Community Development in Uganda

One of the main reasons I was in Uganda was to co-lead a trip with my friend Keneth to his grandmother’s village. In the process, I also had the opportunity to support my friend Charles who is doing similar work.

Background
I met Keneth and Charles in Uganda last summer during my internship in Kampala at a microfinance finance company. About four years ago, Keneth went to his grandmother’s village, saw kids sleeping without mattresses, sold just about everything he owned (which as the time was eight ducks), bought toothbrushes, and went around teaching kids in the village about dental hygiene. Since then, he has formed a community organization to arrange sponsorships for children in the village. The sponsorships provide school fees, uniforms, shoes, books, pencils, and mattresses to the kids. Keneth also organizes soccer tournaments that attract hundreds of kids from around the community and teaches them about HIV/AIDs during halftime. The organization is called “Hope for African Children’s Ministry.” (http://hfacm.blogspot.com/) Charles’ does similar work because he was influenced by his father, who started providing school fees for one child in his village in 1998. Five years ago, at the time of his father’s death, his father was responsible for helping over forty children. Charles is committed to keeping the spirit of his father alive by continuing to help the children.


Yale students at Masaka


The Trip
Last weekend Keneth and I co-lead a trip of 10 Yale students, who were living in Uganda for the summer, and 3 Ugandans to see the children in his grandmother’s village. Afterwards, I spent an additional day with Charles in his village. During the first part of the trip, we had the opportunity to visit Hope for African Children’s Ministries Office, walk to the community water well, enter children’s home, attend the Sunday church service, and play soccer with the kids. The trip was incredible. I was so overwhelmed by the hospitality. I received three chickens as gifts, which literally was the source of some family’s livelihood. Here I was worried about getting my tennis shoes dirty and people were giving me an animal that provided their daily source of income. And families just kept giving – preparing us meals and giving us fruit, baskets, mats, sugar cane.

It’s difficult. I don’t know how to talk about my trip without sounding trite or playing into Save the Children advertisements that I see as I’m watching late TV – the ones with kids who have descended bellies and flies crawling on their eyes balls as they sit on garbage somewhere in Africa (they never tell you exactly where). And of course, while I was in the village I saw need. But for me, motivation doesn’t come from a guilt trip, but from the relationships I built with the children there and the people who were helping in the village. So to prevent myself from falling into platitudes, I’m going to tell you two stories.


Richard
Richard lives in a village outside of Masaka – the same part of Western Uganda where AIDs was first discovered in humans. The AIDS crisis severely impacted Uganda. At one time, in areas such as this village, the infection rate was about 30%. Richard and his three siblings lives with his grandfather because his parents both died. His grandfather was a coffee farmer, but is now can barely walk. Nevertheless, when he heard I was visiting, he hobbled down the road after me, half naked, to discuss how he could get schools fees for his four children.


Richard, second from the right, with his siblings and grandfather

His grandfather does his best to support his grandkids – but it’s incredibly difficult without a stable source of income. At first Richard was shy, hiding behind his sisters. But by the end of the visit a smile had crept onto his face. He showed me around his house – a house with holes in the roof and part of the front side missing.


Richard's bed

Since his grandfather doesn’t have a job, Richard sleeps next to his sister Jenny on some shirts. His grandfather didn’t ask me for medicine for his own health problems health or shoes or wood to patch up the holes in his house. Instead, he asked me to pay school fees for his grandson, about $20/month, so that his grandson would have the opportunity one day to go to university, and then to work in an occupation besides coffee farming to be able to care for his siblings when his grandfather died.


Juliet
One of the highlights of this trip was getting to meet Juliet, the girl that the group Christians for Social Justice at Yale sponsors. She’s six years old. When she was two, her dad died of AIDS. Her mom is doesn’t have money to afford ARVs, and can’t take care of her children so Juliet lives with her grandmother. Juliet walks about an hour each morning to the well to get water before school. Her grandmother told me that if she could have anything in the world she would get a rain receptor (about $20) so she could be guaranteed to have water for her kids during the dry season and ensure they have more time to spend on schoolwork.



Juliet’s fairly shy, but when she smiles it takes over her whole face. She loves playing netball and singing – she even performed the song “head and shoulders, knees and toes” for me. Because of the sponsorship Juliet now has shoes, clean clothes, and regularly attends school.



When she grows up, she wants to be a doctor.



Future plans
Since the program is new, Juliet is one of only 10 kids who are sponsored. Keneth has 30 addition kids that need sponsors – and he’s constantly turning people away. But Keneth & Charles both of have big plans to expand their organizations – like starting sustainable programs to make the communities self-sufficient. One example of such a program involves buying a male and female pig for a family, which will, in time, give birth to piglets and generates income. As part of the program, families that receive pigs from the organization also help the community in turn by giving some of the piglets to another family, and the cycle continues.

