{"id":6121,"date":"2021-03-12T18:03:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T18:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/?p=6121"},"modified":"2021-03-12T17:48:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T17:48:22","slug":"karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right","title":{"rendered":"Karamoja is lesson on getting stories right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press<\/a> – Uganda<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>There is a little experiment to teach people about stereotypes and prejudices that I learnt from the brilliant Patience Atuhaire, of the BBC. You basically mention different places\/people and have participants write or say the first thing that comes to mind.<\/p>\n

I was in Karamoja last weekend, with the Mountain Slayers, climbing Mount Morungole. It is one of the really scenic marvels of nature in Karamoja, that the rest of the world \u2013 let alone Uganda \u2013 knows so little about.<\/p>\n

It is a grueling 12-hour bus drive, if you limit your stopovers to a bare minimum. But if you aren\u2019t in a hurry and know how to have a good time on the road, in only the way that the \u201cSlayers\u201d know how to, it could take up to 16 hours.<\/p>\n

To pass time, I decided to read a compilation of essays by the revered African literacy titan, Chinua Achebe, published under the title The Education of a British-Protected Child. It turned out to be a great book choice, because the day after we returned, my grandmother, Abwoli, asked: \u201cBut what exactly is it that you are looking for in that place?\u201d<\/p>\n

The question was posed in Rutooro, so its phrasing might have been different, but it wasn\u2019t without context, considering that this was my third visit to the region \u2013 all courtesy of the Mountain Slayers hiking community.<\/p>\n

Yet in answering it, I found that I needed to offer a lot more about the region to someone who had never been there. But this got me asking e how much I knew about the place and its people, and therefore, what right I had to frame them for my 88-year-old grandma. Never mind that I have been through Kaabong, Moroto, Napak, Nakapiripirit, and Amudat districts, which form the bulk of the region\u2019s administrative units.<\/p>\n

If you are a product of Uganda\u2019s and Africa\u2019s education system, then you are familiar with the narrative about John Speke, David Livingstone, Mungo Park or some Muzungu, having \u201cdiscovered\u201d some river, lake or mountain \u2013 and consequently gone on to name it after whatever and whoever they fancied. We usually rile about this framing in our curriculum, often joking that John Speke couldn\u2019t possibly have discovered the Source of the Nile in Jinja, yet Basoga \u2013 and others before them \u2013 had inhabited the place for eons.<\/p>\n

In one of the essays, published in 1998 \u2013 Africa\u2019s Tarnished Name \u2013 Achebe, uses a line I had never seen before. He says: \u2018The Portuguese captain, Diogo C\u00e3o, who discovered the river (Congo) for Europe in 1482\u2026\u201d. It\u2019s easy to miss the \u201cfor Europe\u201d in his sentence, yet with it in there, what and how we learn and believe about Africa changes drastically.<\/p>\n

So, sometimes when we talk about curriculum reforms, all we might have to do is make a few edits to phrasing and the narrative about who we might significantly change \u2013 for the good of all. Having read that essay, I was wiser in how I detailed Karamoja to my grandmother, but still felt a certain guilt \u2013 for how I had described Karamoja, the first time I visited the region, in 2017.<\/p>\n

Back then, writing about my experience of Mt Kadam and Kidepo National Game Park, for friends on Facebook, I had waxed lyrical about the place and its undulating mountain ranges, the captivating marvel of its sunrises and sunsets, and the kinds of clear starry skies that have lovers spellbound. Yet, typical of the kinds of institutionalized prejudice that many of us have about Karamoja, I had also called the land \u201cundiscovered\u201d.<\/p>\n

That time, Angelo Izama, always unassuming, had called me out on it, noting that we needed to be more intentional about perpetuating stereotypes, especially those that are based on ethnicity, race and religion \u2013 and in Karamoja\u2019s case, systemic exclusion reinforced by a narrative of \u201cotherness\u201d.<\/p>\n

When you see hordes of Karimojong children begging on streets of major towns and wonder, with irritation, \u2018Why them?\u2019. You might have visited and wondered how the region is so poor; or why you needed to use the bush because you couldn\u2019t find a toilet.<\/p>\n

Do you ever consider the decades of systemic repressive and exclusionist policies that countered their social norms, as political events unfolded around them? Do you wonder how deprivation, a redefinition of their boundaries by colonialists, the war in Sudan, dispossession of land by successive governments have shaped who they are, what we see today?<\/p>\n

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds. rukwengye86@gmail.com<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Uganda. There is a little experiment to teach people about stereotypes and prejudices that I learnt from the brilliant Patience Atuhaire, of the BBC. You basically mention different places\/people and have participants write or say the first thing that comes to mind. I was in Karamoja last weekend, with the Mountain Slayers, climbing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":6120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8],"tags":[233,240,234],"class_list":["post-6121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","category-homepage-english","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-uganda","tag-uganda"],"yoast_head":"\nKaramoja is lesson on getting stories right - Uganda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is a little experiment to teach people about stereotypes and prejudices that I learnt from the brilliant Patience ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Karamoja is lesson on getting stories right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is a little experiment to teach people about stereotypes and prejudices that I learnt from the brilliant Patience ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Uganda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-03-12T18:03:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2021\/03\/img-604ba94a0b6c1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Karamoja is lesson on getting stories right\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-03-12T18:03:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right\"},\"wordCount\":764,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2021\/03\/img-604ba94a0b6c1.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Uganda\",\"uganda\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"files\",\"homepage-english\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/karamoja-is-lesson-on-getting-stories-right\",\"name\":\"Karamoja is lesson on getting stories right - 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