me to the sunroom beside the living room in Kololo and standing there in silence.  It was not the first time my dad had woken me up to watch the sunrise with him.  On that morning, perhaps a couple of hours before the rest of the house was up, we stood there, facing the garden, the trees that fenced off the neighbour’s property and the orange glow of the sun through the branches in front of us.  There was smoke rising from the slow burn of the garbage heap on the north side of the garden creating a silhouette of the papaya tree that was laden with fruit.  My father asked me that morning:  “Should I call my next book Artist the Ruler or Smoke in the Papaya Tree?”  I looked at the papaya tree and thought for a few seconds.  I didn’t think it was remarkable that he was asking my opinion, but I had nothing to offer, so I capitulated.  “I don’t know.”  And then I didn’t think about it again until the book was published.  So here’s that morning that we had together, just the two of us.

He did like music. Who was his favorite musician?

Honestly, I don’t know who his favourite musician was.

My dad loved music and he loved singing. I know he had some favourites among traditional singers, but I don’t know who they are/were.  He really enjoyed the music of Afrigo and Jimmy Katumba and Peterson Mutebi when they used to come to The Centre.  He’d go up on stage and sing and dance with the performers and we kids were so embarrassed!

I do know that he did not think much about Bob Marley, who was the man I most wanted to emulate.  At one point, during the Primary 7 long vacation, I decided I was going to let my hair go wild so that I could grow dreads.  My father held his tongue for a few days and one day he unleashed his scorn for reggae and his fury that I should try to look like a Jamaican Rastafarian when I wasn’t.  I didn’t try to grown dreads again until I was well into my thirties.

Did he ever talk of other artists and writers that he admired?

I think that his contemporaries would know more about that, but we learned so many of what they used to call Negro Spirituals from our dad and his friends.  He loved Handel’s Messiah.  Writers he admired?  We had a house with a double-sided book shelf like those in a library.  There were books everywhere. I do recall however, that he thought that a red soft cover book by ( Francios) Rabelais was hilarious.  He kept laughing out loud and he’d share passages with my mother and once he tried to read it to me.  I didn’t get a thing that was funny from it but he had tears running down his face from reading that book.

Did he like other forms of art? 

My dad loved art in various forms and lived his love of art.  When he traveled, which was quite frequently, he’d return home with masks and basket weaves and odd things from far off places.  He’d buy coffee table books with lovely photography that we leafed through.  He had among his friends playwrights like the late Rose Mbowa as well as Wole Soyinka.  My dad would sit and watch the ‘plays’ and ‘musical concerts’ that my siblings and I would act out for him and his friends.  He danced and sang and wrote about dancing and singing.   He was the first African director of the National Theatre, wasn’t he?

Which writer today most reminds you of his style?

My dad did his thing and I think many writers do their own thing which makes it unfair to make such a comparison.  Okot p’Bitek started the song school and others have tried to emulate that style, some with better success than others.  In terms of a sparse style that tells much more than is apparent on the page I can only think of Canadian writer Nino Ricci and only specifically in his Testament, a retelling of the story of Jesus Christ.  In that book, you come away with the belief that you now know what the world was like at that time.  It is complete, rich and complex, like Okot p’Bitek’s portrait of Acholiland during the early days of Uganda as an independent country whether in Ocol and Lawino’s lamentations or in the novel, White Teeth.  You think you know, but the writer has suggested and you, the reader has completed the picture in your mind.  But then again, all good writers are commonly really good and really different.

Uganda turns 50 next year, a milestone for the generation of your father. How will you mark that passing?

Possibly by doing what I do best – by witnessing and thinking about what I’m looking at and feeling.  I’ll probably be amongst other Ugandans and well wishers who look forward to celebrating that milestone and think about what it is we’re celebrating.  At fifty, it’s good be able to look back and say this is what we’ve done and this is who we are.  It should be interesting.  I hope it’s a good celebration.  We’ll see.

How do you think he would have liked to?

He’d probably take a critical stance at what it was Uganda was celebrating, but at the same time, he’d take the opportunity to party it up as much as the next person.

What projects are you working on presently in your own own work?

I’m back at school.  I recently began a doctorate at the University of British Columbia in Interdisciplinary Studies and I’m really grateful to be back in academia.  I also teach English (literature and language) to adult foreign students and do some volunteer community work on the side.  I’m a wife, a mother, aunt, and a poet.  That along with and a book-length manuscript that is on the edge of completion keeps me out of trouble.

Are you a Ugandan/Canadian writer or just a Ugandan writer?

There you go with your binaries.  I’ve been referred to as an African writer and an African Canadian writer as well.  The thing is, my work is not really bound by geography although sometimes it is influenced by being Canadian, or Ugandan or African or north American or Acholi or Black or female.  When a Colombian listener comes to you in tears proclaiming that your work has described her experience, then these things don’t really matter, do they? I suppose it is helpful for people to be able to categorize and catalogue things and people, but that’s not my concern so much.

Does that description matter?

Right now, not really.  Someday, maybe it will.

Which of your works do you like the most and why?

Right now, there’s a strong voice of a woman who’s just watched a glass slip from her finger and break, like her marriage, she says.  I’ve tried to ignore that voice, but it’s louder than anything else in my head so I’ll probably get her out before I can continue with my other work.  I really like the last short fiction I wrote.  It’s called Hallelujah Michael and it came out whole, not feeling like my own creation and I made my whole family read it.  I guess I could say that I like the fiction I write best because I feel like a conduit and get to experience the story as it is formed, like the first witness.  Then I get to craft it.  It’s an awesome, humbling and holy feeling, as close to creation as I know how to get.

What is a typically good writing day for you?

It’s hard to think about a good writing day.  Good writing moments are times when I get the opportunity to sit and write and when I look up, hours have gone by and I’m elated and exhausted and most thrilled to be me.  Thanks for the chance to chat with you.  Good luck to you as well.

Juliane Okot Bitek – is based in Vancouver (@jobitek)