Reading Uganda Festival

Following the Lancaster/Uganda Friends Writing Project, Graham Mort visited Kampala for the week 4^th- 8^th July as Guest of Honour at the FEMRITE 'Reading Uganda' literature festival in Kampala, where he was featured in The Observer newspaper. The week included the book launch for FEMRITE’s latest anthology Never Too Late, a bonfire poetry night featuring performances by local poets, musicians and storytellers, readings in Ugandan secondary schools by contemporary writers and Graham's two-day creative writing workshop focusing on poetry and short stories. You can read the poems that came out of the workshop here and see images of the festival in our gallery. Below is Graham's blog of the experience.

 

Reading Uganda Blog  

2.7.2011.

 

I set out late afternoon as they were baling hay in meadows along the Lune Valley, a beautiful day with hot sunshine and Ugandan clouds pushed up by thermals into fantastically billowing horizons. A buzzard appears over the motorway, wings and tail fanned in an almost perfect circle of lit plumage. Then the airport and a delayed overnight flight to Dubai, arriving early in the morning, but too late for the connection to Entebbe. I call Hilda at Femrite to re-arrange my schedule since we’ll now lose a day. A day spent in a soulless hotel overlooking a vast, dusty building site that is this new city in the desert. Earlier we’d flown over Baghdad and the Euphrates and I thought of Wilfred Thesiger amongst the marsh Arabs in the 1950’s, predicting the end of their way of life. Fortunately I’m reading Cormac McCarthy and, lumped together with a few hundred other airport refugees, find some connection there: ‘Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granite beast…’

 

4.7.2011.

 

I rise at five-thirty, try some fruit juice and get the airport shuttle. Men in spotless white headdresses and robes guide us into the airport. The flight to Entebbe is on time and after touching down in Addis, we’re flying over the khaki uplands of Kenya and then the deeper more luscious green of Uganda. Femrite members, Hilda, Lillian and Juliet meet me at the airport, fuss over my baggage and drive me into Kampala and across the city to the Makerere University Guest House. We touch base about my new schedule and they leave, laughing and waving from their 4x4. The Guest House seems shabbier, the campus overgrown and a little forlorn. There are ibis and cattle egret and marabou storks pottering, as well as kites taking to the air and a beautiful lilac breasted dove pecking at the lawn. The tennis court is humming with topspin and the terrace thronged with SUVs and gossiping Ugandans. There are odd, and I mean eccentric, Brits and Americans staying here and the service is as slow as it ever was. A friendly Canadian postgrad, Connor, assures me that the wi-fi system is working, but only in fits and starts for me. He’s looking at sustainable development and shopping for malarial prophylaxis. A Bell lager takes fifteen minutes to arrive. But it’s worth it – to be drinking a cold beer, overlooking the mosque, back in that scent of diesel fumes and lake water, and hot charcoal.

 

5.07.2011.

 

Hilda picks me up at 8.00am and takes me through the manic Wandegaya traffic to the Museum of Uganda on Kiira road – a dim hangar-like space, though there are cotton tablecloths on the solid mahogany tables. It’s a slow start to my prose workshop, starting with a shy group of 16 that slowly swells to 24 during the morning. We go through a series of exercises aimed at focusing attention on the role of the reader in realizing fictional writing. Lunch is a full-blown Uganda affair: pasta, beef stew, matoke, rice and vegetables – an overdose of carbohydrate that I manage to largely by-pass. I take some photographs of participants over lunch before an afternoon of writing first lines and then first paragraphs of new stories. At the end of the session an interesting discussion break about the use of English and the problems of vernacular usage and translation. That’s cut short by the evening session – 5 Ugandan writers, who read first, then a few poems from me, part of a story and an address about transcultural writing projects and CTWR at Lancaster. There’s no mike stand, so I cut a hole in a cardboard box, stick the microphone in, and balance it on the podium.  It’s the first time I’ve ever taken my writing about Uganda back to Uganda, but the work is well received. There follows a long discussion about how Uganda can develop its reading/writing culture. As ever, the sincerity and commitments of the Ugandan writers is impressive. Hilda drops me off at the Guest House in the dusk, under a fine crescent moon. Connor’s hunched over his laptop, frogs and grasshoppers are calling and later dogs will howl deep in the night. It’s been a long day, but I feel back amongst it all now.

 

6.07.2011.