I love that model because it captures some of the most memorial parts of the trip. Being in the village was certainly overwhelming – but the hope was undeniable. Hope that motivates Charles to have a full time job and run a community based organization. Hope that prompts community leaders to donate their crops, share their time, and open their homes to support children in their village. Hope that makes adults committed to ensuring that their kids finish school so they could have a better future – so committed that a grandfather that could barely walk chased me down the road half naked to discuss how he could get schools fees for his four children. I can only imagine what the community would be able to do if there were given resources to enhance income-generating activities.





A Continued Relationship
Keneth & Charles told me that one of his biggest needs is for people to be “their ambassadors” -- to tell the story of the organization and the children looking for sponsors to their friends to increase support – not just monetarily, providing advice, and connecting them with resources. For them, its first and foremost about building relationships with the kids and making sure that everything that is done is in their best interest.




Concrete ways to help:

• Visit Keneth’s website (http://hfacm.blogspot.com/) and learn more about his work. He loves building relationships with people and meeting new people on Skype to talk about the organization.

• Get together with friends or family and sponsor a child, like Richard. If you don’t have the financial resources, you can still start building a relationship with a child via penpals and tell their story to your friends.

• Donate skills: In particular I’m trying to help Keneth and Charles develop their websites and public relations aspects of their organization.

• In terms of support at Yale, we are creating a club that Keneth’s organization as a case study for hands-on community development work – we want to help him register as an NGO, create a community needs assessment, develop income generating programs for the community, and work with existing Yale groups (such as engineers without borders, amnesty, and the global development alliance) to address the needs of clean water and health in the village. If you have any suggestions of resources that would be helpful in this regard, please let me know.




I’m so excited about the beginning of this partnership -- it’s really incredible to witness a love that is so strong it is almost tangible -– a love that connects and protects and empowers.

Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill

So this post is long, but important.


The background
As you probably know, last summer I worked in Uganda for two months at a microfinance company. Since I was already in Africa this summer, I decided to visit Uganda for a week and a half. The main purpose of my trip was to lead a trip to my friend’s NGO (an incredible experience, which I will post about soon). While I was in Uganda I also conducted interviews about the controversial Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which I plan to use for a paper once I return to school.



Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Also termed the “kill the gays” bill by Rachel Maddow, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill is a piece of legislation that has been introduced in the government to criminalize homosexuality. While some countries regulate sexual acts, this bill is even more expansive and severe. Some notable parts of the bill include:
a) The death penalty for cases of “aggravated homosexuality”
b) Seven years in prison to anyone who “aids” “abates” or “promotes” homosexuality. This includes the current work of educators, lawyers, and health care professionals.
c) Seven years in prison for a person who is believed to have the “intention to commit homosexuality.”
d) Up to three years in prison for a person waits more than 24 hours to report someone whom is believed to be homosexual. This would require doctors, counselors, priests and other religious leaders to face prison time if they did not report private conversations to the government.


How it all got started
While homophobia is not new in Uganda, the political capital necessary to fuel public support for this bill was fostered by three American evangelical Christian leaders. While their teachings about “curing” homosexuality have been largely discredited in the US, these men came to Uganda in March of 2009 to hold seminars talk about how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” One of the men, Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child” and “The Pink Swastika,” attended a meeting with Ugandan conference organizers during the drafting of the bill. Shortly after their visit, the bill was introduced into the legislature by a Ugandan Parliamentary Leader, Bahati, on October 14th, 2009. Of course, isolating blame to these three men would be illogical, but many Americans are shocked to learn that some of these leaders are supported financially by religious communities in the US. And it is certainly true that religious leaders have used religious justifications to support the bill, such as Pastor Ssempa, a friend of Rick Warren, who held numerous scatological porn screenings to drum up support and fear for killing gays in Uganda in his church. Or the Uganda Mufti, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje who wants gays marooned on an island in Lake Victoria until they die.


Public Opinion
Homophobia and transphobia are ubiquitous in Uganda, mainly because of the propaganda and false stereotypes spread by such community leaders. When I interviewed friends and students my age, many of whom were educated at the best university in East Africa, they gave me the following justifications for the bill and their support of it:
- Homosexuals go into schools and recruit children. They lure them in with money and presents. We need to protect the children.
- Homosexuality isn’t “African,” it’s a western disease, imported by the white man.
- Homosexuality is wrong/unnatural/against the bible. People need counseling to change. Since its unnatural, homosexuals don’t deserve rights.
- Homosexuality is the same as pedophilia and is carried out through sexual violence.


For centuries the LGBT community has been targeted as a way to preserve social order, scapegoated to address social problems and unrest. Sociologists have documented that communities, when subject to an external threat, also target minorities internally. In the US, this type of violence was clearly inflicted against the LGBT community during WWII and McCarthyism. And many will argue that support for legislation like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Arizona Immigration Law is a continuation of our nation’s illness of targeting minority groups internally in order to gain a sense of false security during a time of national instability.

