Uganda UK Willy/Jones

Climate Change

2007-12-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

For the past months every body was talking about the commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (Chogm) which was held in Kampala city,

In preparations the city was renovated, cleaned, flowers were planted on the sides of the road, new hotels built, building were renovated security was put on alert, and so many other activities done during the preparation time.

Chogm was consisted of different meetings the main meeting was that of the Heads of state which they talked about the climate change and agreed that its serious threat to both poor countries and the small islands, but failed to find a simple solution to combat it.

Some of the solutions which I saw they tried to talk about it was that of encouraging developed industrial countries to take a lead in cutting emissions of green house glasses,

These climate issue it’s a serious issue needed to be talked out in every international conference because it’s a serious threat which can undermine the continuing efforts to archive the millennium development goals, I am inviting all people most especially Ugandans to uplift the cause of climate change by campaigning about it in every environmental conference and encourage the major emitters to reduce green houses so that we can uplift the millennium development goals plus the health standards of the communities in poor countries, let us join together, I believe every individual has power to make good things happen in the communities, with the help of the living God we are to make it

CHOGM'S PREPARATION

2007-11-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

Preparation to host the commonweath summit(chogm) has changed kampala followers has been grown on the roads of the city and this has made it beatiful, roads have been changed like entebbe road and jinja roads now days i like the way they have been changed, hotels have been built, at first to the local people Chogm was seen as curse becausing of the suffering it has brought to many ugandans during preparation, kiosks on entebbe roads were removed some boats on lake victoria and the clouser of some big roads to enable repairs to take place which at first made chogm a curse to ugandans because the blocking of major roads caused traffic jam in the city and delayed travelling plus the price increased for the taxes, many were urging that they suffer but very few may beneffit from Chogm

KAmpala Chogm

2007-11-12T06:29:00.000-08:00

Millions of people in kampala and around kampala are preparing for the big conference of commonwealth countries to be held in kampala Nov 2007 about 5000 delegates are expected to be arriving in the country , According to the medias in the country, local people are saying that they have not gained in the up coming conference, they are urging that only the Government officials plus their relatives are the one to gain, while people are saying like that preparation are in high gear, all over the streets buildings are being renovated, flowers have been planted on the roads, and all the city looks that its ready, many people are arguing around the town that it will not be good if some of the big guests in that conference doesn’t visits the cultural leaders like Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi Of the Kingdom of Buganda Kingdom, it’s the one of the powerful and biggest kingdom in the history of Uganda but has been left out, many Baganda and other cultural leaders are not happy if queen Elizabeth doesn’t Visit their leaders or palaces,
People in Uganda are not satisfied with the words of the British ambassador in Uganda who said that cultural leaders will not be able to meet with the Queen of England and they are not happy with the letter which was sent to the kingdom more updates is coming

KAMPALA Smog

2007-10-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

The Gonvernment of Uganda recently removed all the taxes for Vehicles in Uganda and Increased the revenues on Fuel, many junk motor vehicles has started moving on the roads of kampala and even bringing alot of traffic jam on the roads

The icreased number of reconditioned cars on Kampala street are some of the smong major causes, smog is a combined gases from fossil fuels, these gases are dagerous to human life, good envirnment is our life, its time for any one who cres to protect the environment and Kampala look like other big cities in Europe and the rest of the world,

any one or organisation and even good thinking people can join forces to cut down the importation of recondioned cars, transfer factories from the city centre and encourage use of the clean hydroelectric power in the city and we should also avoid use of old uncoditioned cars in the city

together we can make good things happen in Kampala city

KAMPALA CITY SMOG

Unemployment In communities

2007-10-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

Uganda's Unemployment is worsening Day by day desipite several Governments attempt to reverse the trend. The Uganda Breau of statistics findings reveal that illiterate s are more likely to be available for work than the litrate. the unemployed rate is 3.5% and underemployment rate is more prevalent in the rural areas which is 17%

while the Gorvenment of Uganda has created agospel among ugandans called Bonna Bagagawale ( prosperity for all) it has to create more income generating activities among Ugandans youth through training skills like in sustainable methods of Agriculture and promoting youth talents in sports and other talents,
this scarcity of employment among the most youth in the country among rural and urban residents has brought joint efforts among the communities through forming youth clubs, groups and even trying to to seek employment in foriegn NGOs and many volunteer groups have been formed to moblise for united civil and social enconomic actions on unemployments,

however this success of this programme requires more gorvenment effort in order to full fill prosperity for all plus all the entire public
Ugandan youth they are saying that they are ready to work but they don't have enough capital what the need is the skills so they well come any simple solutions to be employed

Uganda Post 16 (8/14)-Family Dinner, Rwanda & Gulater Alligator

2007-10-27T18:17:00.000-07:00

In no chronological order, summaries of our last big family dinner, our weekend trip to genocide memorials and a failed (but funny) volcano trek in Rwanda, and saying later (not bye, bye is for forever) to Gulu.

So last Thursday, we had our last big family dinner with members of the family coming from every student. It was a big buffet with traditional Acholi cultural dances, including the amazing “courtship” dance, which consists of a lot of shaking of body parts and then little Acholi girls coming up to Jacob and Paul (our visiting professor from the US) and courting them as they both get on their knees and rub each other’s faces.

It was an amazing night as our parents gave speeches wishing us off. Several of us, including myself, cried after my father’s speech, which involved him telling us all to share Gulu and what we have learned and seen with our families and friends. He quoted the Pedagogy of the Oppressed book that I gave him and described how we liberate each other when we listen to the stories and problems of others and that the study-abroad program that we are on is an amazing educational experience where instead of just hearing about “war-torn people in Northern Uganda” we live with a family and work with the people rather than for them. He also mentioned that whenever he sees a white person walking around Gulu he will look for my face in theirs and feel compassion for them rather than seeing them as just another white person. He also emphasized the importance of tearing down artificial barriers, such as race and where one is from, which he has brought up with me throughout this trip.