 

Today I attend a debate on the presence of Ugandan Literature in the secondary school curriculum (they still have the old ‘O’ and ‘A’ level system here). A spokesperson for the National Curriculum Development Council delivered a spirited defense of the current policy, where very few Ugandan writers are featured. She cites a number of factors, including poor editing and language use in published work. Most writers and editors would agree with that. Her case is answered by teacher and poet, Joseph Mugasa, who I first met here ten years ago. He gives a characteristically funny and energetic response, arguing that writers, publishers and teachers needed to work together in the interests of Ugandan culture. We discuss ways of doing this, including a poet laureateship and a ‘readathon’ to promote reading and awareness of contemporary literature. It’s a friendly but passionate debate and Joseph is on good form, making many of his points with jokes and aphorisms. Afterwards I manage to access my email at Femrite and spread the news that Beatrice Lamwaka from Crossing Borders and the Lancaster/Uganda Friends Writing Project has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for short fiction, which is generating real excitement here. Then lunch with Hilda and Tino and a call to an old friend - Susan Kiguli, poet and lecturer at Makerere - when we arrange to meet at the Guest House and catch up. I’ve already arranged to meet two postgraduate students heading for the Management School at Lancaster and find a note from an American Fulbright scholar asking if we can meet up to talk about her project – an investigation into imported sanitary towels. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help much, but call her all the same. Then I visit the University bookshop and pick up a Luganda phrasebook and ‘Birds of Uganda’ – Speckled Mousebird, Blue-Naped Mousebird, Narina’s Trogon...there’s a lot to look out for…

 

7.07.2011.

 

The day starts with a power cut on Makerere campus. Then into the museum with Hilda to set up the poetry workshop – 20 students, most of them also attending the Tuesday session. The atmosphere is much more relaxed this time and we work through a range of individual and collaborative exercises exploring metaphor, image and meaning. What’s the difference between an idea and a thought? It’s a lively and engaging atmosphere, In the afternoon I’ve decided to build twin poems: The Book and The Tongue, that might reflect some for the discussions we’ve been having about literature and orature. The groups start using their African languages, from which we build refrains, then building a poem from individual components written on strips of paper. There’s a great debate in each group, a little bad temper, some bruised egos, but eventually the poems are built an work very well, sharing obvious similarities in structure, but exploring different aspects of language and experience. After the workshop we have to launch a new Femrite anthology Never Too Late – short stories intended to provoke discussion of sexual and social issues amongst teenagers. The Chairperson of Femrite, Mary Okurut, is late, so we decide to use a reading of our two new poems to introduce the event. The power is still out, so a generator is thumping outside. The use of Luganda and other languages has an immediate appeal to the audience. After speeches and readings, the book is launched and the socialising starts, though we’re in darkness by now. Jackee Batanda (who was once writer in residence at Lancaster) arrives with Mary Okurut. Then I’m kidnapped with two young Americans, Liz and Anne Therese, by ex-pat Vivien Craddock Williams and driven, rather madly, to the Athenia restaurant in Kololo, to a graduation party. We meet Derek, the graduate, a prince, a princess, some Greek Ugandans and the oldest muzungu in Kampala, John, who’s 96!  We’re complete strangers but received with great hospitality and a huge plate of traditional Ugandan food. They try to drag us to the dance floor, but by now we’re pretty tired and slip sideways and back to Makerere for a late beer and a long talk about our projects, Uganda, and where home is.

 

8.07.2011.

 

This is the last day of the ‘Reading Uganda’ festival and starts with a free day. I visit some old haunts, walking all the way from Makerere to the National Theatre via the Ban Café and the Masala Chaat resturant on Dewington Road. It’s pretty hot with a clear sky and the city is incredibly busy. That extraordinary press of people going about their affairs. Sensory overload from all directions. A new Hilton Hotel – almost finished – dominates the skyline as I look south from Makerere. The news has been full of the independence of Southern Sudan all week. A new African nation. I run into Nancy Oloro Robarts – Femrite member and participant in the Uganda ‘Radiophonics’ project – just near the parliament buildings and we exchange our own news. Then the hot walk back to Wandegaya. The evening event at the museum starts at 6.00pm and is a bonfire and reading with barbecue. A fire burns inside a circle of chairs and, despite the power cut, we have a PA system and one light running from the generator. I begin the readings, which go on all night, interspersed with the raffle and live songs from the MC. It’s a great atmosphere, though tricky to read balancing a microphone and a torch for most of the older participants! The traffic continues on Kieran road beyond the museum gates, and the yellow lights of cars, matatu and boda-boda sweep over us. A car alarm and the warning lights on an SUV parked above the compound go off at regular intervals all night, fulminating like a troublesome guest. By nine o’clock things are beginning to wind down and fruit bats are flapping out of the trees and over the roof of the museum. I take my leave, holding the present I’ve been given – a large batik wall-hanger with a poem by Mildred K. Barya. It’s a lovely gift, thoughtfully chosen and beautifully wrapped. It’s been a pretty full week and Hilda looks exhausted by the end of it. So much to organize and worry about. I’m not sure when I’ll make it back to Uganda, but I’ve set some time aside on Monday to visit the Femrite office and discuss things with Hilda. Meanwhile I’ll be meeting Makerere academic and poet Susan Kiguli to explore connections there. Watch this space…