Category: Lifestyle

Will Uganda really ban the miniskirt?

Lydia Asano sashays down the red carpet at Kampala’s luxury Serena hotel, wearing an “Afrocouture” black lace gown, partially see-through and with a slit up her left thigh. Onlookers are captivated by the 6ft model. “It’s my favourite piece that I’ve ever modelled,” gushes Asano (21) backstage after the fashion parade. She regularly goes out to Kampala nightspots in this kind of outift. “It could be something little and cute, anything goes,” she says. Fast forward to Saturday night and Lilian Mubende (25) is sipping a cocktail in De Posh Bar in Kabalagala, Kampala’s party area, sporting a purple above-the knee dress. “When I wear my short dresses I feel free,” she says.

But if a bill passed by the Ugandan Parliament in December becomes law, fashion parades such as that at the Serena hotel may be threatened and Ugandan women will have to cover up or face arrest. Passed the day before a more notorious anti-gay bill, the government-backed anti-pornography legislation has a broad definition of “pornography”. According to the 2011 version, retabled in parliament last year, this includes “any cultural practice, radio or television programme, writing, publication, advertisement, broadcast, upload on internet, display, entertainment, music, dance, picture, audio or video recording, show, exhibition or any combination of the preceding that depicts sexual parts of a person such as breasts, thighs, buttocks and genitalia”, among other meanings. The 2011 draft bill reportedly proposes that anyone found guilty of abetting pornography face a 10m shilling (£2,473) fine or a maximum of 10 years in jail, or both.

Simon Lokodo, Uganda’s ethics and integrity minister, insists the bill in its current form will be signed by President Yoweri Museveni, and therefore come into force, very soon. “Maybe he will take some time to sign the anti-homosexuality bill, but for that anti-pornography [bill] we are sure he’s going to sign,” he told the Guardian. “He has not commented on this [publicly] as he has with the anti-homosexuality bill. That means he is comfortable with it.” Lokodo says that the bill targets “irresponsible” women wearing clothes above the knee in public because they are “hurting the moral fibre” of Uganda.

“So today if I met somebody putting on a miniskirt, a miniskirt that explains a lot of what that person has in one’s mind, that person should be arrested,” he said. “What we want to condemn is the provocativeness, that they want to draw somebody to desire them. We are saying that we are blaming and condemning any of these girls who dress so indecently, especially in public areas. We shall not accept it, whether it is fashion or what.”

Last April, when the bill was reintroduced in Parliament, Asano sported a “save the miniskirt” T-shirt and went to many save-the-miniskirt parties. Despite Lokodo warning that people will be “sensitised” by the law so they report others breaking it before police catch them, Asano is not letting down her hemlines yet. “We should be focusing on getting thieves and rapists off the streets instead of bringing in a miniskirt bill,” says Asano. “It violates our rights. If they refuse to let us wear miniskirts, why should the guys be able to wear little shorts?”

Protestors in London at a Slut Walk event in 2011. The Slut Walk initiative serves to protest against the perception that the way a woman dresses can justify rape and sexual violence. (Pic: Flickr / msmornington)
Protestors in London at a Slut Walk event in 2011. The Slut Walk initiative serves to protest against the perception that the way a woman dresses can justify rape and sexual violence. (Pic: Flickr / msmornington)

Mubende thinks that certain politicians are just trying to whip up fear. She is more cautious than Asano, saying: “The minister is serious about it [the bill] but the president’s not. When the president is serious about this we shall stop wearing them.

But Rita Aciro Lakor, the executive director of Uganda Women’s Network (Uwonet), argues the issue is about more than whether women can wear miniskirts. “It’s about going back to controlling women,” she says. “They’ll start with clothes. The next time they’re going to remove the little provisions in the law that promote and protect women’s rights.” She says the more people talk about miniskirts, the more people wear them, and that the law will be hard to implement.

Human rights lawyer Peter Magelah believes the bill, which he stresses is also largely about press freedom, will be used “selectively” and “for political reasons” if it becomes law. “Idi Amin had a miniskirt law in Uganda and a lot was written and said about it, but it wasn’t removed from the statute books until 2002,” he says. “It was in place and no one enforced it. And, of course, the law doesn’t provide for how short a miniskirt should be, so in a court it’s one thing a lawyer would have a field day challenging.”