In Uganda, you only have to glance at the headlines of one of the nation’s newspapers that “outs” top officials, religious leaders, and community members (conveniently including pictures, home addresses, and places of work of “homos”) to see such internal discrimination inflicted on the LGBT community in Uganda. In many ways, regardless of whether the bill passes, it only reflects a social climate of hatred and discrimination toward the LGBT community. To just cite one example, the week before I came to Uganda, Pasikali Kashusbe was brutally murdered, beheaded and castrated in Uganda. His head was found in a latrine on the farm where he worked. His body was found earlier in the week about half a kilometer away. In 2007, Mr. Kashube and his partner Abbey joined Integrity Uganda, an organization for LGBT Episcopal and straight allies.

Cultural imperialism?
While most oppose this type of violence, some people are afraid to intervene because of fear that they will be imposing imperialist attitudes in Africa. I appreciate the sentiment and agree that the voices of individuals in the LGBT community in Uganda should be at the forefront of any action. Yet it is also helpful to remember that homophobia, not homosexuality, is the Western import. Anthropologists have documented non-heterosexual relationships in Africa for centuries. (For more information about same sex practices in Africa, see “Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives” by Ruth Morgan and Saskia Wieringa) In fact, it was the British colonialists that brought in the first laws criminalizing homosexuality, codified homophobia which conveniently also exerted control over the indigenous people and deemed traditional practices unacceptable.



The Ugandan LGBT Community



Tapping her black converses, held together with rainbow shoelaces, she says
I'll stay here [in my office], even if there is a mob of people throwing fire that burns us alive. If I call a police, and they find out, they will just join the mob... But if we stop and stay the office is closed, they have won. So ill stay here.

I’m sitting at Free to Roam Uganda (FARUG), an organization for LBT women in Uganda, and I’m absolutely floored. I know I can’t even begin to imagine the severity of the words as they hang in the air. I can’t imagine what its like to walk home and hear neighbors jeering that they are waiting for the bill to pass so they can kill you. I can’t imagine what its like to have to worry whether there is a critical mass of people around that will stop an attack. I can’t imagine what is like to have scars on your back as the visible reminder of other’s hatred of your existence. All I know is that these people are incredibly strong. and brave.




A variety of LGBT organizations exist in Uganda, operating under the umbrella organization Sexual Minority Uganda. These groups offer individuals in the community access to health services, resources, social networking, and counseling services. There are organizations for youth and adults, women, men, trans and intersex individuals.

But what’s most striking is not the programming, it’s the community. This place was like a haven. Everyone around me at FARUG was smiling and joking, bobbing occasionally to the latest Ugandan songs. Perhaps its because people know that in this space they no longer have to amputate part of themselves. Even the names reflect their community, such as the man they call Uncle, program director for the trans group and, at the age of 21, one of the youngest employed trans activists in the world. As they go around collecting money for a young gay man who is in the hospital because of a motorcycle accident, it’s clear that this is their family, their family by choice – which, for some, is their only family.

The Bishop
Seeing and hearing about the hatred they experience is difficult. Knowing this hatred is supported by people who claim to be speaking because of their faith in Christianity makes me physically sick. But amidst the violence and injustice, I had the opportunity to meet an incredible man, Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, the leader of Integrity Uganda.



The Bishop greeted me with such a warm, grandfatherly smile, a genuine smile that few people can give after they have been publically humiliated by the media, asked to leave their church, and live in fear for the security of their family.

Are you afraid?
Paul said in Christ there is no male, female, jew, gentile, slave, or master. In Christ we are all one. That principle is very important. I’m not scared to stay, I will go against discrimination, even though now and then I will get harassed.


What about people that use faith to support the bill?
Jesus came to help the oppressed. Not to put more oppression against the oppressed. Evangelical. The root of the word, is good news. Evangelical, good news, what is this good news? …. Does my faith tell me to hate people, or love them. Faith should not leave us to hate…. I’m a Christian. One element I regard very important, which was wrote by coming into the world by incarnation, Jesus Christ being born here. The word of God is to bring love. Sacrificial love. Not just loving myself, but think about other people. .. the litmus test I have, even on my faith. “is this loving”. If this is not, then I say I’m sorry, that is not the faith I should hold.

What will make people change?
That’s why education is the important. Not in Africa alone. Everything. Ignorance about human sexuality is widespread….I know something about the history of the homosexuals in the west. People could be hanged, killed. But it is changing. It takes time. It takes time. It takes time to learn, be exposed, change about things….Things will change. For sure. Because to me, God is still creating.

I agree with the Bishop that things will change. It will take time, but things will change. For the ordinary Uganda, actions are not taken simply out of hatred, but hatred that is motivated by fear – fear based on lies that are propagated about the LGBT community, fear of a loss a sense of loss of culture, fear of difference. The things I’ve talked about in this blog entry may be shocking, but it is in no way isolated to Uganda. Hatred is still being promoted in pulpits in the US today. Unequal rights are codified in law. Slurs about sexuality are common insults in schoolyards. And violence is certainly widespread -- outside of my own hometown, on the anniversary of Stonewall last summer, a man suffered a concussion because he was thrown against the wall of the gay bar that the police raided.

