Freedom of Speech, Dirt

On January 7, 12 members of the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine were massacred in Paris by Islamic extremists. Political leaders from all over the world as well as ordinary Parisians responded by marching for freedom of speech 4 days later. Less than a week after the massacre a violation of freedom of the press took place in Uganda. A senior Ugandan police officer was arrested last week and accused of beating several journalists as they covered a protest march against unemployment. Ten reporters in all were injured and two ended out in the hospital. Last I heard one was still there, though I may have missed news on his condition. When I was in Kampala to attend a required security briefing at the U.S. Embassy the next day, we passed a crowd surrounding what appeared to be the release of the police officer into the public on bail.

Journalists have been beaten to death in Uganda as recently as 2010. However, this sort of action has become uncommon of late, according to my colleagues in the mass communication department here, and indeed, there was a public outcry afterward. The beating does serve as another reminder, though, of how fragile the linchpin freedoms of speech and the press can be.

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And now a note on a more mundane topic: dirt. If you reside in the U.S. you may not realize how  important sidewalks are to your life.  It’s dry season here in Mukono, and what with no tarmacked roads or sidewalks within about ½ mile of campus, everybody trudges through piles of red dirt all day long. This dirt is persistent stuff. It creeps up the sides of buildings as if to envelope them from the bottom up in watery red-brown. 

The dirt leads you to engage in all sorts of rituals. When my research team came over to the house for a meeting on our front porch the other day, I noticed one of my team members carefully take out a tissue and wipe off the chair she was going to sit in. In the U.S. you might think such a person was OCD, but in fact she was taking actions any reasonable person would take to protect her clothes. Ugandans are always prepared with tissue to wipe off their shoes when they reach their destination, because whatever color the shoes started they will have transformed into a dusty burnt sienna. Slow-on-the-uptake Americans like me never remember to load our pockets with tissue and walk around looking unprofessional. And if you’re wearing sandals . . . well let’s just say the need for Jesus’s disciples to have their feet washed at the end of a long day on the roads around Jerusalem now resonates with me. The dirt also dictates that you can't wear clothes twice before washing or the dirt might set. No more of that "Just wear your jeans again tomorrow" stuff.

In about two months the rains will start and the dirt will turn to sienna-colored mud. At that point I expect we will need to adopt another practical East African habit: leaving our shoes at the front door.

Photo below: Rural Uganda