Nourishing Hope—in Uganda and in the United States

S P R I N G 2 0 1 1 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 23 by Joy Ladin NourishingHope— inUgandaandintheUnitedStates I t’s the first Sunday of 2011, and I’m sitting on a balcony in the Ntinda sectionofKampala,Uganda,watchinglizardsskitterupthecrumblingconcretewall across the way, contrasting my coffee-drinking leisure with the sweat of the young man washing—forever washing—one of the four-wheel drive vehicles in which my hostingorganizationferriesaroundguestacademics.It’sanotherinanendlessseries of beautiful days—for the moment, the Ugandan battle over whether gay and transgender people have a right to exist is being fought in court, with words rather than blunt instruments . Though it’s Sunday morning, the air is alive with sound: men joking or arguing, Gregorian chant from the church beyond the palms, a truck loaded with construction materials rattling over the rutted dirt road whose reds—brick red where damp from a brief night rain, and pale and dusty red in the sun—echo the red-tiled roofs of the wealthier residents’ houses. The Kampala that’s always visible in the distance, sprawled across the hills, is a weave of roof red and jungle-foliage green, human growth (people pour in daily by the hundreds from the impoverished countryside), and lively shreds of the chimphaunted forests destroyedtobuildthiscity. By American standards, Uganda is struggling. Most of its national budget is supplied by foreign aid; most of its rural inhabitants live in poverty, without power or running water (though often with cell phones), fighting to survive treatable diseases. Literacy is low. Families are decimated by AIDS, and traditional values and communal relationships are erodedby the constant lure of the city. Democratic institutions are tenuous at best; civil and regionalwararerecentmemoriesandnone-too-distantthreats. And yet, this country is humming with hope. The Ugandans I’ve met see their country growing before their eyes, buildings rising, new ways of life taking shape. The nation is so newthataKampalaradiostationhasadailyfeature,“That’ssoUG,”tohighlightcommonbehaviors that unite and define its multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, far-flung (thanks to the paucity of roads) inhabitants. Ugandans are acutely aware of what they lack compared to older, established, “developed” nations, but for those I’ve spoken to, Uganda’s unfinished state, for allitsproblems,representspossibility:notabrokenworldtheymustrepair,butaworldthat they are creating. I saw that excitement—the excitement of being, as our sages put it, God’s partner in Creation—in Sarah Kihika, who quit a booming civil law practice to become a human rights lawyer, working to create a Uganda, a world, based on human dignity by defending the rights of poor women and, despite considerable danger to herself, people even more marginalized: the gay, lesbian, transgender, and intersex Ugandans who are routinely ostracized, beaten, and killed—as was her friend and fellow GLBT activist David Kato, on January26,2011,ayearafterhispicturewaspublishedbyananti-gaynewspaper.Isawthis excitement also in George—I didn’t get his family name—who gave up well-paying work in South Africa to buy a few hardscrabble acres with the goal of improving local agricultural techniquesandcreatingnewmarketsforproducesopeoplewon’thavetoleavethetraditionnourishing countryside to make a living. I saw it in the Lantern Poets Meet, a group of fifty Joy Ladin, David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College of Yeshiva University, is the author of five books of poetry, including the recently published Coming to Life, Psalms, and Transmigration. The author (right) is inspired by the energy and hope of Ugandans like human rights lawyer and activist Sarah Kihika (left) despite their facing a very tough political and economic climate. JOY LADIN 24 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G S P R I N G 2 0 1 1 young poets who debate the merits of one another’s poems as thoughthefutureofUgandanpoetrydependeduponthem(itmay well). I saw it in the nun who heads the literature department of Makerere University, which she has committed to the mission of documenting Ugandan traditions and folklore before they vanish—not merely for preservation, but so that the traditional wisdomtheycontaincanbeusedtogiveatrulyUgandanformtoa nation being flung into the future by the brainless hands of capitalism. Each of these pioneers lives as though their country were...