Also, last weekend, we went to Rwanda where we saw three different genocide memorials and went volcano trekking. Rwanda is one of the most beautiful countries I have seen in my life with its 1,000 hills and volcanoes that are filled with fields that stay green all year, and according to our Ugandan friends, some of the most beautiful women. Yet, odds are that every Rwandan you see has been affected by a genocide that cost hundreds of thousands of peoples’ lives and left 30% of children as orphans. It reminded me of Northern Uganda, where odds are every person we saw has been affected by the twenty-plus year war where 90% of the people in the area we live in have been displaced.

Two of the genocide memorials we visited were in churches that people went to for sanctuary, but the churches were attacked by Hutus who killed the Tutsis that were hiding inside. Upon walking into the first church, I did not notice anything different other than the holes in the roof, which I guessed were bullet holes, but I was not sure. A guide for the church who is also a survivor of the attack showed us the front gate and windows which had been bent open, the blood stains on the altar where the priest says mass, the bullet holes of the roof, the room with the broken door where they now keep everyone’s clothes who was in the massacre, and the basement of the church and area behind the church where there are rows upon rows of skulls, bones, and caskets with more. She survived because she was by the door during the initial grenade which through her down, and she was left covered by other dead bodies for three days. I do not know how someone could relive the worst day of their life every day by taking people around that church or the families and friends of the 2,000 victims who have to go see all the bones.

5,000 people died in the other church where all the clothes, jewelry, letters, everything of the survivors was kept and is now displayed. It is just too much for the human mind to comprehend and too much for people to tell Rwandans to simply get over it. If I have learned anything from hearing genocide survivors speak at Northwestern, it is that something like genocide is cross-generational and is not something that someone can “get over” and “move on from”.

The final memorial we went to was in the capital Kigali and was a beautiful museum that looked like the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. The saddest part for me was not the images and videos of murder and the blood stained clothes, but the stories of people saving others and the stories from kids about the last time they saw their parents. One kid describes how his mother and he (who, as he is telling this story, is about my age) were in hiding for days before they ran out of all their food except beans. His mother knew that he did not like beans so she risked her life by going out and finding him vegetables and passion fruit. She died soon after. Stories of life and love in all this violence is just too much for me.

To unwind from all of this, we went volcano trekking on a soaking wet and muddy day, and our tour guides laughed at us as most of us were wearing sandals, shorts and t-shirts. We did not even get close to the crater at the top, but it was a lot of fun as we slipped up and down and we got to see two gorillas. Our guides said the gorillas were the closest that they have ever been to the path and that we cannot tell anyone that we saw them because they are not supposed to point them out to us since we did not pay the $1000 to see them (I am sure they will not read our blog, so we’re fine).

Now zoom forward to a couple days ago: as we are leaving Gulu, our agricultural training project has been “successful” as the seeds are growing, and our computer project has a shot at being sustainable as we have left the teachers and a potential outsider to continue our work with a work plan for a peer education program where the two teachers would have students help them teach their classes, which can contain 80 students at a time!

According to our Professor Paul, it has been a success story, and we are providing means for them to continue this. He reminded us this past week that “when working with community, the ultimate goal is not sustainability, that’s for institutions that hire people and have a maintenance fund to worry about. With communities, you give them some things and learn with them, but ultimately it is up to them if they want to do it. He reminded us that the strength of the community is flexibility. The importance is on building capacity of organization we are working with to address issues, not sustainability. Overall, our group found that we did not have much to contribute to the agriculture project, other than funds, and we were flexible and were able to work at Alliance Secondary School and to provide the computer teachers with some skills, knowledge, materials (and further donated resources), and a work plan to truly be “Your Computer School”, as Alliance calls itself on their sign and the students’ shirts.

Our host families were amazing. Gulu is amazing, even if the Lonely Planet says you have no reason to go there. I want to go back next summer. Our organization turned out not to be everything we expected, but we learned a lot about NGOs, development, Uganda and ourselves and that’s as cheesy as I will get in a blog.

Finally, to borrow from Liz's post (read below), I will miss Naked Man ("he has a name, it is Komakech (which means unfortunate)", the markets, having 14 brothers and sisters, big momma (my mom), bigger momma or big momma squared (her sister), the clouds, the stars, the trees, my dad's village, having chicken potatoes and rice with every meal, three bottles of Fanta Citrus a day (find it in the US), the Acholi languages/dances/people, seven stones and the other games my siblings played, and just life in Gulu.

I will not miss the war, the Internally Displaced Persons Camps, the way women are treated, being called a muzungo/mono by everyone (everyone asks "how are you? i am fine" but they don't care how I really feel ha), the way too many briefcase NGOs (NGOs that exist simply to exist and go from donor to donor), Ugandan food (sorry, but it isn't that great), the bus ride from Gulu to Kampala (horrible roads and Kenny Rogers and Ugandan music and Nigerian films), and the fact that if I like Gulu now, I am told I should have seen it before this war where "everything was different".

Thanks for reading so far and I’ll keep posting until someone cuts me off.

Adong maber (take care),

Nikolai "Anywar (stubborn) Komakech (unfortunate) The Last/Lost Born

Uganda Blog Post 15 (8/2)-Visiting My Father’s Village and Update on Our Project(s)

2007-10-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

My Dad takes me to where he and his family lived until he had to move to avoid being killed. Also, an update on our Computer Training Project as we struggle to try to connect NGOs and do something sustainable, and on our help at a Camp with literacy.

