Winning a By-Election

When I first moved to Kitchener I often found myself lonely and bored. Kitchener is a small and quiet city, a former blue collar town now dominated by a struggling technology industry, and I was finding it hard to meet people who I could relate to.

About two months after I moved to town a Provincial By-Election was called in the riding just North of mine, Kitchener-Waterloo. Then I started hearing rumours that one of the board members for Reception House, where I work, was expected to win the NDP nomination. Could the situation be any more perfect? 

A few days after Catherine Fife won the nomination I called her office to offer my services as a foot canvasser for her campaign. The person on the other end of the line seemed excited that an experienced political canvasser was volunteering their time.

On the first night I volunteered I had the opportunity to canvass with Catherine and four other volunteers in an apartment building.I had never canvassed with a candidate before and was excited to watch her in action. Throughout the campaign I had opportunities to canvass with a diverse group of NDP supporters, ranging from a couple of MPPs from Northern Ontario, people coming in from other ridings to offer their support and with new friends from Kitchener. 

As time went on the campaign grew dramatically. An original staff of five seemed to almost double and there always seemed to be at least twenty volunteers filling some role at any given time. One evening after an all-candidates debate I was invited to attend an after party with some other volunteers. I was discouraged to learn that some of they young people who I thought were fellow volunteers were actually filling roles as poll cats who apparently assist in the office and canvass. It was disappointing to know that people were being paid to do the same job that I had volunteered for, especially when you encountered individuals who were not acting in their roles effectively. 

The week of the by-election was a busy one for me. I had committed to canvassing, was holding a charity BBQ at work, and I was rehearsing for an upcoming swing dance performance.

On the day of the By-Election, September 7th I was assigned to both inside and outside scrutineer in a small poll where Catherine only had ten confirmed supporters. Later in the evening I was also asked to scrutineer the vote count. I did not expect Catherine to win in the poll given the low level of confirmed support in the poll. 

When I started volunteering for the campaign I was really unsure of how Catherine would be received as the riding had never elected an NDP MP or MPP, and provincially the riding had been held by a conservative for almost two decades. However, talking to people canvassing Catherine had a lot of support and the day before the election the Waterloo Record predicted that Fife would win.

Despite the low level of committed NDP voters in my poll Catherine did take the most votes, and won by a much larger margin in the by-election as a whole. This brings more legitimacy to my claim that I have never worked on a losing election campaign. 

The victory party was epic :)

Uganda's Stories

A few months ago I pledged to write a blog post detailing some of the stories that impacted me most while I was in Uganda. As usual things have been busy and I've also been trying to get my mind around which stories to tell and how to tell them. below are a collection of people who shocked me with their tenacity and inspired me with their courage and conviction. 

This is only a sample of the people who I met and interacted with. I also had many friends who chose to reveal very little about their personal lives. One said to me once "Yes Kirsten, we all have stories, but we keep them to ourselves"

In Uganda it's common to see newspapers with large headlines posted to trees and other inanimate objects. One day on my way into work I saw a newspaper with the headline "Musevini Proposes the Death Penalty for Rape." Being vehemently opposed to the death penalties I was furious and felt justified enough that when I got to my office I expressed my dismay to one of my colleagues. She responded that she didn't really care about criminals and when I asked why it turned out that her father had been murdered and the justice system had done little to bring her fathers' killer to justice. She said that with her father gone that she found it difficult to see the value in protecting anyone else's life.

In Nebbi, which is in the West Nile region of Uganda (far North West), I interviewed a woman who was the principal teacher at a nursery school who had been elected as the chair person of her cooperative. She said that her husband had found it difficult to accept her role as a principal teacher but that when she was elected as chairperson that he abandoned she and her children because he felt she no longer had time for him.After giving her an ultimatum to quit her responsibilities in the cooperative, he abandoned she and her children. She continued to work for her community and her children. 

In Bweyale, I met a woman who left her husband after she lost four consecutive babies because she believed he was cursed. She later returned to him after discovering the children had died from measles and diarrhea, conditions which are easily contracted by living in close quarters such as those found in camps for internally displaced persons. She eventually had two children. In Uganda, the average household has seven children.  

