Youssou n’Dour, one of the most popular Senegalese alive, is now the Culture minister after his failed attempt to run for presidency early this year. Before the film Toure told the audience, “with this film as a small African boy I feel I am making my mark of history.”

Moussa Toure, Film director and some of the cast at Cannes2012

La Pirogue (Shallow canoe used for fishing) in French mostly features Senegalese model, Comedian and actor Souleymane Seye Ndiaye who plays the character Baye Laye who leads a group of 30 illegal immigrants on a deadly journey across the Atlantic to Canary Islands.

There aren’t many things that can beat wrestling in popularity in Senegal. The Senegalese wrestling is well developed and a game handed down from generations and Toure could find no other event to welcome his viewers to Senegal than a wrestling game. At the game is where many the men are planning the journey to their dreamland – Europe where they expect success.

Before the journey begins few of the soon-to-be migrants have thought of the journey itself, the emphasis is on what they will become. Baye will leave behind a wife and a son who badly wants his father to buy him a Barcelona jersey.

Baye is hesitant to go but his young notorious brother Abbou is not. Abbou has dreams of being a musician once he gets to Paris and he even has a latest iPhone. Abbou says he is a son of a fisherman and sees no reason to hesitate to take this journey. There are a few middlemen who get money from the men destined to Atlantic.

I had a chance to take a photo with Ndiaye, Senegales model, comedia and actor who’s the lead character in La Pirogue.

Read more 

So far I have written on the films from the African continent that feature in this year’s official selection and yesterday i had a brief interview with the MD of Nigeria Film Corporation talking about Nollywood.

Today I did take time to learn about Brazilian cinema. For more on the project you can read my articles and those of other bloggers in French and English on Cannesvupar  . Besides work,  I spend time trying get to say my Malagasy roomate’s name Lalatiana Rahariniaina!! Check out her blog .

Some photos

At the Brazil stand

Back at CFI pavillion

Ingrid has been at the forefront of various pressure groups in Uganda for the last 5 years. She was one of the leaders of the Activists for Change (A4C), a pressure group that led the famous Walk to Work protests that took place in many parts of Uganda for the greater part of 2011 as the Arab spring was going on.

The group has been banned because in our country where we still use very colonial laws to the advantage of a dictatorial regime, the attorney general has powers to declare a group illegal even without evidence of  the need to ban them. This law threatens even a blogger or writers who mention A4C as government could claim that they are  promoting an illegal group  with intention to ‘incite violence’. Already two journalists have been summoned by the police over an interview had with the head of the group. Human rights groups have warned on the dangers of the government-increased crackdown on freedom of speech, expression and assembly in Uganda.

Once the group A4C was banned, some of its leaders rebranded it into For God and my Country (4GC), taking after the country motto. It was after the launch of the new group that Uganda police brutality came back to our living rooms.

This time a male police offer publically groping Ingrid as another pulls her leg out of the car. The police officer didn’t grope her once, he did it repeatedly and in the video we hear Ingrid asking why the police officer was doing that. One other police officer warns his colleague but does nothing to stop this.

Storyful covered the initial reactions of Ugandans on twitter. On Saturday evening, in a move to do damage control Uganda police sent a tweet;

They didn’t even have the humility to describe the incident they were talking about. They wouldn’t even come close to mentioning this public sexual assault. Then later on the TVs came a junior police spokesperson to claim that the officer who groped Ingrid was a woman; as if a woman groping a woman is a lesser evil!

The  women’s movement in Uganda together with human rights activists wouldn’t let this pass. To be honest they have been quiet in the past regarding rights of women in the political sphere. Today over 15 women activist wearing only their bras staged a protest outside the Central Police station to call for the attention of the Inspector General of Police who has so far been quiet on the matter.

Photo via Urban Legend Kampala

As expected they were arrested but their message was loud and clear! “We respect our bodies and we expect to be respected.”

In a country where investigations into sexual violence usually don’t easily go through, when you have a person in uniform sexually assaulting a woman the public outcry can only be louder across political divides . Respect is earned and if the police are to get respect of Ugandans they better bring such officers to face the justice system! Resorting to internal disciplinary methods when it comes such sexual crimes will only condone such acts and Ugandan public will not be satisfied with that.

