A Wonderfullyrich World

K’la List is alive! In the first 10 days, I’ve gotten 3,000 pageviews 700 visits with an average time of 6 minutes on the site per visit. For those of you who aren’t familiar with website statistics, this is a fairly amazing turn-out for a campaign focused on a country that’s primary medium is mobile communication (as opposed to broadband internet).

With 3 million people in the city of Kampala, I have a long way to go, but I’m reassured by continuing use of the website and the incremental increase in posts by people. Certainly people are very excited by the prospect of having a website like craigslist or gumtree around. Actually, because of the reactions I’ve been getting and there feedback, I recently decide on putting up a Missed Connections section. Although I’ve been avoiding creating personals where sex could be sold, I was convinced that Missed Connections could provide a useful outlet perhaps be an amusing read, while at the same time be relatively harmless in propagating the already rampant prostitution here in Kampala.

Hopefully people enjoy the new area. I’m still trying to put the word out, less in a digital way right now–as I think I’ve penetrated my network of digital contacts in Uganda–and more on the ground in coffee shops, internet cafes, maybe an article in a paper (if I can swing it) and just glad handing as many people as I can.

I’ve been getting people and places to hand out cards about the website, but I’ve begun to consider the idea of some form of a gimmick. I haven’t figured out what, maybe a giveaway or a chance at featured ads maybe, but if you have a good idea, drop me a line! Things are looking good for the site though.

When I arrived in Kampala, I was frustrated by the lack of a craigslist.org or gumtree.com sub-site for Kampala. Over the many months I’ve been here I’ve found a huge expat population who’s also been frustrated by this, which got me thinking on multiple occasions about how hard it would be to create a site that could achieve similar goals of gumtree or craigslist.

Originally I was thinking I could get craigslist to add k’la as a city, but when I took a look at kenya.craigslist.org I was dishearten to find it’s very unused right now. It seems unlikely they’ll kick-off another city in Eastern Africa, and as I thought about it, the problem is more along the critical mass point. I can guess that there was no advertising in Nairobi, as craigslist doesn’t do advertising. You could let it go and it’ll build steam slowly, but this site has the capacity to make these areas much more dynamic and should be promoted. Basically it needs a push.

The more research I did, the more I realized that it’s feasible for me to set up a site and that I have a 50/50 chance of getting that critical mass if I push it.

A few weeks ago I gave in and put one up. I’m starting small and will expand as it warrants it. It’s nearly ready for public use. Right now I’m primarily focusing on trying to put the word on the ground. You can take a look at it while it’s still in beta. Feedback is much appreciated!

More as it comes!

A quick reminder to change your passwords regularly. There are more up to date guides, but password guide I wrote years ago is still fairly valid. Also it’s worth looking at my post on revisiting your personal security.

Last night after watching a movie, I noticed I was logged out of gmail, which isn’t odd, but it was odd that my password wasn’t working. I located the recovery method and was able to go to my back up account, retrieve the link, and reset my Gmail account.

Unfortunately I found out to late that someone else had access to my account. I knew it was a hack because looking at my activity information (a link near the bottom of your Gmail box) showed the IP 116.193.168.17, which I did a reverse look-up on and found out was a Bangladesh DSL address. I know of one person who has been in Bangladesh, but no one currently and certainly didn’t allow anyone my password.

Thankfully I caught it with-in 22 mins of the access, so they didn’t have much time in my account. I have done a full password change-up on all major accounts, but I’m fairly well convinced they haven’t got much useful info. They tried a further password reset on my account.

All in all that was a frightening reminder that it’s technological prowess is a survival trait these days. Stay on top of your passwords, change them regularly, maintain some diligence on your account information, and do your best to keep up on trends.

I don’t know how they got my password, but I’m not going to let them keep it.

