I got home a week ago, today. I spent the next two days asleep in my bedroom, emerging only occasionally to eat MEAT and VEGETABLES. (It seemed extremely important at the time.) Then I flew to California where I am now, snuggled with Ozzie the beagle. I missed him so much! And he did remember me! I was worried he wouldn't, or that he would be offended I'd left him with Mom and Dad for so long, but when I walked into the room he woke up to the sound of my voice and bounded into my arms. What a cute little munchkin! So it seems as though I am forgiven.
Meanwhile, I have to apologize for not finishing this blog sooner. I thought this would be top priority, but I have to prepare for job interviews, draft my evaluation (which is already 20 pages and threatens to become a mini novella), and put together a short advocacy film. Plus, I'm still finishing up little pieces of business for folks in Uganda. Time hasn't been quite as available as I'd expected.
Tomorrow Dad is inviting a bunch of his friends over to look at my pictures and welcome me home. Talk about the proud papa! I asked if I could invite some of my friends, too, and he gave me permission. It's like being seated at the adult's Thanksgiving table for the first time. So I'm really happy;
Enough small chat, though. I still have blogs to post; I just wanted to let you know that they were coming!
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Retrospective post #2
This is a second retrospective entry from Gulu. I have at least one more to publish, possibly two.
***
Well, Gulu is over. I know I haven’t written much about it – the Institute didn’t really give me time. Also, I think it was one of those experiences that I couldn’t write and feel at the same time. There was just too much going on.
I realized how much I had changed this morning when I got on the bus and leaned back to take a nap. Leaning back aimed my eyes right at the ceiling of the bus, where the first thing I saw was grasshoppers crawling out of the bus lights and around the storage compartments. For a second, I felt my body start to tense up, and then I just decided, nah, isn’t worth the effort and went to sleep. I didn’t wake up again until Karuma Falls. Figured if the bugs really bothered me that much, I’d just eat them.
You know, it really has been a journey for me. Yesterday I didn’t even know for sure how I’d get back to Kampala. I was completely reliant on Maisha’s Number One Rule of Travel: As long as you have your passport and a working credit card, you’ll be okay. I’d heard rumors that you could take the Post Bus back to Kampala, that it was new and comfortable and driven safely. The best part is it only costs 20.000/= as opposed to 450.000/=, like I’ve mentioned before. The only problem I could see was transport from the hotel to the bus at 5:30 in the morning. Gulu wakes up at 6 a.m. sharp. Not before, not after. Even the roosters wait until the church bells ring to start crowing. (Okay, maybe one deviant little clucker will let out an early cock-a-doodle-doo, but it’s pretty rare.) So how on earth was I going to get someone from town to bring a car around and pick me up with the delinquent roosters?
I went to the bus park the night before and made an appointment. Of course, I made the one cultural faux pas: I asked how much it would cost. Have I learned nothing in my travels here?
“Fifteen thousand!” one eager driver shouted. Great. It costs fifteen thousand to get from downtown Kampala to Ntinda, and this wasn’t even half of the distance. I mock-scowled at the driver.
“Ten.” I insisted. This was probably still about five times the regular pay, because the guy beamed immediately. Oh well. I swallowed my pride and told myself I had really only spent about $8.
The guy came to pick me up in the pouring rain at 5:25 a.m. He was actually early. I, silly munu, had turned off my alarm clock and gone right back to sleep, figuring he would be at least 30 minutes late and I had time. Uh, oops. It was the horn that woke me up. Forget the fact that the entire ritzy hotel population was sound asleep, this driver just put his hand in the middle of that steering wheel and leaned. I hadn’t even finished packing. I slumped out of bed, threw my things into the bag, deliberately abandoned what I felt I couldn’t carry (i.e., two pairs of shoes that have literally skinned my feet since I got here, medical supplies that I won’t need in Kampala, and Jacqueline’s tub of groundnut paste), and oozed down the stairs to the car. It was raining like mad, one of those blinding Ugandan lightning storms again.
The driver took me to the post office. No one was there. I got out of the car and asked the post office guard when the bus was leaving, and he said it only traveled Mondays through Fridays. My driver snickered. The little cretin! I’m pretty sure he knew this would happen.
“Well,” he had the audacity to say, “you can always hire me.” I thought about all that money going down the fuel pump.
“Do you know the way to Kampala?” I asked. My driver didn’t answer. He just looked sideways and grinned. No way was I going to hire him.
“How about you just take me to the new bus park, just to see if any nice buses are going? I’ll hire you if no one is there.”
He took me around, and sure enough there was a bus with its engine running. Looked pretty full from the outside, too. “But you have resolved to move with me!” my driver said. Yeah, sort of. I had resolved to move with him if my luck gave out.
I smiled a tight little smile and said, “Let me just check with these guys; if I go with them I will pay you for the trip back to the bus park, too.” You could see the little shilling signs lining up in this guy’s eyes. Munu was going to give him even more cash than before, and he wouldn’t have to waste the day trying to find Kampala. Great.
I stepped up to the bus. Three young Ugandan men were lounging on the stairs, trying to look tough and American. It’s cute when Ugandan men do this, because they usually miss the cultural nuances completely. Exempla gratia, one of these fellows was wearing an oversized Winnie-the-Pooh t-shirt. I burst out laughing.
“What?” my driver said behind me.
“That guy is wearing a Pooh Bear shirt!” I laughed, trying to keep the giggles to a minimum. Even if Ugandan men might not look tough doesn’t mean they weren’t child soldiers five years ago. I’m not sure if the driver understood or not, but he heard the word “poo” and started chuckling uncertainly. I just let that one go. Way too early in the morning to offer cultural explanations.
I climbed up to the bus and asked the guys, “Hey, what time is this bus leaving?”
The boys didn’t miss a beat. “Why don’t you climb on board and find out?”
I shrugged. I looked into the bus. There were a lot of people wearing professional clothes, and some kids. It looked safe enough. “Okay, I’m going with them,” I told the driver. He looked at me funny.
“You call me when you get to Kampala,” he said. Great, that raises my confidence tons.
The ride itself wasn’t bad, though. The only bit that got a little scary was where road repairs forced us to detour across a really pitted, narrow road. The bus kept sloping off the side and driving tilted for 100 meters or so before righting itself again. I told myself two things:
1. Mom would kill me if she saw me doing this. I’d better never take this bus again.
2. I’m a fat American. If I lean opposite the way the bus is tilting, I can keep the cabin balanced all by myself.
Number two was a lie, but it made me feel better, and we got through safely after all.
Actually, the ride was pretty exciting. I sat by two silent, strong-looking men and one small talkative fellow who had the most adorable little girl cradled in his arms. He played with her the way I remember Dad playing with me when I was a kid, and it brought all sorts of memories rushing back. Turns out this guy, Peter, works with Invisible Children, and I did a little interview with him along the way. He didn’t really say anything I didn’t know about child soldiers trying to get through school, but it was engrossing all the same.
The two strong silent types to my right sounded like they were offended to be crammed onto a bench with a large tourist. They spoke in rapid Luganda and sounded a little annoyed. That changed, though, when we hit our first pit stop. I wanted goat muchomo so badly (hadn’t eaten dinner the night before, or breakfast that morning), but I only had 10.000/= notes. Muchomo costs 500/= … it’s meat on a stick, a salty roadside bbq kebab that I have learned to love over my road trips. One stick is enough to satiate hunger, two is enough to make your tummy bulge. I got ten. No way would somebody on the side of the road have change for a 10.000/= note; they just don’t carry that much or make so much in sales. Buying ten sticks meant they only had to find a 5.000/= note, possibly an easier feat. But there was no way I could eat that much muchomo – it would probably make me sick. So I gave two to Strong Silent #1, two to Strong Silent #2, and four to Peter and his daughter. It made the Quiet Ones explosively happy.
