Sketching plans for Katine's art project
Sunday 21 March 2010
I'm about to head off to the airport for my first trip to Uganda to explore how to produce a piece of artwork with young people in Katine. The aim of the trip is to come back with range of possible ideas for the artwork; to try out some initial approaches, eg storytelling, drawing objects, portraits; think about using objects children have made, but blown up to a larger size; to work around the theme of a tapestry; to source materials to work with, such as corrugated iron, wood, wire, chalkboards, yellow jerrycans, coat hangers.
Monday 22 March
Missed connecting flight by 20 minutes at Nairobi, with a group of 10 passengers. We were bused to a hotel, where we had breakfast, a short nap and lunch before heading back to the airport for our now evening flight to Entebbe. It was a good chance to talk with Liz to get background to the Guardian's involvement with Katine, relations with Amref, putting the project in the spotlight and the difficulties of this. It was very interesting to meet other travellers and hear what they are up to. On the plane, I met a nurse who has travelled from South Africa to Uganda, Sophie from Rwanda, people coming to volunteer at an orphanage, an MA student from Cambridge studying English lit and a Ugandan artist called Eve. All of this was set against the backdrop of Nairobi airport, the bus, and the hotel that tried to turn us away. One hour sleep. Malaria pills. Amazing views out of the hotel window on the seventh floor.
Made it into Entebbe around 9pm.
My itinerary for the trip:
- Meet with Lillian Viko, acting project manager in Katine to discuss ideas
- Meet with teachers and discuss project
- Visit schools, look at classes
- Visit craftsmen
- Take a class to experience teaching environment
- Find resources.
Tuesday 23 March, 9.45pm
Writing this in the Landmark Hotel in Soroti, with a torrential downpour and lightening raging outside. Seen Katine, and had dinner with Liz and Steve, Amref's Uganda communications manager, and was then joined by Oscar, the former project manager of Katine, and Rose, a nurse who is attending to an Amref worker who has contracted malaria. It ended with Oscar explaining the riots last year, in which 21 people were killed, in terms of kingships, government control, land rights, change since the 1920s and 1930s, landed gentry. The Ugandan president is from the west, and gained power with promises of returning land to the king of Kampala, but is only doing this piecemeal.
The drive from Kampala through Soroti and on to Katine was amazing, but I was very tired, and struggled to stay awake. We travelled along red dirt roads full of potholes and then on the new road built by the Chinese, who are trying to extend it north as a trade route.
Soroti looks like an amazing place, but one that ideally you would need two weeks to visit, and adjust to in order to get a really good picture of what is happening. I have three days.
The drive reminded me of "Township Wall" by the Nigerian artist Dilomprizulike, with buildings painted in vivid colours, such as bright purple, French ultra, and covered with hand-painted advertising. Corrugated iron sheets reflecting the light, or painted over, yellow jerry cans, bikes packed with bundles of objects, even a chicken. Women carrying water pots balanced on their heads, bright coloured dresses and hats, men sat on their motorcycles, street signs, Katine hand-painted signs, abstract crosses of wooden framework on balconies, doorways.
A couple of slogans we passed while driving particularly caught my eye:
"Our relationship with the people is symbiotic not parasitical". And one from a soft drink brand: "Everyone deserves a fortune."
I met Richard Kavuma, CNN award winning journalist and Katine reporter for the Guardian.
I need initial stories and objects for the kids, and some materials to play with.
Could we get a handful of students to walk the streets taking pictures with me? High resolution, then select from these to print. Could we set-up a class around this?
Tomorrow- visit Katine school, see what the classrooms are like, meet the kids, assess the size of classes and what experience the kids have of making art, make links with local artists, devise workshops.
Issues:
- How to select groups to work with, whether to target all schools, or work with a core group, and where?