Last Saturday, my Father here in Gulu took me to see the village (a ten-minute drive from our home) that he was born in, grew up in as a child, and lived in up until 20 years ago when he was forced to leave. He was Principal at the time of Samuel Baker Secondary School (a couple kilometers up from where we live now) and the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) came to his village to murder him.

He had 5 children then, and two of them, Tony, my 26-year old brother, who was born in the camp and lived there for several years, and Wini, my 20-year old sister, who was born in the camp and moved after several months, told me their thoughts on the village. Tony said he has no interest going back as he does not remember much about the village and does not feel any ties to it. Wini likes going back to see the family members there, but she does not like talking about it much. In contrast to both of them, my father talks about it several times a week and took me to the village “so that I would not get lost when I come back”. He is going to move back to the village once the war is over and will finally have cattle and goats again as the LRA and government military stole his livestock once he left.

The village was several huts in different spots with a huge patch of mango trees where the kids would climb and throw down the mangoes when they were in season. My Dad was beaming with pride at the village and showed me how the huts have been moved, where the hut was that the rebels burned down and where his aunt was still living (she was sitting outside her door as she was locked out) and where his brother, the father of my cousin Ochii, still lives. He is a “drunkard” and my father and Ochii kept their distance from him.

We then went to the family’s graveyard where my Dad showed me where his sister, daughter, mother, and other family members were buried due to different deaths, but the most common of which was AIDS.

I will talk more about the village later, but a quick update on our project is that we are trying to find an NGO in the area to help continue our computer training at Alliance Secondary School. We want to institute a peer training program to help the one teacher with his 30-80 students per class, but we simply do not have the time. Also, we are helping out with a literacy program at an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp, especially with child mothers there, and the lady we are working with is pushing for a lot there, including a nursery, but we are having problems addressing the issue with her of the importance of people returning to their villages and not providing things to make them not want to leave the Camps and instead provide these services in the villages.

Ok that was a run-on sentence, but I have to run.

Apoyo,

Nikolai Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 14 (7/29)-Oppression in our lives and in Gulu

2007-10-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

Thoughts From One Who Belonged to the Oppressor aka Notes from the Inside of My Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and how they relate to Gulu and life and such.

“…his methodology as well as his educational philosophy are as important for us as for the disposed in Latin America…For this reason, I consider the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in an English edition to be something of an event”(9).
I took a while reading and rereading this book and meditating and reflecting over a lot of what Freire says and a lot of people in my group wanted to read it (and hopefully will), but I took so long on it so sorry, but I recommend this to everyone. I was able to reflect a lot on my religious/political/economic/social beliefs and all the cycles of poverty I have seen in Milwaukee with loan and housing discrimination and under-funded schools and in Northern Uganda with a similar discrimination and under-funded education and a war, which has all its own generational cycles. Ahh, here are quotes from Pedagogy and some questions and thoughts of it that this program keeps bringing up.

“…the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled” (21).

Intellects and radicals are at the forefront of these movements in the past, but today have we students lost our “radicalness”? Has our education turned us into conformists? Why does a radical have such a negative connotation in our society today? Are we so satisfied with our current state that for those who want to change it they are viewed as disrupting freedom and order and harming others?

“The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic, humanist (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of humankind. Pedagogy which begins with the egotistic interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression” (36).

One lesson is to be mindful and differentiate between the types of generosity. Are we not generous if we gain something from it like more knowledge and a better understanding of the culture and place or can we not help but gain those? See an earlier discussion on socialedge.org on the goals of international youth volunteerism. Who starts the pedagogy of humankind, can donors, can outsiders? These are questions that the book provides guidance to, but it is ultimately one’s own motives and perception and goes beyond “doing good”.

“It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life” (37).

I have wrestled with the debate throughout my life over if those who commit crime are doing it of their own will or is it more a reason of the situation that they have grown up and/or exist in and that they lack other outlets. Two examples that always come to mind are the thief who stole the bread for his starving family or the terrorist who kills others because he is facing an entire army and is occupied and feels this is the best/only way out/to fight. They commit crimes and issue terror, but do they initiate it? Are they helpless and has someone already put them in such a situation that “begets” such a person? Either way you think, at least look from the other side.

To work with the oppressed, we engage in “not an attempt to learn about the people, but to come to know with them the reality that challenges them” (91). Freire recommends that we “labor in the fields, meetings of a local association…the role played by women and by young people, leisure hours, games and sports, conservations with people in there homes” (92-3).

Can the work we are doing be more like this, such as with our agriculture project and with all our time here. We probably need more time to truly gain a broad and comprehensive set of observations. We have tried working in the field with the agricultural group whose work we are funding, I have attended the local Gulu Chapter’s Rotary meeting, and we live with families, but I do not think we want to do “observation visits” and “register everything” in our notebooks (92). I think we want to live and work with the people, not challenge their entire society and the state of oppression that they are in. To be honest, I don’t think I can work with the group in the field or go to much more dorky Rotary-like meetings. Maybe the people in the Peace Corps and other long-term service trips should take such a comprehensive approach though?

“The most important thing, from the point of view of libertarian education, is for people to come and feel like masters of their thinking by discussing the thinking and views of the world explicitly or implicitly manifest in their own suggestions and those of their comrades. Because this view of education starts with the conviction that it cannot present its own program but must search for this program dialogically with the people, it serves to introduce the pedagogy of the oppressed, in the elaboration of the oppressed must participate” (105).