“Oh, where are you from?” they asked me. “You act like an African!” And they bought extra cassava and water and shared it all around. Peter got extra plantains, so we had a little feast in our bus row. It was kind of nice.
Turns out the two guys on my right are from Kampala, but doing construction work in Juba. They are very disenchanted with Sudan.
“How is Juba?” I asked them.
“Ah, it is a little bit behind,” #1 said.
“Nobody wants to work!” #2 exclaimed. “You see guys our age, and they just want to exchange money.”
“You see people sleeping under the trees.”
“No villages?” I asked. “Used to be, people built huts.”
“No,” the answered, “not anymore.”
I wonder exactly what is happening over there. Are the people really in such bad shape? Has the war exhausted people? Or maybe there are a nomadic group of people living in the Juba region? I don’t know. I will have to ask Dad. I really hope folks are better than that, though.
I mostly hung on for dear life, after that conversation, because road repairs had turned the tarmac into dust, and the bus wobbled the rest of the way to Kampala. I’ve been sneezing black goo since we got into town, and I really hope this doesn’t make me sick. At least on the bus, I was further away from the dirt than I would have been in a car.
Anyway, we made it back into town in one piece, and Vincent from Avarts took me to the cottage I’ve rented. Have I mentioned that I was bloody tired of managing my discomfort? I decided to splurge, this week. Happy birthday to me. I am paying a whole $50 per night for luxury lodgings in Kampala. I was supposed to have DSTV (I don’t) and an internet connection (it doesn’t work), but even without that, I’m in heaven. There’s a miniature market next door. The resort itself is fenced and guarded, secluded in a beautiful residential area on Naguru Hill. Wander outside, and there are goats all over the place wagging their little tails, and kids (the human kind) playing football. Inside, the landscaping is beautiful. Flowers drip off the trees, the neat stone walkways look like someone has polished them, and the lawns are well manicured. Every room is actually a separate porched cottage with a little glass table and African-print chairs in front. Inside, the floors are freshly tiled, the plaster is in perfect condition, the shower has an electronic temperature regulator, the kitchen is complete with a toaster oven and tiny refrigerator, the furniture is made out of wicker, the windows and doors are covered with glass that seals (read, no insect invasions unless they come out of the walls), and all of the cabinets and closets are new. The rooms are bright, the windows are enormous and let in a lot of sunlight; it’s all just perfect. Oh, and the bed! The bed is twin-sized, the comforter is a light blue embroidered with flowers, and the mosquito net is actually tented and framed with pink lace. I feel like a princess in here. I kept oohing over the place until the hotel owner actually got embarrassed, but I couldn’t help it. I’ve lived for nine weeks with dirty concrete floors or gaping holes in the windows and doors to let the insects in. For a month now I’ve been living with cold showers in Gulu, and barely any room to turn over in my sleep, let alone a lacy mosquito canopy. Who cares about television and internet? I feel clean for the first time in months. I even took a shower and then cleaned the bathroom, because there was Tilex available and it made me feel good.
Anyway, Jane Bagonza, the hotelier, says she is going to name this place Maisha. She likes the name and the meaning behind it. I am super happy that such a nice place is going to be named after me. I hope I get to see it someday, after Jane is done. Right now it’s just four little cottages, but she is installing a restaurant upstairs, and she plans to add a mini-mart and a business center. I probably won’t be able to afford this place, by that point, but I sure would like to see it.
Anyway, I’m going to take a nap now. I can feel the muscles behind my eyeballs twisting. There’s something about traveling that is just exhausting. Or maybe it’s just relief to be back in Kampala. G’night!
***
Well, Gulu is over. I know I haven’t written much about it – the Institute didn’t really give me time. Also, I think it was one of those experiences that I couldn’t write and feel at the same time. There was just too much going on.
I realized how much I had changed this morning when I got on the bus and leaned back to take a nap. Leaning back aimed my eyes right at the ceiling of the bus, where the first thing I saw was grasshoppers crawling out of the bus lights and around the storage compartments. For a second, I felt my body start to tense up, and then I just decided, nah, isn’t worth the effort and went to sleep. I didn’t wake up again until Karuma Falls. Figured if the bugs really bothered me that much, I’d just eat them.
You know, it really has been a journey for me. Yesterday I didn’t even know for sure how I’d get back to Kampala. I was completely reliant on Maisha’s Number One Rule of Travel: As long as you have your passport and a working credit card, you’ll be okay. I’d heard rumors that you could take the Post Bus back to Kampala, that it was new and comfortable and driven safely. The best part is it only costs 20.000/= as opposed to 450.000/=, like I’ve mentioned before. The only problem I could see was transport from the hotel to the bus at 5:30 in the morning. Gulu wakes up at 6 a.m. sharp. Not before, not after. Even the roosters wait until the church bells ring to start crowing. (Okay, maybe one deviant little clucker will let out an early cock-a-doodle-doo, but it’s pretty rare.) So how on earth was I going to get someone from town to bring a car around and pick me up with the delinquent roosters?
I went to the bus park the night before and made an appointment. Of course, I made the one cultural faux pas: I asked how much it would cost. Have I learned nothing in my travels here?
“Fifteen thousand!” one eager driver shouted. Great. It costs fifteen thousand to get from downtown Kampala to Ntinda, and this wasn’t even half of the distance. I mock-scowled at the driver.
“Ten.” I insisted. This was probably still about five times the regular pay, because the guy beamed immediately. Oh well. I swallowed my pride and told myself I had really only spent about $8.
The guy came to pick me up in the pouring rain at 5:25 a.m. He was actually early. I, silly munu, had turned off my alarm clock and gone right back to sleep, figuring he would be at least 30 minutes late and I had time. Uh, oops. It was the horn that woke me up. Forget the fact that the entire ritzy hotel population was sound asleep, this driver just put his hand in the middle of that steering wheel and leaned. I hadn’t even finished packing. I slumped out of bed, threw my things into the bag, deliberately abandoned what I felt I couldn’t carry (i.e., two pairs of shoes that have literally skinned my feet since I got here, medical supplies that I won’t need in Kampala, and Jacqueline’s tub of groundnut paste), and oozed down the stairs to the car. It was raining like mad, one of those blinding Ugandan lightning storms again.
The driver took me to the post office. No one was there. I got out of the car and asked the post office guard when the bus was leaving, and he said it only traveled Mondays through Fridays. My driver snickered. The little cretin! I’m pretty sure he knew this would happen.
“Well,” he had the audacity to say, “you can always hire me.” I thought about all that money going down the fuel pump.
“Do you know the way to Kampala?” I asked. My driver didn’t answer. He just looked sideways and grinned. No way was I going to hire him.
“How about you just take me to the new bus park, just to see if any nice buses are going? I’ll hire you if no one is there.”
He took me around, and sure enough there was a bus with its engine running. Looked pretty full from the outside, too. “But you have resolved to move with me!” my driver said. Yeah, sort of. I had resolved to move with him if my luck gave out.
I smiled a tight little smile and said, “Let me just check with these guys; if I go with them I will pay you for the trip back to the bus park, too.” You could see the little shilling signs lining up in this guy’s eyes. Munu was going to give him even more cash than before, and he wouldn’t have to waste the day trying to find Kampala. Great.
I stepped up to the bus. Three young Ugandan men were lounging on the stairs, trying to look tough and American. It’s cute when Ugandan men do this, because they usually miss the cultural nuances completely. Exempla gratia, one of these fellows was wearing an oversized Winnie-the-Pooh t-shirt. I burst out laughing.
“What?” my driver said behind me.
“That guy is wearing a Pooh Bear shirt!” I laughed, trying to keep the giggles to a minimum. Even if Ugandan men might not look tough doesn’t mean they weren’t child soldiers five years ago. I’m not sure if the driver understood or not, but he heard the word “poo” and started chuckling uncertainly. I just let that one go. Way too early in the morning to offer cultural explanations.