I’ve been in and out of Uganda for the last 5 months and for the most part there hasn’t been much ridiculous to report. Yesterday however I had an incident that is very African and quite ridiculous. First, you need some background. I am not working these days, rather I’m doing some volunteer work for openstreetmaps.org as I indicated in my previous posts. What this entails right now is having the driver of a special hire (car) take me drive me in really odd loops around the Kampala while I’m sitting in the passenger seat with my maps, gps, camera, and pad of paper taking notes, marking points, and directing the driver. I also walk some places as it’s more accurate data and slower pace for note taking, but you can cover more ground in a car. Specifically I’m “Mapping Users Needs” such as Clinics, NGOs, Marketplaces, schools, roads, Being an American, a tourist, and a volunteer, I don’t normally carry my passport (for theft reason) nor do I have papers indicating I work for OpenStreetMaps from the government or the organization. etc.

Yesterday around 3pm Daniel (the driver) and I just visited a friends house to check in on it, then drove to a supermarket so I could pick up a few things before we set off on our mapping for the day. We drove all of a few hundred meters up the street from the supermarket and noting a sign for the United Nations Clinic we drove towards it. The clinic itself is a UN faclity, which means it had Police Guards, a barrier, and the razor wire fencing (that many homes have too), but although there are signs on the street there were no signs on the barriers or building. So I asked the Police guards if this is the UN Clinic. Little did I know that this question would end up being a major annoyance lasting many hours that carried over to today. They started asking me questions about who I am, why I’m doing this, who it’s for, what the purpose of knowing the UN Clinic, etc. Being a transit person and growing up in the US under US rights of self-indictment I often times give vague answers to questions and don’t volunteer large amounts of information, especially in situations where you are suspected of something. I gave them what information I could, but continued to ask them what the problem they had was, which I got very little of the information about. This is all at about 4-4:30pm, eventually they took my Colorado Drivers License and Daniel’s papers into the clinic asking us to wait. I later learned that they went in and spoke to someone at the UN Diplomatic Security Service, who asked them to check me out. They did not tell me this however, so I was outside waiting in front of the clinic with no idea what’s going on, dealing with Ugandan Police (some of whom were carrying AK-47s as they do), feeling rather intimidated & rather pissed off.

Around 5:30pm they eventually asked us to go over to the police post with them where they would have me talk to their superiors. Mind you although one of the Corporals who accompanied us to the Post was uniformed, another Constable was not, and they did not identify themselves (no name tag, badge, or ID). This was also true of the Inspector who took my case history, life history, travel history, and incident history. I’ve been more frustrated in my life, but not often. When someone who isn’t uniformed and doesn’t identify himself in a country that has the possibility of being corrupt starts inquiring about where your parents, brothers, and friends live, I’m get somewhat offended and retort sharply. In addition to being asked idiotic things irrelevant to the incident, I had a heck of a time understanding this Inspector who was using techniques of superiority which don’t sit well with me. (i.e. things that go beyond polite) It can be said there was a cultural difference here, and I did manage to keep my cool for the most part and did get through this. I did however start texting and calling friends, specifically a friend of mine who works for human rights organization here in k’la and asked if she could help. I became increasingly concerned about this as I continued to asked what the issues was at hand they still wouldn’t answer and I wasn’t sure if they were ramping up for a bribe or something more serious. I asked my friend if she could indicate a lawyer, and I did this while the Inspector was speaking to me intentionally to make him understand I wanted more info and results.

Finally that ordeal ended, which I’ll admit afterwords was the most ridiculous part of the whole incident. The inspector took me to the Officer-In-Charge of the station. A youngish looking guy who wasn’t in uniform either. The inspector recounted his findings (slightly skewed) and the detaining officers started to explain, however they up and took it to the next room with the un-uniformed Division Police Commander (DPC). I sat for 15-20 mins while they chatted, then they called me into another couch (Daniel is still here and asked to stand outside). At this point I finally understand more of what’s going on, as I mentioned previously, the detaining officers called and asked someone what to do and they said to send it up the line. They thought of me as a suspicious person, and apparently there is a increased security threat alert right now, so they were trying to determine who or what I was. At the time I thought it was ludicrous that they would suspect a white umuzungu as a terrorist, especially one with such as bad cover story that it took hours to explain what openstreetmaps was, that it was a volunteer activity, and that my reasons for doing this was primarily altruistic and maybe I can make money off selling it later. I’d send a Uganda, or I wouldn’t even bother as most people around new it was a UN clinc (and it had signs on the road).

