Gulu Updates

Hey friends!

So I’m finally getting around to updating this thing, there’s so many stories to share but I’ll try and limit it to the main points from the last few weeks! I’m still obsessed with Gulu and am so sad that I have to leave it in just one short week. The people I work with are amazing and so is everyone I come in contact with here. It’s also really starting to feel like home, more than Kampala ever did, simply because it’s so chill and everybody makes you feel at home right away. I’m even over craving American food and now crave things like posho, fried cassava, or pork. Who would have ever guessed!

Okay, so rewind to Easter a few weekends ago. We went to a Catholic service at Holy Rosary because we knew it would be in English and it was a really great experience, despite being away from home on a holiday. It was a really cool mixture of traditional Catholic practices with traditional Acholi culture. For example, the altar girls (?? I’m really ignorant about Catholicism) walked down the aisle in more traditional wear doing a traditional dance and the band playing the music the whole service used traditional instruments like drums, etc. Also, when women are excited here at ceremonies/celebrations they do this shrill shrieking thing (Ay yi yi yi!) and so they would do that whenever they were really into a song or what the priest was saying. The service lasted two and a half hours, which wasn’t bad compared to what I was expecting for an Easter service in Uganda.

For Easter dinner, I had the best meal I’ve probably had in Uganda, especially because it was finally a home-cooked meal made with love. We were talking to Big Momma, our tenant, and she said “No, tonight I cook for you. You eat here.” We were totally down for this, considering we eat out pretty much every night and so we agreed we’d buy the dessert and sodas. She made us chicken, rice, peas, and chapatti and it was UNREAL. Also, the chicken was extra delicious because it was the stupid rooster that woke me up at least four times the night before (what ever happened to roosters just crowing at sunrise????). I actually had a dream about breaking its neck so watching Big Momma kill it for Easter supper was truly refreshing. We got to eat the dinner outside in the tile courtyard by candlelight, and it was so incredibly wonderful. We’re really very lucky to have Big Momma because every time we’re struggling to cook on a charcoal stove or hand-wash our clothes she steps in to take care of us. I’m really going to miss her. Also on a side note, we were cooking grilled cheese the other week and when we offered her one she said “No, I don’t like cheese, I like Blue Band (butter).” We all died because that’s SUCH a typical Ugandan response…

Easter Dinner

So the next week our friends who stayed in Kampala came up for the weekend to visit Gulu and see what we’d been raving about. We had a great time with them and packed as much stuff into one weekend as we could. On Friday, Invisible Children showed the KONY 2012 videos (Part One and Two) at Pece Stadium (small soccer stadium) in Gulu, so we all went to that. It was a really interesting experience and the stadium was WAY over capacity. You had to fight to get in and then we had to push through the crowd to get near the stage. They had a lot of really popular African artists come too, so that was neat. Then they screened the videos and it was cool to see people’s reactions, especially after all of the global criticisms. In general, people reacted positively to the video and you could tell they were in agreement over hatred of Kony because every time his image popped up they all jeered. I think the only issue was that they maybe don’t understand what the purpose of the video is and why they were watching it, but I think it was a genuine effort by Invisible Children to let Acholi citizens see the video that is after all, about them. Anyways, so we went out that night and had a blast (4:30 AM…Ugandans go hard), and then headed to the pool at Acholi Inn on Saturday. Our Ugandan friends Tony and Jacob were also along for the ride the whole weekend, so it was like a huge ongoing party and it was so nice to have everyone together again. That night we also got to watch a pirated DVD of Hunger Games, so that was the cherry on top of a mzungu-filled weekend.

After they left on Sunday morning, it absolutely poured as the start of the rainy season was coming in. I’ve never seen rains like this before in my life, and I can’t say it’s very fun to experience them almost daily. However, on this particular day we turned into an opportunity and decided to make a slip and slide in our tile courtyard where we’re staying. We were already wet from walking home so I forced Jake and others to come outside and join. We ended up “slipping and sliding” for about an hour, and I can only imagine what Big Momma was thinking. She already thinks we’re so bizarre so I’m sure we just further added to it that day.