- Topics for workshops, actual content of sessions. And structure
- Materials
- Stories. Daily life of the kids
- Background to development project, and what makes this one special
- Background to how this project relates to Uganda as a whole
Wednesday 24 March
Initial visit to Katine primary school to see what pupils are doing in lessons, looking at primary one and primary 5 classes. In the morning they were talking about family members, and then drawing pictures of boys and girls, and of farming, and talking about the different roles men and women have, and how these roles are sometimes reversed. Some of the kids drew on small black boards, others in exercise books. The teacher says they are used to drawing modes of transport, such as cars, motorcycles, buses, taxis, trucks, bicycles.
Signs dotted around the school grounds included reminders to wash and stay clean, and not to exchange gifts for sex. This is a primary school.
Molly, Amref's education project assistant in Katine, showed me around. We walked around around the school to look at handmade buildings and meet families. In the afternoon we visited an arts and crafts class. Pupils were split into three groups, and each group had to draw modes of transport in Katine, people hunting and people drinking alcohol. Very good results, purely from imagination, with some artwork that really stood out. The class ended in chaos as I started to make sketches of the classroom and the pupils, which caught their interest. Communication seemed quite difficult, but a few brave ones came up to shake my hand. They seem very enthusiastic and keen to get involved. They deftly use razor blades to sharpen their pencils.
Main issues:
Materials – what can we use to make the artwork, how can we develop skills they have already or are familiar with?
We need to developing a story or narrative. The theme could be the new road, signs.
Objects - yellow jerrycans, fruit and veg, handmade toys. What they can draw on and with, how we can transport this back? How can we combine images and narratives?
Thursday 25 March
David Ogwang, Amref's project assistant for the livelihoods component of the Katine project, takes me on a tour of Katine to visit the main craftsmen in the community at work. David had already taken George Amponsah, the film-maker around, so knew where to go.
We visited someone making clay pots, very close to Katine. The abstract pattern on the outside was made using biro cut into 2-inch strips, then rolled around the pot. A pinch pot is made out of the clay, coils are added, then smoothed down with the side of the thumb, before being further refined with a shell or flat piece of plastic. This is then fired under a layer of grass on a fire.
We then visited a lovely family that makes fishing baskets out of wire and palm leaves. The man I met can make 10 to 12 in a day. To be successful you must use 11or 13 strands of palm. The wire was sold to him by people who were installing electrical wiring on the road. He has had it for five years and reckons it will last 20. He says when I come back he will show me how to make it and use it. He is waiting for the waters in the swamp to rise.
We also saw craftsmen making baskets, mats, hats and handbags - all of which seemed to be accompanied by drinking the local alcohol brew from a pot with long straws.
As we drove around Katine, we dropped off some vaccines at the medical centre, at the end of a long red dirt road, and passed a school with the original mud and thatch buildings in the foreground and the new buildings Amref has built behind them. Good contrast.
David also explained the history of Katine – the drought, floods, the Lord's Resistance Army incursions, the disease that wiped out cassava, and all this since 1980.
He also explained this is the first integrated community development project that Amref has been involved in. Having the Guardian track Amref's progress, and being constantly under scrutiny he says has made the team work harder and more efficiently.
Friday 26 March
Myself and Molly return to Katine secondary school to meet the art teacher at 8am and take a lesson. While we were waiting, Molly told me a bit about her life and the responsibility she has to fund her brother and sister through college from her wages. After waiting half an hour for the teacher to show (in the end he did not turn up – I understand he had to travel in from another district), we decided to go ahead and take the class. We looked through the students' sketchbooks. About 10 of the group were doing art and design, and every drawing seemed pretty much identical. They had drawn a still life with a drum, a wheelbarrow with gardening tools in it, a perspectival study of the school, a tree outside with no branches or leaves, a hand, and a grasshopper drawn through a lens. They were very basic, probably the equivalent of year seven work in the UK. But they seemed keen to get involved in the art project.
The lesson consisted of Molly explaining the activity, then me and another teacher repeating the instructions. We were met with blank stares from the children. However once they began to work, they produced interesting results. The activity was to write a story about something good or bad that has happened in their lives, and to draw a picture to go with it. The teacher was very enthusiastic and helpful, and the 70 or so students worked very hard, but seemed very shy.
Friday afternoon we headed back to Kampala. My time in Katine was up and now the real work begins.