Women in Uganda

Many highly educated Ugandan women work at IDI; in fact all five research department heads are women!  My colleagues dress very smartly and fashionably; most wear high heels and pencil skirts below the knee.  Education is seen as very important here and almost everyone you meet is studying for a masters degree.

Educated women tend to marry in their late twenties but still favor large families; seven children is typical.  Because it's cheap, most hire help at home so than they can continue to work.  Daycare is not popular since some of the children are HIV positive and there have also been stories of child abuse at day care centers.

Life is harder for uneducated women, many of whom sell fruit or snacks in the streets.  Morning and evening as I walk to work I see women stooping, sweeping the street gutters with brushes made from a tied handful of reeds.  I am not sure who pays them. Women gracefully carrying heavy loads on their heads are a common sight; I've noticed that they twist either banana leaves or their traditional multipurpose shawl (kitenge) into a ring like the lady in the photo to steady the basket.

In the country, people mold the red mud to make bricks; there are piles of bricks neatly stacked outside, and these are used to build houses, with corrugated metal roofs.  Cooking is done outside on charcoal stoves; charcoal burners gather wood and make charcoal out on the Kiira Road, and water must be fetched in large polythene canisters.  People keep chicken, goats and sometimes cattle, including Ankole cattle which have enormous horns. Apparently domestic violence is quite common.

On June 23 at the Kasubi Tombs I learned more about traditional treatment of women.  At a wedding ceremony, the brother in law of the bride presents the groom with a chicken.  As a sign of respect to her husband, a woman is not allowed to eat chicken (or eggs, or grasshoppers which are a sweet delicacy here) or pork, or anything delicious!  Modern women do eat these things but in the villages the chickens and eggs are reserved for the men and also for visitors, but not for the women.