Amy Fallon for the Guardian

Tunisia’s desert dunes lure amateur astronomers and Star Wars aficionados

Deep in Tunisia’s Sahara desert is an otherworldly planet familiar to Star Wars fans: Tatooine, the twin-mooned childhood home of Darth Vader.

Once a pilgrimage site for aficionados of the cult sci-fi film, the dune-swept landscape that provided the backdrop for almost every Star Wars movie, among many others, has been out of reach since the Tunisian uprising, which kickstarted the Arab Spring three years ago. Now, as the North African country inches towards a successful transition to democracy, many hope that will change.

The set of Star Wars Episode 1 in the Sahara desert in Tunisia. (Pic: Flickr / Pondspider)
The set of Star Wars Episode 1 in the desert in Tunisia. (Pic: Flickr / Pondspider)

“We have a new government and we’re full of hope,” said Taieb Jallouli, the set director who oversaw the Star Wars shoots in the country, speaking as Tunisia’s Parliament passed a long-awaited new Constitution. Seen as the final step towards establishing a democracy after an uprising that toppled the autocratic ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, it could be help lure back film fans and desert adventure tourists, whose numbers plummeted during the turbulence of the uprising.

“[Star Wars director] George Lucas always said he loved the light in Tunisia’s southern desert. We hope old directors and a wave of young, new ones will come back now there’s stability,” said Jallouli, who was also artistic director for The English Patient and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, which were both partially filmed in Tunisia.

The creators of imaginary galaxies like Star Wars aside, peace in Tunisia’s deserts also stands to benefit a small group of people more interested in real extraterrestrial objects: meteorite-hunters. Star Wars‘ Tatooine is named after the Tunisian town of Tataouine, the site of a famous meteorite landing in 1931. A small group of meteorite-hunters are keen to resume a hobby that has been largely impossible since the revolution.

Architecture from southern Tunisia that inspired the Star Wars films. (Pic: Flickr / Henry Patton)
Buildings in Tataouine inspired George Lucas for his Star Wars films. (Pic: Flickr / Henry Patton)

Sofien Kanoun, president of Tunisia’s 40-strong amateur astronomy society, said: “We’ve asked the government for permission to undertake meteorite-hunting expeditions in the desert because some of those areas have become military zones during the last three years.

“In the desert, there’s a huge surface area of land that’s uninhabited, so it’s the best place for successfully recovering any fragments which don’t land in the sea. We need them to have a better idea of the birth of the solar system.”

For now, as news of jihadists training in remote regions has made large swathes of the Sahara too dangerous for travel, the group relies on a human chain of Berbers who live in the desert to pass on information.

“I personally count on citizens who call me up to say they have got bits of meteorite,” said Hichem Ben Yahyoui, the association’s treasurer, waving a page of complicated formulae that explain the supersonic path of a meteorite, which landed between Tunisia and Algeria last September. “We were the first to calculate the trajectory and pass on the information to [professional scientists] about exactly where in Algeria it fell,” he added proudly.

The amateur astronomers also battle a lack of funding, and hardline Islamists who have cracked down against everything from art shows to rap music. Government funding for Tunisian astronomy has dwindled to a trickle, though the country was once home to Muslim scholars such as Ibn Ishaq whose works still influence modern physics and astronomy. With a symbolic membership fee of 2 dinars (75p) a year, Tunisia’s amateur astronomers rely largely on pooling their own money together to fund trips, build experimental rockets or order sophisticated equipment only available from abroad.

Mundane earthly difficulties have not stopped them from reaching for the stars. Every few weeks Yahyoui, who also volunteers as a curator at Tunisia’s science museum in his spare time, journeys to meet other fellow space-lovers across the Arab world.

“It’s dangerous but I don’t mind taking the risks because it’s a labour of love,” he said, ahead of a recent trip to advise on the building of a space museum in Libya, where internal conflict has seen a spate of abductions and political assassinations by militia gangs this month alone.

