Charles Kayongo, a Ugandan bar owner, and his wife Eunice, have defied traditional beliefs and refuse to have more than two children. Credit: Dennis Kasirye/IPS

By Henry Wasswa
KAMPALA, Nov 15 2012 (IPS)

Charles Kayongo of Uganda is a father of two girls aged five and three. And even though age-old traditions among his ethnic group, the Baganda, say a man should have an unlimited number of children and a son as an heir, Kayongo refuses to have more children.

Like a growing number of cash-strapped young parents in this landlocked East African nation who yearn for a modern lifestyle, he says that he and his wife, Eunice Kayongo, want a small family.

“Enough is enough. I do not want any more children. I discussed this with my wife, and we have been using pills and condoms for the past two years. The cost of food, of sending them to school and buying medication is already too high for me,” the 33-year-old tells IPS from his home in Mukono town on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital, Kampala.

Kayongo, who owns a bar, says he spends 10 dollars a day on his family and earns a total of 440 dollars a month.

“I am interested in family planning because it helps us live a better life. I make sure I go with my wife to the clinic. I have to plan financially for my family.”

Uganda has one of the world’s highest population growth rates at an annual rate of 3.2 percent. The country’s total population is currently 34 million. 

“One million people are added to the Ugandan population annually, but the resources are not increasing at the same rate,” Anthony Bugembe, a programme officer at the Population Secretariat in the Ministry for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, tells IPS.

Kayongo is among an emerging generation of young Ugandan husbands who are beginning to defy the old African tradition of fathering large numbers of children and are opting for smaller manageable families.

Lynda Birungi, from the national family planning group Reproductive Health Uganda, says more young fathers are becoming involved in family planning than before largely because of financial reasons. However, these men are still a minority.

“Out of every five women who come to our clinic, only one comes with a man. But over 20 years ago, no men came. These days, the young generation of male partners want a better standard of living and feel that they can attain this by having small families,” Birungi says.

Meanwhile, in the southern African nation of Malawi, what started as a travelling theatre of only 10 police officers 11 years ago has now grown to a movement of over a thousand men preaching against gender-based violence, which fuels unwanted pregnancies and increases maternal mortality.

The group, the Men’s Travelling Conference (MTC), is a team of mostly men and some women funded by the Norwegian government and the United Nations Population Fund.

In 2003, the MTC marked the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, an international campaign calling for non-violence against women and children that is held from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10, in a unique way.

Men from Kenya, Zambia and Ethiopia converged on Malawi’s capital Lilongwe after travelling there by bus. Along the way, the men stopped at each community they passed, and left behind the message that violence against women was destructive and that men hold the power and responsibility to stop such violence.

Now every December the MTC travels by bus to various communities in Malawi to educate men. Wisdom Samu is one of the men who travel with the MTC.

In September 2001 he lost his wife shortly after she gave birth to their seventh child.

“Through the MTC, I have learnt that I was to blame. I never allowed her to use family planning methods because I wanted more children,” Samu tells IPS.

Samu has since become a role model and has persuaded many other men from his community of Namitete – situated 50 kilometres outside of Lilongwe – to become involved in family planning.

“I tell them to listen and plan together with their wives, and to allow their wives to use modern family planning methods,” he says.

Samu’s story is echoed across Malawi, a country where 13 women die every day from avoidable pregnancy-related complications.

“It was these scary statistics that made us think outside the box…We agreed to recruit and mobilise male supporters at all levels and sectors to push the agenda through drama, song and discussions to tell men that its time they sat down and planned smaller families with their wives,” Emma Kaliya, chairwoman of Malawi NGO Gender Coordination Network, tells IPS.

As Malawi strives to involve more men in family planning, the West African nation of Mali is slowly but surely making progress.

The country’s Millennium Development Goals report by the U.N. Development Programme in March 2010 said that Mali’s maternal mortality rate had dropped from 582 to 464 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2001 and 2006.

This is partly because of intensive campaigns to involve men in family planning.

“Ten years ago, my clinic in Bamako only used to receive women, but today the women are being accompanied by their husbands and that to me is a sign that what we are doing is working,” says Mountaga Toure, executive director for the Malian Association for the Protection and Promotion of the Family, known by its French acronym as AMPFF. The association is an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

“I sometimes see men coming on their own to collect contraceptives for their partners, saying that their wives are too busy to do that,” he tells IPS in a telephonic interview.

This, he says, is a massive change in a deeply Muslim country like Mali.

Toure says that the AMPFF, in partnership with the IPPF, is deliberately encouraging men to talk about what has always been regarded as taboo.

“To make them understand, we talk about the economy and whether it can allow any man to support 10 children … this makes them understand the reason why they need to plan with their wives how many children their pockets can support,” Toure says.