And all it takes for evil to succeed in the world is for good people to sit by and do nothing.

In addition to finding ways to oppose violence in Uganda, this bill is a reminder to me that we still have a long way to go in the US. A long way to go to embrace equality for all people – regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender identity, expression, nationality, or disability. A long way to go to move beyond tolerance toward celebration of difference, to oppose ignorance that still infects the US. A long way to strip away the fear that motivates discrimination and our implicit acceptance of hatred by our inaction.

Paul said, three things, very important. Faith, hope, and love. These three. But the greatest of them all is love.

If love is not above … its[all] absurd.

Female Entrepreneurs in the Arab World

So I realized that I’ve written a lot about the food, tourist sights, and taxi rides so far in my blog, but haven’t actually talked about the reason why I’m in Tunisia – for my internship at CAWTAR.



The Center for Arab Women Training and Research, CAWTAR, is the main research center in the region dedicated to issuing reports about the political, social, and economic situation of Arab women. It’s really legit, frequently partnering with the UNDP, UN-INSTRAW, Oxfam, the Islamic Bank, and the World Bank.

My project:
I’m currently working on a report that assesses the situation of female entrepreneurs and identifies areas of improvement in seven Arab countries – United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, The Occupied Territories of Palestine, and Algeria. For each country I’m creating a profile where I analyze the relationship between female entrepreneurs and current national research, government policies, cultural norms, legal environment, businesswomen’s networks, access to training, and access to credit.

“That much be a really short report”
That’s how a friend responded when I told them about my project, thinking that female entrepreneurs don’t really exist in the Arab world. Let me tell you, they definitely do. (As confirmed by my projected 120 page report) And I’m definitely learning a lot in the process.

Combating the stereotypes
So it’s true that female entrepreneurship is less common in the Middle East and North Africa than in other developing regions … but here are some things I’ve been learning.

* Not just microfinance: The widely held perception is that the few female entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa region are mainly in the informal or formal micro sector (employing fewer than 10 workers), producing less sophisticated goods and services. This perception is wrong. Of the formal-sector female-owned firms surveyed, only 8% are micro firms More than 30% are very large firms employing more than 250 workers.

* Annual Earnings: These firms are successful. For example in the United Arab Emirates, female-owned businesses faired considerably better than those in the US in 2007. 33% of the Emirate companies surveyed earning annual revenues of more than US$100,000, compared to only 13% of women-owned businesses in the US in the same year.

* Global Competitiveness: Female-owned firms are also active exporters, and a high share attract foreign investors and are heavy users of information technology—all key ingredients for global competitiveness. Female owned firms higher more women, and tend to promote women to higher managerial levels.

* Role Models: Women have fairly strong economic rights under the Islamic shari'a. In fact, many cite Khadijah, the Prophet’s first wife as an example of a wealthy and successful buinesswomen. Ibn Sa’d (8:9) describes her as a “woman of honor and power, and a hirer of men.”


Some Profiles :




Mona Almoayyed was recently listed as one of the top five most influential people in the Gulf Region. She was the first woman in Bahrain elected to the Chamber of Commerce and is the president of The Bahrain Businesswomen’s Society. She is the managing director o f Almoayyed & Sons, a business that sells, distributes, and services leading brands in sectors ranging from automobiles and electronics to office furniture and real estate. Her company currently employees over 2,000 workers.




Salma Hareb was listed first in Forbes Arabia top 50 most powerful Arab businesswomen. She is chief executive of Dubai's Economic Zones World and Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority. Her responsibilities include Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority's (Jafza) global operations, overseeing Techno Park and Dubai Auto Zone and being a member of the boards of the Dubai Export Development Corporation and Forsa, a group that encourages female entrepreneurs.




The barriers:
So given female entrepreneurs have a pretty great track record, why is the female labour force participation and number of female business owners so low? Of course its complicated, but these seem to be themes in my research.

Legal environment: While the legal environment is generally fairly favorable to women within the economic sphere, the legal environments outside the economic sphere may create barriers for female entrepreneurs. For example, women’s freedom of movement based may be limited based on work hours, plane travel, or driving. Also, social laws, such as personal status codes, may reinforce social roles that confirm men as the breadwinner and primary worker.

Access to Credit: Many businesswomen have cited that they have difficulty obtaining credit for a variety of reasons. These include disproportionally inheritance rights, discriminatory treatment at banks, and lack of education about credit sources. Many governments and non-government actors have focused attention toward microfinance to meet the need of female entrepreneurs. While expanding credit access for microenterprise is important, it is not sufficient to simply encourage women to participate in the informal economy. To highlight the full economic potential of women, training must be available to encourage the transition from the informal to the formal economy, to participate in lucrative export and import markets, and to be leaders in traditionally "male-dominated" sectors, like technology and natural resources.