“As amateurs we do it for ourselves, to pass on knowledge through each generation,” he said, standing beneath a staircase spiralling upwards to a blue planet encircled by red rings.

Ralph Ziman’s ‘Ghosts’: Yarned, beaded and dangerous

For his first solo series Ghosts, South African filmmaker and artist Ralph Ziman photographed Zimbabwean street vendors wielding handmade replicas of AK-47s which are adorned in traditional Shona-style beading. The multimedia project aims to highlight the international arms trade and its devastating influence.

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Ziman explains:

I had six Zimbabwean artists use traditional African beads and wire to manufacture several hundred replica bead/guns like AK-47s, as well as several replica bead/general purpose machine guns (GPMGs), along with the ammunition. In response to the guns sent into that culture, the mural represents an aesthetic, anti-lethal cultural response, a visual export out of Africa.  And the bead/guns themselves, manufactured in Africa, are currently being shipped to the USA and Europe.This bead/arms project provided six months full-time work for half a dozen craftsman who got well deserved break from making wire animals for tourists.

The completed bead/guns were the subject of a photo-shoot in crime ridden downtown Johannesburg.  The subjects were the artists who made the guns, several construction workers who happened to witness the shoot, and a member of the South African Police Services who just wanted his picture taken. The mural is mixed media, wheat paste, dye, acrylic spray-paint and ink on wood. This mural is the first in a series to be put up in LA.
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In 2008, Ziman wrote and directed Jerusalema. The film was submitted to the Academy Awards as a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. He has also produced murals in Venice Beach, California where he lives with his family.
Ghosts will be on display at C.A.V.E Gallery in Los Angeles from February 8 to March 2.

Ethiopia’s teff poised to be next big super grain

At Addis Ababa airport, visitors are greeted by pictures of golden grains, minute ochre-red seeds and a group of men gathered around a giant pancake. Billboards boast: “Teff: the ultimate gluten-free crop!”

Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, well-known for its precarious food security situation. But it is also the native home of teff, a highly nutritious ancient grain increasingly finding its way into health-food shops and supermarkets in Europe and America.

Teff’s tiny seeds – the size of poppy seeds – are high in calcium, iron and protein, and boast an impressive set of amino acids. Naturally gluten-free, the grain can substitute for wheat flour in anything from bread and pasta to waffles and pizza bases. Like quinoa, the Andean grain, teff’s superb nutritional profile offers the promise of new and lucrative markets in the west.

In Ethiopia, teff is a national obsession. Grown by an estimated 6.3-million farmers, fields of the crop cover more than 20% of all land under cultivation. Ground into flour and used to make injera, the spongy fermented flatbread that is basic to Ethiopian cuisine, the grain is central to many religious and cultural ceremonies. Across the country, and in neighbouring Eritrea, diners gather around large pieces of injera, which doubles as cutlery, scooping up stews and feeding one another as a sign of loyalty or friendship – a tradition known as gursha.

Outside diaspora communities in the west, teff has flown under the radar for decades. But growing appetite for traditional crops and booming health-food and gluten-free markets are breathing new life into the grain, increasingly touted as Ethiopia’s “second gift to the world”, after coffee.

Sophie Kebede, a London-based entrepreneur who, with her husband, owns Tobia Teff, a UK company specialising in the grain, says she was “flabbergasted” when she discovered its nutritional value. “I didn’t know it was so sought after … I am of Ethiopian origin; I’ve been eating injera all my life.”

Market
The gluten-free market is the backbone of Kebede’s business. Today, Planet Organic shops in London stock 1kg bags of Tobia Teff flour (£7 each), while 300g packets of its teff breakfast cereal sit alongside milled flaxseed and organic, sugar-free Swiss muesli, and cost £5.44 The company also sells readymade, gluten-free teff bread with raisin, onion, sunflower and other varieties. (Teff is available at other UK stockists).

