My strongest support goes to my friend Katherine Roubos, whose courageous coverage of the GLBT community in Uganda has garnered this:I went to the rally to be a part of a team of white female decoys (Katherine's editor sent her to cover it, which theoretically gave her some sort of journalistic immunity, but the purpose of the rally already nullified that. Better safe than sorry, not so?) and to exercise my own curiousity: the event was organized by Martin Ssempa, a conservative Ugandan religious activist with whom I recently exchanged words.Wow. Martin Ssempa is undeniably charismatic. He is also undeniably creepy. For all you Lawrencians: imagine Fred Phelps shaking your hand. I came home and took a very long shower.P.S. Aga Khan, if you fire her, that's it. We're...
I got an e-mail today that I wanted to share with you all:Hello thereI was searching for Aga Khan online and came across your website.Forget Google Page Rank and Technorati — this is the true measure of blogebrity.Let me introduce myself, my name is [redacted: I'm going to call him JoeBob] and I will be marrying an Ismaili woman come May 2007. I have courted her for over 7 years now.JoeBob, I'm impressed. That right there is what we AgaKhanoholics call determination.In that time, I have been witness (not personally, but heard) to many of the rituals that her family participate in their "jamat khana."I have had so many of my questions unanswered when I display a passing interest in the religion and Aga Khan in particular.My questions mainly pertain to the money that is collected...
George Bush will out Aga Khan as a terrorist mastermind and commence war against Pakistan and Tajikistan. Turkmenistan will be thrown in for good measure. Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post will reveal that what were thought to be terrorist training camps in northern Pakistan were actually just schools for poor shepherds, and CNN will begin featuring "Stangate" on the nightly news. Fox News will insist wool from the sheep in question contained suspicious traces of plutonium, thereby justifying the attack. Ronald Gates will resign, and in an unprecedented violation of the Constitution, Dick Cheney will take over his role. American voters, disturbed by the thought of radioactive sheep, will be too busy lobbying against imported lamb to notice.Yoweri Museveni will die of gout....
On Tuesday the New Vision reported that Bujagali Energy finished their environmental feasibility study for the construction of a new dam at Bujagali Falls.The proposed dam — a $530 million collaboration between the Sithe Global LLC (based in the U.S.) and Industrial Promotion Services (based in Kenya and owned by Aga Khan) — is an attempt to ease Uganda's energy crisis. Estimates made in 2005 by Power Technology, a web site that aggregates power industry data, claim that, if construction goes as planned, Uganda's electricity supply would exceed demand for the first time in years.Though Uganda's electricity deficit has been called "the single greatest obstacle to the country's economic growth," many local and international groups have raised concerns as to whether the dam is...
Several weeks ago I was discussing my interest in Aga Khan with a friend of mine over a couple of rounds of waragi-and-tonic. This friend works for the Daily Monitor, the more independent of Uganda's two main newspapers. He informed me, somewhat conspiratorially, that Aga Khan owns the paper.I filed this piece of information away somewhere in the back of my brain with the waragi and let it sit there until yesterday, when I decided to see if it was true.First resort: Google, the Omniscient God of Search Engines. I typed in "aga khan daily monitor" and was shocked/thrilled/somewhat disappointed to see that, aside from a couple of news articles about Aggie's recent publicity stunts, the first result listed was none other than yours truly.Hello, I'm Jackfruity, and I'm an Aga...
Last week someone broke into one of the organizations I work for and stole some random things. I don't know what the total damage was, but the office doesn't look any worse for the wear, and the attack doesn't seem to have been specifically targeted at us.This morning, one of the staff knocked on my door and handed me an empty jar of peanut butter."Someone broke in last week," he informed me. I thanked him for the news, wondering why I was holding an empty jar of peanut butter.I only wondered a little bit, though, as this man spends nine hours every weekday doing things like cutting the tops off of coffee filters, endlessly rearranging the two newspapers we keep on the front table (Daily Monitor on top. No, New Vision. No, Daily Monitor.) and painstakingly washing and drying all of...
I've been out of commission this past week, enjoying the outlying edges of Uganda. Sipi Falls. I highly recommend it.I'm back and looking forward to honing my writing skills by participating in National Novel Writing Month. Fifty thousand words in thirty days, mostly composed by candlelight during my long, lonely nights in the bush. I'm still not sure what I'll write about, but I have a hunch it will involve Aga Khan. Jay-Z should also feature heavily.Want to join me? Go to NaNoWriMo.org and sign up. Then go to my page and be my buddy so we can poke and prod each other to the finish...
Since my ill-advised and much-regretted visit to Didi's World, I've begun to notice the subtle omnipresence of Aga Khan in Kampala. This morning his kindly visage watched over me as I made my purchases in the local grocery store, and after lunch I saw an call for applications to the Karachi-based Aga Khan University in the New Vision. Now I'm sitting in the outdoor restaurant of his newest five-star hotel, the Serena, trying to unlock the mystery of this stately gentleman whose official portrait — swaddled in white, wearing a fez — is as prevalent as President Museveni's.Preliminary research (read: Wikipedia) has informed me that the Aga Khan, formerly Prince Karim Khan, was born on December 13, 1936 to Shia playboy Prince Aly Khan and Joan Guinness, the ex-wife of Guiness...
After exhausting the locally available restaurant options and gorging ourselves on free wireless at the Speke Resort in Munyonyo, a friend and I decided to spend one afternoon of our three-day weekend (Happy Ugandan Independence Day!) at Didi's World, an amusement park in Kansanga.From the outside, Didi's looks quite inviting, festooned with dual portraits of Mickey Mouse-as-Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks. It's not until you pass through the metal gates that it begins to resemble less a great place to take the kids and more Funland, home of sleezy mobs and bloodthirsty carnies.The entrance hall is decorated with the requisite photo of Museveni (no surprises there) and a picture of a white man swathed in regally sparkling robes (what?). Upon inquiry, my friend and I learned...