Amy Fallon

Prophet Elvis: Uganda's Gateway to God?

The newsletter to fuel — and thrill — your mind. Read for deep dives into the unmissable ideas and topics shaping our world. I’m a self-confessed “nobody” amid a throng of fans standing on a red carpet at an “annual honor ceremony” for Uganda’s most prominent “prophet.” But I’m still being urged to pose for the cameras. “You’re a dignitary,” one of the many minders of Elvis Mbonye tells me. I politely decline the offer. Welcome to the world of the seemingly very public but yet very inaccessible

Signing for Your Coffee in Kampala

The newsletter to fuel — and thrill — your mind. Read for deep dives into the unmissable ideas and topics shaping our world. International Week of Deaf People runs from September 19 to 25 with the theme of “Building Inclusive Communities for All.” Today, on International Day of Sign Languages, we visit a remarkably inclusive cafe in Uganda where your coffee is served (mostly) without a word. At one of the newest cafes in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, there’s silence, but an inclusiveness, and

How religion dominates the ADF

In his almost 25 years as a chaplain in the Royal Australian Navy, Collin Acton can rarely recall pulling out a Bible. Religion became “less and less relevant to my personal life”, he says. “[Some] fundamentally believe that someone without faith cannot care for another human being,” Acton, who is 60, tells The Saturday Paper. “I’ve always used compassion and empathy.” Acton’s career of more than three decades with the Australian Defence Force earned him a medal for deployment in the Middle Ea

The courage of our convicts

When Fanny Jarvis stole from her employer, the servant girl from Staffordshire in Britain received a tough sentence: transportation for life to a new country. Three years after her arrival in Australia she was charged with insubordination, likely unaware of the role that she and others who shared her fate were playing in the origins of the nation’s democratisation. Today, she is still virtually unknown. But Jarvis, who endured nearly four years of hard labour and long periods of solitary confin

London women are finding a potentially dangerous lifeline in Airbnb

Anna, a single woman in London subletting her flat on Airbnb, arrived home to find a man sneaking out of her bedroom. She had rented her room to a woman on the holiday rental site, but there was no mention that a man would be staying with her. “I went into my sitting room and just as I was taking off my jacket, I saw a guy creeping out of the room and then down the stairs and out the door very quietly,” she says. She shared her story with researchers George Maier and Kate R Gilchrist from the Lo

“Let go of the fear”: Life lessons from the first Black woman to visit every country in the world

When she quit her six-figure salary corporate job in 2008 and moved to Japan to teach English, Jessica Nabongo had been to nine countries—and never traveled solo. But it was the beginning of something. Three years ago, she became the first Black woman to travel to every one of the 195 countries and 10 territories recognized by the UN (United Nations) at the time. Her final stop was the Seychelles, where she arrived on October 6th, 2019. 38-year-old Nabongo, who has just published her first

Bernard Collaery’s divine intervener

When the decision to end his prosecution was announced, one of the first people that whistleblower Bernard Collaery called was a 76-year-old, plain-clothed, straight-talking nun living in a south-western Sydney convent. Susan Connelly, a sister of St Joseph, the religious congregation founded by the Australian saint Mary MacKillop, may seem like an unlikely ally for the embattled Canberra lawyer who had faced jail time for allegedly revealing spying in Timor-Leste. But Connelly, who’s been a C

Would You Eat Grasshoppers at 35,000 Feet?

When Ugandan vendor Paul Mubiru boarded a flight from the nation’s capital Kampala bound for Dubai and began enthusiastically selling nsenene – or grasshoppers – to other passengers in November, he was applauded and criticised in equal measure. It was an incident more commonly seen on a roadside than a plane full of international travellers which certainly caused a buzz in the East African country of Uganda. The actions of Mubiru and Hajib Kiggundu Hajib, a fellow vendor whose recording of Mubi

Sowing the Seed

SEED libraries are cropping up all over the place, and they're helping their communities to grow.

Labor urged to act to prevent Julian Assange extradition

The legal case against Julian Assange is a game of luck and whim. Any day now, the British home secretary, Priti Patel, is expected to rubber stamp his extradition to the United States. What will happen to him there is uncertain. The Westminster Magistrates’ Court formally approved his extradition on April 20 and Patel has until May 31 to announce whether it will happen. If convicted of espionage in the US, Assange could be sentenced to 175 years in prison. His legal team argue he would likely

Attention Passengers: Would You Eat Airline Food at Home?

