“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In Uganda radios can be purchased for as little as $1, making them the most accessible and utilized news source. People huddle together to listen to the radio; it sparks discourse and creates community. As storytelling in its most primitive form, radio narratives disarm prejudice by rendering the listener blind. Stripped of all physical attributes, stories become portals into the lives of others. Themes overlap, place and person are transcended.
We believe that it is the voice of youth which is the most eloquent of all. It is untarnished, truthful and resonates with hope for the future. Seeking to synthesize current initiatives developed by NPR’s Story Corps, Compassionate Listening, and Transom.org, we have embarked on a peace project which will harness the power of modern technology by capturing and sharing radio narratives of Ugandan children across the world.
In our project, we are not the “storytellers” rather it is the Ugandan children who reveal and narrate their own stories.
Some Background:
Throughout its history, Uganda has been wracked by conflict and misunderstanding. While it has been a hallmark for Eastern Africa in terms of its economic development and its HIV/AIDs education, behind this facade it remains divided, and it has been crippled by war in its Northern region. The country is extremely multifarious, home to over fifty-six ethnic groups, more than a dozen languages, and a plethora of vibrant cultural traditions. Over the last twenty years, the historic North-South ethnic and political division has been further compounded by the emergence of the Lord’s Resistance Army in the North. This division has spawned gross misperceptions and prejudice on all sides. Amidst this upheaval, several groups have also been systematically marginalized and in many cases bypassed or indeed harmed by development. The Karamojong tribe is one example of this marginalization. We seek to assuage these tensions by capturing “an oral history of Uganda today” recording stories of Ugandan children from a variety of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
In the months of July and August we will be visiting and recording stories in three locations around Uganda. In the South, we will work in Kampala, the capital, where there is great socioeconomic disparity. We will also visit Rakai, where poverty and HIV/AIDs are prevalent. In the North, our interviews will focus on war victims, specifically the Acholi in Gulu and the Luo in Lira. While many Ugandans speak English, we will hire translators both for interviews and hope to ultimately translate our finished stories into the language of each region.
On Spreading Peace:
Our goals span three levels: First, the individual; the process of telling ones story is cathartic, it empowers the individual as they discover their voice. We will use the pure act of listening as a means of confirming the sanctity of the individual. In this essentially mute, non-judgmental, non-adversarial manner, we hope to help heal the wounds of sundered peoples and empower Ugandan children.
On the national level we seek to bridge divides by airing these stories around the country, thus cultivating an awareness and empathy within Uganda which crosses traditional barriers of communication. This will assuage existing prejudices and promote empathy and in turn peace within Uganda.
At the third, international level, our project will aid the ongoing peace talks regarding the situation in Northern Uganda by airing stories in surrounding countries, in the United States, and here, via podcast, on our website. The stories we collect serve to inform citizens of other countries about the situation in Uganda in a more personal way than cold statistics or 15 second news pieces. Uganda Storytelling is designed to foster empathy and spark action on the part of citizens in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to airing on Public Radio International, over 15 college radio stations (including several NPR affiliates) around the United States have expressed interest in airing our stories this coming fall. Transom.org and PRX.org, two websites showcasing and promoting freelance radio journalists, have also committed to airing our stories, thereby linking us to the greater public radio network.
Special Thanks to:
The Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation which awarded Uganda Storytelling with a 100 projects for peace grant.
Jack Kruesi and Starr Weekes for supporting the project with additional funding.
Sue Halpern for her advice and mentorship at the project’s conception and throughout its development.
The Vermont Folk Life Center — specifically Erica Heilman and Andy Kolovos for providing audio interviewing and editing training.
About the Site:
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This website would not be possible without the generous nature of a number of open source projects who freely provide much of the code which is required for a dynamic website like this to function. Thanks are due to: The Apache Project for the webserver; the PHP and mySQL projects for the “back end”; WordPress, phpBB and K2 for the “front end”; and Google for the free use of the Google Maps API, as well as many other smaller projects which this site takes advantage of.
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