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.
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| With my mom's church friends before the ceremony |
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| 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 26th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 2nd, 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.
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| with my work friends Maggie and Betty before the Acholi introduction ceremony |
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| 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
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