Christian Mafigiri: Telling Ugandan stories through graphic novels

Christian Mafigiri is a Ugandan artist whose love for American comic books led him to pursue a career in art. He later trained as a journalist and he has combined his skills in journalism and art to tell stories through different forms of graphic story-telling.

Mafigiri has recently collaborated on a multimedia project with Scottish photo-journalist Marc Ellison that tells the stories of 6 former child soldiers who were abducted by the LRA and their struggles to integrate into society, while trying to deal with their own trauma.

Mafigiri has also produced graphic novels for sell which use the style of the comic books he loved as a child to tell stories that resonate with Ugandans.He hopes that one day his graphic novels and comics will give Ugandan readers the sort of entertainment he got from reading American comic books like Superman and Batman.

Tranquil empty streets in Kampala. A sight so rare

Parts of Kampala can look like a ghost town over the festive season. These pictures were taken on Christmas day and streets that are ordinarily full of traffic were almost completely empty. 

I kind of liked the feel in a way. Almost wished the city was that quiet all the time.

Back to School

I started a postgraduate course in management yesterday and I am feeling quite nice about being a student again, 10 years after my undergraduate studies. I wonder why I hadn't done this earlier. It took only one day in class for me to remember how much I actually liked to study. Unlike most of my friends, I actually liked university for the classes and the studying. All the other stuff like partying was fun too but I had been raised in a pretty free environment so, for me, going to university was not a break from the shackles of parents and home like it was for most of my friends. Unlike in secondary school, I do not remember having that much difficulty studying for and passing my exams. Now I am a manager in training and I like the fact that the particular course I took and the institution I am studying at has more of an emphasis on the experiential than on the academic. Hopefully by the end of 2 years I should be a top-notch project manager and I will have figured out exactly how I am going to put my knowledge to use. Its not that I do not have an idea of what I want to do. I actually have way too many ideas running through my head that I do not know at this point where to begin and how to integrate it all. But I am hoping I will "see the light" in the coming months. It should not therefore be a surprise if some nuggets of project management find there way onto this blog. However I intend to leave most of that over at my other blog. While I am at it I intend to jump-start this here blog. Its been dormant for way too long.

Welcome to 2012-The year the world doesn't end and Uganda turns 50.

The new year is already 3 days old but I think it is still young enough for me to wish everyone a happy new year. Like all brand new years, 2012 is walking briskly along with a purposeful stride and an air of invincibility thinking it cannot do worse than 2011. However, this elation will not last and everything will soon get back to normal, which is not necessarily a good thing because normal for Ugandans means ever increasing fuel prices (with the accompanying price increments in nearly everything else), higher interest rates on bank loans, politicians stealing billions, et cetera. I could go on but what's the point, there will be enough of this in everyone's life during the course of the year. I don't need to labour the point. Besides there are people better placed than me to make predictions,  like the opinionated Mr. Kalyegira does here, or give analyses on what to watch out for.

However, there is one thing I am very certain of, and that is, that the world is not ending this year contrary to what ancient Mayans might or might not have predicted for the year 2012 or what The Red Pepper will inevitably dedicate miles of newsprint to. This year is going to be ordinary in many ways but for some of us it will be a special one because.....

2012 is the year Uganda turns 50.

I can already hear people saying "who gives a damn" or "how does that help me?" and I understand the average Ugandan's nonchalance towards independence anniversaries. Independence does not mean much to most Ugandans because only a small portion of us ever lived under colonial rule (and some who did wish things had never changed) and the difficult lives most Ugandans live have effectively immunised them of sentimentality and yet sentiments are what such jubilee celebrations appeal to. They aim to rekindle the pride of a people; engender patriotic fervour and cause the poets to writes odes to the nation's heroes and the people to break out in song and exalt the great legendary leaders that fought against the marauding hordes of foreign invaders and.. and....OK maybe I am getting carried away here but that is impression I get whenever I see independence jubilee celebrations of other countries on TV. Unfortunately, it appears Uganda does not really have anything of the sort make a big deal of. We had a pretty tame colonial experience (compared say to Kenya or Zimbabwe), the post colonial experience has not left us much to celebrate and these days NRM has kind of appropriated for itself any gains Uganda has made over the past 49 years so that any independence day celebration is indistinguishable from an NRM anniversary.