As one human rights activist Nicholas Opiyo  posted on his facebook said:

 The loud silence of senior police authority (forget the casual speaking ad insensitive spokespersons) in the face of the brutal affront at the dignity of women lends credence to the suspicion of their tacit approval or condonation of such acts. The same happened to Anne Mugisha at Jinja Road Police Station on April 11, 2011, Nabilah Naggayi Ssempala and many other women. Enough to this brutality. Kale Kayeihura is a shame to this country

Many Ugandans through Facebook and Twitter wondered , if the police can do that to a prominent politician publicly, who knows what takes place when women are taken into custody? Ingrid is a woman first and a politician later; when law enforcers choose to use sexually humiliating tactics to curtail women’s freedom to demonstrate and question their government, all of us are not safe. When a country has armed forces with a history of sexual violence, this act of public groping of a woman politician can only worry us and hope we are not going backwards in the fight against sexual and gender based violence.

In the past we have seen shootings of civilians in protests and no officer is brought to book. In cases when the police are investigating themselves we can only wait to see what they come up with.

In 2008, the Uganda police arrested Kampala Woman Parliamentarian Nabilah Sempala in a manner that was meant to humiliate her and no one was held accountable. The country watched images of police officers lifting up skirts of a woman Member of Parliament. There was a little noise and we didn’t see much accountability.

In 2010 I had interview with Ingrid Turinawe who was at time leading a group of women calling for peaceful elections and accountable electoral commission. Ingrid and some women who were part of the group had reported the indecent way the police arrested them and again no much followup was seen.

If women have to worry about being undressed, groped and many worse things in their attempt to participate in politics then Uganda cannot claim to protect the rights of women.

Through their work i have learnt about issues affecting women in Afghanistan. I hope to one day watch This is my City too.

Follow them on Facebook.

Easter is about freedom and someone recently asked “so Rosebell, what’s your favourite bible character?”   David! To me he represents human flaws, freedom and victory. And in the end I love the fact that in the end despite all flaws God calls him “Man after my own heart”.

So to all friends, real friends, family and everyone who values freedom, may you be free!

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32

“The video is ten years too late.  Watching it, one imagines that nobody was ever involved in this struggle before they started filming.  Back in 2003, we devised a brilliant strategy with highly competent Ugandan officials on how to eliminate the LRA by depriving them of rear-bases in southern Sudan.  Within two years, the war in Uganda was over and Joseph Kony’s force of several thousand was reduced to a few hundred fugitives in the Congo.

The failure to capture him thus far has nothing to do with lack of funds. It is a complex intelligence operation against a cunning and ruthless adversary who knows how to survive in the jungle.  The millions in funds gathered so far are needed for rehabilitation of former child soldiers and their communities, not to pay overhead for NGOs in America.  The video may be useful for public education since the world is woefully ignorant about Africa.  But its content is at best uninformed and at worst deceptive.  Exploiting other people’s suffering for self-promotion is unethical.

Had the Ugandan communities directly affected been consulted, the video would have had a very different focus, and the millions of dollars in funds too would have reached those that need it most.”

12 year old Nancy Lamwaka one the thousands of victims of LRA war but now tormented by a new disease.

Over the last few days I have received thousands of emails in response to the video I put out in response to KONY2012. Most of the emails were from grateful people who had learnt something from my video.  I am unable to read all the responses and reply you all at this time but your efforts are very much appreciated.

Most responses indicated they want to support the Ugandan child and be sure that the help goes to the right cause.

The cause

More than 3000 children in northern Uganda are currently battling a mysterious disease that has come to be known as nodding disease. Please read more from Wikipedia about Nodding Disease. There are so far 170 reported deaths.

In brief,  nodding disease is a mentally and physically disabling disease that only affects children between the ages of 5 and 15. Victims get seizures on the smell of food or when they get cold. Read more from previous blog

The World Health Organisation and Centre for Disease Control (CDC) have been working on research to establish the cause and how the disease is transmitted with no success so far.

Why we need to act fast:

With the healthcare system in northern Uganda wrecked by war and in a country where the right to healthcare is not guaranteed, most children suffering from this disease have been going through unbearable suffering. Parents are forced to painfully tie their children to trees.

I visited the Mulago National referral Hospital last week as part of women’s group to give a small hand to the caretakers of 25 children who were brought from northern Uganda to Kampala.

Women activists in Uganda this week tied themselves to trees to protest government slow response and the continued psychological torture mothers in northern Uganda are going through despite end of the war. The government has not yet released the 7 billion shillings needed to support the victims and families.

How to act:

Northern Uganda has great leaders who have been campaigning to get more funds and medical attention to the victims. Beatrice Anywar, the Woman Member of Parliament for Kitgum is one of the finest.

She’s not just a politician; the whole of Uganda knows her activism on corruption and environmental issues. Last year,  the US Mission in Uganda gave her the Woman of Courage Award for her work.

