July 30, 1999
The University of Kansas associate professor of anthropology recently returned from eight months of field research in Uganda. She lived among the Karimojong peoples, asking the women about their childbearing and conducting body measurements. She is the first anthropologist to do this kind of work in Karamoja.
For hundreds of years, these peoples have relied on zebu cattle, goats and fat-tailed sheep. Drought makes planting crops a roll of the dice.
The Karimojongs' main food is milk. Blood from their animals is a dry-season food. They roast it in something that resembles blood pudding. It packs plenty of protein, but Gray finds blood too salty for her taste.
She says that pastoral peoples are among the last groups in the world it's still politically OK to trash. They're cursed for allowing their animals to overgraze the land and turn it into desert.
Big lie, Gray says. For centuries, these peoples did just fine. Then various planners moved in. First the British. Next, Idi Amin and his successors. They've all made life miserable for the Karimojong.
The British encouraged ranching. They placed some traditional grazing areas off-limits to the herders, shrinking the amount of forage and grazing available to their animals. Then, in the 1970s, droughts pared herd sizes.
A severe drought began in 1979 and ran through 1981. In an associated famine in 1980, child mortality hit 60 percent, infant mortality 100 percent. The Karimojong have never fully recovered.
For the past 20 years, Gray says, assorted public and private forces have been trying to make farmers of the Karimojong. But these peoples have fought back. For one thing, they got into Amin's weapon stashes. The leading cause of mortality for adults in 1994-95 was, according to statistics of one major hospital, gunshot trauma.
As I said, Sandra Gray's got moxie. Even so, by the last two months of her stay in Uganda, she was nervous. To ensure her safety and that of her staff, she was doling out what's affectionately known as "lunch money" to minor officials.
Gray did more than 300 interviews with women about their children: how many they had, how many had died and of what. She measured the women, their children and their husbands: height, weight, fat, muscle stores and more. She saw blatant malnutrition.
She says, "Even though the work is necessary, I feel guilty when I try to measure, in the name of science, a child who's near death."
Her research question is whether fertility has increased since the 1950s. She's betting it has - and that she'll find some of the highest child mortality rates in the world.
To get to Karamoja requires driving north 10 hours from Uganda's capital, Kampala. On the trip up, Gray and her Kampala-born driver made an emergency stop. Herders with AK-47s sauntered past. Gray, once an off-Broadway actress, palavered with them. The Ugandan driver froze. The herders left. The driver was still rattled.
"Should I drive?" Gray asked.
"This is another world!" he said. "This is another world!"
Gray said, "But you're a Ugandan."
He said, "This is another world!"
Hearing about the Karimojong, I found myself wishing it was another world.
And I bet they do, too.
Column by Roger Martin