This summarizes how education should be taught. It is amazing how in every educational setting that I have been in, I have no say over the content and the way it is taught and it is too much the teacher simply lecturing. I think that is why I like studying abroad with research components aka the situation I am in now. My father, the Director of the Teacher's College here, and I discussed this. How the students here never do any projects? How the teacher says "knows everything" and there is a lack of discussion and the students don't challenge or ask the teachers critical questions. He is reading the book now and encouraging teachers to admit when they don't know something and to learn from their students and to search with them for the answers.

“Dialogue with the people is radically necessary to every authentic revolution” (109).

Chaford is supposed to be one of our links to the community as well as our families and those we meet. Yet, I do not know if what we are doing is the best or what the people most want, yet it is hard for us to push for an “authentic revolution” in two months, but for all my other campaigns in my life, I have to constantly be in dialogue with the people, which is why I like volunteering. If you care about education, tutor a kid; if you care about possessions, talk to the homeless; if you care about the future, mentor a kid. Volunteering, hopefully, involves dialogue with someone about their life and about what they think should be done and how you can help. It is a chance to see their life through their shoes as much as that is possible.

According to the “bishops of the Third World” that Freire cites, “if the workers do not somehow come to be owners of their own labor, all structural reforms will be ineffective…they [must] be owners, not sellers, of their labor…[for] any purchase or sale of labor is a type of slavery” (164).

A lot of projects that we hear about and that we see NGOs doing deal with the issue of empowering people and ensuring that they have ownership over their work. Freire emphasizes that the most important aspect of labor is not how high of a price people get for what they sell, but that people want to be owners of their work not sellers. My friend Lauren on a Guatemala trip after visiting Fair Trade coffee farmers talked about our role as buyers in this process and reminding us that we need to be conscious of what we buy and the choices we make. I feel like I have met too many NGO workers and others, including ourselves, who came in with an idea of what the people wanted instead of asking and working with them. I think that we have adapted and that having a community-based organization helps in navigating this, but it is still a dialogue that needs to take place for some time with the people having ownership of the ideas and the work because the alternative has a lot of potential for harm and paternalism. We lacked this dialogue when planning our agricultural trainings (though we are limited by time, language and space to the camp): Did we ask what trainings they wanted? How was the youth leader chosen? Is an agriculture project what they wanted? We put a lot of trust in Chaford’s, our community organization, knowledge of these people, and I do not know if they had the dialogue with them.

“Unity and organization can enable them to change their weakness into a transforming force with which they can re-create the world and make it more human…it is indispensable for the oppressors to keep the peasants isolated from the urban workers, just as it is indispensable to keep both groups isolated from the students” (126).

It is interesting to read about the oppressors' need to isolate workers from us, students. People tell us we “should be studying” and that we are “irresponsible and disorderly”, while peasants and factory workers “should be working” (126). What role can we as students serve in joining with the workers? What services can we provide? Will our higher institutions support us or even let us?

“The dominant elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all means, including physical violence, to keep the people from thinking. They have a shrewd intuition of the ability of dialogue to develop a capacity for criticism” (130).

I have struggled with this point that the elites want the poor to keep quiet so the government under funds schools in poorer areas. A worse education usually means less free and critical thinking, which means less criticism of the government. We can see it hear in Northern Uganda (where the main university in Kampala used to be half from the North, and now they are only 1%) and in the US where the schools are funded by taxes, i.e. if you’re in a rich neighborhood, odds are your school is better than one in a poor neighborhood. I want to study this when I get back at Sullivan High School, which has a huge refugee population and is also severely under funded, and then at secondary schools in Mexico City and Paris, which have high proportions of Guatemalan immigrants and Iraqi refugees, respectively.

“Young people increasingly view parent and teacher authoritarianism as inimical to their own freedom. For this very reason, they increasingly oppose forms of action which minimize their expressiveness and hinder their self-affirmation…This rebellion with its special dimension, however, is very recent; society continues to be authoritarian in character” (135-6).

Is a youth rebellion legitimate? Will our generation be different and change future ones? Or is the oppressor legacy too great, and the kids of these oppressors will be too powerful? Is the educational system with the lack of ownership of students in terms of content and everything too restricting and conformist?

Ok some thoughts to think about with our trip, but for now...

More Funny Stuff From Gulu:

· Members of our Group went to visit Heifer farmers and in the spirit of Heifer’s giving “passing it on” program, where farmers share the offspring of their livestock with others, one of the farmers gave us a rooster, which Rachael took and hung from the edge of her “boda boda” (motorbike). So last night we ate “Mr. Millet” and he was delicious as her mother made the best “smashed” potatoes ever. And Jacob broke a glass, and Rachael’s dad broke a chair, and “our pets’ heads are falling off”!! Heifer needs any animals, but cows are the best. go to their site at heifer.org and you can see how to buy cows and other animals as gifts for farmers in Uganda!

· Naked Man and I now share the same name as my Dad had some elders over, including his brother, who is a priest at Pope John Paul II School and who told me that since I am the second and the last born in my “home-home” family that I should have the name Komakec, which Naked Man and the amazing little guy that teaches me volleyball at Alliance (I spike it in kids’ faces now) are both called.

· The Priest also said I need to get Arsenal and the Chicago Fire to send balls and boots (soccer shoes) to his school so we’ll work on that.

And More from My Family:

· Lona, my youngest sister at age six, watches Cradle to the Grave with Jet Li and DMX by herself. Her favorite film other than Barney.

· My Dad’s uncle was placed in a basket in the middle of a field naked for a night, and if a hyena devoured him then he was not the child of my dad’s grandfather, but if he wasn’t (which he wasn’t) devoured then he was the child of another man.

