The streets in Kampala, Uganda are never empty. Check out the video below to hear Danielle’s thoughts on the city (and it’s constant activity) and meet a young man named Brian we talked to who is eager for you all to come out and see all the commotion for yourselves!
Crossposted from www.BorderJumpers.org
This is the third in a four-part series on my visit to Heifer International projects in Gicumbi District in Rwanda. Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute Nourishing the Planet blog.
In addition to milk and income, dairy farmers also get another important resource from their cows-manure. While raw manure can be composted for use on crops, cow dung can also be a source of fuel for households.
Madame Helen Bahikwe, another farmer in Gicumbi District, began working with Heifer International in 2002. She now has five cows-and an excess of manure. With a subsidy from the government as part of the National Biogas Program, Madame Helen built a biogas collection tank, which allows her to use the methane from decomposing manure to cook for her 10 person family. She no longer has to collect or buy firewood, saving both time and money and protecting the environment. The fuel is also cleaner burning, eliminating the smoke that comes from other sources of fuel.
And according to Mukerema Donatilla, another farmer we met, biogas “helps with hygiene” on the farm because they can use hot water to clean cow udders before milking and for cleaning milk containers.
Both Mukerema and Madame Helen had to contribute about $USD 700 for the materials to install their biogas units, while the government contributed about $USD 400. With funding from SNV, a Netherlands-based organization and the Rwanda Ministry of Infrastructure, the government hopes to have 15,000 households in the country collecting and using biogas by 2012.
Obama is a Corporatist Sell Out! seems to have become one of the battle cries on the liberal blogosphere at the moment, and partly inspired by Al Giordano’s excellent article We Have Met the Corporation and It is Us (hat tip to Happy in VT for the link) this seems worthy of a wider moose moot. I was hoping to write something more linked and substantial and elegantly argued, but given the holiday season, thought it best to get this modified comment out there, sooner rather than later.
You may disagree but, from this transatlantic perch, it seems that there is some justice on focusing on the role of commercial and corporate interest in the US legislative life. As the Health Reform process has made quite clear, the US system of campaign finance, legislative checks and balances, is quite prone to effective lobbyists, paid handsomely by their corporate clients, surely because they get results.
But to go from this recognition of corporate influence, to a conspiratorial Chomskyite hegemony and argue that ‘everything is about corporate power’ seems to be – as Al Giordano says – to both state the obvious and miss the point.
No pun intended.
What is wrong with people, though? Think Progress is reporting that some lunatic teabagger called in to C-Span this morning, fretting that his fervent prayers for Senator Byrd’s death had resulted in the incapacitation of GOP Senator Inhofe instead. No… no, really, I’m not kidding. The dude was practically in tears. Watch it below (really watch it — you will be stymied, and it’s barely a minute long):
Transcript of caller’s remarks (thanks, Blasky):
Our small Tea Bag group here in Waycroft, we… we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Senator Byrd that he would die and couldn’t show up at the vote the other night. How hard did you pray because I see one of our members is missing this morning. Did it backfire on us [begins crying] and one of our members die? How hard did you pray Senator, did you pray hard enough?
RNC Chairman Michael Steele must have a real way with words — he certainly knows how to charge for them, and he isn’t shy about it. Apparently he’s doing regular speaking gigs and charging up to $20,000 a pop. Wow! But we’ve always known Steele had a witty, “beyond cutting edge” style all his own, so it’s really no wonder that he would charge people to listen to his words of wisdom. I mean, when you’ve got the prescience and insight to call that ghetto Obama stimulus package “bling bling,” you really set a high bar for yourself. (Ain’t he hip-hop and fresh and straight dope, y’all? What a guy!)
This is the second in the four-part series on my visit to Heifer International projects in Gicumbi District in Rwanda. Crossposted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet blog.
Holindintwali Cyprien is a 40-year old farmer and livestock keeper in Gicumbi District, outside of Kigali in Rwanda. But he hasn’t always been a farmer. After the genocide in the 1990s, he and his wife, Mukaremera Donatilla, 40, were school teachers, making a about $USD 50.00 monthly. Living in a small house constructed of mud, without electricity or running water, they were saving to buy a cow to help increase their income. And when Heifer International started working in Rwanda almost a decade ago, Cyprien and Donatilla were chosen as one of the first 93 farmers in the country to be Heifer beneficiaries. Along with the gift of a cow, the family also received training and support from Heifer project coordinators.
Today, they’ve used their gift to not only increase their monthly income-they now make anywhere from $USD 300-600 per month-but also improved the family’s living conditions and nutrition. In addition to growing elephant grass and other fodder-one of Heifer’s requirements for receiving animals-for the 5 cows they currently own, Cyprien and Donatilla are also growing vegetables and keeping chickens. They’ve built a brick house and have electricity and are earning income by renting their other house.
Although Heifer trained them how to collect water with very simple technologies using plastic bags, Cyprien took the training a few steps further and installed his own concrete tank. In addition, Cyprien has enough money to invest in terracing his garden to prevent erosion, a necessary farming practice in this very hilly area.
And today, Cyprien is going back to his roots and making plans to teach again-this time to other farmers. He wants, he says, “the wider community to benefit from his experience.”
