From the Azande people in Diaspora to Azande People Back home in Western Equatoria: Azande Live Talk Show(ALTS) Engages in Mass Production of Masks for Western Equatoria

Azande Live Talk Show (ALTS), a Facebook platform started four years (2016), by young Azande people in the diaspora and back home to promote the Azande culture and create unity among the Azande people worldwide has mobilized funds to produce masks and distribute to the people back home. Rurugene Online News recently had an interview with one of the founding members, Emmanuel Roger Roger, who lives in Brisbane Australia and is actively involved in this mass production of masks for the people back home in Western Equatoria. He explained how the platform was started, what it has done, how the masks they are being distributed, and what they plan to do as a group in the future.

 Rurugene Online News (RON): What is the Azande Live Talk Show, how did the group come to be?

Emmanuel Roger Roger: Azande Live Talk Show is a Facebook Group where we engage on live talk shows aimed at promoting the Azande Culture and building unity among the Azande people in the diaspora and those at home. The forum was created in 2016. We had a lot of experience with war and unrest and some of this burden started affecting people in the diaspora, especially the Azande people. So we came up with the idea of how we can elevate our spirits and encourage our people back home. So we thought of creating an environment where we can come and talk about our issues without expressing our anger; a forum to discuss our issues in a civilized manner.

ALTS is therefore an organization, an online platform with executive board members; we currently have 16 executive board members spread across the globe. These include Sahatini Bakatingbere- CEO, Emmanuel Roger Roger-Broadcasting department editing Chief, Samson Masiya-Engineer. Other executive board members include: Bagura Abraham, Duga Daniel, Emmanuel Kumbo Tamana, Jacob Anther Sumbuda, Johnson M Ngama, Lawrence Shuruma, Maah Antony, Mbiko Sabeyo, Ngbaanigb, Ngbapai Mborinami Waraga, Susan Mongalla Lubua, Suzan Edwin, Tade Naleke, and Viola Navibae.

At the beginning decided to talk about things that only affect us socially like education, social issue, women, health, and any other social issue. We decided to leave politics out because during that time there was a lot of tension based on how things were happening back home. So we didn’t want to expose some of our members to danger by engaging in political talks until things settle or until we get peace back home.

Rurugene Online News (RON): Tell us something about the Mass production of Masks projects

Emmanuel: When COVID 19 started reaching some African countries, we started discussing among our executive members what we could do to reach out to our people back home should this pandemic reach there among our people in Western Equatoria. Some members actually contacted us in the executive and asked about what we were doing or planning as one of our major platforms that represent the Zande people in the diaspora. We shared the ideas with members who opted to do something. We decided that people would contribute but only those who had the capacity to do so and the contribution was open, besides there was no specific amount that we requested from the people. We just urged them to contribute any amount they had. We convinced them that whatever they would contribute would be for the good of the people. Our members around the world in countries like Canada, America, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Australia, even some back in our home countries like Uganda and South Sudan contributed. That’s how we got the funds for the project.

 Based on our connection with some of our local organizations back at home, especially those that were already working on the ground, we decided to collaborate with them. Initially, we had the idea that if we failed to get any partner on the ground, then we would have to go through World Vision, UNICEF, or one of the United Nations organizations on the ground to partner with them so that they can execute the project for us. Luckily we managed to get one trusted local organization on the ground after they sent us their portfolio and it is through them that the project is being executed, that is production of masks as well as distribution as well as sensitizing the community on how to protect themselves from the virus.

 Rurugene Online News (RON): Apparently, information from the ground indicates that people in the villages rarely put on masks. In fact, when someone goes around wearing masks in the villages, children would specifically run away from him/her saying, “Corona is coming, Corona is coming!” based on this assertion, do you think the production of masks has been effective or maybe you could have done something else?

Emmanuel: With regards to our people back home, especially Africans, we have some taboo cultures, you know, we’re cultural people so when something like this happens in rural areas, you expect such. For example, when Corona started, I heard that people in Yambio and Juba considered greetings with elbows or fist as rude or bad manners because they did not understand the meaning or importance of the measure. It took time for the people to adjust to the measures, they had to be trained on how to protect themselves.

Rurugene Online News (RON): Roughly, how many masks have been produced since the project started?

Emmanuel: Probably around 500 masks but is still going on. The good thing about it is that we have discovered that we can continue to produce the masks because the masks have the logos of ALTS and ADEFINE, the local organization back home that is helping with the process. We are currently receiving demands from people in the diaspora in countries like Australia, America, Germany, UK, and Canada. They are inquiring about how they can get the masks. That means we will continue making the masks and whoever wants the masks in the diaspora, we will make sure that we will create an account where the money will come back and help the locals. Although we have done the project, it is not enough. There’s a lot of needs down there on the ground. At the moment, we’re still producing the masks and we hope we’ll still continue producing them.

Rurugene Online News (RON): Have you done a project of this kind before, maybe in a different scenario. This time it was a mask for Corona, maybe previously you did it for hunger or some emergency?

Emmanuel: Well, first of all, as I told you before, ATLS is an organization that was started four years ago and is still a young organization. We have never had such a project before. This project is a footprint and an example for all of us as the Zande people. It is unfortunately apparent that among ourselves, there seems to elements of pessimism and mistrust, especially when it comes to doing a project in such a big scale. This is the challenge we faced during this project. We needed to know the exact things we needed to do and which people to a partnership with. The first thing we did for transparency and accountability was not to collect money directly from the people. We opened an online go-fund-me account. For this account, any money or anyone who deposited money, their name would appear in it, the amount and the country where they deposited from. The account was on Facebook and all the ALTS members around the world have an access to it. They would go access it at any time. They could go and see or check how much was there, who contributed.

We did this to show people that this money is not going to individual bank account or ALTS bank account, it is their account as the people and they have the right to see what is coming in and what’s going out. Secondly, we kept updating our members worldwide every week about the process and where we have reached. Then when we reached the point where we want to implement the project in partnership with ADEFIN and we invited its chairperson Mr. Simon Mikanapare, he came to our program where we had a show for one and half hours to let him explain about ADEFIN, to let him also explain the things he is going to do on the ground to make sure that this project goes well.

After we finished that we designed what we call the Ethical Voluntarily Agreement with ADEFIN which means anyone whose going to be a volunteer in this project has to sign it as a sign of commitment that they would do what is required of them. At the same time, we signed a memorandum of understanding with ADEFIN to show that ADEFIN is responsible for the ground for this project so they would send us all their reports, as well as keeping us updated on how the project is doing.

Rurugene Online News (RON): Are you planning to do any other project to help the people back home?

Emmanuel: Right now our philosophy as ALTS is like we don’t want to make a lot of promises and secondly we always like to be realistic with ourselves therefore, we don’t want to have these artificial promises and thereby giving people false hope. As such when we decide to do another project, we want it to be realistic, simple, clear, and achievable. There are a couple of projects we are working on now and there is also the result of this project, a lot of our members now are so enthusiastic about the level of trust we have created within our group. Some of them are saying that finally, we can be able to do something for our society. So for now we will just take things slow.

Rurugene Online News (RON): Possibility of collaborating with maybe the church organization, the churches that are there in Western Equatoria. Could it be that in the future you would want to liaise with the church organization to continue supporting the people home?

Emmanuel: Yes. I personally believe that churches are the pillars and backbones of society; without churches, we can’t be able to do so many things we need for our society. Definitely, we as ALTS, our advisers are Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro and the late Bishop Peter Munde of ECS who is late now. Definitely we will work together with the church. I consider churches to be one of our close allies they are the most trusted partners.

By Rurugene Team