Social norms: Social norms may help and hinder female entrepreneurs. For example, female entrepreneurs often cite that family connections may be a great source of support and that they have great ease managing other female employees. At the same time, gender social norms (ie that the primary role of the man is to be a breadwinner and the woman is to be a mother) are very strong and may limit female business women in a number of ways. For example, a survey of the unemployment rates demonstrates that women make up the majority of the unemployed workforce, even though they are not a large portion of the overall workforce, demonstrating that preference is given to men when jobs are short.


The optimism:

Many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have embraced the importance of encouraging female entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneur awards, TV channels, international conferences, policy reports, and business associations continue to multiple in number.

A BBC news report states that ”Arab women swathed in black Abayas are often perceived in the West as victims of oppression…But, "Now it is very politically correct to address women's issues," says Haifa Fahoum Al Kaylani, chair of the Arab International Women's Forum in London. "It is like a competition between Arab governments to encourage women to enter business and the political process.” Many policy makers have realized that more female entrepreneurs are needed in MENA to help diversify the economy and create 54 million jobs for an estimated 174 million-strong work force by 2030.

My research has convinced me that supporting female entrepreneurs is a powerful avenue to enhance the status of women and contribute to economic growth in the Arab world.

My Tunisian Home

This is my room in Tunisia. Its really simple, just a mattress on the floor and a place for my clothes. Of course, its much messier now than when I took this photo.





This is the view from my window.




As you can see, it's absolutely gorgeous at night. And its the perfect temperature to leave the window open when I sleep at night to let the breeze in.




This is one of my favorite parts of the house, the bookshelf. Most of the books are in french and arabic.
Two of the books that I'm attempting to read are:

"La Pensée Musulmane Moderne" (Modern Islamic Thought)
"Le Don" de Toni Morrison (A french translation of one of Toni Morrison's books ... I'm trying, its a bit of a struggle)




My Tunisian mom taught me how to make couscous. This was my first attempt. You cut up a ton of vegetables, dump in some uncooked couscous, add some garlic, drizzle in some olive oil (the Tunisians love olive oil) and then mix it all up with your hands. Its pretty messy.

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Then you put it on the stove for an hour, the couscous cooks, and voila, my lunch for the entire week at work. I love Tunisian food. (more pictures to come!)

My Experience in a Tunisian Taxi: Frarabic, Facebook, and Will.i.am

Taxi rides are by far one of the most adventurous parts of my day. Today was no exception.

As a bit of background: driving rules are quite different in Tunisia. Thanks to the French, the preferred method of roads intersecting is in a “rond-point,” where all the roads feed into a circule and cars in the middle of the circle fight to get out and cars in incoming streets fight to get in. Unlike clearly articulated right of way rules in the US, the rule here seems to be “go – and whoever gets there first has the right of way”

So after work yesterday, I took a taxi back home, like always. The driver was young, probably about 25, and had American hip hop music playing on the radio. Now most taxi drivers are daring, but it was clear when he made a U turn into oncoming traffic to pick me up on the other side of the street that he was particularly daring. He started talking to me when I got in the car, but I couldn’t really understand – which I initially blamed on my poor French skills. The North African French accent is much different than the Parisian French I learned in school, so it takes me a few minutes to adjust.

Even though I wasn’t responding, my driver kept talking. Gesturing at his mouth with his hands and every so often laughing hysterically. For about every French word, he was saying five Arabic words. True frarabic. It was clear I didn’t understand. (Generally if I’m not talking at this point taxi drivers see a confused look on my face, stop talking, and the ride continues in silence. Not this taxi driver.) He really wanted me to understand something. So, as we are driving in the highway, zipping in between the other cars, frequently crossing the median and driving head-on into oncoming traffic so we can pass other cars, and my taxi driver decides that increasing the volume of his voice and gesturing wildly will help me understand Arabic. Oncoming traffic is changing lanes so we don’t hit them, and I’m not understanding any better.

My taxi driver finally sees that I’m not getting it. So as we are soaring down the highway at 60 miles an hour he decides to call his friend and proceeds to yelling something in Arabic over the phone, pass the phone to me as I try and listen to his friend shout in French, all the time looking at me more than the road and driving with one hand. But I can’t understand his friend. Its windy, its noisy, people are honking at us (rightfully so). I try and tell him to hang up the phone, but he’s still yelling in Arabic and holding the phone by my ear. Then, I hear a word I understand.

Facebook. My taxi driver has endangered my life because he wants to facebook friend me. Seriously.

Hoping that the madness will stop, I get out a piece of paper, write out my name, and hand it to my taxi driver. He smiles and says facebook along with a lot of Arab words.

I’m safe. Or so I think. In relief, I nod my head a little bit to the beat of the song that has just come on the radio, the new “O.M.G” by Will.I.am and Usher. My taxi driver sees me, nods, and then proceeds to release the break to the beat of the music as we head into the intersection, one of the biggest rond-ponts in Tunis. The next three minutes we are jolting back and forth across the road to the beat of Usher.