In Arua, also in the West Nile region of Uganda I spoke with a man who was a self-proclaimed feminist. He believed that because God made women the companions of man that men should treat women well so that they could work beside one another. Given the typical relationships between husbands and wives, this position was really quite progressive. 

My regular boda boda driver in Kampala, Kevin, was 24 and left school after his parents died so that he could make sure that his younger siblings could finish their educations. His goal was to return and finish highschool.

My friend David grew up in Eastern Uganda. The only child of his father and mother he had several half-siblings from each parent. As a young adult his father chose to pay for his education in Kampala but insisted that he study finance rather than his true love, art. David continued to struggle through his courses to maintain the approval of his father. 

I also had the great fortune of working with a Peace Activist Rose Othieno. Rose is the Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (or CECORE), which helps to mediate conflicts at the local, regional and national level, produces research papers and offers training on conflict transformation. Rose left a government position in 2003 and help to found CECORE in response to the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda. Her work has been internationally recognized and she is a fantastic resource to the country. I couldn't have been luckier than to have the opportunity to work with her.

Finally, I also had a friend  whom I knew as a Ugandan and saw on a regular basis. He often seemed tired but otherwise seemed well adjusted. One day he surprised me by disclosing that he was actually Congolese. He had been kidnapped by a rebel group in North Eastern Congo and forced to work for them as a porter. When the rebels attacked he lost most of his immediate family. He was granted refugee status after crossing the Ugandan border. His hope was to find work or be resettled to a country like Canada.

I still worry about the political situation in Uganda. The government continues to pursue legislation to ban homosexuality, the environment continues to degenerate as the population grows and there is little hope for a truly democratic government. 

I also often think of the rural areas and slums where I visited where there is very little access to basic needs such as clean water, electricity or adequate food. At times it makes one wonder how much undiscovered potential lies just out of reach. 

I am however, encouraged by the people who I met who are pursuing their dreams or working towards a better lives for themselves, their families and their communities. I hope every day that efforts in Ugandan and around the world will contribute to a more just and equitable global society. 

I think of the places and friends I left behind often, and hope that they think of me too

Three Months at Home.

I've been thinking a lot about this post, how to word it, what to write in it. I considered writing it in June, and then in July and now here we are in August.

About a month ago I realized that I wasn't really telling many people much about Uganda. After this realization I shared it with a recently acquired friend who simply said "Why not?" which seemed like a simple enough question. Or maybe not.

Here's why:

1. It's really difficult to explain what exactly it was that I was doing in Uganda. For review I was completing a CIDA internship with the Uganda Cooperative Alliance where I was trying to help make a development project in Northern Uganda sensitive to the legacy of conflict in the region. This might seem pretty theoretical and unimportant but if you run a development program in a non-inclusive way or you provide the wrong types of assistance, this can aggravate existing tensions within the community you're working in and undermine peace. So it wasn't a simple case of doing something wonderful and humanitarian but instead trying to effect systems and programs which are not easily changed. This meant doing things like research and workshops which are interesting but don't make for great stories.

2. I feel some embarrassment and guilt about my experience. My placement was no walk in the park. I was working with a supervisor who had a background in agricultural economics and who was really good with financial management but not so great at Human Resources Management. I found out about 2 days before I was supposed to go to Uganda that the job description which had been sent for me was the same as for the intern who had, had the position the previous year. I found out after I got to Kampala that the organization never requested a peace and conflict officer and that it was suggested by someone with the Canadian Cooperative Association who had since left their position. This left me fighting an uphill battle to get what little work I could done. And because of a lack of interest in what I was working on in combination with inexcusable budget delays I didn't get as much work as I might have done and I've been left with an unfinished report which is making me feel incredibly guilty, yet it's hard to find the motivation to finish it when I'm not sure if anyone would ever read it.

3. I saw a lot of problems in development both through involvement as an individual and with the organizations I worked with. As a result I became extremely critical of the development system which is an important and relevant point of conversation, but not one that is relevant for most of my friends and family.