In any case the DPC similarly though this was a waste of time as he was familar with google maps and could understand the notion of openstreetmaps.org, but he still had protocol to deal with. He was a bit put out as the detaining officers did not report to him, they were VIP police who brought this to the local division. Something that he didn’t consider suspicious, nor an uncovering of secrets (as the UN clinic is publicly noted on the road). As I didn’t enter the barrier, then he was befuddled as to why they stopped me. At this point it was 7-7:30pm and the UN Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) has gone home, but he called the US Embassy. They sent someone over, who turned out to be a Investigator for the State Department Diplomatic Security. As I didn’t have my passport and the office were close at the US Embassy too, they eventually said they had two options. Detain me overnight or go with me, get my passport, and I’ll return the next morning. It took some haggling, but the latter was finally chosen. Even that took another 15 mins to sort out as trying to figure out the logistics of what car they were taking, who was going with who, and how they were returning required haggling, repetition (something very african in nature, even if you understand something the first time you tend to get it repeat two or three times), and finally decision.

I finally returned home last night at 9pm, took picture of the investigators US ID, got his card and gave him my passport. I got on the horn with several people, but was just hungry, tired, and zoned out by this time so I eventually just went to bed. I didn’t sleep overly well as as it was a rather nerve wracking situation and it wasn’t exactly over I was to meet the investigator at the police post this morning at 10am to get my passport back, assuming everything was cleared up.

I arrived with Daniel this morning at the police post, met the investigator who said I came up fine and had no warrants outstanding. We waited for the DPC (not the VIP Commander but the local DPC), I chatted with the constable who detained me and the investigator. After only brief wait we saw the DPC (now uniformed). The Embassy Investigator indicated his (non)findings and the constable was asked if this resolved his situation, and the DPC said he was satisfied and I left.

Oy vey! Who knew that African bureaucracy and American isolationism would meet in such as abstract way. This all started because the intelligence services think al qaeda types are using Uganda and Eastern Africa as a operations area. (I’ve gotten several emails from the US embassy listserv about this.) Both because of this and the christmas increase in crime (that the embassy also warned about while relating an incident involving Americans) there is an increased threat level. I’ll admit that I should have carried a copy of my passport and I can sort of see why I might be a suspicious character in this situation, but the aforementioned method of umuzungu intelligence gathering seems to make me a unlikely suspicious character. Add the repetitions, time consuming, personalized, and seemingly asinine way of determining my (non)suspicious character that is the Ugandan way, and I’ve just seen a part of Uganda I hope I never see again. If this constitutes a mix up, what constitutes a crime?

It was all taken care of though. I’ll go on with my mapping, and I think I’m headed back to the states here soon, as I’m not making enough head way on making money. It’s an experience I won’t soon forget.

I’ve got two new pages that I just put up, they are my place for Open Street Maps and the Garmin image file that I compiled that works on many Garmin handheld GPS devices. Open Street Maps tells the story of why I’ve spent some time on this. The image file contains a fair amount of the street data in Eastern Africa, which doesn’t really exist anywhere else. It’s all user input and based on GPS traces and Satellite Imaging. I’ve been improving the Kampala street naming and will be doing some more traces this weekend during my weekend trip to Bujumbura. (16 hour bus ride… uggh!) More later perhaps.

I was hunting through my spam box looking for a piece of real email and saw the first line of this email which tickled me.

“yo mate, ok I`ll give you my trick but if you give it someone else I`ll fuckin kill you ”

What to say…
They’ve pleaded, oozed, destroyed, tricked, manipulated, fired randomly, and now I’ve seen flat out threated. Of course it’s designed to engage you and do the opposite of what it threatens, but for some reason that just makes it all the more funny to me. (I’m sure it’s not the first time, “they” have threatened, but it’s amusing to me and thought it might be amusing to you)

So I have a job. It’s a starter job, but it’s a good start. I’m a Designer with appfrica.org, which is a shop here in Uganda founded by Jon Gosier, another American here in k’la, which is an incubator software design shop. I say incubator as he’s been hiring locals, talented programmers out of school generally. It’s got good press, an increasingly known brand name, and some good projects it’s already working on. I’m not specifically a web designer, but I’m up for the challenge and interested in pitching in with these guys as it’s a great model. It’s a brilliant bridge between western business and african empowerment. It’s capable of bi-directional learning, leverages western investment and african prices so is market ready, as well as being socially responsible.

