The king, the camp and some creative thinking

Iben and Rasmus talk about how it is to be a youth volunteer in Mityana, Uganda – a life that offers a little of everything. Martial law, Ugandan dishes and specialities as well as good ecperiences with Life Planning Skills are just some of the experiences they talk about.

By Iben Revsbech and Rasmus Lund, October 2009

Thursday evening, the phone rings: “Iben, how are you and Rasmas?” I laugh and answer: “We are fine – as we always are, nothing new. We just talked two hours ago, remember?” Joseph get quiet in the other end of the line and then says “Okay, let me know if you need anything but please stay inside and do not leave your house. People are crazy and angry and they are shooting and burning cars in Kampala. It is something with the Kabaka…” Then he hangs up and I feel a bit confused.

Not long after, we hear shots nearby and people are yelling. What is going on, and who was the Kabaka? The otherwise so peacefully town Mityana is suddenly involved in a political power struggle and an armed conflict between the president of Uganda and the king of Buganda. Rasmus and I are caught in the middle of all this – two innocent youth volunteers who does not know what to do.

The weekend comes as does some clarity
We were supposed to have our first Life Planning Skills session in a youth camp for young people between the age of 13 and 16 this weekend. But the camp was rescheduled to the following weekend due to state of emergency in Mityana.

Saturday we finally found out what happened. The problem was a conflict between the president of Uganda and the king of Buganda Kingdom (the Kabaka). Buganda Kingdom is the  biggest and most influential part of Uganda. Apparently, this is a power struggle between these two and it ended up in demonstrations and clashes between the police, the military and the demonstrators in Mityana.

This is what started the conflict. The president prevented the participation of the Kabaka in an event. To the residents of Buganda, this was an insult to their king. Luckily, the Kabaka chose to stay at home which probably prevented the riots from escalating. Furthermore, he asked his people to stop the riots and then the state of emergency was over.

Unfortunately, this kept us from facilitating our Youth camp as planned. It is important to stress that we were not afraid at any point and we would have been moved to another branch, if the conflict had not been solved so fast.

Besides this dramatic start, we have begun our Life Planning Skills sessions in our four contact schools. So far, the sessions have been about HIV/AIDS, Gender Roles and Equality, Relationships and Future planning. But let us briefly introduce what Life Planning Skills is about.

Life Planning Skills – an explanation
In short, Life Planning Skills is a guide to teenagers on how to make the right decisions in life and how to stand on one's own two feet. Here in Mityana branch, the focus is on students in Senior 1 – which in Denmark would be 7th grade.

There are 16 life skills for example self awareness, empathy, creative thinking and critical thinking. We do not educate the youngsters in the 16 skills as such but we facilitate sessions with a subject related to the different skills. We facilitate four sessions with each class under different subjects and after these sessions, the students should be better equipped to plan their lifes and make good decisions.

Our impression is that the teaching methods are mostly the blackboard or lectures. We try to come up with creative suggestions for how the sessions could be more fun for the students and how to evaluate the sessions in order to gradually improve the sessions.

The week after
Our youth camp was postponed to the following week. The night before the camp, three of our colleges from the branch introduced us to Ugandan specialties: Local brew and roasted goat meat. Local brew is a kind of bear brewed on bananas and pineapple but it looks a bit like milk and has an aftertaste of strong alcoholic beverages.

We were sitting in a big garden in front of a hotel in the city, eating the roasted meat – that  had been cut in small weird-looking pieces – from a big dish right in the middle of the table while we drank the strong brew. It was getting dark, but it was still warm.

We were talking about peoples’ attitude towards the Kabaka, the president and what really had caused this conflict. It turned out that there is a general unsatisfacition with the president in Buganda.

This was a nice introduction to the camp which was really cool for the participants and all of us facilitators.