Pancakes made with teff. (Pic: Flickr / verymom)
Pancakes made with teff. (Pic: Flickr / verymom)

As western consumers acquire a taste for teff, how to ensure that Ethiopia and its farmers benefit from new global markets is a critical question. Growing demand for so-called ancient grains has not always been a straightforward win for poor communities. In Bolivia and Peru, reports of rising incomes owing to the now-global quinoa trade have come alongside those of malnutrition and conflicts over land as farmers sell their entire crop to meet western demand.

Ethiopia’s growing middle class is also pushing up demand for teff, and rising domestic prices over the past decade have put the grain out of reach of the poorest. Today, most small farmers sell the bulk of what they grow to consumers in the city.

This may have helped boost incomes in some rural areas but it has had nutritional consequences, says the government, as teff is the most nutritionally valuable grain in the country. Estimates suggest that while those in urban areas eat up to 61kg of teff a year, in rural areas, the figure is 20kg. The type consumed differs too: the wealthy almost exclusively eat the more expensive magna and white teff varieties; less well-off consumers tend to eat less-valuable red and mixed teff, and more than half combine it with cheaper cereals such as sorghum and maize.

Increased production
The Ethiopian government wants to double teff production by 2015. Its strategy, published in 2013, argues that the grain could play an important role in school meals and emergency aid programmes, and help reduce malnutrition – particularly among children and adolescents.

It notes that teff is also gluten-free, so it is well suited to address growing global gluten-free demand, and calls on companies to start testing, promoting and mass manufacturing teff-based products such as cakes and biscuits.

Though Ethiopia has a fast-growing economy, it remains on the UN’s list of least-developed countries. An estimated 20% of under-fives are malnourished or suffer stunted growth, and the UN’s World Food Programme estimates the costs of chronic malnutrition could be worth 16.5% of GDP.The government’s agricultural transformation agency aims to boost yields by developing improved varieties of the grain, along with new planting techniques and tools to reduce post-harvest losses.

The Syngenta Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Swiss seeds and pesticides company, has also joined the quest for increased teff production.

Government restrictions, instituted in 2006, forbid the export of raw teff grain, only allowing shipments of injera and other processed products. But this could change: the goal is to produce enough teff for domestic consumption and a strong export market, according to the government’s strategy.

In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, dozens of women painstakingly sift and mill teff at the factories of Mama Fresh Injera, one of the few domestic companies that exports teff products.

Stacks of teff near Addis Ababa. (Pic: Flickr / Carsten ten Brink)
Stacks of teff in Addis Ababa. (Pic: Flickr / Carsten ten Brink)

Mama Fresh is a family firm that has been selling injera to top restaurants and hotels in the Ethiopian capital for years. It also ships the flatbread to Finland, Germany, Sweden and the US, primarily for consumption by diaspora communities. But the company has its eye on the gluten-free market. It aims to double exports to America in 2014, and will soon start producing teff-based pizzas, bread and cookies.

David Hallam, trade and markets director at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, says while there is money to be made from new global markets for traditional crops, governments have to support small-scale producers to ensure they share the benefits of increased trade.

“Typically, these products are going to go through many hands before they reach the shelves of Sainsbury’s or wherever. There are [profit] margins at every step, and small farmers are not necessarily well placed to bargain with the bigger traders,” says Hallam, who sees quinoa’s popularity as a cautionary tale of how export opportunities can be a mixed blessing for poor countries.

Regassa Feyissa, an Ethiopian agricultural scientist and former head of the national Institute for Biodiversity, warns that without careful planning, increased teff production for export may displace other important crops for farmers. And efforts to boost production could benefit business interests at the expense of small farmers.

With little Ethiopian teff on the international market, farmers in the US have started planting the crop. Farmers in Europe, Israel and Australia have also experimented with it.

Kebede says she gets her grain from farms in southern Europe, though she would prefer to source it from Ethiopia. “Teff is second nature to an Ethiopian; so who better to supply it? We have this sought after grain being grown in the country, so why can’t an Ethiopian farmer benefit from this?”

Megacity, mega commute: Lagos and life on the road

Ochuko Oghuvwu is surprisingly chirpy for a man who spends upwards of 30 hours a week in his car, commuting to and from his office in Nigeria’s financial hub, Lagos.

