Uganda's teen king

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/03/16/uganda.teen.king/index.html?hpt=C1

I was originally just going to post this and say "lol he reads Twilight" but the rest of the article was pretty fascinating as well. I can't imagine growing up as king of a struggling nation; the pressures on this kid to produce economic miracles must be astronomical and I find the way he comes across in this interview to be beyond admirable.

Of course this is the point where someone unearths via the magic of Google some horrible authoritarian atrocity he agreed to when he was younger but for this moment I think dude is pretty upright and impressive.

man that is a really inspiring story. like a lot of people who went to college in the 90s (and onto the present for all I know), I had a cursory study in postcolonial Africa, and I'm always looking for good news from some of the countries that've fared terribly in the wake of the colonial years. a generation of good leaders instituting good policies in just a handful of African countries could effect seismic change there, I think (nb I am notoriously politically naive so maybe nothing short of 100+ years of unrealistically great luck could help).

hmmmm

heard about this dude when I was in FP, but not much.

I do recall that many were leery (esp in the north) of Mousevenis recent decision to ethnicize a bit more. places like Uganda are tricky cuz while traditional ways/cultures need to be preserved, ppl got to get with the idea that the nation-state isn't a totally awful idea and that maybe it wouldn't hurt to get everyone on the same page linguistically.

sorry morbs u_u

aaaaaand just found out my bro received a Xmas card from Uganda with my name on it. signed by sixteen ppl, including two babies. n_n

wait did you just call me morbs

maybe it wouldn't hurt to get everyone on the same page linguistically.

in what you mean by "getting everyone on the same page" lies a world of things to talk about though right - language is precious and when one falls into "preserved" status, it tends to walk into the shadows along with the culture that sustained it -- right?

imagine when he comes back to the US after school to look for a wife

aaaand that's my patronizing joke of the day

wau

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/19/world/main5397985.shtml

Ex-Nurse Aide in U.S. Crowned Uganda King

http://www.safariweb.com/safarimate/boyking.htm

shit that is a fantastic outfit

I want to be a boy king

fyi u not a boy u a man

ok, he is a former nurse's aide, I am now 100% smitten w/the Ugandan king

/maybe it wouldn't hurt to get everyone on the same page linguistically./

in what you mean by "getting everyone on the same page" lies a world of things to talk about though right - language is precious and when one falls into "preserved" status, it tends to walk into the shadows along with the culture that sustained it -- right?

well yeah!

would honestly like to have his convo, because I had a hell of a time with it in Ug. this whole idea I mean.

It is a small ass country with over fifty languages, and one lingua franca, English, that surprisngly few speak well (NB in my v limited experience...which otoh was limited to jus folks and not the educated).

my bros org is sponsoring boys from the north (acholi, who are not well liked by some since the war), and we were both outraged by the fact that the catholic school was beating them when they spoke Lwo. on the other hand, a functional govt (as we---in the west---conceive of it), sorta demands that ppl understand each other. and I dont mean at a high, legislative level. I mean like delivering the mail and getting hospitals built.

I mean on the one hand I'm horrified when ppl get all "speak English!" here in the states, but im similarly horrified when I see how difficult it is for a small nation to coalesce around an "identity" foisted upon it by colonialism.

it's interesting: the Kampalans I knew were generally in favor of getting over all this ethnic stuff and just being Ugandans (their words, roughly). Rural peeps, not so much. And when the country's 85% rural...

xp

iPhone typin, four hours of sleep, finLs, sorry dudes

finLs are rough, no worries

j0hn i think the nurses aide is a difft ugandan king. i've been hunting around and i can't even tell how many there are? seven?

anyway, peep this stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Anderson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_Communities

good luck (pre)Dr. gbx

ty

wait did you just call me morbs

lol no I just felt a pang of palpable guilt being all "dangit if everyone just spoke the same fukkin language things would run a lot more smoothly imo"

had a real good talk with a friend who's working with PIH in Rwanda (she's gonna put in a word for me ^_^') and it's interesting to hear how she admits that, like, Kagame's semi authoritarian rule is like sorta ok since it means that there's good hospitals and less violence and that.

dunno. I'm just interested in the tension between pragmatism and liberal values in the majority nations, since it's something we get to ignore most
of the time.

yeah, a lot of the time I really do feel that being liberal is the greatest privilege wealth has to offer and it frustrates me to no end that other people don't agree

it kinda is, tho, right? i mean, since we're talking about Uganda, let's put this on the table: they are (last I checked, a few weeks ago, admittedly) still fast-tracking legislation to make the practice of homosexuality a crime, punishable by death (or so it was proposed, at least at one point...may have been "down-graded" to life in prison). this is, to me, unconscionable. and i think it's unconscionable, wealthy western liberal or no---however, afaik (*AFAIK* <-- not much) homosexuality ~as it is conceived of in the west~ in basically a Brand New Thing in places like Uganda, even if MSM (to medicalize it, sorry) is basically a thing that happens everywhere and has for time immemorial.

(fwiw, i think queer studies in the majority nations has got to be one of the most interesting/worthwhile things going---though, this lady i'm seeing has a friend who basically globe-trotted as an academic to gay communities in far-flung places, and while it was def fascinating and worthwhile for him, he apparently felt, at times, as a "gay man from the west" that he was not at all welcome, and possibly in legit danger)

Funny this thread should be started today because the Kasubi Tombs in Kamapala, which house the bodies of (I think) four old kings of a different kingdom, Buganda, just burned down.

I was only there a few weeks ago, it seemed to be an incredibly important site for a lot of people. FWIW it looked like this before.

Oh we totally drove past the teen king's palace by the way. It's like a big pentagon type thing on a hill. The town it's in, Fort Portal, is the prettiest I saw there.

as is often the case with any discussion around africa, there are many, many threads in play all at once here very quickly - like, for me, I'd get the anti-gay Ugandan legislation off the table if we're gonna talk about other stuff, or it'll be the only thing on the table. (I am passionate about my own opinions on it, fwiw, which are yr classic white liberal "fuck off if you're not willing to let people love who they want" ones.) so, my focus is here:

I mean on the one hand I'm horrified when ppl get all "speak English!" here in the states, but im similarly horrified when I see how difficult it is for a small nation to coalesce around an "identity" foisted upon it by colonialism.

yeah, I mean, the legacy of colonialism - or of "the colonial project" as I usually like to put it, since I think the legacy is of what went down, not of whatever ideologies underlay the whole deal -- is so incredibly thorny: it's like trying to parse race relations post-slavery. how do you even begin to address something so pervasive? to me, I think, long-term, the notion of nationhood needs to be addressed -- I mean, prior to colonialism, there was no "Nigeria," right? (nb if we get into pre-colonial Africa I am 100% out of my comfort zone & am eager to be schooled) "Nations" in general: they may be "how the world works," but the world, broadly considered, kinda doesn't work, so maybe "Uganda" as a nation is a concept worth looking at as reconsiderable. Am I wrong about that? Because I think coalescing around a language, while valuable for preserving nationhood probably, is going to be a process with casualties.

GBX - most of the Ugandans I spoke to (mostly Kampalans, admittedly) seemed to be of the impression that it was officially recognising the kingdoms that cemented Musevini's position and at the same time galvanised the idea of 'Uganda' as an entity, possibly because individual kingdoms were less inclined to try and break away. But it's not perfect and the tensions do flare up as recent riots in Kampala show.

(I will freely admit my experience is considerably more limited than yours from what I can tell, especially of rural areas)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX-0750E0Co