I climbed up to the bus and asked the guys, “Hey, what time is this bus leaving?”
The boys didn’t miss a beat. “Why don’t you climb on board and find out?”
I shrugged. I looked into the bus. There were a lot of people wearing professional clothes, and some kids. It looked safe enough. “Okay, I’m going with them,” I told the driver. He looked at me funny.
“You call me when you get to Kampala,” he said. Great, that raises my confidence tons.
The ride itself wasn’t bad, though. The only bit that got a little scary was where road repairs forced us to detour across a really pitted, narrow road. The bus kept sloping off the side and driving tilted for 100 meters or so before righting itself again. I told myself two things:
1. Mom would kill me if she saw me doing this. I’d better never take this bus again.
2. I’m a fat American. If I lean opposite the way the bus is tilting, I can keep the cabin balanced all by myself.
Number two was a lie, but it made me feel better, and we got through safely after all.
Actually, the ride was pretty exciting. I sat by two silent, strong-looking men and one small talkative fellow who had the most adorable little girl cradled in his arms. He played with her the way I remember Dad playing with me when I was a kid, and it brought all sorts of memories rushing back. Turns out this guy, Peter, works with Invisible Children, and I did a little interview with him along the way. He didn’t really say anything I didn’t know about child soldiers trying to get through school, but it was engrossing all the same.
The two strong silent types to my right sounded like they were offended to be crammed onto a bench with a large tourist. They spoke in rapid Luganda and sounded a little annoyed. That changed, though, when we hit our first pit stop. I wanted goat muchomo so badly (hadn’t eaten dinner the night before, or breakfast that morning), but I only had 10.000/= notes. Muchomo costs 500/= … it’s meat on a stick, a salty roadside bbq kebab that I have learned to love over my road trips. One stick is enough to satiate hunger, two is enough to make your tummy bulge. I got ten. No way would somebody on the side of the road have change for a 10.000/= note; they just don’t carry that much or make so much in sales. Buying ten sticks meant they only had to find a 5.000/= note, possibly an easier feat. But there was no way I could eat that much muchomo – it would probably make me sick. So I gave two to Strong Silent #1, two to Strong Silent #2, and four to Peter and his daughter. It made the Quiet Ones explosively happy.
“Oh, where are you from?” they asked me. “You act like an African!” And they bought extra cassava and water and shared it all around. Peter got extra plantains, so we had a little feast in our bus row. It was kind of nice.
Turns out the two guys on my right are from Kampala, but doing construction work in Juba. They are very disenchanted with Sudan.
“How is Juba?” I asked them.
“Ah, it is a little bit behind,” #1 said.
“Nobody wants to work!” #2 exclaimed. “You see guys our age, and they just want to exchange money.”
“You see people sleeping under the trees.”
“No villages?” I asked. “Used to be, people built huts.”
“No,” the answered, “not anymore.”
I wonder exactly what is happening over there. Are the people really in such bad shape? Has the war exhausted people? Or maybe there are a nomadic group of people living in the Juba region? I don’t know. I will have to ask Dad. I really hope folks are better than that, though.
I mostly hung on for dear life, after that conversation, because road repairs had turned the tarmac into dust, and the bus wobbled the rest of the way to Kampala. I’ve been sneezing black goo since we got into town, and I really hope this doesn’t make me sick. At least on the bus, I was further away from the dirt than I would have been in a car.
Anyway, we made it back into town in one piece, and Vincent from Avarts took me to the cottage I’ve rented. Have I mentioned that I was bloody tired of managing my discomfort? I decided to splurge, this week. Happy birthday to me. I am paying a whole $50 per night for luxury lodgings in Kampala. I was supposed to have DSTV (I don’t) and an internet connection (it doesn’t work), but even without that, I’m in heaven. There’s a miniature market next door. The resort itself is fenced and guarded, secluded in a beautiful residential area on Naguru Hill. Wander outside, and there are goats all over the place wagging their little tails, and kids (the human kind) playing football. Inside, the landscaping is beautiful. Flowers drip off the trees, the neat stone walkways look like someone has polished them, and the lawns are well manicured. Every room is actually a separate porched cottage with a little glass table and African-print chairs in front. Inside, the floors are freshly tiled, the plaster is in perfect condition, the shower has an electronic temperature regulator, the kitchen is complete with a toaster oven and tiny refrigerator, the furniture is made out of wicker, the windows and doors are covered with glass that seals (read, no insect invasions unless they come out of the walls), and all of the cabinets and closets are new. The rooms are bright, the windows are enormous and let in a lot of sunlight; it’s all just perfect. Oh, and the bed! The bed is twin-sized, the comforter is a light blue embroidered with flowers, and the mosquito net is actually tented and framed with pink lace. I feel like a princess in here. I kept oohing over the place until the hotel owner actually got embarrassed, but I couldn’t help it. I’ve lived for nine weeks with dirty concrete floors or gaping holes in the windows and doors to let the insects in. For a month now I’ve been living with cold showers in Gulu, and barely any room to turn over in my sleep, let alone a lacy mosquito canopy. Who cares about television and internet? I feel clean for the first time in months. I even took a shower and then cleaned the bathroom, because there was Tilex available and it made me feel good.
Anyway, Jane Bagonza, the hotelier, says she is going to name this place Maisha. She likes the name and the meaning behind it. I am super happy that such a nice place is going to be named after me. I hope I get to see it someday, after Jane is done. Right now it’s just four little cottages, but she is installing a restaurant upstairs, and she plans to add a mini-mart and a business center. I probably won’t be able to afford this place, by that point, but I sure would like to see it.
Anyway, I’m going to take a nap now. I can feel the muscles behind my eyeballs twisting. There’s something about traveling that is just exhausting. Or maybe it’s just relief to be back in Kampala. G’night!
Monday, August 4, 2008
Make-up post #1
I have a few things to say about Gulu that I will have to post retrospectively, because of the trouble with my computer and the lack of consistent power. Here is one of those entries.
***
I’m leaving Gulu on Saturday morning with the Post Bus. It’s about 430,000/= ($275) cheaper than hiring a car, and the money that I save … well, I might give some of it to Gladys at the front desk. She works 18 hours a day like everyone else here, and makes 80,000/= per month. That’s about $60, and not enough to eat with even in Uganda. Anyway, Atimango Gladys is special because she just got into the public administration program at Gulu University, and will be taking weekend classes so she can continue to work. For anyone counting, that’s 18 hours of work per day, 6 days per week, plus school. And she can’t afford tuition. So I was thinking maybe I would help her a little bit.
Life has gotten a lot better, with a little adjustment. The lack of water and power don’t bother me so much anymore, and the crazy rain just washes away my bad feelings. I don’t mind so much that people charge me twice the price for everything, or that the kids make a game out of who can catch the munu’s attention. “Munu” is the Acholi version of “mzungu” – white person, essentially. My friend Simone calls this “innocent racism.” The kids especially have no idea they’re being offensive. They just want to rub your arms to see whether the paleness will come off revealing darker skin underneath. It’s fascination, not hatred.
There are just so many little things to appreciate. The frogs here sound like wind chimes. The lightning is like electric diamonds. I found a supermarket yesterday, a real supermarket with boxed juice and bread. It’s run by an Indian who wanted the luxuries of home, and there are as many electronic gizmos as there are kitchen supplies. So you can pick up your television and your Cadbury bar in the same place. It’s got that thrown-together look that everything seems to have here in Uganda, but it’s the best thing I’ve found in town so far.