Members of our group and other teams are going to Rwanda this weekend to see genocide memorials and meet the Bishop of two members of our team who also wrote a book called Bishop to Rwanda. So I won't be posting for a while so...

Adong maber,

Nikolai Anywar Komakec The Last/Lost Born Mr. Millet Smith

Uganda Blog Post 13 (7/26)-An Acholi Chief, an Acholi Historian, an Acholi Professor, a US Professor, my Dad, Opiyo, and I sit at a table…

2007-10-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

And discuss traditional reconciliation methods of the Acholi in terms of the 22-year war in the North versus the methods of the ICC and the current government, land security once the war is over, and the utmost importance of getting peace for these peoples.

An Acholi Chief and psycho-social counselor for CARITAS (an organization that trains community psychologists), an Acholi Historian who has written three books this past year about the Acholi culture and history, an Acholi Professor, Ron Atkinson (our Professor that taught us in the US and who has written extensively on the Acholi culture (see The Roots of Ethnicity: The Origins of the Acholi of Uganda)), my father (the Director of the National Teachers College in Gulu), Opiyo (Jacob White, my group mate), and I (me) sit at the dinner table at my pacho/gon (home).

We discuss a lot.

The Chief begins by emphasizing that the moment the ICC (International Criminal Court) lifts their indictments of LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) members, then it will create a sense of belonging for these members as peace can be signed. The war has created a sense of loss and ceremonies help the people become open so that others can be reintegrated. The process is dialogue: a sense of love and belonging is created. There is a human need for agreeability, and the Acholi see it as unfortunate that people, such as the ICC are putting reconciliation before peace. The Chief ends by saying that people still love and want us (the LRA) despite what we committed. For a man whose people have been killed by the LRA, he is so forgiving and so welcoming of the LRA back to his community and clan that he does not even differentiate between the people loving his clan (us) and the LRA. Amazing.

Ron then asks the four Acholi men how the ceremony of Mato Oput (the Acholi ceremony of forgiveness) will play out, specifically the aspect of it that includes compensations, given all the poverty and destruction from the war? The Chief answered that people need a situation of awareness of what took place, that some of what happened was not intentional (child soldiers and such forced to do it), but even if it was intentional, the gravity of the crimes can be too much. Reconciliation is not a one-man business, but it is spread to the entire extended family and clan. The obligation is that the entire clan participates in it because if you are the head of a family tomorrow it might be your family who is charged. There is a fear of revenge present so need to have a clear understanding because if it was one clan-mate harming another, then there is a great chance of revenge so every member of the clan participates so it is not just “one on one hate”, but a group reconciliation. All have to pay for the person that committed as the entire clan takes responsibility so therefore that will solve impunity and this ceremony is there (Ron agrees). In terms of larger compensation, beyond specific cases solved by the clan, there will need to be a general fund, with the government of Uganda with aid from foreign governments or NGOs contributing, to compensate victims because almost all of us are victims and no single source can help. But specific cases it is the clan. The Chief ended, “In our culture, there are some things you don’t force. A person who committed the crime will confess because of cen (the misfortune)”. Yet, it is not enough for religious people just to pray; need to find the root cause and nature of problem to combine spiritual and culture aspects. Reconciliation will not go bad if it is distributed in the right manner (Ron’s book Traditional Ways of Coping in Acholi, outlines these ceremonies). They will come back with the ceremonies as they synthesize and help people.

Another question which Ron poses for the Acholi men is how the Reconciliation and Accountability Document says that government actors can’t go through alternative justice methods and only go through Uganda Government legal methods. Are all government people excluded from cultural approaches then? Or what if it would not be the Uganda national legal system, but the military courts where the UPDF (the Ugandan military who has been fighting the LRA) people would be going through their own legal system.

The Chief is the first to answer again and he says it would look “funny” if the UPDF and the LRA committed crimes in the same community and then they were punished differently. If two parties go through Mato Oput then the person who committed the crime will feel free and accepted as people who were victims feel free since both parties are brought together to reconcile. The Chief adds that we can’t use two systems to recognize two people on one issue. This creates dissatisfaction and is not proper practice.

Ron then asks what about some LRA and UPDF people who committed crimes from other parts of Uganda so the Acholi justice and cultural practices do not apply to them? The Chief says that most of these people are higher-ups, but most on the ground who are Acholi and lower-rank and did the crime themselves need reconciliation. The Acholi Professor adds that someone of another culture wouldn’t get it or see value of it (their traditional justice). Those UPDF who are Acholi should go through Mato Oput and those not Acholi should go through the legal system.

The Chief then adds that different cultures have similar traditional legal systems. For example, if tell Buganda about the Mato Oput concept, they’ll tell you a similar concept in their culture. Forgiveness is in every culture and Mato Oput is a very strong part of forgiveness and reconciliation. If a Buganda kills an Acholi, then it is not the same ceremony, but it satisfies both sides. For example, the South Sudanese have ritual of killing a bull that still satisfies both sides. A second example is if one marries a girl from another tribe then he takes on their customs to marry her.

The most important thing in Mato Oput is acceptance and the truth that I committed the crime. Once this accepted (that I’ve confessed and been forgiven) it brings you together. Practical aspect of the ceremony is just symbolic. Difference with Acholi is actual drinking (symbolic part). In Buganda, they pray once accepted and then compensation determined and that’s it. Same for the Acholi as compensation is not looked at until after Mato Oput occurs. Another example was when people bended their spears to symbolize the rejecting of violence and making that a taboo now. Both sides accept that we were killing each other so that’s how bending spears started in Acholi culture. So different communities can look for something to symbolize the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. Doing this has a psychological aspect of healing. You can even do without it. So in Acholi, drinking itself depends on crime. If do it intentionally, then drink, but if not, then just accept it and done. If different communities sit down, they can come up with a similar tradition like Mato Oput and perform it.