I finally got home. The whole trip took about 20 minutes, twice as long as normal (we definitely missed a turn somewhere).

But who knows, maybe Ill have a new facebook friend tonight?

“Development, if not engendered, is endangered”

It’s a catchy quote, taken from a UN development report published a decade and a half ago. And it essentially sums up my academic interest, and the philosophy of CAWTAR, my summer employer in Tunisia.

The UNDP report elaborates that “neglecting the gender dimensions of poverty seriously undermines effects to achieve sustainable human development.” When this report was written in 1995, around the time of the 4th Bejing Conference, the idea was infectious, reshaping international development agencies, models of statistical data collection, and long term strategic government plans.

“Women, the World’s Greatest Untapped Resource”

That’s the slogan on billboards in the Tunis airport of a prominent development group that focuses on women’s issues. Their claim seems to be generally widely supported in academic literature.

Improving the condition of women has large and sustainable returns.

Returns in the financial sense, since encouraging women to work in the formal sector certainly increases the available labor force. But perhaps even more discussed, microeconomic studies have demonstrated that households models are not unitary -- women and men invest resources differently. When women have increased or independent control over financial resources, the health, educational level, and general wellbeing of children in the household improves. In addition, many researchers claim that women are more financially trustworthy, work harder, and make better investment decisions. Combine these results with the idea that gender equality is the sign of any modern and civilized society (a concept we ironically proclaim the in US), gender equality in development has attracted international attention, and money.





You don’t have to look far (the Millennium Development Goals, for example, or UNIFEM, as pictured above) to see that gender equality has taken center stage. But a closer look reveals that gender quality coming in vogue has been accompanied by a great debate. In addition to questions of what “achieving gender equality” or “empowering women” actually means (more on this in a later post), some women’s groups, both locally based an internationally have questioned whether current practices of development through globalization have actually achieved these ends.

McDonalization – helpful or harmful?

The first report I read at my internship, the Arab Women’s Development Report 2001, explained that the benefits of global restructuring are to date “unequally distributed.” It furthers by explained “far from reducing international migration flows by moving products instead of people, globalization’s “movers” have become its “losers.” This fairly evident in many countries where benefits of globalization have accumulated with the owners of multinational corporations where the backbone of the labor force – often previously part time or migrant workers – receive almost no compensation for their work. You don't have to look far to see pictures and hear stories of women and children in horrible working conditions in sweatshops in developing countries. It’s not a universal trend, but it’s certainly visible.

So to be honest, there isn’t really a conclusion to this post right now, although I certainly have more thoughts. And I certainly want to explore the entanglement, for better or worse, of globalization and development through my internship.

As I read back on this post, it sounds a little bit snarky. That’s purposeful. I want to clarify that I whole-heartedly agree that engendering development is essential to make a positive impact. At the same time, gender issues in development are complicated, often more so than presented in the media, and real sustainable approach to development requires a critical examination of our current models, and a healthy dose of skepticism about Westernization.

For those of you that are interested in learning more, I highly recommend:

“Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn"

“Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East by Isobel Coleman”


This post was written by the request of Lindsay. Let me know if you have any posting requests and Ill do my best to muse about them :)

My Tunisian Mother...

... is one of the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. She's a strong, independent, single, adventurous, feminist, atheist, race-sensitive, NGO-supporting, fine-arts loving, Arab woman. And proud of it.

"Sois-toi meme" (Be yourself). It's one of the first things she tells me. We are driving back from the airport while she is explaining to me that I shouldn't worry about adapting to Tunisian culture. What's more important, she says, is that you are yourself. "For example," she recounts, "I love to travel. But I wont travel to Saudi Arabia. They make women covered themselves there - totalement. I dont wear la voile (the veil), it's like a prison."

I'm a little surprised. And definitely intrigued.

Where to begin to describe Mab, my Tunisian mother? She's certainly a product of the 60s/70s women movement in Tunisian, similar in some respects to the hippie/female empowerment trends in the US. She lives in a small flat outside of the capital. It's a simple apartment, without very much furniture but decorated with rugs and paintings from her various travels. An interior designer in the US would say everything clashes, but I love her house because its like snippets of story from her various travels around Africa. "Je vive tres simple" (I live very simply), she tells me, as if she has too much to do in life to be worried about accumulating furniture that collects dust.




Technically she lives alone. But not really, because she's always hosting youth from around the world in her house. Right now she sleeps in the living room because she only has two bedrooms in her flat -- one for me and one for a student from Mali. But she doesn't mind, she says, "quand je suis avec les jeunes, je reste jeune" (When I'm with the youth, I stay young)

Last weekend we went to the center of the city, where we visited the fair trade business that she helped finance. She wanted to go discuss an idea that she had with a friend: a week long camp for young, poor artists in Tunisian. To inspire them. She loves to support the arts - painting, drawing, musicals. We spent 30 minutes in her friend's gallery, looking at a painting that depicted a woman inside a wine glass, musing about it's symbolism as we drank Tunisian tea. We have a system: she speaks in English, I respond in French. Sometimes we switch back and forth within the same sentence, and people on the street pause, trying to piece together our conversation. But it doesn't bother me. I'm too busy listening to her talk about any smattering of subjects: Shakira, the veil, Obama, racism in Tunis, poverty, the environment,verses in the Quaran, tennis, her jewish friends, abortion, government quotas, and her favorite Senegalese authors.