I also ran into a very interesting person, in my more recent explorations. Any foreigner you meet up here, anyone who isn’t associated with a major group, anyway, is bound to be really interesting. This particular gentleman runs a restaurant across the street from the Institute. It’s called Bambu, and walking in is like stepping into the idealized version of Uganda. Instead of the normal plastic chairs and plastic tablecloths advertising beer, there are real benches with foam cushions and polished wood tables. The landscaping is beautiful, and the bar is very complete. The first thing you will encounter is a stately looking older man sitting at his counter with a beer, watching the sun roll across the sky and chatting softly with his employees. Ask him how his day is going, and he responds with something pithy – “oh, a lot like yesterday.” This is what James Bond looks like when he retires. I’ve wanted to speak with this man since the first time I met him, and finally yesterday worked up the courage to say, “You know, I’m trying to think up better questions for you.”
“What?” he asked.
“Like how did you get here, what was it like setting up shop, what made you come to Uganda – that sort of thing. Slightly more stimulating than ‘how ya doin’.’”
I think this tickled him, somewhat. The mellow look on his face never changed, he just said, “Well, there’s the short answer, the medium answer, and the long answer to all of those questions.” And I knew I had him, at least for a minute. I sat him down and asked him to give me the long version. I got the medium version, until he decided he was tired of company and wandered away. Turns out he used to help the United Nations with security issues, had a café in Spain, and left it in 2005 to try his luck in Gulu. Today he’s snuggled in here with a young lady lover and the occasional Skyy Vodka. He says it raises a few of the local eyebrows, but he doesn’t really care. Now just think about this man’s timing. 2005 was when the ICC indictments came out against Kony and the LRA leaders. The first brick of this restaurant was laid down in 2006, while peace talks were ongoing. That means that the land purchase and licensing went on before that time. How did Mr. Mystery know that the talks would more or less succeed, and Kony would never return? He calls it a “calculated business risk.” I call it double-0 status.
You get fascinating people like that, up here. Like Opiyo, who is doing research on child soldiers and sex slaves for his PhD dissertation. He told me some stories that I am not allowed to reprint, stories that could make a big difference in Kony’s trial if only they are published. And if this dissertation ever makes book form, you must read it. Opiyo Oloya: Remember that name! I also met a gentleman named Callum who freelances for the BBC and Al Jazeera. He told some wild stories too, stories which I can actually retype. Callum has been coming to Uganda on and off for the past five years. He was working on a documentary for the BBC when he got a call from a buddy of his who works with the UPDF.
“We have just won a great victory against the LRA,” his friend exclaimed. “You must come see!”
And so they jumped into the friend’s car and drove from Kampala to northern Uganda, out to the village where the battle had been fought. Apparently, this particular village had only two rifles to guard itself, and the LRA took it very early on in the conflict. Winning the place back involved decimating the troops on the ground. Callum said there were about forty bodies, all told. These villages are tiny, just a small collection of shops, so that number is a lot of people.
The first thing Callum saw when he got out of the car was the body of a four-year-old boy.
“Of course, you realize that when you’re talking about a victory against the LRA, what you mean is that you’ve killed a bunch of children,” Callum explains. “I hadn’t really realized it until that point. It isn’t much of a victory.”
I could see this in my mind’s eye, dozens of corpses, all child soldiers with guns their own size. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the hurt that their mothers feel? Can you even begin to conceive of what a nightmare this has been for Uganda?
Opiyo and Callum talked a lot about what it takes to turn a child into a killer like that, stories they discovered during interviews. The LRA abducts these kids, maybe three of them, and they make the two youngest kill the oldest child on the pain of death (their death, the deaths of their families, whatever it takes). The entire village sees this, and so the boys are ostracized. They are disowned by their remaining families and their friends. No home will take them in. Schools won’t accept them. They are considered too dangerous to interact with normal society. And so the LRA presses them into service, preying on the children’s cultural prerogative to take orders. Other soldiers beat them constantly and march the boys around in circles for days on end. The children say that they will march three days straight without sleeping, time and time again. Then, when they are finally physically broken, the senior soldiers begin to grant them respect and make these boys feel included. They are given a new identity within their community, and the need to belong somewhere is enough to make many of these children commit to a life of war. Those individuals who still retain enough of themselves to attempt escape are amazing – and there are many.
I knew all of this already. It bears repeating.
Circumstances are better today, though. Victims are going home; the IDP camps are emptying out. Some of these former child soldiers are in school, and you can watch them laughing. There are a lot of people hopping around on crutches, covered in burns or missing limbs. But that doesn’t stop them from living. They keep right on at it. I was right; when I got out here I was too overloaded to see the situation’s reality. But now I can see the exhaustion, despair, mistrust, devastation, and fortitude despite it all. These people maintain a strength that is truly inspiring.
What concerns me, though, is the way the post-conflict situation is being addressed. A lot of NGOs are reducing aid and pulling out, not really thinking about how to re-stabilize society. I talked to one guy working with the Norwegian Refugee Council. He was furious. “Everyone says return to the villages should be voluntary. But if you stop distributing food, what’s voluntary about it? You have nothing to eat, you have to start farming so maybe you can eat something next year. Meanwhile, people are starving!”
A lot of promises have not been kept. The government said it would give farmers basic tools. No such luck. Medicines donated to Uganda are spoiling at Entebbe Airport because there isn’t sufficient transportation to get them to villages up north. Civil society organizations are trying to help, but a lot of them are based in municipalities and never reach the people who need help most. And the schools are so understaffed that they ask parents to pay for extra teachers. This isn’t exactly a request to some suburban PTA; this is demanding money from war victims so that their children can be in a class of 60 or so students. That is, if the camp even has a local primary school. Many of the transition camps do not.
I’m going to stop thinking about this for a minute. I’m getting angry, when what I should really do is work on the problem constructively.
The other day I took a cue from Emily and tried to get a dress made somewhere. It was a mess, and eventually I just gave up. I guess out here, you have to have a dress so the tailors can copy the pattern. Material stores don’t even sell bolts of cloth big enough to make a dress for me, so even if I had a dress to copy, I probably would have had to make it a skirt and blouse, instead. And trying to communicate with the tailors was nasty; they didn’t really want me to hire them. Eventually I gave up and bought a book of East African poetry, instead. It’s surprisingly good; I wasn’t expecting educated literature, and this stuff is on par with the anthologies I’ve got at home.
The next day I went with Fabius and Simone to the main campus to listen in on a discussion about developing an HIV policy for Gulu University. Attitudes towards HIV patients are pretty atrocious out here. The general sentiment seems to be, “well, you asked for it!” This policy is really necessary, and I wish there were some NGOs in the area to inform the committee’s research on the matter. The university and the community both need to confirm that people with HIV/AIDS have legal rights, including the right to work in public places. And if you’re sick, that doesn’t mean God has disowned you. I heard that attitude, too.
Anyway, after the meeting the dean of students gave me a traditional dancing stick made from a cow’s tail and a cork-like staff wrapped in beads the color of Uganda’s flag. You use it to dance for the king, balancing it on your bicep while you flap your arms up and down. I was very flattered to receive a traditional gift like this. Maybe I’ll take it out clubbing, sometime.
Oh, there goes the power again …
***
I’m leaving Gulu on Saturday morning with the Post Bus. It’s about 430,000/= ($275) cheaper than hiring a car, and the money that I save … well, I might give some of it to Gladys at the front desk. She works 18 hours a day like everyone else here, and makes 80,000/= per month. That’s about $60, and not enough to eat with even in Uganda. Anyway, Atimango Gladys is special because she just got into the public administration program at Gulu University, and will be taking weekend classes so she can continue to work. For anyone counting, that’s 18 hours of work per day, 6 days per week, plus school. And she can’t afford tuition. So I was thinking maybe I would help her a little bit.