This Indigenous-owned airline in Canada has passengers swooning over its cheesecake. With its crispy brown base and the right amount of fruit and creaminess, the homemade cheesecakes made and served by Air North, a small Canadian airline headquartered in a community of just 40,000 people, are considered a little slice of heaven at 30,000 feet. “I recall receiving comment cards asking which flights are the cheesecake on or if they could buy it anywhere,” says the airline’s longtime Red Seal che

Leaving the Church Makes For Some Good Content

The first Australian-produced podcast of its kind, it focuses on the pair’s religious experiences along with their guests. Launched in 2021, the self-help show is “causing a stir” among church leaders in Australia, Troy tells VICE, growing an audience here and beyond. It’s just one of the ways that those who have escaped authoritarian religions are using new media to “democratise their voices”. It comes after the popularity of podcasts like Exvangelical, named after the term used to describe the

‘I want the kids to see Australia’: Meet Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s fiancee

“Keeping Julian in prison will kill him eventually,” Moris, speaking at the Frontline Club, an independent journalist’s hub in west London where Assange held press conferences and hid out, tells The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “The Australian government should be saying [to the US] ‘he’s our citizen, this has gone on for too long. It’s harming our credibility, politically. We’re getting a lot of flak over this issue. It would be helpful if you drop this’.” Sara Gonzalez Devant, as Moris w

How a Spanish right-wing group incited a moral storm in Kenya

In July 2020, Kenya’s upper house of Parliament was debating the Reproductive Health Bill. The bill, introduced by two women MPs – Sarah Kihika and Esther Passaris – sought to expand access to safe medical abortion and other reproductive health services. It would have been a milestone for women’s rights in the country. The bill was controversial. A petition against it was delivered to the parliament building in Nairobi, while online it was met with fury, vitriol and trending hashtags such as #

I envisaged a two-week visit when I arrived at the youth hostel. I didn’t think I’d stay six months

Lured by the landscape and the inspiration that it offered, I envisaged a two-week visit when I arrived at the youth hostel in the mountains. I planned to work remotely, finish off the degree that I was working on part-time, and hike. I didn’t think I’d stay six months. But since international borders were shut, shelving my plans to move back overseas, I’d ended up in limbo in my small hometown. As a long-term expat, I was now making up for time away from my family who I loved. But all my school friends had moved away years ago, and after several months, it became isolating. Where to go to that wasn’t locked down? A former art nouveau ballroom in a mountain youth hostel became the unexpected answer, the setting for my life during a large chunk of the pandemic. In a year when so many people were alone, I accidentally moved into the biggest share house I’d ever lived in.

Sex ed is headed back to Uganda's classrooms

Sex education is headed back to Uganda's classrooms. But quite what what education will look like is a point of contestation in a country that tends to put a higher premium on the opinions of religious leaders than on the best interests of its students.

Recovering From Religion

Saving Julian Assange

This week, Stella Moris said she and Julian Assange still intended to marry in the new year, although they have not set a date. She is currently speaking to the prison about arrangements. Moris hopes it will be a ceremony attended by close family and friends, with their children, Gabriel, 4, and Max, 2, taking part. “The High Court ruling has made things even more precarious than before,” she tells The Saturday Paper. “But that has only strengthened our determination to celebrate what is const

Steve Widders - The Visionary

Declared medically blind by Fred Hollows in 1990, second-time president of the Rotary Club of Armidale, Aboriginal Elder Steve Widders is championing Rotary's diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

An innovative game is helping Ugandan women to combat online violence

Rocking a sharp fuchsia pink blazer with high cut trousers and a flower behind one ear, Goitse, a Botswanan college student living in Rwanda, is described as an “ardent feminist” who loves a “soft life.” When she hears about a South Africa rape case trending on twitter, she ‘likes’ and retweets the post to show solidarity with the sisterhood, quoting a news story and expressing that as a woman she is always scared of losing her life to domestic violence. A fellow user DMs her an insult and Goi