Then again, he has just started the working week after two whole days without having to battle giant pot-holes, monster traffic jams, roadworks, irate drivers and police checkpoints.

Oghuvwu’s stockbroking firm in the Ikoyi area of Lagos is only about 32 kilometres from his home in Ojo, due west towards the border with neighbouring Benin.

The drive to the office should only take 45 minutes to one hour.

But those days are as rare in Lagos as 24 hours of uninterrupted electricity from the national grid.

Instead, the trip normally takes him three hours – even longer in the June to September rainy season – despite him being behind the wheel from 5:30 am.

“I wake up early to beat the major traffic,” he told AFP.

“Those that wake up later end up spending more time. On a day like a Monday, if you leave the house at 6:30 am, you spend more than four hours in the car.”

Oghuvwu, a marketing executive in his early 40s, is far from a rare breed in Nigeria’s biggest city.

Hundreds of thousands of people like him also spend nearly as much time commuting as the statutory working week in countries such as France.

He could even be considered a late riser. Others who live nearby set off a full hour earlier to beat the infamous “go-slows”, as local call traffic jams.

“We get exhausted. We’re always tired. For somebody in my position, I just lock the door of the office and have a little nap for 20 to 30 minutes,” he said.

The time spent crawling bumper to bumper with other cars, motorbikes and battered yellow taxis, packed buses and overloaded trucks has taken its toll on his Volvo S90.

The constant stop-start means brake pads need checking every other month and the services of panel beaters to smooth out the inevitable dents and scrapes from the quest to keep moving.

But the gruelling commute has also affected his social life and the amount of time he spends with his family.

Ughuvwu’s children, aged between six and 14, are usually asleep when he leaves the house and when he returns.

“At the weekend I don’t go out,” he added. “I mainly stay at home. I don’t want to face the traffic. It’s ruined my social life.”

Traffic on Agege Motor Road in Lagos. (Pic: AFP)
Traffic on Agege Motor Road in Lagos. (Pic: AFP)

Officially, Lagos is said to be home to some 12 million people.

But many estimates put the figure at about 21 million, in a city spread over 910 square kilometres.

New arrivals hunting a slice of Nigeria’s economic growth heap pressure on the already creaking infrastructure. Land shortages and a lack of housing has pushed up real estate and rental prices.

Fuel subsidies and cheap, second-hand cars often imported from Europe have put more vehicles on the road.

As a result, a long commute is a necessary evil for all but the wealthiest.

The managing director of the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (Lamata), Dayo Mobereola, admits they need to act now to prevent total gridlock.

“This problem has been going on for almost 40 years,” he said.

“We’ve started addressing it over the last five years and we have a roadmap now to address the issues as they are today and also to plan for the future as well.

“If we don’t do anything then in the next five years there’s almost going to be a stand-still.”

Master plan
Lamata’s $20 billion, 30-year master plan is based around integrated public transport.

Its proposals for nine designated bus lanes and seven suburban train lines, built with Chinese money, are designed to get people out of their cars.

Slum clearance is essential, although campaign groups claim that residents are given little or no warning that their homes are earmarked for demolition and no compensation afterwards.

Work has slowed because of legal disputes, while some slum dwellers move on and set up home elsewhere, to be cleared another day.

More affordable accommodation within Lagos would help cut commuting times, suggested Oghuvwu, as prices where he lives are nearly two-thirds cheaper than in the city.

Water taxis along Nigeria’s southern, Atlantic coast and the lagoons that stretch around the city could also help tackle the gridlock.

Failing that, businesses could relocate from the traditional trading hubs of Lagos Island, Ikoyi and Victoria Island to the suburbs, he added.

For now, though, his life – and everyone else’s – is dictated by traffic.

In the afternoons, many workers are out of the office door and on their way home as soon as the clock chimes four, car radios tuned to Lagos Traffic Radio 96.1 FM to hear about tailbacks and accidents.

Oghuvwu himself usually leaves about 4:30 pm – and he’s all too aware of the consequences.

“That extra 30 minutes costs me an additional one hour on the road,” he said.