I also feel like I have already run most of these topics into the ground on my blog and they are also not terribly reflective of what impacted me most about my trip.

When I came home from Uganda both at Christmas and in May I was confronted with an overwhelming sense of calm. The roads are perfectly paved, people follow traffic signals, no one carries large shot guns, the police for the most part do their jobs well with a minimal amount of aggression, most people have access to food and health care and Canada is so much quieter than Uganda, it's almost unsettling.

Almost immediately after returning home to Canada I quickly began to develop a sense of annoyance with my friends and family over complaints they had about things like other drivers, the weather, the cost of clothes etc. These complaints are still bothering me although I have readjusted to my white-middle class position of privilege relatively neatly.

When I visited the Kibera slum in Kenya in December where almost 4 million people live in absolute poverty most of whom are under the age of thirty, it's vastness struck me. Here is a slum with 3 times the number of people that live in Toronto, who struggle to access food and health care and have no access to clean water or education. I learned about girls who risked sexual violence just to have the privilege of attending one of the few schools available to them. I noticed almost everyone carrying out their routines. Two things struck me about this. The first thing that struck me was how much untapped potential must exist amongst the four million people living in the slum and how if they were given the same opportunities that I had to access education and other opportunities I had received growing up that we might have advanced far past the point we are at today in terms of development, conflict resolution and even scientific advancement. The second thing that struck me there as well as throughout my trip, was how lucky I was to be born in Canada to my family, even with it's problems.

If anything these are the two lessons that I've taken away from my trip. Gratitude and the need to do better by our brothers and sisters around the world. This by no means is meant to suggest that developed countries should instruct developing countries on how to develop and provide these opportunities because there is more than adequate academic and anecdotal evidence suggesting that they absolutely should not. It's also not to say that there isn't also work to be done in Canada, or wherever you happen to be reading this from. On the contrary, it is far less problematic to contribute to development in our own communities through working with foodbanks, advocating for human rights or lending a hand it a friend in need and the results are far more visible. I believe if we strike a balance and consider both, including educating ourselves about human rights and development issues around the world.

And so, in my next blog entry I'm going to share some stories which profoundly touched me that I heard or witnessed in Uganda all of which I feel demonstrate the challenges to accessing development and empowerment and the courage of those who are working towards better lives for themselves and their communities throughout Uganda.

What Toronto and the DRC Have in Common

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the second least developed country in the World. It is a tenuously Democratic country where political parties battle for control of the government not in election booths but in the streets with guns and tanks. It is a refugee producing country, with an armed conflict in the East which has claimed the lives of million. Enough food and running water are considered a blessing.

Toronto is the largest city in one of the top ten most developed countries in the World. It is a refugee receiving city, a low unemployment rate and a social safety net. Most of it's residents apathetically enjoy the benefits of living a secure and comfortable, if not privileged lifestyle.

It would seem that these two places are quite literally a World away from each other. Yet recently, they are suffering from the same problem; gun violence.

This week 12 people were shot late in the evening on July 18th at a street party in Toronto. Less than a month ago 7 people were shot at the Toronto Eaton Centre and two died. The response of the the Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments has been to call for stricter gun control and an increased police presence. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford went so far as to suggest people convicted of gun crimes should be deported or at the very least removed from the city (obviously he has no knowledge of the Constitution let alone the Charter). As nice as these things sound they reflect a tough on crime approach which is responsive and tries to regulate access to guns and restrict the people that use them. This is only half of the equation.

Community leaders in the Toronto community affected by the most recent shooting have called for more social programs, social housing and better resources for a community stretched thin by discrimination and poverty. This fact is often included as an after thought in news items and is seldom addressed by politicians, and yet it is an approach backed up by a great deal of reason.

The Small Arms Survey, a research organization focusing on armed violence in Geneva Switzerland has done a significant amount of research on the demand for small arms and light weapons and more recently armed violence and development. Both areas of research suggest that in order to reduce armed violence and gun crime, the reason that people acquire and choose to use weapons must be addressed alongside the laws that regulate gun ownership and the people who use them.