Meanwhile, back in Uganda, Kayongo’s decision not to have more children has not gone down well with his mother.

“My mother wants me to have sons, but I do not want more children. It is my decision,” he says.

*Additional reporting by Mabvuto Banda in Malawi.

Uganda conservationists are concerned that increasing numbers of people have begun eating primate meat. Credit: Samson Baranga/IPS

By Henry Wasswa
ALBERTINE RIFT REGION, Uganda, Oct 25 2012 (IPS)

Conservationists struggling to protect the remaining population of Ugandan chimpanzees have raised concerns that people around wildlife reserves in the west of the country have taken to eating the primates.

“There is now an issue of eating bush meat. We did not think Ugandans were eating primate meat but we are starting to observe that monkeys and chimps are being eaten. This is scary. The threat to their survival has been growing bigger,” according to Lily Ajarova who runs the Ngamba Chimpanzee Sanctuary, located on an island of the same name in Lake Victoria in the Albertine Rift region.

The sanctuary, which houses 48 primates rescued from human captivity, was set up with the help of the Jane Goodall Institute and is managed by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Decades ago, tens of thousands of chimpanzees roamed the thick tropical forests that then covered a vast tract of land in Uganda’s Albertine Rift region. The area covers the western arm of the Great East African Rift Valley from north-western Uganda to the extreme southwest, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

But according to the World Wildlife Fund, chimpanzees have already disappeared from four African countries, and are nearing extinction in many others largely due to deforestation and the hunting of the primates for bushmeat. Currently there are only an estimated 5,000 chimpanzees in Uganda, conservation officials say.

Most of the remaining chimpanzees in this country are protected in six main game and forest reserves in the Albertine Rift region, while others are trapped in forests owned by individuals.

Ajarova told IPS that although her team of conservationists had first noticed people eating primate meat in western Uganda two years ago, those engaging in the practice had mostly been immigrants or refugees from neighbouring DRC. It was rare for locals in this East African nation to eat primate meat, she said.

“There are many other parts of the world where primate meat is eaten but this had not been happening in Uganda. We began witnessing this over time. It has been developing slowly and we ourselves only got wind of it when we were in the field two years ago,” she said, adding that it was now “an emerging problem.”

The recent arrivals of immigrants from the DRC have created a shift in the population balance of the area and have had an effect on local culture, she said. In July the Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Musa Ecweru said that Uganda was struggling to feed the large number of Congolese fleeing the fighting in North Kivu Province in neighbouring DRC. There are an estimated 16,000 Congolese refugees in western Uganda.

“There are lots of Congolese refugees in the area and they may have influenced the local people to eat monkeys and chimpanzees,” Ajarova said. “This has not been a part of Ugandan culture in the past, but now it is becoming an issue. We have found that the habit is now rife in the whole (western) region. It is rampant in almost all the villages we visit.

“We have from time to time seen villagers carrying carcasses of monkeys and, on occasion, chimps,” Ajarova said.

Officials also believe that people have taken to eating primates because the Albertine Rift region is poverty-stricken and people mostly depend on forest resources for survival, as they cannot afford to purchase meat.

“People are desperate, they are poor as this is an underdeveloped region. They mostly depend on forest resources, including game meat, and this may have forced them to resort to eating primate meat,” Ajarova said.

Experts are now worried that the new trend could lead to a possible outbreak of Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever that is often fatal, which is believed to be transferred to humans through contact with an infected animal.

“This is a serious problem. Any meat that is eaten has to pass through proper veterinary inspection, even if it is from farms. People eating primate meat run a risk of getting infected with zoonotic diseases, including Ebola,” said Andrew Seguya, the executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

“There is no Ugandan tribe that traditionally eats primate meat, but there are many Congolese refugees in that area and the Congolese may have spread the habit to locals,” he said.

“Ebola is spread through direct contact and it’s thought that these primates are carriers of the disease and may transmit it to humans through other ways, including faecal matter. There is even a school of thought that AIDS might have been transmitted from primates,” Seguya, a veterinary surgeon, told IPS.

The western district of Kibaale, in the Albertine Rift region, was hit by a suspected Ebola epidemic in July. Health officials are yet to confirm that it was an Ebola outbreak. But according to media reports 17 people died.

Meanwhile, Ajarova said efforts are being made to change people’s attitudes towards eating primate meat through education programmes and the setting up of animal-rearing projects among villagers.

“We are telling people to stop eating primate meat, informing them that it is dangerous to their health as they will get diseases like Ebola. This is one of the key messages in our education programmes,” she said.

“We also use FM radios to pass on conservation messages to the communities. These reach out to large numbers of people at one go,” Ajarova said.