Disclaimer: I am no expert on any of this. Pretty much all the info I have is through word of mouth.
Background info (though I may have some of the details a little off): elections are held every 5 years in Uganda. The next one is in spring 2011 and people are already pretty restless. The current president, Yoweri Museveni, was a key player in overthrowing Idi Amin and came to power in 1986. He originally did a lot of good helping the country set up a infrastructure that had recently been completely destroyed. He's also credited with leading Uganda in one of the best responses to the HIV crisis among developing countries all over the world. He did a lot of other good stuff too but in the interest of time I'm going to skip ahead to the 2006 elections when he got rid of the presidential term limit and was accused by many people of rigging the elections. Right now, he still has many supporters but has been coming under increasing pressure for the ridiculously high levels of corruption in the government. So people are already bracing themselves for an extremely intense and violent election period next year.
Yesterday, there were riots at Makerere University, which is the big public university in Uganda, and 3 people got shot. It's time for student body elections, and here, candidates are affiliated, endorsed, and backed by national political parties. It would be like if people in the US ran for student government on Democrat and Republican party tickets. They're not even having this study abroad program here next spring during the national elections because of the anticipated violence, so you can imagine how intense university elections must be. The rioting spilled out of the university gates and into the street but didn't make it very far before being contained by the police.
Then, last night somebody burned the Kasubi Tombs to the ground, which is not difficult because they are basically a little wood and a lot of dried grass. However, it is a HUGE deal because it is the heritage site for the Baganda Kingdom and is where the past 4 kings are buried. I won't go into a lot of detail, but basically the Baganda kingdom is one of the main kingdoms that was turned into Uganda by the colonial powers, and ever since independence there has been tension between the Baganda kingdom and the government, much of which has to do with authority to rule over the people. Kampala is where the ancient Baganda kingdom was, so most people in this region are Baganda. So, though as far as I know there is no evidence, many people are blaming the burning on the government trying to remove any legitimacy of authority from the Baganda king before next year's election. President Museveni (who is not Baganda) came to the tombs today to show his grief, but was met with resistance from many Baganda who were at the site. In the scuffle, Museveni's guards shot a few people.
Then, today there was more rioting at Makerere University, which spread farther outside the gates and down to one of the main city markets, where part of a police station was burned down.
I am telling you all this for 2 reasons. Mostly so that you know what is going on here, as I think it may end up affecting my experience. Also though, I can't quite tell what (if anything) you are all hearing about this in the US and so I wanted to give a general idea of what is going on and let everyone know I am ok. A few students today got really worried calls from home so I thought I'd go ahead and preempt all of that. SIT has really great procedures in place for tense/ riot-filled times like these. They have connections all over the city to alert them of dangerous areas, they have designated safe havens both in and outside the city (including one right by the airport), our transportation coordinator (this crazy, old man) may in fact be magic in his ability to find and quickly get to people no matter where they are, and we all have cell phones. If anything happens of interest, I will most definitely put it on my blog. So whatever you hear about happening in Uganda, don't worry about me and know that if I see a large, angry crowd of people I have the common sense to go in the other direction.
It would be interesting to know what news you are getting over there though. I find it actually pretty amusing that what of Ugandan news is of interest to Ugandans, is not usually the same as what is of interest to the international community. Very rarely do any of the top stories in my google news Uganda section on my blackberry match up to any of the front page stories of any of the major Ugandan newspapers. For example, all this oil business and homosexuality bill are really widely covered on cnn, bbc, al jazeera, etc. Uganda's main papers (the New Vision and The Monitor) tend to focus more on things like local events, minor legislation, personal lives of celebrities and politicians, speculation about next year's election, and bizarre and gruesome crimes. I've actually started collecting clippings of newspaper headlines, as some of them are actually just beyond acceptable for any legitimate newspaper, especially one of th top ones in the whole country.
Anyways, can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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