This assertion is supported on the research that I did for my M.A. thesis with Congolese refugees which suggested that lack of livelihood alternatives (needing to find a way to secure money and food, which in the case of Toronto might drive teens towards gang membership and in the DRC might drive men toward militia membership), lack of protection from authorities and inequalities were major factors contributing to the perceived need to use and own a weapon.

In order to address the demand for small arms/ hand guns, countries, provinces and municipalities must do is implement social programming which doesn't only cover the needs of the majority of people but particularly that reaches minorities, vulnerable people and those who commonly face discrimination. This can include library programs, after school programs, access to health care, more easily accessible social assistance and job training and more options for individuals seeking to leave street gangs behind.

Unfortunately the municipal and federal governments in Canada see little room for such programs in their "cut the gravy train, tough on crime" budgets despite the fact that such initiatives would actually make those programs more effective. The provincial government also seems to be skirting the issue by presenting it as a municipal problem and not a provincial one.

If we are to avoid further gun violence within our communities and our country we must entice our leaders to act to support people at risk in our society rather than continuing to pass through laws that pander to their perceived target audiences.

Refugee Health Cuts

When I started this blog I was working with refugees for the first time. I was in South Africa and I watched as many refugee claimants struggled to get by in a highly xenophobic society where they faced barriers to accessing essentials such as food, health care, and employment. I will never forget the day when I had to bring two women to the hospital who had severe food poisoning after eating expired food from a shelter they were staying in that had no food or running water.

After returning to Canada from South Africa I was hired as an intern with the Halifax Refugee Clinic. The main focus of my internship was coordinating aspects of the Invisible Women/Concrete Barriers project which sought to help refugee claimant women and their children gain access to resources, including health care, in their community. As part of my work I followed up on research that had been conducted on the challenges facing refugee women in the community and became familiar with the Interim Federal Health Program, which is meant to provide supplementary health care services to refugee claimants and government assisted refugees. At the time in Nova Scotia, refugee claimants who were covered by the program were ineligible for provincial health care coverage which of course caused a number of problems. Fortunately at the time the coverage provided under IFH was enough for refugee claimants and government assisted refugees to access basic health care like seeing a physician and taking prescription medication.

Then I took a break from working with refugees, I worked with the government and I went to Uganada. Now I'm back in Canada and back working with refugees, but this time it's government assisted refugees. As part of my job I help to coordinate a weekly health clinic for newly arrived government assisted refugees and listen as the case workers around me try to find family doctors for their clients. I'm also already acutely aware of some of the health and psychological needs of our clients which require prescription medication,  special equipment and counseling all of which are covered for one year through the Interim Federal Health Program. In Ontario government assisted refugees and refugee claimants are immediately eligible for provincial health coverage.

On July 1, 2012 significant changes to the Interim Federal Health Program will take effect. The cost of prescription medication, medical equipment such as wheel chairs and walkers and services such as counseling will be cut, except in emergency situations. Even worse; if you're a refugee claimant from one of the designated countries of origin, which as of yet have not been identified, or your refugee claim is denied you will only have access to health care if your medical condition is deemed to be a health risk. 

Government Assisted Refugees (GARs) are individuals whose refugee claims have been approved by the International Organization on Migration or the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and who are approved for resettlement in a country such as Canada. They receive a travel loan and when they arrive in Canada they have permanent residence status. Many GARs have spent months or years living in a refugee camp. Many refugee camps do not have proper sanitation and residents do not have access to adequate nutrition which means that individuals arriving from camps may be suffering from malnutrition or water borne diseases and need prescription medication to treat these conditions. A smaller number of GARs are permanently disabled and need access to mobility devices or are chronically ill and need access to medications. Almost all of the individuals arriving in this category have little to no money, particularly if they have been living in camps and cannot afford to cover these costs.

Refugee claimants are often individuals who have fled their countries of origin very quickly. Although they have a variety of financial backgrounds many individuals in this category may face the same health concerns as GARs and may also have injuries or conditions requiring immediate medical intention, particularly if they came on a container ship. This category of refugee is less likely to have been living in a camp situation and does not have permanent residence status. They have less access to resources in their community to support them and face substantial uncertainty until a decision is made about their claim.