However, all hope is not lost and two initiatives by The New Vision and The Monitor called the Uganda Jubilee Project and Uganda@50 respectively hope to get as many Ugandans as possible involved in the jubilee year by sharing that which they feel they ought to celebrate or be proud of about Uganda as it turns 50 as opposed to the same old parades, boring slogans and speeches that are imposed on us every year. Because I feel we as Ugandans ought to make this anniversary one worth celebrating I will be monitoring how these two projects progress and giving my two cents worth every now and then. This kind of anniversary ought to be the kind of thing that should (if only temporarily) get most Ugandans thinking of themselves as a diverse group of people with a common stake in this project called Uganda that requires everyone's contribution if its to succeed.

Maybe I expect to much and I am making a fuss over nothing but I will see how the year progresses and I will keep dropping my two cents worth every now and then.

Happy New Year once more.

On what Kampala needs

I stumbled across Kampalaver by accident, and though it is no longer active,it has links to many articles on it that lead to some wonderful posts about Kampala , its problems and what can be done to solve them. The links are within the last post which was written as a goodbye and included a kind of "Best of Kampalaver".  I liked this blog because I have an interest in urban planning though I am not an urban planner myself and I love seeing cities and towns that work and wish Kampala could too. But alas, 'tis not so.

Back again

After a 3 year absence, I have decided to get back to blogging. I cant say why I stopped except that I probably suffered some kind of prolonged blogger's block. This is a new blog under a new identity. I am still tweaking things around so there wont be a real post for a while. In the meantime I have reposted my last post from my previous blog (kind of saying bye to the old and welcoming the new). I will be posting about anything that comes into my mind, which will make for a lot of variety in topics and tone.
Lets see how it goes. Here's my last blog post from over 3 years ago in another time and place.

How does one begin to describe the atmosphere around the Olympics opening ceremony last night? Since I am not much of a wordsmith I will settle for awesome. Though I was not at the Bird's Nest I can say with confidence that I will be very lucky to be part of something as exciting again in my life.

Like I said, I wasn't fortunate enough to be at the main event though some chap had offered me a ticket at an extortionist price I had fun prowling around and witnessing all the excitement. I hooked up with a fellow Kampalan and we watched the opening ceremony in various bars on TV and huge screens in my hood.

The most fun we had was sitting on a pavement in Di'anmen watching the event on a massive screen on a building across the street with our yanjing beer in the company of grannies, mummies, daddies and kiddies. People brought their folding chairs from home and settled down to be part of the event.

Me and my sidekick cheered and clapped when our kanzu and gomesi clad Ugandan team (all 12 of them came on the screen) and the guys around didn't disappoint by giving us vocal backup though I am sure few knew where Uganda was.

Some other craziness that ensued was when the Kobe Bryant's face came on. These NBA crazy guys let out a round of cheers that was only matched when another NBA star, and son of the soil, Yao Ming led the Chinese team into the stadium. From there on it was all Zhongguo, Zhongguo (which is China, China, in Mandarin).

The only fly in the otherwise fine ointment was that we were not allowed into an area called Houhai to watch the fireworks display (one of very many all over the city) up close by the authorities. But we managd to watch from a distance anyway.

One plus was that the public transport operated the whole night, which allowed an inebriated pair of Kampalans to extend the festive evening to Sanlitun across town without having to fork out for a cab.

Its a pity that I couldn't get my hand on tickets to any of the games venues but seeing as they are on every screen everywhere, I will follow well enough. I had a tentative offer for tickets to some baseball match, which I previously ignored because I know nothing about the game but now I am desparately searching for the guy who offered because I have to attend at least one olympic event.

I still can't believe I am here in the midst of all this due to a series of serendipitous decisions. This time last year if you had told me I would be in Beijing during the Olympics I would have told you to get yourself a new dealer because the current one was giving you some madness inducing narcotics.

Adios for now lets see how the next few weeks play themselves out.