Anywar has been on radios and TVs calling for donations to help victims. I spoke to her this morning via phone from Kitgum in northern Uganda where she is meeting grassroots leaders, community health teams to look for ways to deal with those suffering from the disease.

More than 3000 children cannot go to school or access the available medical help to ease their suffering. If you want to donate to a cause and help out in reconstructing northern Uganda and bringing communities back to their feet please support Anywar and others battling nodding disease.

Contact MP Beatrice Anywar for more:

 Phone: +256 772 99 87 24

Email: anywarb@yahoo.co.uk

Visit her on Facebook and leave her a message:  Beatrice Atim

More images from the north on Echwalu’s Blog and a story of a tormented girl victim of nodding disease. Hashtag #NoddingDisease to raise awareness.

 I can’t bring myself to watch the video. I found all of their previous efforts to be emotionally manipulative, and all the things I try as a journalist not to be. After the peace talks in 2008, they put out another video, and I saw the footage used in these videos blending archival footage with LRA and SPLA and videos of them goofing off. It was the most irresponsible act of image-making that I’d seen in a long time. They conflated the SPLA with the LRA. The SPLA is a government army, holding weapons given by the government, and yet they did not create any division between them and LRA. That’s terrible.

And for that Ms Gordon got a response from filmmaker defending Invisible Children with the worst of all narrative of three boys trying to save Africans instead of playing Angry Birds.

I also spoke to Victor Ochen who has lived in this war and now is a director of African Youth Initiative Network, which is working in northern Uganda to rehabilitate the community. The organization has different approaches that cover trauma and war related conditions that need surgery. These are the kind of good willed humble people that should be getting the much needed help to bring back generations in northern Uganda to their feet.

It’s good piece of video put together and they had good intentions. We agree on one thing we need to end the atrocities.  But Invisible Children are focusing more on an American solution to an African conflict that the holistic approach which should include regional governments and people who are very key to make this a success. The video also looks at LRA from a bush perspective but there’s a political perspective and in this campaign we are far from stopping more harm on the victims. Campaigning on killing one man and that’s the end is not enough. To me even a bullet isn’t good enough for Kony, killing him alone will not be enough. There are many people who are caught up in this war.  Every war has its own victims. We should be looking at ways to support victims not just in Uganda but all other countries affected. As far as I know Invisible Children in invisible on the ground and in communities.  They have good access to international media but they have no connection with the community they claim to represent.

Teddy Ruge is Ugandan and a lead social media strategist for the Connect4Climate campaign at the World Bank. He is co-founder of Project Diaspora, an online platform for mobilizing members of Africa Diaspora to engage in the continent’s development. In January he received a Champion of Change award from the White House for his community development work in East Africa. This is what he said on the Kony2012 video.

 It is a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes. We, Africans, are sandwiched between our historically factual imperfections and well-intentioned, road-to-hell-building-do-gooders. It is a suffocating state of existence. To be properly heard, we must ride the coattails of self-righteous idiocy train. Even then, we have to fight for our voices to be respected

Another Ugandan Citizen journalist Maureen Agena grew up in Northern Uganda, Lango sub region and studied at St. Mary’s College Aboke, a school from which Joseph Kony’s rebels abducted 139 girls in ordinary level. She blogs at Dignity in Poverty wrote: I am a visible child from Northern Uganda. Who are the “Invisible Children”?

 I hardly doubt that the people of Northern, Eastern and West Nile regions in Uganda, the most affected by this war have any idea that a video talking about their plight has gone viral on the internet. It’s 2012 and the people of Northern and eastern Uganda are in the post conflict era and re-settling. Why doesn’t the video at least give a brief  highlight of this current situation rather than threaten the entire globe with out-dated information? Does “Invisible Children” have an idea what impression of Uganda has been portrayed to a world that still believes Idi Amin is alive and still terrorising us? What will happen to our tourism sector?

A Uganda journalist writes for Insight on Conflict.

Is it about the dollars or a false belief that unless Americans know about it, no solution comes our way? Could it be that we are leaving the real change agents in oblivion as we search for solutions elsewhere? For example, the Juba Peace Talks 2006-2008, which restored stability and paved way for the end to abductions in northern Uganda, was not an American invention. It was local civil society and peace actors like the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiatives (ARLPI) who pushed for a negotiated solution. In fact the moment America got involved, we witnessed “Operation Lightening Thunder”- a military operation with disastrous effects as the LRA eluded air strikes, and scattered into DR Congo and the Central African Republic where they continue to commit atrocities in retaliation.

