always time

i rode back and forth between entebbe and kampala today. nakasero market was mild and familiar. the glorious scent of burning meat blended with the stagnant odor of rotting produce.
fresh pineapples.
i learned today that there are things that are days of the week. i had forgotten that thing when i was flying aimlessly around the world for a couple of days. places aren't really open on sunday in christiany places like uganda.

children smile and say 'hello mzungu how are you?'

Anthony helped us find the bus to Moroto, not that we will be using it (from Kampala anyhow). We met back up with him some time later.

'There is so much inflation. The people, they are fearing to put their money in the banks, so they sleep with it in their homes. They are fearing that if they put it in the banks, they will be asked many questions: Where did you get this? for what? where did that person get it? They are fearing, and it is very hard to make a good living. You get one chance, and you have to take it. I have had three dreams: to be a farmer, to be an artist, and to be a pilot. I am already doing some farming now, and I will maybe still be a pilot. But i do not think that i will be able to pay for the training to be a pilot.'

When he says 'pilot', it sounds like 'pirate'.

The little girl on the taxi back to Entebbe says 'mommy! mommy! mzungu!'

She smiles and giggles the rest of the time that they share the taxi with us. She has a high-five for stephen when she leaves.

Oklahoma nights are wild nights.

this series is a potentially embarrassing collection of me partying hard in oklahoma. i know that they say that what happens in oklahoma stays in oklahoma, but i'm afraid that the time has come to incriminate myself.


This is Colin. He is my friend and he is very happy in all of these pictures.


Things got exciting. We worked on a very small puzzle.


Colin was lovin life and rockin hard.


Colin had a canker sore. He wanted you to see it just in the moment that i put together my best composition of the night. It was a very important canker sore.


It started to snow. There are about 8 inches of snow on my side of Boulder right now, and i hear there there are upwards of 14 inches elsewhere. Yay playing outside in an hour or two.


And so concludes an evening of wild partying with Colin Stringer.

...

And so begins a short review of a book: Living with Bad Surroundings by Sverker Finnström (2008). i'm less concerned with being critical than with commenting on what i found to be interesting.

i thought it was a worthwhile book to read.

In Living with Bad Surroundings, Finnström provides an ethnography of Acholi cosmology in a temporal and local state of piny marac, or "bad surroundings", particularly with regard to the perpetual conflict between the Ugandan state and the Lord's Resistance Army/Movement (hereafter LRA/M). Some key questions addressed by the book are: What are the historical foundations of the current conflict? What are the aims of the LRA/M? Why are many Acholi sympathetic to--although not necessarily supportive of--the LRA/M? What outcomes do Acholi generally hope for from the conflict? How do Acholi attempt to maintain a sense of control when their bodies are the battlefield on which the dirty war between the Ugandan state and the LRA/M are being fought?

Finnström spends much of the book deconstructing the official discourse. He argues that it is flatly incorrect to attribute the current instability to violence inherent to Acholi culture. In fact, Finnström notes observations such as the following from Samuel W. Baker, early British explorer: "I believe that if it were possible to convert the greater portion of African savages into disciplined soldiers, it would be the most rapid stride toward their future civilization."

Further, Finnström objects first to the notion that the state of the Acholi is fundamentally a humanitarian concern brought about by a rogue group of apolitical terrorists, and second to the notion that when said group of terrorists is defeated, Acholi will be able to lead peaceful lives in their homeland without systemic change. While the official discourse has been quick to portray the LRA/M as merely an apolitical terrorist movement, Finnström--without in any way defending or justifying the violent methods used by the LRA/M--seeks to present the LRA/M as an inherently political movement. Finnström's argument is that even if the LRA/M is employing horrible tactics, even if LRA/M victory clearly would not bring about an improvement in circumstances for the Acholi, and even if the LRA/M per se does not have the support of the Acholi people, the fact that the stated political objectives of the LRA/M resonate with the Acholi people suggests that we should take the complaints of the LRA/M seriously as a relevant political agenda. By embracing a rhetoric of aimless terrorism, the state has further radicalized the LRA/M: with no possibility of political outlets for their complaints to be heard, terror becomes the only option obvious to them: "Perhaps such a self-conversion to terrorism can be interpreted as an effort to recover political agency, otherwise denied in the official discourse" (Finnström 2008:128).

Again: Finnström is very clear that he is not in anyway justifying the LRA/M's violence. Rather, Finnström is arguing that we don't stand to gain much by casting the LRA/M as the only villains in the conflict.

Finnström notes countless acts or omissions of the Ugandan state that have been perceived by the Acholi as offenses or crimes. Of note in recent times, the structure of the IDP camps (and Finnström hates the term 'IDP', which he views as dehumanizing) is such that the 'protected' civilians--who were forcibly resettled by the Ugandan army in many districts, including Gulu district--are settled in a ring around the army that is presumed to be their defender. It is a curious stance from which to defend the civilians.

Finnström doesn't offer a forceful argument for how the war should be ended, but he does note that because of the systemic violence against the Ugandan north, the long-time marginalization of the Ugandan north in Ugandan politics, and the indiscretions of agents of the Ugandan state in the Ugandan north, the defeat of the LRA/M would not be likely to increase stability in Acholiland. Systemic changes are needed more urgently than military victories.

i didn't comment much on potential offenses by representatives of the Ugandan state, or the common Acholi view that humanitarian interventions are simply perpetuating the conflict, but those two ideas were driving points in the book, and worth investigating further if this interests you.