Ron’s last big question was if the Acholi men see problems coming up with people returning in large-scale to their land like arguments over boundaries and customary clan land? The Chief answered that people have not yet returned on such a scale and as people want to go back there are already a lot of problems for people among their brothers and in same clans even. Lots of disagreement and conflict of various types will exist, especially psychological problems. They need lots of preparation in place and it is unfortunate that we are not preparing ourselves for it, the Chief goes on. We need to start thinking about such problems and visualize the likely problems and strategize for when the people return.

Ron then drew a picture of his idea for solving land disputes which is finding out through the catechists or elders and get young people on both sides with computers and devices like GPS tracking to mark the land and get the elders to agree on the boundaries. So get two groups, elders and youth, to walk boundaries and mark them. The Chief looked at the drawing and said the forefathers were smart and named and marked boundaries by natural resources. Although the boundaries are not physically seen, people are aware of them. For instance, he asked a district to give them all the sub-clans in the district and then mark off where they live and where others live around them. The people used the directions, like where the sun falls and rises, where Sudan is (North) and to the South (the Nile) and mentioned that these directions will be used to resolve land conflicts. The Chief admits that we can’t stop conflict, but can use a strategy like Ron’s to help.

Ron added how some people are trying to take land so if have these boundaries established then people don’t take empty land and say no one is using it and thus, it’s ours. There is an understanding and boundaries marked that it belongs to someone, and it is empty as it could be hunting land or wild land for timber that the clan isn’t using, but it’s their land. The Chief agreed that land has different purposes and that is not left for nothing, like to keep animals and that they know the value of land and that it is a God-given thing that people want to utilize. Even during Colonialism, the British told them their land would be better used for tourism to show the animals and the Acholi way of letting them graze was backwards. So today, land of Acholi is now a zoo and the Acholi were moved by force. The Chief added that when people were chased out, it included his Grandfather who was pushed out when his land was carved. So, two months ago the Chief went to check the land and his items are still there at his old home (from about 100 years ago!).

Another problem is that people may be forced out as the rate of birth in Uganda is very high and the population boom can lead to people impeding on other’s land. So people need to be secure in their land and to not let others take it. So he proposed that three clan elders (one a woman) who know the boundaries and survived the war will talk to the Chief and say where the land is and who has responsibility for it. So we have system and mechanism to know who has land. It should not be left to the young government people today who are in their 20s and don’t know. Now, these government people have their fourth land act and previous land acts with different presidents and different versions like the traditional land act, and it is confusing for people.

All of the men agree that a big problem is stopping the young people from selling their land as they who don’t see the future and want. The President pushes people to sell their land and says things like “are you anti-investment and backwards?”. The Chief adds that the land tenure system in Acholi doesn’t allow an individual to claim land, it is the clan’s land. Even though the present situation provokes us a lot, we know the value of the land so we shouldn’t finish ourselves. In the past, Acholi have been good with land and have shared it with others. Yet, the government can’t impose investments and investors on the land. Individuals will try and the Chairman has contacted them, but if people rise up then it won’t work. Ron adds that the people here won’t forget and will protect land. He closes that right after reconciliation, the most important thing is to have people secure with their land and that this is in fact very important for reconciliation.

The discussion then went into the role of Acholi Chiefs. My Dad said that the colonial governments did a lot to undermine the power of traditional chiefs of their people. The Chief added that greed for power contributed to this in the past, and now, people realize how the integration of components of both (government and chiefs) is essential. The current government understood the importance of reinstating traditional chiefs because current generation doesn’t understand it. Chiefs have stabilizing characteristics and looked to as divine authority and have more influence over people and more acceptance from people because they know chiefs aren’t divisive and people trust them. These are the qualities looked for in the chiefs. The colonial and past governments made a mistake by not partnering with them. There is a need to reinstate the chiefs when people go home after the war.

The Chief said that a power struggle occurs when the government tries to silence Chiefs. But even the Chiefs have checks and balances in conducting their work and they use views of their people for judgments. The Chief says “we have to be patient and listen and consult with counsel of elders”. He adds that they are neutral and can’t say “I’m the cultural leader so it’s this”. People don’t even vote for Chiefs because that divides people. People choose them and they are accepted.

Ron gets on the topic land again and says that young thing people need to realize in respect to communal land is that it this is their future. Even if they want to stay in town now or go to school or city, this land is important for them and the home is always there and can be security for them. The Chief agrees that the young ones in the past just had land there so didn’t have to worry about finding land for grazing and hunting. The problem now is people just want land for sale. People born in captivity don’t have identity and don’t know who their father is or where their land is. Giving people psycho-social support and counseling can help people outside of camps have a sense of belonging. People wasting their time if they are giving this support in the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps. Instead, the people in the camps need to be shown where their land is and who their elders are. People born in bush without fathers don’t know. Can’t just say these people are primitive and don’t understand, but need to help remind and educate them that their communities have values and they deserve respect and recognition. All agree that this is the best so as not to alienate them and to do it practically with the elders finding the land and showing it to them rather than the ICC and the government deciding on their future.

That's a lot, but time to head out to work (so tired) and a Rotary meeting (see if we can connect Chaford who we work with),

Adong Maber (take care),

Nikolai Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 12 (7/23)-Jacob “Opiyo” White’s B-Day: Our First Cultural Exchange and the Best Party of My Life

2007-10-27T17:40:00.000-07:00

Baby Opiyo, our groupmate, celebrates his birthday as his father has a celebration for the first twin which includes Acholi cultural dances. Plus, more crazy factoids about Gulu and my family.

