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Senegal’s president has offered free land and “repatriation” to people affected by the earthquake in Haiti. President Abdoulaye Wade said Haitians were sons and daughters of Africa since Haiti was founded by slaves, including some thought to be from Senegal.

Since Tuesday’s earthquake that hit Haiti to the ground, aid efforts have been flowing into the country but not many have been helped yet due to communication and transportation difficulties.

Countries like the US, EU countries have moved swiftly to offer help. For the past two days I have been wondering what can African countries do for Haiti people. Most of them cannot have that available money and resources to extend a hand. But I was really moved to see an offer from Wade which no other country at the aid forefront would ever grant-resettlement.

Haiti before the earthquake  had also experienced floods which left the country not even limping. Most Haitians lived under poor conditions. While the current aid efforts are on the food, shelter and rebuilding, it will take years before the country can ever build risk –reduction structures.

So is the Wade’s offer worth looking at and even supporting?  Even when there are still questions regarding what the Senegalese people think of the offer and whether the Haitians could be accepted by the locals, I find it worth a discussion.

Watching those pictures of heartbreaking scenes of  Haiti people trying to pull others  out of the rubble made me think this could happen back home. The pictures of helplessness of this black nation reminded of so many other helpless people I have seen back home. This beats my own helplessness from time to time.

But am still interested in what you think of Senegal’s proposal and what can Africa do for Haiti.

Many of you in UG and even those who visit Kampala for the first time wonder why would some people come up with huge banners “ENLARGE YOUR BUMS.” Many ask, why are Ugandans obsessed with bums and hips?

Many look and laugh others follow the advice and as far as I know the trick has worked and in other cases backfired. If you’re interested in getting more information please call that number.

And this is why you might consider the call.

A team of scientists at Oxford in UK have found that carrying extra weight on your hips, bum and thighs is good for your health, protecting against heart and metabolic problems. Hip fat mops up harmful fatty acids and contains an anti-inflammatory agent that stops arteries clogging.

The researchers said having too little fat around the hips can lead to serious metabolic problems, as occurs in Cushing’s syndrome.

Now you know why the song Hips don’t lie was played at the World Cup in Germany and for those who were not yet convinced this is another piece of information.

“I did unimaginable things, dancing around a graveyard at night, drinking all sorts of herbs but nothing helped, so maybe that’s what God wants me to be – without children. What hurts most is the people close to you; your immediate family talk about you like you’re not worth anything without children.”

Those were words of a woman I met late 2008. I was researching on a story that The Independent published about how the infertility burden in Uganda is carried by women. I went back to the find this story today after I read two news reports about women faking pregnancy and ending up in court. Two cases in less than a week. A woman from Mpigi district was arrested for faking pregnancy and taking a dead child to her husband while another identified as Namatovu survived being lynched by a mob after she claimed to have given birth to twins but returned home with a pair of dolls.

All the women claimed to have given birth at Mulago hospital but there have been no such records at the hospital and investigations found that in both accounts were just a falsification. Namatovu was fined sh300,000 (about 150 $) or 12 months imprisonment and as expected this woman from the village would not afford such a fine so she is in jail. In both cases women had failed to conceive after several years in marriage. While in the media we have these stories, police swinging into action and courts following, I didn’t find a proper context given to these women’s story. Why would a person in their proper mind take dolls for a funeral or in the latest case go probably dig up a grave to show that you delivered a child?

That’s why I went back to the infertility story. Some limited research has showed that over 14% of Uganda’s men are infertile, meaning they cannot impregnate their partners. And 70% of the infertility in Uganda is preventable. But in all these cases we can be sure it’s women being taken to witch doctors and being insulted that they cannot have children. The pressure to have a child is immense that women have been physically and sexually abused by all sorts of people in their hunt for a pregnancy. With Uganda having few numbers of gynaecologists few Ugandans can afford the private clinics whose prices can go above 200 $. Women and men with curable fertility problems are never brought to hospitals for there’s no one who has told them that there’s even such a chance.

Without a child for a few years the pressure from family to have a second wife mounts. Sometimes women are driven out of their homes and left with nothing. This is well deep rooted that most cultures would allow a man to be given back his bride price if a woman would not give him a child never mind that in most cases it was the men with the problem. It is poverty to think that the effects of this pressure will only be faced by these women alone. Now women are driven crazy to the extent of faking pregnancy and dead children for it seems society is more empathetic that u tried even when your child is dead. In the end we jump to cover their stories of fake pregnancies and their trials forgetting what brings us to these points.

This is not to the women didn’t do any wrong. But just like the mob, we (media) are shocked and outraged by their actions and we don’t ask what drove them to this. Reading the stories of these two women should tell you that there are so many who have done this before successfully and many will continue to look for a way to beat the societal system, unfortunately this is no solution. I think also the Ugandan justice system should rethink prosecution of such cases.

