What a year. After the Berlin Camp last year, I spent 3 weeks in a clinic to recover. After that, I went to Uganda for the winter – I was invited by Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) as a visiting researcher for 3 months. In this time, Lützerath was evicted and destroyed. After coming back, I decided to transform my mode of activism to playing music.
Nevertheless, I spent quite some time on organising another camp in Berlin, again in Invalidenpark, which just ended two weeks ago. This time, combined as a Mobility Change Camp and a Climate Justice Camp. But it will certainly have been the last time. I’m done with the Invalidenpark and I’m done with organising camps. Going forward, it will be mostly music, I guess.
Research in Uganda
So, about my time in Uganda. AFIEGO is one of the leading civil society organisations uncovering the dirty details about the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which is planned to be the longest heated oil pipeline in the world: the project – lead by French TotalEnergies, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) – is a >1500km long heated oil pipeline from the drilling sides Tilenga (by TotalEnergies) and Kingfisher (by CNOOC) at the Lake Albert, dividing Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), through the basin of Lake Victoria (the world’s second largest sweet water reservoir and the largest in Africa; ~40 Mio people rely on it), to the Port in Tanga, Tanzania. It’s planned to cross ~200 water bodies and several natural reserves, national parks and wetlands, in a tectonically active area. Btw: It has to be heated to 50°C because the crude oil is such a bad quality that it is too waxy to flow at room temperature. The pipeline will be built to export between 75% and 85% of the extracted oil to the Global North. That’s the project in short.
Apart from the environmental catastrophe, it’s also a human catastrophe. More than 100,000 people are planned to be displaced, none with fair compensation and many without compensation at all. The reality is: after their land is grabbed, the first thing that people can’t afford anymore is the education of their children. I have been able to spend some time with the Project Affected People (PAP) and even participate in setting up a project called PermaLab with the women’s group of a local community organisation called “EACOP Host Community”. Over time, I will share my field notes here from the trips to Eastern Uganda. The outcome of my research is something future will tell.
Activist Music
Already in Danni, playing music was part of how I felt contributing most to the community. In last year’s camp in Berlin then, I started writing songs with my crew. You can find some of it on Instagram (@this.is.yuno) and Soundcloud (soundcloud.com/this-is-yuno). Over the summer, I was fortunate enough to play quite some shows on different camps, exhibitions, protests, and occupations. For me, this feels like a mode of activism I can sustain some more years, whereas direct contact with cops is something I will not be able to continue any longer. So, this feels like my version of sustainable activism. On the one hand, I feel like I can communicate things a different way than through discussions only, and on the other hand I feel like I can help fellow activists relieve their stress, give them a break, help them get into relaxation and find some quality time. So, technically I feel like I found a mode of activism that involves major care work for fellow activists. Let’s see where it goes.