Learning from women's landslide songs in Bududa and Bunambutye: enhancing a holistic landslide mitigation in Uganda

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on Bududa and Bunambutye as case studies to investigate how the songs women sing after the occurrence of landslides and the subsequent resettlement of survivors offer significant knowledge that can be harnessed by authorities to mitigate these disasters in Uganda. I specifically examine the lyrics of two women's songs and discuss how they contain valuable information that can offer psycho-social support to victims, besides articulating how government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can reconstruct livelihoods destroyed by this catastrophe. I argue that by examining the texts of women's landslide songs composed and performed during the aftermath of landslides, one can acquire substantial knowledge about the gendered mitigation of landslides. As such, the government and NGOs need to take into consideration the gender perspective if they seek to provide a holistic approach to landslide mitigation and internally displaced people- migrants in Uganda.

KEYWORDS:

• landslide(s)
• mitigation
• women songs
• Uganda

Acknowledgements

I thank Dr Edgar Nabutanyi (the Coordinator) for the Andrew W Mellon Competitive Mentorship-oriented Research grant, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS), Makerere University. I also thank my mentor, Prof. Sylvia Antonia Nakimera Nannyonga-Tamusuza as well as Prof. Anne Gilliland, Dr. Yunusy Ng’umbi and the reviewers for their constructive comments and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As Joseph Were (2010) writes, Bududa is among the districts forming Bugisu, a sub-region in eastern Uganda. The district borders the Republic of Kenya to the west, Manafwa and Mbale districts to the south and east respectively and the expansive Mount Elgon Forest, which stretches across the Kenyan border, to the north.

2 For these discussions, see the works of Christoplos et al. (2001).

3 What I regard as CBOs are grassroots associations which act as a voice for members of a particular community to lobby for funds as well as share ideas on how to rehabilitate their lives (economically and psychologically) especially after disasters like landslides.

4 See also National Housing and Population Census (2014).

5 Among the Bagisu, the idea of a man getting married ‘by’ a woman (khukhwalikha khumukhasi) as opposed to ‘marrying’ a woman (khuyila umukhasi) is tantamount to surrendering one's prescribed responsibility of looking for a woman and bringing her to one's house. To bring a woman home is to proof that you are ready to take care of her as a man. In the scenario that a man has been married by a woman, the implication is that he looks for a woman who has constructed her own house and stays with her, to be taken care of by such a woman. Traditionally, a Mugisu man who fails to perform his prescribed roles is considered umusani mateleesi (Makwa, 2021, p. 142).

6 See Makwa (2015).

7 Bunambutye is located in Bulambuli District and is ‘bordered by Nakapiripirit district to the north, Kapchorwa and Kween to the east, Sironko to the south and Bukedea to the west’ (Pamela Khanakwa, 2022, p. 456).

8 Most of the administrative units discussed in this paper have either changed or will change their status in future. What was a village may have been elevated to parish status and parishes may have transformed into sub-counties, while some sub-counties may have been elevated to county or constituency status. These changes are in line with the government of the National Resistance Movement (NRM's) policy of dividing and sub-dividing administrative units under the slogan of ‘taking services nearer to the people’. See also Khanakwa’s (2022, p. 476) discussion on the ‘chief system’ being replaced by the ‘local council system’ under the NRM government.

9 Although several landslides occurred in Bududa in 2018, the most prominent one occurred in October, 2018 in Bukalasi Sub-County, killing and displacing several people.

10 When I did fieldwork in Bunambutye, it was revealed to me that in this settlement, there were also landslide survivors from Manafwa, Sironko, Bulambuli, and Namisindwa, which are also districts in Bugisu sub-region, eastern Uganda.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper was financed by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS), Makerere University, under the Competitive Mentorship-Oriented Research Grant of the Andrew W Mellon Project, awarded in 2020. The Grant number for the project was G-1709-04905.

Notes on contributors

Dominic D. B. Makwa

Dominic D. B. Makwa is a music lecturer in the Department of Performing Arts and Film at Makerere University, Uganda. He received his PhD (Music) from Stellenbosch University (South Africa), MA (Music) through a sandwich program between Makerere University (Uganda) and the University of Bergen (Norway), BA (Music) from Makerere University and Diploma (Education) from Kyambogo University (Uganda). Besides working on integration of music, dance and ritual, music and gender and music archiving, Dr Makwa’s new research deals with landslide disasters in Bududa District (eastern Uganda) investigating the process of resettlement, coping strategies by the victims, the use of music as a tool of communication and how musicians have participated in archiving this disaster.