Life has gotten a lot better, with a little adjustment. The lack of water and power don’t bother me so much anymore, and the crazy rain just washes away my bad feelings. I don’t mind so much that people charge me twice the price for everything, or that the kids make a game out of who can catch the munu’s attention. “Munu” is the Acholi version of “mzungu” – white person, essentially. My friend Simone calls this “innocent racism.” The kids especially have no idea they’re being offensive. They just want to rub your arms to see whether the paleness will come off revealing darker skin underneath. It’s fascination, not hatred.
There are just so many little things to appreciate. The frogs here sound like wind chimes. The lightning is like electric diamonds. I found a supermarket yesterday, a real supermarket with boxed juice and bread. It’s run by an Indian who wanted the luxuries of home, and there are as many electronic gizmos as there are kitchen supplies. So you can pick up your television and your Cadbury bar in the same place. It’s got that thrown-together look that everything seems to have here in Uganda, but it’s the best thing I’ve found in town so far.
I also ran into a very interesting person, in my more recent explorations. Any foreigner you meet up here, anyone who isn’t associated with a major group, anyway, is bound to be really interesting. This particular gentleman runs a restaurant across the street from the Institute. It’s called Bambu, and walking in is like stepping into the idealized version of Uganda. Instead of the normal plastic chairs and plastic tablecloths advertising beer, there are real benches with foam cushions and polished wood tables. The landscaping is beautiful, and the bar is very complete. The first thing you will encounter is a stately looking older man sitting at his counter with a beer, watching the sun roll across the sky and chatting softly with his employees. Ask him how his day is going, and he responds with something pithy – “oh, a lot like yesterday.” This is what James Bond looks like when he retires. I’ve wanted to speak with this man since the first time I met him, and finally yesterday worked up the courage to say, “You know, I’m trying to think up better questions for you.”
“What?” he asked.
“Like how did you get here, what was it like setting up shop, what made you come to Uganda – that sort of thing. Slightly more stimulating than ‘how ya doin’.’”
I think this tickled him, somewhat. The mellow look on his face never changed, he just said, “Well, there’s the short answer, the medium answer, and the long answer to all of those questions.” And I knew I had him, at least for a minute. I sat him down and asked him to give me the long version. I got the medium version, until he decided he was tired of company and wandered away. Turns out he used to help the United Nations with security issues, had a café in Spain, and left it in 2005 to try his luck in Gulu. Today he’s snuggled in here with a young lady lover and the occasional Skyy Vodka. He says it raises a few of the local eyebrows, but he doesn’t really care. Now just think about this man’s timing. 2005 was when the ICC indictments came out against Kony and the LRA leaders. The first brick of this restaurant was laid down in 2006, while peace talks were ongoing. That means that the land purchase and licensing went on before that time. How did Mr. Mystery know that the talks would more or less succeed, and Kony would never return? He calls it a “calculated business risk.” I call it double-0 status.
You get fascinating people like that, up here. Like Opiyo, who is doing research on child soldiers and sex slaves for his PhD dissertation. He told me some stories that I am not allowed to reprint, stories that could make a big difference in Kony’s trial if only they are published. And if this dissertation ever makes book form, you must read it. Opiyo Oloya: Remember that name! I also met a gentleman named Callum who freelances for the BBC and Al Jazeera. He told some wild stories too, stories which I can actually retype. Callum has been coming to Uganda on and off for the past five years. He was working on a documentary for the BBC when he got a call from a buddy of his who works with the UPDF.
“We have just won a great victory against the LRA,” his friend exclaimed. “You must come see!”
And so they jumped into the friend’s car and drove from Kampala to northern Uganda, out to the village where the battle had been fought. Apparently, this particular village had only two rifles to guard itself, and the LRA took it very early on in the conflict. Winning the place back involved decimating the troops on the ground. Callum said there were about forty bodies, all told. These villages are tiny, just a small collection of shops, so that number is a lot of people.
The first thing Callum saw when he got out of the car was the body of a four-year-old boy.
“Of course, you realize that when you’re talking about a victory against the LRA, what you mean is that you’ve killed a bunch of children,” Callum explains. “I hadn’t really realized it until that point. It isn’t much of a victory.”
I could see this in my mind’s eye, dozens of corpses, all child soldiers with guns their own size. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the hurt that their mothers feel? Can you even begin to conceive of what a nightmare this has been for Uganda?
Opiyo and Callum talked a lot about what it takes to turn a child into a killer like that, stories they discovered during interviews. The LRA abducts these kids, maybe three of them, and they make the two youngest kill the oldest child on the pain of death (their death, the deaths of their families, whatever it takes). The entire village sees this, and so the boys are ostracized. They are disowned by their remaining families and their friends. No home will take them in. Schools won’t accept them. They are considered too dangerous to interact with normal society. And so the LRA presses them into service, preying on the children’s cultural prerogative to take orders. Other soldiers beat them constantly and march the boys around in circles for days on end. The children say that they will march three days straight without sleeping, time and time again. Then, when they are finally physically broken, the senior soldiers begin to grant them respect and make these boys feel included. They are given a new identity within their community, and the need to belong somewhere is enough to make many of these children commit to a life of war. Those individuals who still retain enough of themselves to attempt escape are amazing – and there are many.
I knew all of this already. It bears repeating.
Circumstances are better today, though. Victims are going home; the IDP camps are emptying out. Some of these former child soldiers are in school, and you can watch them laughing. There are a lot of people hopping around on crutches, covered in burns or missing limbs. But that doesn’t stop them from living. They keep right on at it. I was right; when I got out here I was too overloaded to see the situation’s reality. But now I can see the exhaustion, despair, mistrust, devastation, and fortitude despite it all. These people maintain a strength that is truly inspiring.
What concerns me, though, is the way the post-conflict situation is being addressed. A lot of NGOs are reducing aid and pulling out, not really thinking about how to re-stabilize society. I talked to one guy working with the Norwegian Refugee Council. He was furious. “Everyone says return to the villages should be voluntary. But if you stop distributing food, what’s voluntary about it? You have nothing to eat, you have to start farming so maybe you can eat something next year. Meanwhile, people are starving!”
A lot of promises have not been kept. The government said it would give farmers basic tools. No such luck. Medicines donated to Uganda are spoiling at Entebbe Airport because there isn’t sufficient transportation to get them to villages up north. Civil society organizations are trying to help, but a lot of them are based in municipalities and never reach the people who need help most. And the schools are so understaffed that they ask parents to pay for extra teachers. This isn’t exactly a request to some suburban PTA; this is demanding money from war victims so that their children can be in a class of 60 or so students. That is, if the camp even has a local primary school. Many of the transition camps do not.
I’m going to stop thinking about this for a minute. I’m getting angry, when what I should really do is work on the problem constructively.
The other day I took a cue from Emily and tried to get a dress made somewhere. It was a mess, and eventually I just gave up. I guess out here, you have to have a dress so the tailors can copy the pattern. Material stores don’t even sell bolts of cloth big enough to make a dress for me, so even if I had a dress to copy, I probably would have had to make it a skirt and blouse, instead. And trying to communicate with the tailors was nasty; they didn’t really want me to hire them. Eventually I gave up and bought a book of East African poetry, instead. It’s surprisingly good; I wasn’t expecting educated literature, and this stuff is on par with the anthologies I’ve got at home.
The next day I went with Fabius and Simone to the main campus to listen in on a discussion about developing an HIV policy for Gulu University. Attitudes towards HIV patients are pretty atrocious out here. The general sentiment seems to be, “well, you asked for it!” This policy is really necessary, and I wish there were some NGOs in the area to inform the committee’s research on the matter. The university and the community both need to confirm that people with HIV/AIDS have legal rights, including the right to work in public places. And if you’re sick, that doesn’t mean God has disowned you. I heard that attitude, too.