Ready for a math nightmare — every US Dollar is 1,800 Ugandan Shillings! Here’s a test for you: if something costs 51,450 shillings — what is that in US dollars? (No cheating with a calculator…)
Aside from mental mathematics, Uganda is much more affordable than the other countries in East Africa. With the exception of taxis (petrol is a fortune for drivers), everything here is a bit less expensive than Uganda’s neighbors: Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya. That’s of course if you don’t go Gorilla Tracking (at least $USD200 per person) or whitewater rafting at the source of the Nile ($USD125 per person). Looks like our schedule will prevent us from the first and bad weather kept us from the latter. But we love this country so much we have no doubt we’ll be back sometime in the future and we’ll try to do both!
People here are also very laid back — I’ve even gone three days without a cup of coffee here and didn’t seem to mind.
You hear the words “Hakuna Matata” everywhere. Literally.
Internet services down nationwide all day? Hakuna Matata…
Flights cancelled? Hakuna Matata…
Two hours in wall-to-wall rush hours in Kampala? Hakuna Matata…
I am just trying to let go and not be that stereotypical American traveler who can’t go with the flow….(and sometimes failing miserably at it)…
We like the money here, no former or current presidents or war generals, just birds and mammals on the bills. And they are all different colors–very pretty.
We also tried the local beer — called Club — which reminded me of Budweiser (no offense to to Dani’s home state of Missouri).They have a darker local beer aptly called “Nile” which we will try before leaving. Oh, and for some reason Smirnoff is not only the vodka of choice — but those little Smirnoff Ice wine coolers are ubiquitous in local hands…
I can’t complain about the toilets (mostly clean, toilet seats almost everywhere in Kampala, but almost nowhere outside the city) — mostly because Uganda offered me my first hot shower since landing in Ethiopia!
Follow us as we visit toilets, drink beer, and spend money across East Africa ;-). Check out Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
The Sea is a Harsh Mistress
Harbortown is a small village located on a remote island. The people are like people anywhere else. Maybe, a little more self-reliant, since the ferry only comes once a week, but, other than that, they’re pretty much like you and me.
Times had been hard lately. The cannery, the biggest employer on the island, had cut back wages and then cut jobs. Quite a few people needed help to get by. The unmet needs of their neighbors bothered many islanders. One day, some of them got together to find a way to help.
At the meeting, it was soon clear that the most pressing problem was hunger. Harbortowners are known for their independent spirits so it was no surprise that they had a harder time agreeing on what to do about it. In the end, they settled on the most obvious solution. They were surrounded by the sea so they agreed to pool their money and buy a fishing boat. It would be staffed by volunteers with an elected captain. The catch would be given to the hungry. Everyone felt better about the situation as they left the meeting.
The band teacher, because of his organizing skills, was given the task of recruiting the volunteers. He soon had enough to gather the crew to hold a vote for the captain.
Happy Solstice! I like Winter Solstice because it means the days will begin to get longer. We will not notice a discernible difference for a month or so, but at least we will begin getting more light.
Apparently the season has imposed itself on even the worst of all Scrooges. Headzup explains.
And yet I somehow am deeply suspicious. That bill needs to be looked over very carefully.
Once in a while I hear a speech that is truthful and biting, but with a dignity that defies time.
That was very good.
Voting for cloture on Health Care Reform is a significant breakthrough for our country. It is not perfect, not even close, but we are inches from passing some of the more positive changes in American health care in the history of this country. And I do believe we can make this legislation better in time.
Now let’s talk about some of these Senators. Who is up for re-election in 2010 and 2012? I want to move the House and Senate more to the left. We also need a more representative face to our government. More women and people of color. More liberals. And let the republicans rot in their stew of hate and lunacy they have been fostering for the past few decades.
They’re considered a minority in the United States, composing a rapidly growing sub-set of the population. The majority are immigrants; public sentiment, aroused by nativism, is sometimes hostile towards them. They vote heavily Democratic, but because many are immigrants they turn-out in numbers not as great as the share of the population they compose.
I’m not talking about Latinos. I’m talking about white Catholics in the early 20th century.
Today, Democrats hope that the Latino vote will be an essential part of a permanent majority, the keys to an unyielding period of Democratic dominance. Latinos were a major part of Obama’s victory in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. They’ve turned California blue for the foreseeable future. Red states Arizona and Texas are home to millions of Latinos, who represent a threat to the Republican character of those two states. Opportunity beckons.
Or so it seems.
In reality, however, it seems that the path of the Latino vote is the same as that of the white Catholic vote. The more Catholics that entered the country and the more time that passed, the more assimilated they became. In the early 20th century, Catholics were seen as an “other,” as Italian and Irish immigrants not fully part of the Unite States. Today, however, such sentiment is long gone. We regard white Catholics as normal, dull. The days of anti-Catholic discrimination are long gone.
With it has disappeared the Democratic hold over the Catholic vote. JFK won nearly 80% of Catholics because he was Catholic, and because in that time there was still anti-Catholic sentiment. 40 years later, John Kerry lost the Catholic vote, despite being a Catholic.
Will Latinos follow the same path? It seems likely. A large part of what connects Latinos to the Democratic Party is that they are an immigrant community – and Democrats have always represented immigrants. If – when – they assimilate, and the word Latino becomes just another synonym for white, Latinos will behave much as white Catholics do today. Which is to say that they will vote no different from the rest of America.
–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/