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Showing posts from September, 2017

The Movie Trailer that triggered me.

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Taylor Kitsch as David Koresh in the new movie Waco http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6040674/ It's eerie seeing a movie about this. I was little but I remember it was a tragedy that the adults around me talked about this. The early 90's were a time when I first remember understanding the world to be a tough, cruel place. I heard of a genocide in a place called Bosnia and in a beautiful country one of my mothers friends spoke of so fondly just south of Uganda. Television was bringing images of war to the living room. My father would watch this and never send me out if the room when I asked if it was movie but told me that I should be grateful for the peace I enjoyed that the people we were seeing in great pain on TV were longing for. The TV became a fireplace of sorts where pearls of wisdom and rants about the world going mad and stories about the "good ole days" were shared over the years. He screamed at the TV as much during the world cup as he did whe

Musings on Identity

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One of the most human traits it seems is the tendency to label people and ascribe to them the seeming universal traits of the group to which they're being placed into. So for instance, I am a Ugandan. But I also have grand parents from different tribes each and my father identifies as a Mutoro-Munyoro, my mother as a bad ass-But also as a Munyankole-Mukiga . That means during office banter anytime "Westerners" are brought-one can only look at me and they see a menu of stereotypes from which they can pick as a point of attack. I've been asked whether We Banyankole marry our cousins. Why we Batooro like to sleep around. Why we Banyarwanda (This person apparently had one other item on his Joel tribal Ala carte menu) like women with large ankles. And on and on. Mostly harmless but sometimes insidious and but always perplexing especially fro a people that quarrel and put up a fuss when stereotypes of black people or African people are put up. The WWF