Both categories of refugees have significant mental health concerns resulting from trauma, torture and adjusting to a new culture and under the changes to IFH will not receive the support they need. I will never forget when one of the clients of the Halifax Refugee Clinic killed himself after he was deemed ineligible to make a claim because he could not face the prospect of returning to his country where he knew he would be tortured and killed for abandoning the army. 

Refugees living in provinces where they do not receive immediate provincial health care coverage may not even be able to access a family physician.

The government claims that through these cuts it expects to save over 20 million dollars a year. Critics say that the cuts will end up costing tax payers more because of an increase in emergency room visits and public health issues.

When questioned at a news conference by a doctor about the changes, Health Minister Joe Oliver said the government was undertaking the changes to make sure that all Canadians have equal access to healthcare If the Conservatives truly believe that all Canadians should have the same access to healthcare perhaps they should be providing coverage for prescription medication and counseling for everyone rather than cutting access to it for the people who need it most.

If you would like to get involved you should write to:

PM Harper

M.P. Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration

M.P. Joe Oliver, Minister of Public Health

For more information or other ways to get involved:

 http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/federal-cuts-put-refugee-health-care-danger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQiSe00HOec

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75FmimeFnu8&feature=player_embedded

http://www.nursesunions.ca/news/canadian-doctors-refugee-care

Doing It My Way: My Last Month In Uganda

So I haven't blogged in a while... first I got wrapped up in leaving Pretoria and then I came back to Canada which has been overwhelming in a number of ways. But here I find myself again writing my blog.

I'm going to start with a post on my last month in Kampala and the move on from there.

Overcoming Disappointment

In one of my earlier posts I discussed the shock and disappointment of discovering that the Canadian Cooperative Association would not be sending another peace and conflict officer to fill my place after I left. This meant that much of the work I had done would be unsustainable and fruitless.

My disappointment from this decision didn't result from any personal sense of insult. I knew I had done the best I could. I also knew what I was doing was important. The field staff and cooperative members who I interacted with throughout my stay in Uganda had been excited to engage with a sense of conflict. Many participants in the field training were eager to discuss conflict dynamics within their homes and within their cooperatives. Some also seemed interested in discussing conflict at the community level, including fears over the possible return of Kony to the Lango Sub County and issues involving poverty and relationships between pastoralists and agriculturalists.

While some of the conflict dynamics and situations we discussed were unrelated to the cooperative movement, many were. For example, my colleagues and I learned that land disputes are common throughout Northern Uganda, resulting from histories of violence, displacement, political unrest and inter-clan relations and that some cooperatives choose to endorse crops which require large amounts of land putting even more of a strain on limited resources. In some respects, gender inequalities were also shown to be aggravated within cooperatives and communities through cooperative involvement and there are major concerns over transparency and financial management.

Conflict sensitivity, the idea that development interventions should not only be aware of conflicts among the beneficiaries of the project but also should work not to have a negative impact on such conflicts, would serve to address and ameliorate many of those impacts and make the project I was working with more sustainable in the long run.

Throughout my internship I worked hard to ensure that it would be easier for the intern that replaced me. I worked hard to develop strategic relationships with peacebuilding organizations, to introduce our field and head office staff to the idea of conflict sensitivity and to make sure there were resources available along the way. I also chose to engage in activities which were open ended and would create more avenues for the next intern to take their internship. I saw the importance of what I was doing.

I guess it was about as clear as mud for everyone else. One of my biggest challenges during the internship was communicating and working with my supervisor whose background was in agricultural economics. He was a very good financial manager but not particularly interested in how his staff were feeling. When I would try to talk to him about the relationship between armed violence and development he would often defer decisions to me, which was a bad sign in a culture which prioritizes indirect communication. Later in my internship, his reluctance to work with field staff to coordinate field visits and training sessions and his continual lack of interest in my work gave the distinct impression of someone who wasn't particularly interested in seeing that aspect of the project advance.

While there wasn't much expertise on the subject at CCA either when I found out that the position had been cancelled I assumed the decision came from my supervisor. In a way I couldn't blame him. My understanding was that he had not chosen to open the position in the first place and that his priorities were elsewhere.