Slip 'n Slide

Regarding real life updates, I’m still doing research and working at the Acholi Cultural Institution. It’s been really great and exciting, although some days I do wish I had more free time to go on adventures and explore. However, I got quite my fill of adventure last week when we went to settle a land dispute in Amuru (2-3 hours north of Gulu). For background, land disputes are a huge issue with post-conflict Northern Uganda because since the LRA war went on for 26 years, a lot of land ownership is unclear because after decades of displacement, people are unclear of who the original owner was or disagree on who’s entitled to it now. So our job that day was to go into this area (middle of NOWHERE, my boss called it simply, “going into the bush”) and mediate between the two conflicting parties and begin to reach a settlement. We get out there after all this time and find out that the party basically in the wrong didn’t show up at all, so we’ve arranged this whole big meeting for nothing. The team we came with decided it would be a good idea to start walking through these acres and acres of nothing and find the Lamogi people then to try and talk to them.  We’re walking through a plots with huts on them until we get to this one where this guy stands on this huge ant hill with a spear and tells us we can’t pass. After some negotiating, we manage to get through and find ourselves at another piece of land where a few people are congregated around a few huts. I should have taken this as a red flag, but this one guy was standing on the edge of the property blowing an antelope horn that was basically an incredibly loud war cry. All of a sudden, I see people coming out of nowhere from miles and miles away moving towards us. What ensued was probably the craziest/scariest experience of my life. My boss, Santo and a few Acholi chiefs began to try and discuss with them the situation, but before we knew it the other side was becoming very hostile. Apparently their leader wasn’t in town, but his son came to be the main voice and he was PISSED. He yelled at us for bringing so many “useless” people that had nothing to add to the conversation, as he apparently preferred that we had come with fewer people instead of coming off as so confrontational. He also absolutely freaked that a mzungu was there, and that’s when I almost s--t my pants. He pointed at me and said “And what is she doing here? Did you bring her here to arrest us? I don’t know if she has pistols or grenades in her bag. I’m going to have to protect myself.” I guess he just assumed because I’m white that they had hired me to come in and forcefully settle it, which is completely the opposite of any intentions I had…clearly. At this point I notice he keeps hoisting up this heavy bag on his back that we eventually found out was full of weapons. COOL. He went on aggressively rambling for like 20 minutes about how even if everyone around him left he would still take us all out by himself and that if we came back again, he could kill us. because of “fighting fire with fire”. Also, all of his pals are just standing around him at this point with spears and evil glares on their faces. A few other guys had some more threatening words for us, and the best we could do on our side was to try and calm them and insist that we only came for peaceful mediation. When we finally managed to pull ourselves away from the situation they yelled after us promising they’d kill us if we came back. On the way home I also found out that they had been hiding in the tall grass when we arrived and were watching our every move. (Sorry you probs had to watch me pee in the bush!) So yeah that was a pretty ridiculous day, I’m going to try and stay away from those events for the rest of my time here. My organization is going to go back again because they refuse to let the situation go because it’s clearly very volatile and important, but next time they’re going to get police and government officials to go with. On a good note, that’s going to be a baller story for my paper!

Betty and I before the land dispute

Other than that, my research is going well. I’m getting to interview some pretty cool government officials and others, and I’m really enjoying collecting the information and realizing how important culture is in restoring stability and peace in a post-conflict area. The only issue I face is people are very hesitant to be critical of the national government, so some answers they give me are clearly false.

This last weekend, we broke about a dozen program rules and went to Jinja where the source of the Nile is to go rafting and bungee jumping. COOLEST WEEKEND EVER. I seriously didn’t want to leave. I went in only planning to raft, but true to style, I gave into peer pressure and decided to bungee jump too. It turns out I thought rafting was actually way more terrifying.  I thought we would get a choice of levels of rafting, but it was one path and one path only. So after we went over the first rapid, our guide casually said “oh yeah that one’s a Grade Five”. Sweeeet. The second rapid everybody got thrown out, it was pretty much impossible not to, and that was by far the scariest moment. I got trapped under the raft for awhile and while the rapids were raging above my head I was trying to swim to the surface and no matter how hard I tried, couldn’t reach it. I hit my foot on the bottom and my mouth on something, and by the time I finally came up my friend Aimee said a ton of water came out of my nose. But hey, I survived! The rest was smooth sailing, I really enjoyed the next rapid we went over where we went completely under water through a rapid and then just held on tight enough to pop back up on the other side of it. It was seriously so much fun and I can’t wait to do it again!