“You are so beautiful like a crested crane. Your neck is so long and soft. You have so much beauty.”

These are the words of one of the songs that the Acholi Youth Cultural Dance Group danced to at Jacob “Opiyo” White’s Birthday Party as one of our groupmates, Opiyo, celebrated his 20th birthday on Friday. He got the name Opiyo because he is the first twin and his brother Ochen is the second twin. There are many ceremonies, including a birth pot, for twins and beliefs surrounding them, including if Opiyo gets angry, he has the power to kill Ochen, no matter how far apart they are (Note to Jacob’s brother Nick: keep Jacob happy!?!).

Opiyo’s father went crazy for Opiyo’s party and got him a DJ (who played rap and Kenny Rogers (at Jacob’s request)), the Dance Group to perform, and a ridiculous amount of food, including a cake with two candles, one for each decade (or they say he is only days old now since he was just born into a new family).

The dancing was absolutely amazing and we all participated. In one of the dances, the group sang about a man who had two sons. The first born was a leper and the second was normal, but in Acholi culture, only the first born can marry. The problem was the leper could not find a bride so the father told them both to go and whoever gets a wife and brings her back can marry her. So the leper went right to the river where women were washing clothes and grabbed the most beautiful woman and put her on his back and ran home where the father was preparing the wedding ceremony. So the women married the leper. The next song was about pride and sons and daughters dancing together so it was as interesting.

Another song had these words: “All women’s food does not taste the same as some food is spicy with good sauces and other’s food is not good, but they are all the same because they are all women. All women don’t look the same: some are pretty, some are ugly, but they are all fine because they are all women.”

A Chaford board member told me that the elders would dance to discuss community issues, whereas the kids and others would dance to pass the time and keep the youth together and build relationships. The final two dances were to celebrate a war victory where the boys danced with axes, and another dance, called the Courtship dance, where girls would dance over to a boy and then they would leave the circle and they would sit down and if they accepted each other’s dance/performance/everything then they would get on their knees and touch each other’s faces and heads and then go off for fifteen minutes and then come back later. The boys would also court the girls by putting a large necklace over the girls so it fit over both of them (Note to Self: Get Large Necklaces!).

Basically, the night was extremely memorable and our Professor Ron, who is in town and has lived in Northern Uganda for half of his life doing research and living with the Acholi here (see his book The Roots of Ethnicity: The Origins of the Acholi of Uganda), said that we will never forget this for our entire life. He is right, plus the cake was good.

Time for random factoids about Gulu and My Family:

· More Random Crazy Gulu:

o There is a guy that walks around town naked who we creatively call “Naked Guy”. Rachael’s Dad went to school with him and attributes his nakedness to the “insurgency”, as in he was picked up by the rebels. My brother Tony says he saw him at the Insane Asylum when Toni was with our uncle, and the doctors keep sending Naked Guy back on the street because they do not have the time and are not paid enough to deal with him.

§ Some Highlights include (guess which one didn’t happen):

· I saw him eating a banana

· Susannah saw him walking with a pink flower in the glowing yellow sun

· Jacob had a nice romantic birthday dinner with him

o Tuesdays and Fridays are the official days for people to beg in Gulu. So when those days come around, us “munus/muzungus” (foreigners) are even more popular. I cannot wait to tell the people I work with back in Chicago that countries have designated days for people to beg rather than the freedom to beg any day like in the US, assuming a cop does not throw you in the back of his car for loitering or for existing.

o The old ladies that I give my water bottles too are now discussing and we are working out a system where each one gets my bottle on a different day so they are equally dispersed among the seven of them. Talks are still in place and I have three weeks, but I think it is sustainable...it is not, but any munus here should really save their bottles and give it to them because they are like little recycling centers.

· More Random How Funny My Family Is:

o My brothers went around doing Idi Amin (“The Last King of Scotland” and Ugandan dictator) impressions with chicken bones for an entire dinner.

o My older sister Winnifred asked my mom for three names like white people and my brother Tony said why don’t you be called Adyero Winnifred Museveni (the last name of the Ugandan President)!

o My mother Santa, “Big Momma”, wants me to train her in computers, and she told me her family tree so we are going to try to map that on the computer.

o Everyone still makes fun of me for saying, “so long”, “oh yeah”, and anything else as my slight Wisconsin vernacular is even funny here.

o Lona, my youngest sister (we are both “The Last Born” according to my Dad) is the best tire hula-hooper in the world, but she didn’t know the name for what she was doing so I guess she is the best tire…in the world.

o My family asked me my traditions and I told them our holidays and they laughed.

o On a serious note, my cousin keeps trying to get money from me for school fees, books, shoes, etc. and I have to pass his notes to my father. I can help him, but I do not think I should go around his Uncle.

All happy families are the same...all large families are very funny (see Anna Karenina for the allusive rip-off)...

Apoyo Mate,

Nikolai "The Crested Crane" Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 11 (7/21)-GuluPalooza: Our NGO Site Visits, Ways You Can Help Them

2007-10-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

Gulu has a stimstamzuma (had to make up a word) amount of NGOs and we visited a small portion of them. They are all different, but some are doing a lot of sustainable effective work, but running out of funding so come on for the NGO ride...

Part of our program is visiting NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and there is no better place to do this than Gulu and Northern Uganda as NGOs are everywhere. We learn more about how NGOs operate within a conflict, or now a close-conflict area, and also to see the possibilities of partnerships with Chaford, the organization we work with here.