Unfortunately, that assumption made it very hard to face work. During my last month in Uganda I stopped going to work on time, which was pretty much the best thing I could have done. Initially I started going in an hour and a half late, which became one hour and then a half an hour. The reason I was late was that in the face of discouragement at work and a one month extension of my contract I decided to focus more on my health. I slept longer and ran farther and slowly my anger subsided, although it is not completely gone. While I was in the office I kept my head down and worked on my research paper which was 25 pages long when I left Uganda and still is, although I do intend to finish it once my life has settled down a bit here.

Something else happened in my last six weeks in Uganda that made the stay more worthwhile, I made some wonderful friends. After I came back from fieldwork my friend introduced me to another Canadian who was into having dinner parties, music and playing board games, all things which I am also interested in. And as it turned out Mark had more friends who did the same and so I found the stable companionship that I had been longing for, for my entire trip. I did of course have friends before that but not ones who were particularly interested in coming for dinner or playing Settlers of Catan and having adventures on the weekend. Some of my weekend adventures included going to the Bahai Temple a second time and seeing a million monkeys for the first time, going to visit the Lubiri Palace and meeting one of the princesses of the Bugandan Kingdom and going to Jinja a second time and discovering a whole new side of it, including a delicious tapas restaurant and a private boat ride. In my last few weeks I also became more involved in Salsa dancing and I feel comfortable saying I now dance with an adequate level of proficiency.

Life threw me a couple of curveballs the last week that I was in Uganda. The first was what I described witnessing in my last blog post which I won't repeat here. The second was that my friend's brother called me to ask for some advice in a job interview, which contributed to a chain of events which now has me working with a community based organization in Kitchener which I'll describe in more detail in my next blog post.

The third was a little bit more personal. I haven't really shared this with many people so I'm not sure why I feel inclined to publish it in a blog post but here goes... I had a friend of interest while I was in Uganda who I was interested in dating. However, after some time of flirting and unrealized intentions I concluded it wasn't going to happen. Things continued along on the same path and then he left Kampala for Kenya. On my last night he returned to say goodbye with a kiss. We haven't spoken since; I don't know where to start.

In my next Blog post I'll talk about the excitement of my trip back to Canada for all the wrong
reasons, readjusting to being in Canada and how helping my friend's brother with a job interview helped me get a job but also gave me more insight about the decision to cancel my internship.

For now please enjoy some pictures from my last month.

An Assault on Parliament Ave.

Since it's my last week in Kampala my friend/co-intern, Carolyn, and I have decided to go out for lunch everyday. Today while we were walking down Parliament Ave. a pickup truck stopped beside us and some men and a woman jumped out. Suddenly, they surrounded a woman selling mangoes from a bowl on her head on the side of the road. They took the knife she was carrying in the bowl to peel the mangoes and held it against her neck and she started whimpering. They then took the bowl from her head, and grabbed her by her hands and feet and threw her into the back of a pickup truck with a KCCA (Kampala City Council) label on the back. At this point the woman was wailing. There was another woman sitting in the back of the truck who looked equally as terrified.

Initially I thought she was being robbed, then worried that she was going to be raped. It wasn't until someone standing with us pointed out that it was a city council truck that I got a sense that it was a human right violation.

Parliament Ave. is a very busy street lined with government ministries and the front entrance to the Ugandan Parliament. While some people stopped to take notice with us, many others continued to continue with their business, not paying much attention to the violence unfolding in front of them.   

Before we arrived in October, a law had been pass making street vendors illegal. At the time many shops were closed by force but the presence of fruit and airtime vendors has persisted throughout my stay here. It is quite possible that this woman was threatened and assaulted because of her "illegal activity". Yet, the people who accosted her were not wearing uniforms and did not speak to the woman before they attacked her. 

There were also two other mango vendors standing further down the street that these individuals ignored. If nothing else this was a blatant violation of human rights in the interest of city beautification

It's very hard to know what to do in these types of situations. There is no one to report it to and no way to intervene. What's worse is that very few people seemed to notice and even fewer seemed to care.