Falling Out on the second rapid--I'm in the orange

Then came bungee jumping. Most of the group that went did it, which made it a lot more reassuring and since I was towards the end of the line I was actually excited to do it by the time I got up there. However, it started drizzling so I made the “bungee master” promise me that he was sure I could do it with that. He said he wouldn’t let me go if he wasn’t positive it was fine, so I figured it was fine. However, when I jumped off the platform it was drizzling and by the time I was dangling at the bottom it was MONSOONING. The three people after me didn’t get to go and had to leave the platform after I jumped, so that makes me feel so safe! I’m sure he was like oops, definitely shouldn’t have let her go! But it worked out fine and actually made it a super cool experience. The hardest part is just getting yourself to jump but after that it’s just so much fun. I also dove hard enough that I got my fingers dipped into the Nile so that was sweet. I’ll try and post the video soon, I just need to figure out how to rotate it first.

Bungeeing! Notice the rain

Since it's rainy season, it's also MANGO season and that's one of the things I'm undoubtedly going to miss most. They're so plentiful that you can buy six small ones for two hundred shillings which is less than TEN CENTS. Yep. I eat like four a day, because I can just walk outside our office and hit them off the tree. It's fantastic. Also one last story, I got bored with the chief meeting on human rights yesterday so I walked outside and saw that kids were playing drums down the hill and dancing around. I walked down and asked them to teach me, so I ended up playing drums and learning the Acholi cultural dances for about two hours. Of course all the kids laughed at me, but it was so fun. 

As for our last week in Gulu, I’m trying to go out big. Tomorrow two of my friends on the program and I are headed to Murchison Falls for a game drive, boat tour and hike so I’m really pumped for that. Then on Tuesday it’s Uganda’s Labor Day and luckily this year the celebration is in Gulu! Guess what that means?! President Museveni is coming and since my organization is going to the celebration, I get to be in the same stadium as him. And Pece Stadium is VERY small, so we’re practically going to be right next to each other (kinda). Also my brilliant friend Jake has decided he wants to open a mzungu rolex (chapatti with two fried eggs—delicious!) stand next week instead of writing our final papers, so that might happen as well. Can’t wait to see the awkward stares we’ll get from that.

Sorry for this being so long!

Lots of love,

Jessamy

First Week in Gulu

Hey guys!

So the independent study/practicum part of the study abroad time has started and I’m currently living in Gulu in Northern Uganda. I absolutely adore it so far, and I can already tell six weeks here isn’t going to be enough time. Before I get into details about my time here I’ll back up and do stories I haven’t written about so far.

My last day in Kampala with my homestay family I went to an introduction ceremony with my homestay mom and her church lady friends. Introduction ceremonies here are a HUGE deal, and its basically the engagement stage where the bride is introducing the groom to her family for the first time at this huge, elaborate party that has around 600-1000 guests. The reason there’s so many is that it’s rude not to invite EVERYONE, so every single person in the village is invited and you can’t turn them away. My homestay mom also was really nice and had a gomes (spelling?) made for me, which I’m assuming is because she didn’t trust me to dress up nice enough for it. Gomes is the traditional Ugandan dress here with a floor length dress with very high shoulders, with a large, shiny belt thing tied around your waist. Everyone I talked to was so impressed I had a gomes on, so I was glad to fit in even if I felt absurd. I felt even more welcome when before going into the ceremony one of my mom’s friends told me turn around to show her and goes “Oh wow! You even have a butt, that is good!” So the ceremony was even more of a special experience because the groom was actually German, while the bride was Ugandan, so that made me for very interesting interactions, but at least I wasn’t the only mzungu there. The ceremony lasted from around 1230 to 730 (yep, 7 hours) and was filled with tons of dances and gift-giving trains. There’s a proper procedure with giving gifts to each part of the bride’s family, including her sisters, aunts, and parents, and each has to be done to music and dance. Then the bride was finally allowed to reveal the groom to everyone, so she dances through the tables to the back of the opposite tent to bring him out from where he’s been hiding. My personal highlight of the day was watching this white guy’s supremely awkward facial expressions, as he looked so overwhelmed by all the activity, singing and dancing going on.

