http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs Fearless. Thoughtful. Witty. Canadian. And Opinionated. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:12:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Most textiles and clothes are made in Asia, sold to the West, discarded in the West, and donated to charities who have too many dresses to know what to do with them. Then the charities send them to Africa. For example: Fictitious Original Owner: Ciny Showalker’s 8th birthday party in Miami, ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/11/10/little-girls-in-pretty-dresses/ On November 7, 2007, I got an email from a man I had never met before. It began: Dear wife to be, Glenna Gordon, It is in the name of Jesus Christ, I am writing to you this message in order to let you know about my proposal wish just to you. And ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/16/my-congolese-stalker/ "There's a man here with one leg, five women, and thirty-two children," Sarah Shambe tells me, on the day of Rosh Hashanah, as we walk away from Eid prayers to her two-room home in a suburb of Kampala, Uganda.  Sarah spent the morning praying in an open field with thousands ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/02/rosh-hashanah-in-uganda/ Last week while I was waiting around in a rural area in Northern Uganda, I was speaking to a friend on the phone and sitting nearby family of ducks in front of someone’s hut—eleven little ducks and a mom. My friend told me to take a photo. They are sweet, ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/09/23/the-work-in-the-north/ GULU, UGANDA—A man in nicely pressed yet worn shirt and slacks stands in the cramped bus aisle, jostling for space among ladies selling candy, young boys with loaves of bread, hankies, knickknacks, bottles of juice—anything a passenger might want to buy before setting off from Kampala to Gulu, a town ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/09/15/the-ride-north/ The safari jeep stopped in front of a small group of mud huts surrounded by a hand-made fence. A few Masai men, the tribe that lives in this part of Northern Tanzania, came out to greet us. They wore thick beaded necklaces and red and blue cloth wraps, with Nike ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/09/04/this-is-a-safari/ KARAMOJA REGION, UGANDA—We took the hospital by storm—half a dozen cameras, twice as many reporters, all zooming in on a few scores of malnourished children and their petrified mothers. Someone was supposed to have told the hospital administration that the press corps from Kampala was coming with our video recorders ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/08/18/if-some-africans-die-in-some-bush-does-anyone-care/ KAMPALA, UGANDA—When you Google "Stephen Batte," you get over 600 hits. That's a huge number of Internet references for a nine-year old Ugandan orphan, who up until recently didn’t have enough to eat, shoes, clean clothes, or a blanket, let alone a web presence. But, now that he’s famous, in part ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/08/12/a-ugandan-orphan-with-a-web-presence/