Anyway, after the meeting the dean of students gave me a traditional dancing stick made from a cow’s tail and a cork-like staff wrapped in beads the color of Uganda’s flag. You use it to dance for the king, balancing it on your bicep while you flap your arms up and down. I was very flattered to receive a traditional gift like this. Maybe I’ll take it out clubbing, sometime.
Oh, there goes the power again …
Sunday, July 27, 2008
All gone
The power was out for three or four days. Then it came back, but the water stopped running for the next two days. It came back this afternoon, right as the power went out again and my computer crashed. The power has returned (again), but my computer is down for the count. I might have lost all of my pictures and video, which would really be a pity, because I was putting together an advocacy video for the UCICC.
Anyway, I have two major events left to blog about (the Ndere Troupe, from weeks ago in Kampala, and my trip to Pabbo last week). But this probably won't happen until the power is stable and I can slow down, take a shower, and use a computer for the afternoon without bleeding shillings. So my friends, this may be goodbye for a time.
I hold out hope that if I can hard start my computer by exhausting the battery first, maybe I can get into diagnostics at reboot and get the OS running again. Wish me luck, and e-mail me advice!
Anyway, I have two major events left to blog about (the Ndere Troupe, from weeks ago in Kampala, and my trip to Pabbo last week). But this probably won't happen until the power is stable and I can slow down, take a shower, and use a computer for the afternoon without bleeding shillings. So my friends, this may be goodbye for a time.
I hold out hope that if I can hard start my computer by exhausting the battery first, maybe I can get into diagnostics at reboot and get the OS running again. Wish me luck, and e-mail me advice!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Mzungu day
Today was frustrating. Things just don't work up here, it's hard to get work done, and increasingly the institute relies on me for more. It's good to be useful, but it's even more frustrating to be incapacitated.
Anyway, I'm tired. I've hit that point in my stay where I'm ready to come home -- I've been saying this all week, and the feeling will probably keep gnawing away at me until I'm safely on a British plane crossing the Atlantic. I'm still trying to keep active. Tomorrow I'm going to visit the IDP camps with my buddy, Opiyo. Thursday I'm taking pictures of Fabius in his advocate's robes for the new web site I'm developing. Yesterday I typed identification numbers onto 1,000 membership cards for the resource center. This afternoon I chased kids around the tea gardens. So, you know. Life is okay. But I'm still homesick.
I went to an internet cafe to do some research on the institute's bill, and when power went out I decided to walk back to the hotel on my own. I actually managed to find it despite my rotten direction sense by tracing all of the landmarks I remembered on the boda ride over. This involved turning in circles and amusing the residents, but hey, it worked. And on my way back, I wound up at Kope Cafe again.
Kope Cafe was the mzungu restaurant I wrote about back when I first got here. I remember not liking the tourists who were wandering around that afternoon. But at that particular moment, I wanted to be a mzungu again, surrounded by mzungus who would ignore me just like any good American would. So I walked in.
It was perfect.
People ignored me, I could eat lunch in peace, and the lunch itself was so fantastic! After weeks without vegetables -- unless you count malakwang, which I don't -- I had a beautiful steak sandwich which was mostly avocados and tomatoes. It was DELICIOUS. I don't think I've ever liked food quite so much. I can still taste it in my mouth four hours later, and I almost don't want to brush my teeth so it will be there in the morning.
(Hello kids, our phrase for the day is "obvious vitamin deficiency!")
I also had a brownie, which I should have skipped, but I haven't had sugar since I got here, either. That was good too, but not as good as the avocado and tomato sandwich. Mmm, I have to go back, like, tomorrow! It's nice to be a mzungu.
Anyway, I'm tired. I've hit that point in my stay where I'm ready to come home -- I've been saying this all week, and the feeling will probably keep gnawing away at me until I'm safely on a British plane crossing the Atlantic. I'm still trying to keep active. Tomorrow I'm going to visit the IDP camps with my buddy, Opiyo. Thursday I'm taking pictures of Fabius in his advocate's robes for the new web site I'm developing. Yesterday I typed identification numbers onto 1,000 membership cards for the resource center. This afternoon I chased kids around the tea gardens. So, you know. Life is okay. But I'm still homesick.
I went to an internet cafe to do some research on the institute's bill, and when power went out I decided to walk back to the hotel on my own. I actually managed to find it despite my rotten direction sense by tracing all of the landmarks I remembered on the boda ride over. This involved turning in circles and amusing the residents, but hey, it worked. And on my way back, I wound up at Kope Cafe again.
Kope Cafe was the mzungu restaurant I wrote about back when I first got here. I remember not liking the tourists who were wandering around that afternoon. But at that particular moment, I wanted to be a mzungu again, surrounded by mzungus who would ignore me just like any good American would. So I walked in.
It was perfect.
People ignored me, I could eat lunch in peace, and the lunch itself was so fantastic! After weeks without vegetables -- unless you count malakwang, which I don't -- I had a beautiful steak sandwich which was mostly avocados and tomatoes. It was DELICIOUS. I don't think I've ever liked food quite so much. I can still taste it in my mouth four hours later, and I almost don't want to brush my teeth so it will be there in the morning.
(Hello kids, our phrase for the day is "obvious vitamin deficiency!")
I also had a brownie, which I should have skipped, but I haven't had sugar since I got here, either. That was good too, but not as good as the avocado and tomato sandwich. Mmm, I have to go back, like, tomorrow! It's nice to be a mzungu.
Room service
The night after the invasion, I asked Jacqueline and Devotah at work what the heck those bugs were. They started giggling. So did Father William, who had overheard my description.
“Did they have four wings?” Devotah asked.
“And did they come off on the floor?” Jacqueline added.
“Those were white ants,” Father William chortled. “Do you know what we do with those? We eat them!”
Okay, it’s going to take me a while to work up to that particular dish. I talked to a few people about it, like my friend Opiyo, the Canadian school principal who grew up in Gulu.
“Oh yeah,” he said over tea that evening. “I just pick them up off the floor and eat them raw. They taste really good.”
Because I have to live here for a little while longer, I’m trying very hard to just accept this. In order to do that, I’ve had to completely rethink the way I conceptualize bugs. I mean, ants are clean creatures, and extremely hard-working. You only have to look at the size of their hills out here to understand that, or watch them carry the whole body of a grasshopper away, like a band of frat boys celebrating over a 500-foot keg.
Okay, I can live with this.
I turn it over in my head again and again, rewriting the grotesqueries into something absurd or poetic. These things are like cheeseburgers. Flying cheeseburgers, just like in a McDonald’s Hamburgler commercial. Should I be afraid of that? Well, okay, maybe if flying cheeseburgers invaded my room at one o’clock in the morning I would be scared out of my wits, but once I knew there was a logical reason for it, I would have hopped out of bed and grabbed myself a nice double-double cheese-cheese burger-burger please. Not going to happen if the ants come again, but at least I’ll be able to think about that if they decide to fly again.
The people here know when the ants are coming. Opiyo says that when the rains come down heavily after a long, hot, dry spell, the worker ant comes and opens up a little eyelet in the mound that others temporarily seal back over. That’s how you know they’re going to fly, when those eyelets appear. Then at night, the workers and the soldiers go, and they look for a new place to make their home. The queen has stayed behind, so they must create their civilization from scratch. They find a good spot with light and moisture, and then they shrug out of their wings, mate, and die. I suppose if the ladies from the hotel didn’t clean the corpses, I’d eventually see the eggs hatch. But so far that hasn’t happened.
So now when I remember the event, sometimes I envision it as an African love ritual. Like the Ndere Troupe dancing with ankle bells, trying to find a partner – only this dance is performed by insects. Imagine them ecstatic to find a new home, calling one another to the light, and like some sweetly unburdened soul casting off every last weight and care – the work at the hill, the unnecessary wings – casting them off and making love with their last, passionate, dying breath.