With my mom's church friends before the ceremony

Traditional Buganda Dancing at the Introduction Ceremony

When we finally returned home that evening from the village it was time to say goodbye to my homestay family and move on to Gulu. It was actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, as I’m so appreciative for how giving and protective they’ve been over me. I’m going to miss my oldest sister Rashida the most because she always looked out for me and is one of the most hard-working, kind people I’ve ever met. The good news is we get to see the family again before we leave Uganda at the end of the program, so I’m looking forward to that.

After spending the night in Kampala city center, four of us left Monday morning, March 26^th for Gulu! Jake and I were lucky enough to get seated next to boxes of about 400 live chicks for the 5 hour bus ride, so that was obviously a wonderful experience…definitely one of those TIA moments. After arriving we made our way to Tropikana Inn which was recommended to us, and it’s where we’ve since decided to make our home. The owner is an older lady called Big Momma, and she’s the best. And no joke, we have no idea what her real name is, we just address her as Big Momma whenever we need something. We’ve come to love the place, as we all have our own rooms that surround this sort of tile courtyard where we can do laundry or layout at. It’s much cooler on the tile than in our rooms so we spend a lot of time out there relaxing or doing work. Also, the showers, toilets, and sinks are outside in the courtyard but I actually love the set-up and the shower pressure is the most amazing thing ever. On a side note, Gulu is SO insanely hot. I thought Kampala was bad, but Gulu is hotter and drier so the cold shower at Tropikana at the end of everyday is beyond amazing.

our travel companions for the trip to Gulu

Another thing to love about Gulu is the fact that taxi-buses aren’t here really at all, so boda-bodas are the main form of transportation. Hence, I get to take one everyday to and from work and anywhere else I go, so I absolutely love that. It gets interesting when I’m expected to wear skirts pretty much daily, but I’m learning to manage. Gulu is also not very big, the town part consists of about 8 main streets where most of the shops and businesses are clustered, and then not very far outside of this it gets pretty rural and spread out. It’s a million times more preferable here than Kampala, and I love feeling like I know the way around the town already. The other unique thing about Gulu is that there’s so much NGO and international relief presence here, that people don’t even look twice when they see a mzungu. I haven’t been called mzungu once (except for little kids) and it’s insane how much that feels like a breath of fresh air. Additionally great is that the international community presence here has lead to the presence of mzungu restaurants and supermarkets, so if I want a coffee drink or a cheeseburger I can find one (along with free WiFi!). There’s also an Ethiophian restaurant right next to Tropikana where you can get a huge plate of pasta and fresh made tomato sauce for 3 bucks, gotta love that.