I often sit in the living room, her makeshift bedroom, attempting to read books in French while she does work on her computer, listening to the news in Arabic on the TV in the background while the blue and yellow curtains from Mali flutter in a doorway. But my concentration doesn't generally last for long, because we both like to talk instead of focus our tasks at hand. And I now have a bedtime routine -- I always make sure to stop by the living room, because inevitably she has already fallen asleep, book in hand, so I turn off the TV, gently shut the door, and unplug the lamp. It's my small attempt to try to give something back.

She's truly inspiring. Her sense of self, her curiosity about the world, her lack of dependence on material things, her emphasis on interpersonal relations, her desire to make a difference -- a real difference.

I couldn't ask for a better Tunisian Mother.

Modern Religious Art

Le Christ et Le Peintre (L’artiste et son Modèle)
Christ and the Painter (the artist and his model)
Marc Chagall
1951

Due to my inability to master simple stick-figure drawings, I have a huge respect for artists. Especially this one. I first encountered this painting in the Vatican Museum in the “Religious Modern Art” section. It's a little blurry, but the painting is a depiction of the crucifixion, and the man on the right is the a painter, holding a pallet and a paint brush, looking at Jesus. I think it is a beautiful social commentary about the nature of creating art, implying that we project ourselves, our expectations, our bias, our experiences into artwork (and many other things, for that matter). This insight was particularly refreshing after the previous 2 hours I had spent in the Vatican Museum.

Walking through the Vatican Museum, which contained literally miles of art from Ancient Rome to the Renaissance, it was interesting to think about what type of situations and people were missing. In particular, there was a notable lack of people of color. Almost every figure depicted reflected the stereotypical Italian form - fairly light skin, brown hair, (and, if you are looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a particularly muscular body).

Perhaps, in some sense, this is to be expected. Italian artists used friends and family members around them as inspiration - a fairly ethnically homogenous set of models. In many ways, it reminds me of the blue eyed, nicely combed wavy brown haired and paled skinned Jesus of my childhood. This, however, is far from a historically accurate physical representation of any first century Palestinian nomad, who would have had much darker skin, dark eyes, and most definitely less styled hair.

So clearly art reflects a particular social context in which is created, but I think that also has implications for shaping our worldview and expectations today. It concerns me that this homogenous representation of religious artwork in so many ways seems to reaffirm social hierarchies of class, race, and gender. For some, the artwork in the Vatican contains absolutely no significance. But for others, such as myself, the Vatican Museum represented some of the same problematic depictions of religious artwork throughout childhood and in popular culture.

While I was in the Sistine Chapel, my audio guided tour talked about Michelangelo's theology, how he viewed the body as a source of hope in creation despite great brokenness (as seen in the tortured bodies of The Last Judgment). This reflects a larger trend in Christianity, to see parts of humanity as redeemable -- this is present in everything from the importance of the humanity of Jesus to the common themes of transformation and renewal. But I think it does violence to these ideas when the images that are used to convey this sense of hope and renewal don't actually reflect the diversity of human life.

After all, to represent excerpts of the life of Jesus and parts of the New Testament in a way that actually reaffirms social inequality in their physical forms seems highly inconsistent with the narrative of a God that breaks through social expectations, gender norms, religious barriers, and constantly challenges systems of domination. I'm not advocating a return to a "historically accurate" portrayal of Jesus. Scholars greatly disagree on the physical depiction of Jesus, which is probably a good thing. I'm advocating that we should embrace diverse depiction of religious figures. What better way to affirm the radical inclusiveness of the gospels?

This is why I fundamentally think modern religious art is so important.

Modern religious art provides a space to break away from expected, and at times outdated, forms of religious imagery - to allow viewers to encounter divinity in their lives and their own communities as they have the chance to see their own reflection in the artwork.

Yet there needs to be more. Chagall merely brings attention to the process of creating religious art. For more boundary-pushing artists, I highly recommend:

Janet McKenzie’s Jesus of the People, winner of the National Catholic Reporter’s competition
Crucifixion by Sandra Yagi
Kittredge Cherry’s book “Art that Dares,” a Lambda Literary Award finalist

Of course, some will consider these images blasphemous. But I think its important to remember that, historically, we have taken plenty of liberty in our traditional religious imagery, which is unquestionably reproduced because it preserves dominant power structures. If Jesus can be blue eyed and white, Jesus can certainly be depicted as black, arab, female etc. And after centuries of exclusion and violence perpetuated by the church through racism, sexism, and homophobia (just to name a few), such art certainly captures the essence of the gospel by affirming the inclusion of those who have been marginalized.

