rnakijoba's Profile

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  • Kampala
  • Uganda
  • A social worker with 10 years of experience in serving HIV/AIDS affected communities. I am aged 34

Author's Comments

A Culture of Violence Against Women: More Than Rape Kits

Thank you Elisa for your contribution. I concur with you that there is not any much attempt to address the violence against women. In the African context, women suffer silently. " the deepressed suffer in silence". In my culture for example, when rape or sexual assualt happens especially when it is incest, women are told to "put a glass of water in their mouth and be quiet". This promotes it further as men know that it will not be reported publicaaly. Even in marriages, rape occurs but nothing is done about it as women are treated as surbodinates to men.

As well, some countries have these policies but such policies are not implemented. They do remain on paper.
In my view, the best option is to conscientise women to know thier rights and be strong enough to speak out. Women's voices should be voiced and heard, then action taken to descipline the culprits. Also is cases where women are the culprits, similar action should taken although it is vey clear to all of us that it is mostly the men involved in such dangerous act.

Posted by rnakijoba | September 24, 2008 11:34 PM

When the Poverty Line Is Less than a Dollar a Day

Dorene, Thank you!

This is a nice article for a donor….its very convincing. I agree with one thing i.e. “Poverty has to be treated as a mainstream development issue” …since it has to be treated as… you agree with me that there are other issues that have to be addressed first and then poverty can be eliminated!!!!

The fact is that we should stop portraying ourselves as the chronic poor. I associate the term "chronic poor" to beggers on the street and possibly to the majority affected by war in Northern Uganda. Otherwise, majority of the Ugandans can do something for themselves. For example,those with some land will grow food for their survival or even sell a chicken, earn some little money to meet their other basic needs. There is therefore no way the author can say that many people have no means of getting anything.Majority of those with means never have a chance of their means being calculate in tems of money but remains in kind and ignored. Even the dis-abled are challeging us by using their hands and feet to do some hand craft materials which they sell and earn a living. Many of such examples appear on televisions like WBS, UBS among other ways.

Putting emphasis on terms such as "chronic poor" destroys people's way of thinking. It gets into their mind set so much and creates a dependency syndrome where they just wait for hand outs. As development workers, this is not the way we should preach. We should help people identify factors that contribute to high poverty levels for example; alcoholism in families, cultural factors etc and guide them into the process of identifying possible aternative solutions through participatory processes.

Rosemary Nakijoba
Uganda

Posted by rnakijoba | September 9, 2008 5:19 AM