Issue: Happy-ness

Are you happy?

According to the New Vision, 35 of 100 Ugandans are dealing with a mental health illness. Reports also show we are recording an increase in the number of substance abuse cases and suicides. While these latest statistics are alarming, they are not surprising. We find ourselves strained, overwhelmed, and harmed by the unrelenting pressures of modern living, ever-rising costs of living with no matching increment in per capita incomes, prevailing socio-political tensions, rising insecurity, lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and much more. We are conditioned to continuously navigate negative emotions from these like a sense of futility, hopelessness, fear, anxiety, anger, and sadness, while we struggle to maintain positive emotions such as happiness, joy, and contentment. Cast against onslaughts to them, seemingly trapped in places that diminish our existence, we clutch at the fleetingness of these and find our mental wellness and overall well-being compromised.

As questions about our subjective and national well-being persisted they seemed rather poignant given that we were coming up to the 60-year mark of Uganda regaining her independence. Well-being and happiness are crucial at individual and national levels and should therefore have bearing on national policy as proposed by the 2012 United Nations (UN) High-level meeting, Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic paradigm. Macroeconomic factors don’t fully capture the conditions of life let alone the impact of this on the well-being and, therefore, the production of individuals. And mental health, defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community, is a basic human right. 

We are not without agency to frame and reframe what this constitutes for us and how we arrive at it individually and collectively. While the parameters that frame our response to the question, Are you happy might vary, thus creating a seeming inconsistency in ascertaining what happiness means in a wider community, the question is no doubt imperative. More so at the personal level. And, as Chris Gardner, author of the bestselling memoir The Pursuit of Happyness, reminds us during an interview, the “Y” in our Happy-ness Issue is a prompt to each one of us, to find our happiness, to nurture it, and to support the ventures that promote this in our communities.

We encourage you to reach out to the number below if you or someone known to you requires of counselling or mental health care and support.

Toll-Free Line: 0800 21 21 21

The Happy-Ness Issue is a collection of narrative essays, short stories (Fiction), and poetry. We open with the essay How the Fringe is Taking over Uganda’s Publishing Industry by Deus Kansiime. In this Deus shares a quick look at the emerging voices in Uganda’s Publishing industry and the factors compelling their formation. With him, we are excited to see more publishing opportunities availed to continent-based writers.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of many across the world with many in the creative arts sector affected. In Kuonyesha Art Fund: Charting future paths for the Creative Arts, Ednah Namugere shares the successes of Kuonyesha Art Fund working with artists in the project areas of Kampala, Karamoja, and Gulu during this time.

While Live productions are fun to watch they take a lot to put together. In Weaving together a live performance Namugula Joanne provides a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations to show Killing Time to a live audience in June 2022. Killing Time is a satirical play on the struggles of two young men to make a life for themselves.

Wrapping up the essay section is In Pursuit of Happiness as Africa Rises in which I contrast the well-being of “Africa’s children” to the narrative of Africa Rising. A narrative used to justify increased foreign direct investments across the continent.

In the Story section, we are treated to stories of longing, hope, and loss. In Swing mymama, Thabi Moeketsi writes of the migration wave the continent experienced in the 80s/90s and the effect on those left. Wacha Angewech in A Special Ingredient provides a satirical look at the narratives that propel us to ignore our internal warning signals as we watch her protagonist press into her dreams, determined to arrive at these no matter the contradictions that surround them. Finally, How I Lost My Gorilla In Kampala, by Kevin Mukama is a humorous take on how easily we get entangled in affairs, not ours, only to lose what is ours.

While in the poems we find love, loneliness, and the struggles of self against social expectations.

We hope you will enjoy this read and wish you all happiness and well-being in your chosen paths.

For those interested in contributing to Ibua Journal, we receive open submissions of short stories and poems year-long through our submissions portal.

Happy Independence day Uganda!