So now onto the work I’m doing here. Like I said previously, I wanted to research PRDP implementation in Northern Uganda, blah blah blah. But it’s altered a little bit because I’m interning at Ker Kwaro Acholi which is the Acholi cultural institution, and this has given me a little more of a cultural perspective on reconstruction, rather than all political. But this has been a total blessing, because the things I get to do in the organization are so cool and probably something I’ll never get to do again. For example, last week I got to sit in on a meeting between local Acholi leaders and the Ministry of Gender on HIV/AIDS, Gender Based Violence and Maternal Health so I got to see where the communities stand on these issues, the challenges they’re facing, and the way to fix them. It’s really interesting because the area is so affected by issues such as these because for 20 years they were pretty much cut off from all services or information due to the war and conflicts. For example, an Acholi chief leader stated that the problem is some people believe that AIDS will just disappear on its own like other epidemics have, so its hard to sensitize them on how to prevent it. So that was Day One on the job, on Day Two Ker Kwaro had 54 local Acholi chiefs come here for a Peace-building Traditional Justice Conference. The goal was to emphasize the importance of the Acholi cultural norms and practices to them as tools of peace-building and reconciliation within their communities. This is a huge issue they have to face because so many ex-combatants from the war are returning to communities and the people must find someway to address these tensions.  Ugandan court systems don’t have anywhere near the capacity to handle this many complaints and issues, so the people and their traditional leaders need to take the problems into their own hands in order to create stability in their communities. The system is in a lot of ways similar to the Gacaca Court system that was instituted in Rwanda post-genocide because the court system was ridiculously backed up with cases, and didn’t have anywhere near the capacity to handle them. So instead, they went back to their roots and started using Gacaca Courts to bring guilty people forward who could admit their guilty actions in front of the community and then be forgiven. My amazement with these traditional court systems is their capacity for forgiveness, because I imagine it would be so insanely difficult to forgive person after person who had wronged the community so that society could move on and stop focusing all their efforts on dwelling on the past. 

Traditional Justice Meeting with Acholi Chiefs

Later in the week on Friday, I got to work and my boss Santo (he reminds me of Baloo from the Jungle Book) called me into his office and out of the blue told me I was going with him to a meeting in town he had been invited to on women LRA ex-combatants. It was organized by the District Reconciliation and Peace Team and World Vision on the subject of Anti-Stigma and Reconciliation and our organization was invited to speak on peace-building and reconciliation. The need for this meeting was because many of the women who were formerly abducted into the LRA were returned home to their communities and expected to reintegrate, but multiple follow-ups have shown that the reintegration and reconciliation process hasn’t been smooth and that many of these women are having a lot of difficulty moving forward in their lives. A lot of the problems are because people in the communities assume that since the women were in the bush that they chose to join the LRA and therefore were responsible for the conflict and devastation from the LRA. Hence, the women are outcasts and are rejected by society and even their family members. What’s worse is that the children they had in the bush are also ostracized and associated with the LRA. This is sickening because the women were abducted, forced to be wives to LRA commanders/soldiers, forced to bear their children and then these are the women who are left with the burden to bear along with the children who clearly had no choice in their destiny to be born in the war. As if this wasn’t enough to digest, I then was told that one of the women who was contributing to the discussion had been one of Kony’s wives. He’s rumored to have had fifty or more, which is ironic for a man who claims to be so religious and godly. The woman looked around my age, but was abducted when she was twelve and had three children while living in the bush with Kony. It was so incredibly difficult to sit and hear her speak, it honestly made me nauseous like I was going to pass out because I just kept imagining how indescribably awful it must have been for her to live through that and then on top of that be a partner to one of the most evil men on earth. Even now typing this it’s making me sick to my stomach because I can’t imagine anything more repulsive than having to bear Kony’s children. In addition, she now has to raise the children, just like the other women ex-combatants, and said she just wants to care for them despite their background and educate them and raise them in the Acholi culture without stigmatization. The whole meeting was really eye-opening because I think a lot of people, including myself, fail to think about all aspects of the effects of war, so no matter how many schools or roads get built in Northern Uganda now, it’s still not going to create a peaceful community until these women get the justice they deserve and the children get the peaceful futures they’re entitled to. By the end of the meeting, the police commanders, local government officials, and other organizations present vowed to help join together and fight the stigmatization and find more processes that would allow for more effective reintegration and peace-building. Also interesting was the District Commissioner from the Police Force that said “we won’t stop going after the LRA until the last person in captivity is brought home, we will not relent,” because it showed the conflict is still ongoing and nearby even if the LRA have moved out of Uganda.