As this is a starter job, I’m also looking at doing other things in addition (or perhaps under the appfrica umbrella) as well. I’m headed to Gulu here tomorrow for another opportunity which might also prove interesting.

Several years ago I took an international relations course at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, it was an intro course taught (I think) by Alan Lamborn, which changed the face of my political understanding.  It was in this course that I first began to understand politics and it’s impact on our lives. He upended much of my naive understandings and created a fascination in me for the reality of international relations. It was here that I learned of something that has returned again and again of late.

In America we have an almost mystical love for organized crime in drama.  Characters such as Al Capone/Scarface, John Gotti, Pablo Escobar as well as the numerous gangs and organizations they are know for riddle our cinematic and fictional ethos.  Yet ironically, for all of our love of these organized criminals and the fascination of these illegal organizations, the motivations behind the global existence of organized criminals is distinctly lacking.

Take for example the Somali pirates which have been gracing the international section of news magazines over the year and more.  Perhaps one of the more thrilling highlights are the  US Navy Seals who killed pirates.  What is far more useful is to understand not the event, but the context of the events, which includes it’s history and the current political existence.  Before we demonize the Somali’s for being moralless thugs out for a free ticket, let’s back up and realize that they are a failed state.  In failed states instability and insecurity reigns, infrastructure is likely poor if it exist, despotism and corruption are generally common, governmental control weak, and the economy is in the tank.  It’s a painful existence, one consumed by the here and now.  There are good reasons that the Pirates who succeed in ransoms from corporate shipping return to a heros welcome.

It’s not a positive existance, not one that provides for civility, prosperity, and a chance for improvement as we in the west think of our own lives, but it is not one to which most have any capacity to change, except for the worse, or by taking those drastic “immoral” measures.

What’s worth understanding about this is that organize crime is generally understood to be a fact of life.  The corporations involved in shipping are adding ransom insurance and payouts as a cost of their business, as that route is still the fastest way to go and therefore worth the one in some number of ships delayed/lost.

The pirates in Somalia are only a taste of this global organized criminal market, which has a huge impact on our daily lives in ways that we don’t currently understand. To this end, I have created a new area on my blog call the Citizen Continuing Education which I will occasionally post at least a triplet of sources that will give you a brief overview of thoughts about a topic which we all need to begin to display some proficiency. I’ve started with Organized Crime, which shouldn’t take you more then a few hours between the interviews and videos, plus a bit more for the optional information. By the end of it I hope you’ll come away with far more information then you had, and a useful understanding of the subject. I’m also looking to make these interesting and engaging, unlike the dry lectures that you sometimes get out of the lecture hall.

I have another on American History which involves audio books, but I’ll let you know when that’s finished. Should you have a useful mini-course suggestion, please feel free to contact me, or post a comment!

As I like to quote “We live in an exponential growth of technology,” which will give us dilemma we can’t imagine facing–such as the oldest living and youngest living becoming more and more separated by a gulf of age never seen. Being faced with so much information and so much change, especially in an era where we “rational” decision are easily manipulated, makes being an informed citizen hard to actually achieve. What’s more it’s sometimes impossible to retain a global perspective, but it’s absolutely necessary that we balance the local with the global and realize that we are all interdependent in this web of life. I do hope you enjoy your Citizen’s Continuing Education.

Like Snakes on a Plane, you may be cussing like Samuel L. Jackson at the way cell phones are slithering on to your jet. It is however an ineveitable upgrade, one to which I would encourage you to learn to cope with as the added convince and increased ability to work means that even those of you who swear you won’t use it, will likely one day turn your phone on in a plane.

Frankly I find it strange that people would fight this.  It’s not going to cause any further deaths, unlike driving while talking on a cell phone, so for those of you who are outraged, I might ask you to find something more sane to be outraged about.  Say perhaps pork barrel spending of your senator, the horribly low Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard that contributing to your asthma, or even US made and dropped cluster bombs that continue to kill people today.  It’s worth remind you that you are more likely to get killed by a lighting strike then to die on an airplane in the US (As compared to 50,000+ people a year die in auto accidents per year, 20 times the amount of people who died on Sept 11th, 2001).  With the harden electronics on an airliner, a cell phones could possibly do something, but it’s a risk that is hotly debated and to me seems unlikely.