Anyway, I’m doing my best to accept the situation for what it is, and move on with living. That goes for a lot of things that make me a little bit uncomfortable with Gulu. I can do this for just a week and a half more; I can! And then I will go back to Kampala and meet with Francis again, and we’ll talk about Bashir and life will be easier. But for now, I can handle this. I don’t have to face my fear, I have to embrace it.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t come up with a new way of bug-proofing my room, though. I’m not sure that it would actually work, but I am very thorough now, every night, with how I go to bed. Lights go off when the sun goes down. If I need to work, I do it by the light of my LCD display – which is set to turn itself off after three minutes of no use. That means even if I do fall asleep working, my room will be dark within five minutes. Before I go to bed, I spray the room with insecticide, especially the window and door, and any cracks in the wall. Then I stuff the big crack under the door with the mosquito net I bought for the four-poster bed in Kampala and set up the mosquito net over my bed so it’s nice and taut. I don’t want the net touching me with the ants flying against it, entrée or no. And now I know not to go outside, when they fly. It will only make matters worse. But hopefully if I keep the lights out and my room warded, this won’t happen again to such a degree. Then again, bags of white ants? If what Simone says is true, I’ve hardly seen ants at all. I should be ready for … how should I think about it, this time? I should be ready for a denser wave of guests.
“Did they have four wings?” Devotah asked.
“And did they come off on the floor?” Jacqueline added.
“Those were white ants,” Father William chortled. “Do you know what we do with those? We eat them!”
Okay, it’s going to take me a while to work up to that particular dish. I talked to a few people about it, like my friend Opiyo, the Canadian school principal who grew up in Gulu.
“Oh yeah,” he said over tea that evening. “I just pick them up off the floor and eat them raw. They taste really good.”
Because I have to live here for a little while longer, I’m trying very hard to just accept this. In order to do that, I’ve had to completely rethink the way I conceptualize bugs. I mean, ants are clean creatures, and extremely hard-working. You only have to look at the size of their hills out here to understand that, or watch them carry the whole body of a grasshopper away, like a band of frat boys celebrating over a 500-foot keg.
Okay, I can live with this.
I turn it over in my head again and again, rewriting the grotesqueries into something absurd or poetic. These things are like cheeseburgers. Flying cheeseburgers, just like in a McDonald’s Hamburgler commercial. Should I be afraid of that? Well, okay, maybe if flying cheeseburgers invaded my room at one o’clock in the morning I would be scared out of my wits, but once I knew there was a logical reason for it, I would have hopped out of bed and grabbed myself a nice double-double cheese-cheese burger-burger please. Not going to happen if the ants come again, but at least I’ll be able to think about that if they decide to fly again.
The people here know when the ants are coming. Opiyo says that when the rains come down heavily after a long, hot, dry spell, the worker ant comes and opens up a little eyelet in the mound that others temporarily seal back over. That’s how you know they’re going to fly, when those eyelets appear. Then at night, the workers and the soldiers go, and they look for a new place to make their home. The queen has stayed behind, so they must create their civilization from scratch. They find a good spot with light and moisture, and then they shrug out of their wings, mate, and die. I suppose if the ladies from the hotel didn’t clean the corpses, I’d eventually see the eggs hatch. But so far that hasn’t happened.
So now when I remember the event, sometimes I envision it as an African love ritual. Like the Ndere Troupe dancing with ankle bells, trying to find a partner – only this dance is performed by insects. Imagine them ecstatic to find a new home, calling one another to the light, and like some sweetly unburdened soul casting off every last weight and care – the work at the hill, the unnecessary wings – casting them off and making love with their last, passionate, dying breath.
Anyway, I’m doing my best to accept the situation for what it is, and move on with living. That goes for a lot of things that make me a little bit uncomfortable with Gulu. I can do this for just a week and a half more; I can! And then I will go back to Kampala and meet with Francis again, and we’ll talk about Bashir and life will be easier. But for now, I can handle this. I don’t have to face my fear, I have to embrace it.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t come up with a new way of bug-proofing my room, though. I’m not sure that it would actually work, but I am very thorough now, every night, with how I go to bed. Lights go off when the sun goes down. If I need to work, I do it by the light of my LCD display – which is set to turn itself off after three minutes of no use. That means even if I do fall asleep working, my room will be dark within five minutes. Before I go to bed, I spray the room with insecticide, especially the window and door, and any cracks in the wall. Then I stuff the big crack under the door with the mosquito net I bought for the four-poster bed in Kampala and set up the mosquito net over my bed so it’s nice and taut. I don’t want the net touching me with the ants flying against it, entrée or no. And now I know not to go outside, when they fly. It will only make matters worse. But hopefully if I keep the lights out and my room warded, this won’t happen again to such a degree. Then again, bags of white ants? If what Simone says is true, I’ve hardly seen ants at all. I should be ready for … how should I think about it, this time? I should be ready for a denser wave of guests.
My friend from home
I’ve met some really cool people since I’ve gotten here. There’s Opiyo, the New Vision opinion columnist who writes from Canada, and Justin Moro, another New Vision reporter. The folks here on staff are pretty incredible. One guy has a scar on his forehead that must either be tribal cutting or remnants of the war. I’m not sure which. Jackie down in reception tells me that people here work 18 hours a day, so when I hear them say they’re doing okay, I really admire them. I would not be okay with that sort of working schedule. I need at least six hours of sleep per night.
One of the best surprises here, though, was meeting Charlton. Charles is from Philly, too. He’s one of these tall, healthy people whose age you couldn’t begin to guess, and he teaches phys ed at Microsoft’s School of the Future.
I met him while I was downstairs sucking on a soda. Charles wandered into the room wearing a Penn Relays t-shirt, and he was too light-skinned to be Ugandan.
“Are you from Pennsylvania?” I asked.
The man blinked, and turned around. “Yeah, how did you know that?”
Oh my goodness. English! English without an accent and without any arrogance behind it! I was in heaven.
We wound up talking for a couple of hours. Charles, it turns out, is teaching kids at the IDP camps around here to play basketball. He says they pick it up really fast. When he talks, you can see the amazement in his face – kids who actually want to be in school, kids who have been child soldiers and sex slaves, picking up a ball and messing around and laughing. They still act just like kids, he says, despite everything.
The human spirit is really amazing. You know, we might be even more tenacious than mosquitoes.
Anyway, comparing experiences with someone else from home was illuminating. There were things I looked at but never really saw, and Charles brought that home. Likewise, it sounds like there were some things I learned that he hadn’t. So we really helped each other out. It’s good to have a travel buddy. Makes me feel all glowy inside.
Anyway, Charles left this morning three weeks ahead of schedule. He says he’s worried about a flare in violence because of the Bashir indictment, but honestly I think it he’s leaving because he misses his fiancée. He’s so smitten, always talking about her. It makes me very happy to see healthy relationships like his. (Also, the judges probably won’t issue an arrest warrant for another week, and Khartoum is pretty far away to worry about violent spillover.)
But while he was here, it felt like being in college again, hanging out with Suzanne and John and Taylor in the cafeteria. Those were great days, when I knew a friend would always be around for dinners, laughs, and good stories. This was the same. I got to look at all of Charles’ wonderful photographs. He is very talented; no automatic camera adjustments for him. He has an eye and the expertise to compose really great images.
And speaking of a small world, it turns out he knew Carolyn and Jennifer. Have I written about them yet? I’m not sure, so I’d better jot down a recap, just in case I haven’t.