While modern religious art might present new representations of old stories, such representations that break down social expectations, inequality and social injustice should certainly be celebrated, not shunned and condemned, by our religious communities.

These were my musings as I walked through the Vatican. I’d love to hear your thoughts! And below I’ve included some of my additional favorites from the modern art collection in the Vatican Museum.

10 things you might not know about Tunisia

1. Tunisia is in North Africa, about an hour-long flight from Rome, Italy. (see the map on my first blog entry) Tunisia is slightly larger than Florida.


2. The movie “Star Wars” was filmed in Tunisia. The desert is the home of Luke Skywalker. Also parts of “The English Patient” were filmed in Tunisia.


3. Arabic is the official language of Tunisia, although most people speak French as well. All of the street signs are written in Arabic and French. A small minority of people speak Berber, the language of the indigenous people. Most youth and businesspeople also know English.


4. There are palm trees. They are beautiful.


5. Most Tunisians pride themselves on their history as proponents of gender equality, and Tunisia is often referenced as a model Muslim-majority country in terms of female empowerment. Ever since winning independence from the French in 1956, President Bourguiba updated the “Personal Status Code,” which improved the legal status of women by requiring wives to give formal consent before marriage, outlawing polygyny, increasing female legal capacity in the realm of contracts, and making divorce subject to judicial review. Large scale access to family planning was supported by the government in the 1960s and abortion in Tunisia was legalized 1973, the same year as Roe v. Wade. As a result, Tunisia legally secured gender equity before more well-known European countries.


6. Camel rides are very popular attractions in the desert, particularly for tourist. It’s definitely on my to do list – ill report back later with pictures.


7. I made a huge eco-footprint traveling here. The impact of the fuel emissions for my roundtrip flight to Tunisia, like most international flights, produced 2.5 tons of CO2 – about the same impact as the yearly output of the average European car. For eco-friendly travelers, check out climatecare.org or carbonneutral.com to offset your travel ☺


8. Tunisia is an amazing crossroads of French and Arabic culture. In the morning, you can walk down the street, buy a fresh baguette and hear the call to prayer from the local mosque. The long white sandy beaches off Mediterranean coast make it a very popular destination for French vacationers.


9. Censorship is fairly prominent, especially during the current reign of Ben Ali, President since 1987. In particular, the small but notable fundamentalist Islamist party is illegal and cannot publish criticisms of the state. Most Tunisians newspapers are controlled by the state, although access to the Internet has greatly increased information exchange. My guidebook said that facebook would be blocked. It isn’t.


10. Tunisians love food spicy. Harissa is a hot red sauce made of peppers that seems to be mixed in to every dish. For example, today at lunch at my internship I was given a sandwich with tuna, and lots of harissa.

When in Rome ....

Buon giorno,

So, things to do when you are in Rome ....



























-- See the Pope

The pope speaks at the Vatican every Wednesday morning at 10:30am, and this past Wednesday was special because it was a national Italian holiday (independence day). I happened to arrive at the vatican at about 10:20 -- just in time to hear the pope speak. Supposedly about 30,000 people were there!










-- Admire the work of Michael Angelo & other famous artists.

The vatican city museum was breath-taking. In addition to the amazing Sistine Chapel, I particularly enjoyed the display of modern religious art. I couldn't take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, but this is a picture of "The Thinker" by Rodin. Look forward to an additional blog post with pictures of my favorite pieces from the modern religious art section (and a small rant about why modern art is so important).










-- eat pizza

(I think this one's pretty self-explanatory)











-- Make a wish at the Trevi Fountain

If you throw 3 coins over your left shoulder for good luck, or to ensure you return to Rome (maybe both)










-- Shopping!

I'm not much for high fashion, but Rome's certainly the place to go. Vie de Condotti, across from the Spanish steps, has almost every high-fashion name in the business.









-- Eat gelato

You obviously can't tell from this photo, but I had nutella flavored gelato. And clearly the guy next to me thought I was crazy for taking a picture of myself.






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-- Observe a street artist

I was particularly impressed by this guy, who made all of his paintings in less than five minutes and by only using spray paint.











-- Dress in funny clothes

It seemed to be a common theme/a tourist trap for cheesy photos.










-- Eat Chinese Italian food

I know, what you are thinking .. she went to Rome to eat Chinese food? What can I say? I like my veggies -- I couldn't eat more bread, cheese, and tomato at this point. Plus I had to save room for Italian desert. (hey its better than Italian McDonalds!)








-- Stumble upon some colossal ruins

I was trying to find my shuttle to go back to the hostel and literally stumbled across the Colosseum and some other beautiful massive ancient building.






-- meet the locals

They have great food suggestions and are really friendly!


























-- take artsy photos

I got a little carried away :)



The main take away: I you need to get over jet-lag, spend a day in Rome! I had about 7 hours of sleep in 60 hours, but it was all worth it.

More updates about Tunisia soon!

ciao,
Joan