Going out in the field

During the last week I’ve followed the project officers from UMWA out on two different projects. Last Friday we went to Mukono - a district about 20 km south west of Kampala.  As part of the international campaign - 16 days of activism against gender violence -UMWA has been going out to different communities to do role-plays and do community dialogues about domestic violence. When we arrived in Mukono it seemed as if t the ones responsible for assembling people for the event hadn’t done a very good job since we found the tent like this:

 But after some hours a number of people turned up and it ended up being a quite good event:

 On Wednesday this week I went on another project in Wakiso (also quite close to Kamapala). This project specifically targets kids who have dropped out of school. Wednesday was the first of three day training where our project officers, accompanied by personnel from ISF (International Solidarity Foundation) would take the kids through exercises in areas such as gender, human rights and domestic violence. On Wednesday the young ones started with introducing themselves, and telling the group why they had dropped out of school. Then, May (one of our project coordinators) took them through an exercise where they reflected upon the typical daily life for an African woman. The group then identified some of the challenges that a typical rural woman in Uganda meet. Then they went on to the concept of gender, looking at the different characteristics, responsibilities and roles that are normally expected from Ugandan men and women – and also what kinds of characteristics and behaviours that are accepted. The discussion got quite heated as one of the boys told the group that it was a woman’s responsibility to do the work at home (watch after the children, cook, clean and so on) and that he didn’t think it was right that he, after a long day of work making money for the family, should have to help out with even more work at home.

He was met by heavy protest from some of the girls who thought this was old fashioned thinking – the men should also help out. “If I am making tea, you can watch after the kids”, one of them asserted.