Ramblings about Gender, climate change, Equity, community, culture

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UK Covid19 Quarantine abyss -Diary of suspect TK606

Day Zero - 21/09/2021 I am welcomed to Holiday inn express, queens ferry road where I am going to spend possibly 10 days of my quarantine depending on results, if not more, after travelling to a red list country for work. I am overwhelmed by the nature of the quarantine and I decided to share my welcome experiences which then seemed grim, that was before I went through it all!. See my Previous blog . Why do I do this? if I had read quarantine conditions in the UK, I would have made better choices, either not to travel or to comeback through an amber or green country. I don't wish it on anyone, so I will share my journey to help some one else. Day one - 22/09/2021 I didn't sleep well, I guess it was the frustration of the day, travelling all night with intermittent sleep, Covid19 document checks, flight delay in Amsterdam and the limited rights I had. I woke up to a loud knock at 7:00am, breakfast had arrived, the wrong one which I hadn't asked for. This was thankfully cor

Planning to travel to or from a red list country? Quarantine outside the UK!

After one year and a half of not travelling, for us the optimists we ventured to travel for work because it was extremely necessary. I do not regret it a minute, it exceeded our expectations in terms of achieving our objectives. We travelled to Uganda on the 4th of September 2021, after the rigorous preparation and filling forms, fit to fly PCR test, health declaration for Amsterdam and booking a quarantine hotel at the cost of £2,285 before travel. Arrival and processing in Uganda was un eventful since I am fully vaccinated and I had evidence of negative Covid results. There was no need to quarantine, after all I was coming in from the'' United Kingdom''. I chose to stay in an apartment where I can manage the cleanliness and contact, plus I carried a lateral flow test kit to check myself occasionally. We held numerous meetings and a workshop in Uganda, every one is masked up and conscious about safety, social distancing observed, which was refreshing. Today I came

Overcoming our assumptions about Development and People

A few days ago, I came across a cartoon by Rebeka Ryvola that I was tagged in on twitter, mirroring how development planning is managed. Reflecting about it, I remembered a lesson I was taught by a farming community in Western Uganda many years back. I was working with an International development organisation at the time, and we prided ourselves on targeting the ''chronically poor'', and for sure it was in the best intentions. One day we went to the field, I was facilitating a session on conflict management because we used to support communities living adjacent to protected areas who experienced crop losses due to problem animals, and the park-people conflicts were common on crops, land, resource access etc. We also supported community livelihoods, market linkages, savings and loan associations, gender equality, among others. As we waited for the rest of the community members, I started an informal discussion to understand how they perceive ''chronic poverty&

How did we survive the year 2020? Are we ready to face 2021? A reflection on the pandemic year, and how we have overcome it.

The Year 2020 has been challenging as we all know, but here we are in 2021! Happy New Year Every one. The year started well, resolutions were made, plans put into motion, but Covid19 hit and everything crumbled. Weddings got cancelled, travel plans and physical meetings were cancelled, school and places of worship closed, we were moving into the unknown. R eminds me of Mexican saying I heard from a friend, that if you want to make God laugh at you, tell him your plans. The different faces of the pandemic The pandemic was not just a health issue, it had social, economic challenges that have been un precedented. It exposed inequalities, the flawed humanity where husbands and wives could not live together for long hours due to lock down and resorted to violence (wonder why we stay together in the first place if we cant tolerate each other). People with low incomes, living hand to mouth suffered hunger and psychological trauma. I read about a man who set himself on fire because he could

Woes of a working at home mother in the COVID19 era

As Hector Garcia Puigcerver says; We often think that combining tasks will save us time, but scientific evidence shows that it has the opposite effect. Even those who claim to be good at multitasking are not very productive. In fact, they are some of the least productive people. Our brains can take million bits of information but can only actually process of few dozen per second. When we say we are multitasking, what we are really doing is switching back and forth between tasks very quickly. Unfortunately, we are not computers adept at parallel processing. We end up spending all our energy alternative between tasks, instead of focusing on doing one of them well. Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.” Since the changed ways of working due to COVID19, I now realise that I have been switching back and forth between tasks and I am soooo tired, body and soul. I moved to my new job in the UK in March 2019, I dealt with multitudes of c

How climate change impacts have challenged men's masculinity

Engaging Men and Boys in addressing Climate Change Adaptation The discussions of climate change impacts have focused more on women and girls as the most affected, and indeed I agree with the narrative. It has also gone ahead to tag them as vulnerable, which is also true, but more often we forget their capacities in addressing climate impacts, given the right resources, spaces and opportunities. A lot has been said on that, today I want to focus on men. In the Gender Equality narratives, men have been tagged the aggressors, the abusers, the irresponsible, etc -- I also agree, but add that we also forget to engage men in the discussions to understand their behaviours and motivations. In my gender assessments, I always facilitate separate groups of women and men and then bring them back together to generate consensus after each has shared their perspectives. In some Climate Risk Assessments I was engaged with in North Eastern and mid-western Uganda

The Protracted Struggle for Gender Equality -- The solutions lie with the men

The long struggle for Gender Equality! For gender or women justice campaigners, just know that the struggle started long --long before and one wonders when it will end! So what is not working? step back and reflect. I stumbled on a phenomenal lady of the 17th century, Olympe de Gouges, 7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793). Born Marie Gouze, she was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience in those days. She stepped into the space of men, long before the days when the likes of Napoleon thought women should be trained to be good housewives. She demanded for rights of women alongside the rights of men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror (1793_1794) for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her associati

Out comes of the UNFCCC CoP 21 - what does it mean for the poor and vulnerable countries?

Zero poverty, zero emissions: what does the final agreement offer to the poor and vulnerable countries? Part 2 Tracy C. Kajumba, After days and nights of negotiations, campaigns and lobbying, the COP21 conference has finally come to an end with consensus on the final agreement. Both Non government organisations and parties seemed to be happy that there is an agreement, which most commentators thought was better than the first draft which came out with many brackets. The UN secretary general Ban Ki moon in his remarks noted that, “The Paris Agreement is a monumental triumph for people and our planet. It sets the stage for progress in ending poverty, strengthening peace and ensuring a life of dignity and opportunity for all.” The French President Francois Hollande told the assembled delegates: “You’ve done it, reached an ambitious agreement, a binding agreement, a universal agreement. Never will I be able to express more gratitude to a conference. You can be proud to stand before your

Zero Poverty, Zero Emissions... What does it mean for LDCs? Part 1

Last week I attended the Development and Climate days adaptation conference for civil society organisations, which ran parallel to UN COP21 conference . The event brought together adaptation practitioners to discuss practical solutions and learning experiences. I found that participants were hopeful in the discussions, fronting issues of social and climate justice, with the expectation that COP 21 could mark a turning point in climate negotiations. The link between climate change, poverty and development for better resilience could not be over emphasized in the discussions. However, the draft agreement does not seem to have captured the expectations of CSOs as anticipated as yet. A session on eradicating poverty and decarbonising development in the climate crisis reviewed how the climate crisis jeopardises our ability to sustain poverty eradication beyond 2030 and highlighted how resilient low-carbon development can deliver the sustained, more equal and pro-poor growth necessary to er