 

This is the video i recorded late in the night. It’s longer than i would have wanted but i just wanted to put my views out there on a conflict I have covered as a journalist and a people I have worked among as a communications officer at Isis-WICCE. I don’t in any way think I represent views of Uganda like some comments i have seen. This is me talking about the danger of portraying people with one single story and using old footage to cause hysteria when it could have been possible to get to DRC and other affected countries get a fresh perspective and also include other actors.

In brief nodding disease is a mentally and physically disabling disease that only affects young children mostly between the ages of 5 and 15. It is currently in Uganda South Sudan and Tanzania. Victims get siezures on the smell of food or getting cold and the cause is unknown and so is the cure.

About six years down the road, on Monday I was standing together with women from Uganda Women Network, FIDA, Isis-WICCE and the activist Jackie Mwesige who has been pushing the women movement to do something about this.  The women had come with blanks and some items for both the child and their caretakers to hand them over. The hospital administration had been informed in time.

I arrived at about 1:15pm and I was quite surprised to see police deployed at the unit. At first I thought we were in a wrong ward, may be a ward where a wanted person was being kept. We were only here to show our support to 25 nodding disease victims who were transported to Mulago on March 02 after local leaders realized they were not getting much hearing from the central government in Kampala.

Police guarding the ward at Mulago.

All the children are from Kitgum and they part of 3000 children currently suffering from this unknown disease. The nodding disease was given prominence in Ugandan leading papers late last year and since then there has been major coverage even in international media. It took us two hours to negotiate our entry into the ward. Kitgum woman Member of Parliament Beatrice Anywar who has been at the top of calling for well-wishers to support families was present.

After talks we were allowed to hand over the items to families but entering the ward we had police warnings not to take any notes, interview victims or take any photos. If you had just landed in Uganda you would be excused to think that the police is trying to protect minors from being exploited. But this is the same police that arrested these children and their caretakers on their way to seek proper medical care at Mulago hospital.

Anyone who has worked out in northern Uganda knows well how the healthcare system just like other systems was wrecked by the more than two-decade LRA war. Access to proper medication for even simpler illness is a struggle so one can imagine if you have a child with a disease that nobody in the world knows much about.

In the ward, the room is no different from our other Mulago run down wards with a few little beds that even a 7 year old can’t fit in and some mattresses. I met Morris Oyoo who’s organizing the families and records all the help given. He told me he worked at Kitgum hospital as community health person in 2002. It was the first time he saw a child with nodding disease. He even points to a boy who’s about 14 years as being one of the first victims he saw.

Some of the children suffering from Nodding Disease. This is the only photo i managed to get inside the ward.

Some children were on drips, others were playing about. Here they will get no cure but at least in Mulago the world can finally see their faces and their relatives can have a voice. Their story can be seen everyday on TV instead of daily updates on how much has been stolen from which government accounts. In Mulago they also get better attention than in Kitgum.

In our 30 minutes stay in the ward, Oyoo asks questions that grip your heart. “Is it a crime for those of us from northern Uganda to seek medical attention at Mulago? Is it a crime for us to bring our children to a national hospital?”

His statement reminds me of a discussion with a woman activist who recently asked me, what would government response be like if nodding disease was in Kiruhura? She was damn convinced it would have been difference. I was a bit skeptical, still a bit but Oyoo’s sentiment while referring to their arrest on their way to Kampala is well understood.  You would expect better handling of a people who have suffered decades of war and marginalization from the current government. You would expect the government to act better in the face of failure (to respond early to help victims and families).

Just today as I put this down, Uganda’s minister of health announced they are to train 70 health workers who will be deployed in the affected districts of Lamwo, Kitgum and Pader by March 09 to treat the nodding disease patients.

She also indicated that that the nodding disease victims who are now at Mulago would be discharged this week. It wasn’t clear why they would be discharged since the disease has no treatment.  Months after the severity of the disease was brought to national scene, we are still talking about “Ministry of Finance will release the shs 7 billion to open up treatment centers.” We don’t see timelines at all in these statements apart from the discharging victims from Mulago off from the national radar.

One of the women whose at Mulago looking after her child with nodding disease. She had just received a blanket.

The 25 children that were brought to Kampala might be returned but we have learnt a lot. Some women’s groups plan to tie themselves to trees at the NGO Forum as a symbol of the indignity women have had to face as they tie their nodding children to trees in Northern Uganda. This is scheduled to take place tomorrow March 07. We wait to see more awareness on the situation and push for government to reduce this human suffering and loss of dignity.

View more images from the field by on Edward Ecwhalu’s Blog