The succeeding weekend in Gulu was awesome because we for the first time on the whole trip actually had free time to do what we wanted. Saturday afternoon my work friends invited me and my SIT friend Jake to go with them to an Acholi introduction ceremony, and it was so fun. I think it was a better experience because it was one, shorter and two, with people closer to my age. The girls I work with wouldn’t leave until I danced in front of everyone, so I got pushed to join the gift-giving dancing train for the bride. That was really fun, and I got to break out my gomes dress again. One of Jake and I’s favorite moments was when a group of older women after dinner formed their seats into a circle and then broke out a handle of Uganda Waragi (disgusting, cheap gin) that they passed around and danced with. It was quite the party (pictures below). Besides that we explored the town a lot, slept in, and even found a pool to wrap up an awesome weekend. Monday morning, April 2^nd, it was back to work and I headed to Pajule town in Pader district with Maggie, the program coordinator for a Traditional Court Training for the Acholi chiefs and their court staff. Our Ker Kwaro taxi is in the shop, so we had the pleasure of finding our own transportation to this district and naturally Maggie found us a random car that happened to be going to the same town that we could hitchhike with. What resulted was a 3 hour ride in a car that was I swear about 15 minutes from breaking down, and then to add to my claustrophobia, had four people in the backseat on a dirt, insanely pot-holed road. Good times. But the traditional court training was again a really great experience. They began the first day by educating them on human rights and what this means for peace-building and conflict settlement. At first I was baffled by this because basic human rights seem so obvious in the Western World, but then I understood that after 20 years of war where your part of the country had been cut off from the outer world and most development movements, you wouldn’t grasp the scope of human rights either. So the first goal was to help them understand women, children, and those with disabilities all have the same human rights as men and that we are all entitled to them and therefore they should be upheld by leaders and the government. The discussion got interesting when the topic of bride inheritance got brought up, because the more progressive leaders think this should be outlawed, as it’s a violation of women’s rights, but many other more traditional leaders said in this case that human rights are infringing on culture. So I think it will be a slow process because you can’t expect cultures to change overnight, but I think these human rights will be incorporated gradually as development picks up in the North. The next goal was to teach them the traditional court mechanisms along with alternative dispute resolution and communication methods to utilize to resolve conflicts in their communities. These lessons will play a big role in land disputes that are probably the biggest conflict topic in this post-conflict society because after 20 years it’s very difficult to determine what land belongs to whom. At the end of the second day, each court staff member received a bicycle so that they can more easily reach all of their community members (villages are REALLY spread out) to sensitize them on human rights and administer justice.

with my work friends Maggie and Betty before the Acholi introduction ceremony

Traditional Acholi dancing at the Introduction Ceremony in Gulu

Then came getting home, which was another interesting experience of course. To get out of Pader, we had to wait an hour for a guy who happened to be going to where we needed to be to catch the bus back to Gulu. So we all hop in and then down the road pick up this poor guy who had jumped off a truck and broke his leg and probably something else because he was gushing blood. I felt so bad for him because the road was so bumpy and when I told him I hoped he felt better soon he didn’t even notice because he was in so much pain. After awhile we made it to Acholi Bur where we waited another hour and a half for the bus coming from the South Sudan border to take us to Gulu. I filled the time by making a baby cry. She was so cute and I was trying to wave at her and play with her, but when her dad made her shake my hand she went absolutely nuts and freaked out. I felt awful, but the dad said it was because “you’re the first mzungu she’s ever seen.” By the way, we were in the complete middle of nowhere at this point. Around 5 we finally caught the bus and made it back to Gulu in time for me to join my friends for dinner. The rest of this week has been pretty smooth, and I got to interview the District Speaker today on PRDP which was really helpful. I’m looking forward to the Easter weekend, and our friends from Invisible Children are coming back to Gulu so we’re talking about getting a goat for the Easter celebration. Should be a great time. Also, as I’m typing this I’m listening to all the ladies of the office talk about how I must stay longer and marry a Ugandan man. During the past few days they’ve made several remarks about how many cows I would get as a brideprice and that they would be so proud to marry me to an Acholi guy. That should be amusing for the next few weeks…

Also, I’ve finally booked my ticket home so my family can breathe a sigh of relief. They got lucky I did that last week or else I’d probably stay longer in Gulu because I love it so much. But after wrapping up stuff in Kampala I’m going back to Kenya to see baby Jessamy, my Uhuru Child friend Lydiah, and spend some time at the coast! I can’t wait.

Until next time!

Jessamy