Graduation practice project

Looking at my stories of Uganda

In the exchange period of my fine arts course at Willem de Kooning Academy i.e. between February and July’19, I volunteered at a child empowering organization- Kyampisi Childcare Ministries, Kampala, Uganda.
My project in this period comprised the practice of drawing for and note making of my familiarization and friendship with the people of Uganda with a focus on shared emotions with the children housed at the organization. It introduced me to realities like child sacrifice and the problem of it being seen as a cross cultural aspect rather than a crime against humanity.
The current research document reflects upon this project and the reactions surrounding it. The document simultaneously makes account of two methodologies, from two time frames: drawing and reflective writing in perceiving above mentioned events in Uganda and recording myriad interpretations of the content of these drawings and writing in the Netherlands. It also takes up a meta level overview in order to trace the conflict between the story as my own experience (evident in the diary entries) and as looked through different lenses including that of identity politics.
The research accounts for a personal challenge of witnessing the lost role of one’s emotions and being confronted with the realities of the story’s representation in the west. It deals with the question of ‘how to tell a story whose content ignites different reactions and meanings for people differing across regions, through one’s own true experiences. It is an attempt at weaving these contradictory stand points as part of one single narrative.

1.This story is about a difference, a difference that you don’t feel.

2.In the month of February 2019, I went to Uganda. I went there as a volunteer in a child care centre.

3.I am an Indian and study in the Netherlands since past four years. In the Netherlands , I had been with adults who needed rehabilitation but this was my first time at a child care center.

4.I learnt that like in the case of adults, different children too need care for different reasons.

5.I met a 10 year old boy called Muwanguzi. I almost always saw him on a wheelchair, in the corner of the house courtyard . Sometimes, also with a helmet. I used to wonder why?

6. I learnt from the care takers that he was there since quite a few years.

7. My question was then why he had those fresh injuries?

8. he had less nervous control, fell a lot, sometimes even on the face- a tooth had broken and an old scar visible above the right eye brow. ---that’s why the helmet, that’s why he needed to be tied to his chair.

9.He would always get his elbows scratched, even scooped out- that child fell so badly. As days passed, I would see his brown healing scab coming. It used to bring me some relief.

10.The next time I visit him, his scabs would be gone, there would be blood once again. The care takers were careless. They had become numb; they had gotten used to it seeing him like that.

11.He had another injury at the back of his head. The care takers told that some people had attacked him when he was a child. His brain got a severe injury thereafter. thats why he had less nerve control.

12.One afternoon, Muwanguzi fell from his chair. We ran to tie him. He was crying in pain. The last person who attended him- did not tie him. I had wanted to yell at her.

13.In the desperation to comfort him, I started rubbing my hands from his forehead to cheek.

14.Meanwhile I felt something at my thighs. This was Shami, a baby girl of three who used to call me mama. She would come to me when needed water, or a fruit, or when her leg was hurting or when she had a complaint. I always reciprocated with touch, cuddles and fondles as I could not understand her Luganda.

15.One day, while I was working in the office, Shami walked towards me with a zombie face. She stood next to me with the same blank expression without any reply to my questions.
16.I had an instinct. I picked her up in my lap. I called her name after one minute and saw that she had curled up like a cat and slept peacefully. I felt I knew she was sleepy.

17.This was the shami, in need of attention. As I continued touching his cheeks, only thing I could feel was softness, tenderness and warmth. I was so lost that I forgot the blood I saw and the pain I was hearing and also equally feeling.

18.He slowly blinked his eyes with long lashes. I could tell that he felt mesmerized. he chuckled, There was a smile blended on his face.

19.He tried to bring my hand closer to his lips, rubbing it over. pulled my face closer, collapsing in my lap. I thought when was the last time he could have done that.

20.People around him had gotten so used to his situation that they needed to wake up to a reality. he as a child would and should never get used to hurting. And there was love and affection needed to be shown.
21.One afternoon, I was playing with Shami in front of the house mirror.

22.I pointed to the mirror and said “Anno mama, anno chami, anno chami anno mama”

23.For the first time I saw how different she and I were in our skin tones.

24.I swang her up and down. she hung over my back, clasping me around the neck. any slightest meaning of visual difference did not exist, my happiness and her scream of extreme happiness thrilled my heart.

25.The only reality I knew was the joy of a mother- soaked in the satisfaction of delighting her baby, her own child.

26.As if both of us had the same emotion, only in different roles. That day- I named her- “my Ugandan daughter”

27.Back in the netherlands, that feeling reduced and vanished. when I showed my drawings and stories, I mostly got two responses. First the people who judged, who attached pain and injury with skin colour or a country.
28.Second, the people who identified with that colour and were more concerned of the representation of the images in the west.

29.For both the kinds of people, what they wanted to see was more important than what I wanted to talk about, what I felt, how a child reciprocated to me. My approach lacked criticality, contextualization. Love is not an academic topic.

30. I felt , in the Netherlands the surface of skin had become the most important thing- for the power structure and for the anti- power structure alike.

31.When a soft bum of a child puts weight on your thigh, when they crawl making space between your hands and legs, when they strike your cheeks with their palms or roll in your laps, what could deconstruction, decolonial, post modernism, hegemony, ethical questions, criticality, contextualization do with it ?

32.Emotions don’t have any colour, you cannot see them. ‘We’ teach our children these limiting differences, limited as we are by our nature.