This is information i have yet to confirm but a friend has told me that Uganda has stopped flights of Air Uganda to many parts of east Africa because of a threat from Al-shabab.

I am yet to get details but Air Uganda is not a national carrier. It is not yet known how real the plans of Al-shabab were because there has always been a threat since Uganda deployed in Somalia a peace keeping force on the request of IGAD in 2007.

Uganda in flights have not experienced a threat since the famous Entebbe incident in Iddi Amin’s years when an Air France plane from Tel Aviv was hijacked and people were taken hostage by two Palestinian miltants and two Germans in June 1976.

Uganda has also not suffered a terror attack like its neighbours Kenya and Tanzania where in 1998 US embassies were blown leaving hundreds dead.

Since the deployment in Somalia, Uganda has lost not more than 20 soldiers but the deadliest attack came September last year in the AU force compound.

Somali insurgents detonated two suicide car bombs, at African Union (AU) peacekeeping headquarter in Mogadishu, killing nine soldiers including the deputy force Commander from Burundi Maj. Gen. Juvenile Niyoyunguriza.

It’s like I have been in exile this December. Iwas finishing my first semester at school and this meant i had to finish all the piled up assignments so i didnot get much time to write. I hope to write more in the new year, especially after a first x-mas spend on the wintery side of the world.

Thanks for all your participation, i have learnt from most of your comments and some have challenged my own beliefs and principles making grow.

I hope we continue to have this discussion in coming year. Blessings in 2010.

New human rights watch report on election violence in Uganda and how it should be prevented is out. I will update this post after a though reading but for now I have reservations.

It’s good to have another report to refer to in future but I don’t see the government cutting the hands that feed it. The weaknesses in the electoral system that will allow them to get a little over 50 percent can’t be dealt with.

And even if they do that, there other ways to deal with votes the Kenyan model.

I am reading yet another new report by UN experts on Congo on the African Confidential website and it looks like every year that passes the situation slips away from the world to the hands of criminals I mean international criminals all over Africa and Europe. China and some Asian countries like Thailand are new entrant to this scramble for Congo’s resources and lives that began hundreds of years ago.

The report has also put Uganda’s continued role in the conflict and also other European networks with links to the Catholic Church. Two Spanish ‘charities’ with church links are implicated but as I read the report, apart from shaking my head like a lizard, I wondered who cares? Not even we Ugandans know the exploitation of our own resources and where the money goes so how can we even put up a little meaningful fight for the Congolese people.

Just like the past UN reports, nothing has changed. The lootocracy continues and so do the killings and rapes. I still can’t hope to find the answers in the current unjust international system just like I can’t stop Ugandan army top shots from fuelling the conflict. It seems for now we stuck in this not-so-effective name and shame game. We can only spell out a few names we know of those whose hands and bank accounts are stained with the blood of innocent Congolese children, women and men.

The world cup trophy is still on tour, i saw it in Brazil in April  but it can when to Uganda i wasn’t there. Just last week the papers had a picture of the president holding the cup but thats not my interest. K’naan, a Somali- Canadian singer and poet has the Coca Cola world cup song out

He’s life story is told in some of his songs but i love this gimme freedom part  for the very first World Cup on the African soil.

The song is a remix from his earlier song Waving flag which has got very strong lyrics for most of us in Africa below is part of the lyrics that have a great meaning for me :

Born to a throne, stronger than Rome
but Violent prone, poor people zone,
But it’s my home, all I have known,
Where I got grown, streets we would roam.
But out of the darkness, I came the farthest,
Among the hardest survival.
Learn from these streets, it can be bleak,
Except no defeat, surrender retreat

So many wars, settling scores,
Bringing us promises, leaving us poor,
I heard them say, love is the way,
Love is the answer, that’s what they say,
But look how they treat us, Make us believers,
We fight their battles, then they deceive us,
Try to control us, they couldn’t hold us,
Cause we just move forward like Buffalo Soldiers.

But we struggling, fighting to eat,
And we wondering, when we’ll be free
So we patiently wait, for that faithful day,
It’s not far away, but for now we say,

[Chorus]
When I get older, I will be stronger,
They’ll call me freedom, just like a Waving Flag,
And then it goes back, and then it goes back,
And then it goes back

That’s the power of music and a friend of mine responded after listening:

“I am glad that for the first time the world will listen to someone Somali and that new face we haven’t seen.  All we have been hearing is about the bombs ”

As  K’naan takes that stage around on the world cup tour  I say Coca Cola made the right pick. He will remind us that Somalia is about people like him and that we should “accept no defeat,  surrender, retreat.”