Sorry the outrage gets to me occasionally.  I’m here in Kampala listening to people talk about Rwanda’s brutal nature, riots about land and other uniquely African power struggles and when people whine about using your cell phone it can be a bit overwhelming.  On the plus side though, it is a culture where you can whine about it if you want.  I might be outraged, but it’s your right to talk about it.

Uganda, which already has a laws concerning gay sex, is planning laws that broaden homosexual illegalization.  This has already happened to some degree in Burundi (who previously crimilized gays) and has been introduced in Rwanda, however the law that’s been introduced in Uganda is much harsher.

There’s a debate going on within the ex-pat activist community, beyond the basic outrage at this, as to how this might affect their ability to work here.  Some organizations work on gay rights, others support gay rights in their countries of origin, others just work with persecution in all it’s forms, as well as those organizations that have LGBT staff or fund such organizations in and around the region.

In general Kampala was considered stable and safe to work in and from.  The hit squads of years ago cleaned out the gangs and crime making it rather safe from thieving and mugging.  Similarly the LRA conflict is in the north, and hasn’t entered the city.  In this way the number of guns and soliders in Kampala are much more limited then in Bujumbura, Nairobi, or etc.  Essentially Kampala an ideal places to base regional organizations out of because it’s relative safety for muzungu and locals, as well as it’s  ease of access to other areas in the Great Lakes region of Africa which are far more volitile.

That’s not to say that Rwanda isn’t safe, it’s possibly the safest country to live in within the region, however, that’s only true if you don’t cross the government.  It’s this lack of political freedom which might be changing, as the laws passed and introduced are broad enough that anyone advocating on behalf of LBGT could be considered to be violiting the laws and arrestable.  This is true even if it’s not a direct correlation, say a person is caught doing business with a gay activist or something equally silly.

It’s a debate, because it’s not clear that this is going to be enforced. (Previous laws were not, there were no convictions in Uganda based on the less strict gay sex laws).  These laws could be used as an excused to harass and imped some organizations that Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi feels is counter-government.  The backlash involved from the international community is an unknown factor.

What’s pretty clear is that this is a political move based on conservative populations of highly religious peoples (Africa in general is the highest growth rate of all religious groups world wide, as well as being the most conservative) where anti-gay sentiments have been increasing for the last several years.  Although sentiment is on the rise, I’m lead to understand that in the case of Burundi it was a leverage issue in political gamesmanship that brought it out rather then outright lobbying.

This in addition to the riots that have shut down the city for the last two days (and are likely to happen tomorrow and perhaps into the future), I’ve arrived in K’la during an interesting time.  Given some of my reason for leaving Cape Town was security, it has made interested in politics and culture here in order to assess stability.

To digress for those who are interested Human Rights Watch has a good write up on this.  There have been several riots in K’la due to the Buganda king being barred from visiting part of his kingdom.  Although it’s part of his kingdom the people within the region want nothing to do with him.  There’s more to this background such as the impact of the downturn, long running governmental antagonism to the kingdom, and recent land disputes, but I’ll leave it at this for the moment.

The president and several ministers are apparently sparring with kingdom officals in a reckless disreguard for the rioters.  This could be settled peaceably, but rather threats and bravado are being shown in public face offs.  Inevitably it’s the poor who are hurt, as 4 were killed yesterday, and more likely were killed today.  There are squads of quasi-police/governmental hitters that are beating people on behalf of the police.  Earlier tonight, half a kliometer away at the airstrip, I heard gunshots.

As I’ve come to learn, thing here in Africa can go pear shaped far quicker then what westerners are used to.  Wednesday there was a few articles about this in the paper, but it was business as usual and no hint of trouble.  Today, it’s not a good idea to do much outside.  Although I’ve made lots of progress on finding a job, I might even have an offer if I can get a work permit, life has some reconsidering to do…

Let’s hope the new anti-gay laws and this Buganda/Government issue settles.