Carolyn Davis used to be an editorial writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She has a great eye for social causes and wound up in Uganda, oh, probably back in 2005 or so, just to see what effects war had on the country. We all worried about this woman traveling out to Uganda where malaria was prolific and the LRA was still very active, but she went with human rights activist John Prendergast, and when she came back she had amazing stories about Kitgum and Gulu and Pader. One of the stories that trip inspired focused on Jennifer Anyayo, a young Acholi woman and burn victim. LRA soldiers invaded her home, shot her father, forced her into her hut, and set it on fire. They told her not to come out, and she says that they laughed while she screamed. Anyway, the fire took most of her face and part of one hand before the soldiers left and neighbors came to pull her out of the fire. It’s amazing that she lived.
Actually, Jennifer is one of the reasons I decided to go to law school. After seeing what happened to her, and what was happening to so many people in Uganda, I couldn't just keep ignoring the basic, fundamental suffering that children were going through on a daily basis. If it weren't for Carolyn's story about her, I probably would never have come to Uganda.
We did what we could for the girl. We brought Jennifer to the United States for a year’s worth of reconstructive surgery. It didn’t really do anything to improve her physical appearance, but there were certain functional benefits – she has eyelids, now, and a bit of flap where her nose used to be. Also, she learned a lot of English and took some intensive tutoring, which hopefully caught her up a little bit in school.
Charles had read all about this story and contacted Carolyn to learn more about Uganda. He was especially struck by a photograph of four girls playing netball at sunset. He said that he just knew he would have to go and be with these people. So he hooked up with an organization that brings sports to war-affected youth, and he did what he could to make the kids happy.
I like that. Charles was really polite around people too, not brash and bossy like a lot of the tourists I’ve seen. I trusted him almost immediately – in fact, on the night of the white ant invasion I even sent him an SOS by cell phone (“help bugs please call reception I cant leave my mosquito net”), but he had traveled that day and was sound asleep.
Being around him just made me feel better about everything. He kept saying that I was a good traveler, that he would learn a thing or two from me. That made me laugh, especially after the insect invasion. Me? A good traveler? What do I know? The only advice I really gave him was that trick about net tucking.
Hotels should post instructions for those things. Oh well.
Later we went to Binen, a local restaurant, where I introduced him to goat stew and bo’o. We talked a lot about his kids and our travels, and he kept going on about people’s living conditions. I’m so busy psyching myself up to handle things, I sometimes miss the conditions that other people are living in. Here are kids playing soccer next to a sewage drain, jumping right into the effluent to fetch the ball. There people are living right next to a garbage dump, in tiny little concrete homes that Charles compares to a catacombs. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. When I look, I see the kids playing outside, the cat and the ducks and the laundry hanging on a line, and my mind stops there as if it refuses to see the negative. It’s nice in some ways, but I need to accept the whole picture.
Anyway, I’m going to miss my hometown friend. Charles, if you ever see this, I’m wishing you safe travel back to Kampala and the United States. It was great meeting you. Hope to see you and Deirdre back in Philly.
One of the best surprises here, though, was meeting Charlton. Charles is from Philly, too. He’s one of these tall, healthy people whose age you couldn’t begin to guess, and he teaches phys ed at Microsoft’s School of the Future.
I met him while I was downstairs sucking on a soda. Charles wandered into the room wearing a Penn Relays t-shirt, and he was too light-skinned to be Ugandan.
“Are you from Pennsylvania?” I asked.
The man blinked, and turned around. “Yeah, how did you know that?”
Oh my goodness. English! English without an accent and without any arrogance behind it! I was in heaven.
We wound up talking for a couple of hours. Charles, it turns out, is teaching kids at the IDP camps around here to play basketball. He says they pick it up really fast. When he talks, you can see the amazement in his face – kids who actually want to be in school, kids who have been child soldiers and sex slaves, picking up a ball and messing around and laughing. They still act just like kids, he says, despite everything.
The human spirit is really amazing. You know, we might be even more tenacious than mosquitoes.
Anyway, comparing experiences with someone else from home was illuminating. There were things I looked at but never really saw, and Charles brought that home. Likewise, it sounds like there were some things I learned that he hadn’t. So we really helped each other out. It’s good to have a travel buddy. Makes me feel all glowy inside.
Anyway, Charles left this morning three weeks ahead of schedule. He says he’s worried about a flare in violence because of the Bashir indictment, but honestly I think it he’s leaving because he misses his fiancée. He’s so smitten, always talking about her. It makes me very happy to see healthy relationships like his. (Also, the judges probably won’t issue an arrest warrant for another week, and Khartoum is pretty far away to worry about violent spillover.)
But while he was here, it felt like being in college again, hanging out with Suzanne and John and Taylor in the cafeteria. Those were great days, when I knew a friend would always be around for dinners, laughs, and good stories. This was the same. I got to look at all of Charles’ wonderful photographs. He is very talented; no automatic camera adjustments for him. He has an eye and the expertise to compose really great images.
And speaking of a small world, it turns out he knew Carolyn and Jennifer. Have I written about them yet? I’m not sure, so I’d better jot down a recap, just in case I haven’t.
Carolyn Davis used to be an editorial writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She has a great eye for social causes and wound up in Uganda, oh, probably back in 2005 or so, just to see what effects war had on the country. We all worried about this woman traveling out to Uganda where malaria was prolific and the LRA was still very active, but she went with human rights activist John Prendergast, and when she came back she had amazing stories about Kitgum and Gulu and Pader. One of the stories that trip inspired focused on Jennifer Anyayo, a young Acholi woman and burn victim. LRA soldiers invaded her home, shot her father, forced her into her hut, and set it on fire. They told her not to come out, and she says that they laughed while she screamed. Anyway, the fire took most of her face and part of one hand before the soldiers left and neighbors came to pull her out of the fire. It’s amazing that she lived.
Actually, Jennifer is one of the reasons I decided to go to law school. After seeing what happened to her, and what was happening to so many people in Uganda, I couldn't just keep ignoring the basic, fundamental suffering that children were going through on a daily basis. If it weren't for Carolyn's story about her, I probably would never have come to Uganda.
We did what we could for the girl. We brought Jennifer to the United States for a year’s worth of reconstructive surgery. It didn’t really do anything to improve her physical appearance, but there were certain functional benefits – she has eyelids, now, and a bit of flap where her nose used to be. Also, she learned a lot of English and took some intensive tutoring, which hopefully caught her up a little bit in school.
Charles had read all about this story and contacted Carolyn to learn more about Uganda. He was especially struck by a photograph of four girls playing netball at sunset. He said that he just knew he would have to go and be with these people. So he hooked up with an organization that brings sports to war-affected youth, and he did what he could to make the kids happy.
I like that. Charles was really polite around people too, not brash and bossy like a lot of the tourists I’ve seen. I trusted him almost immediately – in fact, on the night of the white ant invasion I even sent him an SOS by cell phone (“help bugs please call reception I cant leave my mosquito net”), but he had traveled that day and was sound asleep.
Being around him just made me feel better about everything. He kept saying that I was a good traveler, that he would learn a thing or two from me. That made me laugh, especially after the insect invasion. Me? A good traveler? What do I know? The only advice I really gave him was that trick about net tucking.
Hotels should post instructions for those things. Oh well.
Later we went to Binen, a local restaurant, where I introduced him to goat stew and bo’o. We talked a lot about his kids and our travels, and he kept going on about people’s living conditions. I’m so busy psyching myself up to handle things, I sometimes miss the conditions that other people are living in. Here are kids playing soccer next to a sewage drain, jumping right into the effluent to fetch the ball. There people are living right next to a garbage dump, in tiny little concrete homes that Charles compares to a catacombs. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. When I look, I see the kids playing outside, the cat and the ducks and the laundry hanging on a line, and my mind stops there as if it refuses to see the negative. It’s nice in some ways, but I need to accept the whole picture.
Anyway, I’m going to miss my hometown friend. Charles, if you ever see this, I’m wishing you safe travel back to Kampala and the United States. It was great meeting you. Hope to see you and Deirdre back in Philly.
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