I think it is important to explain a little bit more about Chaford-Uganda as I learn more about them as the trip goes on since we were not told the full story at first for why they exist. Basically, Chaford, Charity for Rural Development, came about because no one was doing work in Atiak, a region that was absolutely destroyed from the war as it served as the crossroads for the Lord’s Resistance Army (the rebel army) and the military who would engage in heavy fighting in this region. All the board members are from Atiak so they set up Chaford to work with the rural population there. Each of the board members also work with different NGOs or schools and have experience in these fields. Many work with youth so that is a passion that Chaford has, but they do not have a consistent source of funding and are working on and applying for funds for several different projects so those are concerns that they are working on.

The first NGO that we visited was GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organisation (gusco.org)). They welcome anyone at anytime to visit (there were monos (white people) volunteering when we were there). They are an indigenous NGO that started in 1994 to take care of kids under 18 that were captured by the LRA. They have rehabbed 8,200 kids back into the community. They have community outreach operations and also centers (one of which we visited) where they provide clothes, food, counseling and help the children find their families. This is especially difficult with former child soldiers and those captured by the LRA as the parents are often now in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps and they were not in the camps when their children were taken. Once GUSCO reunites the child with their family (either guardians or extended relatives (they have never not found someone's family!), they also help counsel the family and make follow-ups for one year.

The Center has structured activities with a time table for every hours so the children feel busy all the time with the evening being for games and sports. They reminded us that they are a small NGO with not enough funding to pay for the children's school funds, but they help one time with clothes and materials for their formal education. If they come back and can't do formal education, they teach them technical skills. They also train teachers in primary schools with psycho-social support because the kids who have been captured will misbehave in schools.

Child mothers come here too as "they are given to men at a very young age". Here they get money (non-refundable) to start income-generating activities and get training in different activities. A majority of the activities are buying produce and selling it at the market. It is important that GUSCO provides a place for them as some parents do not welcome them back given their pregnancy. The GUSCO representative that was describing this to us pointed to some of the child mothers outside gathering food and water. I looked into the eyes of the babies on their back. They were so big, so full, he has done a lot while on his mom's back, worked, lived, struggled, but he's on there, and he's not crying from seeing me so he's not afraid of "munus" (foreigners). They currently have seven children living at the Center: 5 children from 14-17 and two babies. Six of the children are boys as they told us that there are usually more boys than girls.

They have a 300 kid capacity and they had this for quite some time especially during the military's Operation Iron Fist Campaign (www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/888) and then they would stay for 6-8 weeks. Now and when there are so few kids, they provide much one-on-one care and focus on field work. They also have programs to get kids from the center into town and they call these country walks. Their parents are also allowed to visit and do so. They tell us that the kids come from the Child Protection Unit where they are screened for injuries or diseases. The average stay is 3 weeks though there has even been a kid that stayed for three plus years because of their illnesses.

GUSCO relies on relatives to take care of orphans as the Acholi tradition is a relative takes care of orphans and GUSCO has never fostered a child! They do training for these relatives and work hard to find the families through family tracing rather than relying on the community or the family to find the kid. Some of the ways they would find this information is through rebels who would call and ask the kids who their family was doing or the rebels would ask this on the radio.

We also asked if a family has ever rejected a rehabbed child and they said very few do. We also asked the average time of a child in the Bush and they said it's hard to tell as a child can be abducted and the next day rescued. Child moms have an average time captured of six years. The reason why some kids hesitate coming back is because the rebels tell them that if they come back then the people in the communities will poison them so GUSCO brings support for them until that fear subsides and then the kids are able to open up. They keep them busy with football helps this and on Tuesday and Thursday they have dance and traditional ceremonies.

One of the things we realized walking around there were the walls on the inside of buildings have drawings of helicopters and big guns and gunfire as kids would even stand on windows to draw. GUSCO said when the kids first come to the center they draw things like this from the bush then about half way there they draw about the center like soccer and the dances and then towards the end they draw about wanting to go to school and stuff after the center. You can learn a lot from kids drawings here and what we learned from speaking with an art therapy teacher from the Art Institute in Chicago is that you simply let the child draw what ever is on their mind and don't tell them what to draw or try to interpret what they drew for them, but let them tell you. GUSCO does this as they simply ask them to draw what they think and the class therapy teachers at GUSCO keep the drawings and assess them.

GUSCO has also built two new large permanent housing structures as UNICEF said that they are expecting a lot of youth to come into town if peace is realized, while before there were mostly temporary tent-like structures. They always emphasized that people had freedom here. Also, when we left we saw two white flags on top of their huge protected barbed wire fence that covers the center. They said the meaning of the flags was when the rebels and government signed a cessation of hostilities. Everyone in the North had these flags up for a long time and they were for the kids here as a sign of no more bloodshed and as an expression of peace "that they can just look at each other and that people can be hopeful about peace here". The main offices for GUSCO are also connected to this center and the people on the board interact with people at the center.

The second NGO we visited was the Gulu Youth Center which targets youth (ages 10-24, though you are still considered a youth until 35 in Acholi culture) and kids in school come here for after-school programs while those out of school come here full time. The employee that we spoke with was named Kifola which means misfortunate, but there was a ceremony to lift the curse for all of the names so now she is fortunate. She told us how they are sponsored by Straight Talk, which is a non-profit that is sponsored by UNICEF. One of the main roles of the Youth Center is HIV-AIDS testing and counseling, which occurs on a first come, first serve basis as they open early and there are always tons of youth that come as there are more than the counselors are able to see. They also provide contraceptives, STI drug and treatment, have a radio show, do peer education, and distribute newspapers about issues kids face and social issues like the environment in the Acholi language of Luo and in English.

When we were there, we could see kids inside watching a film about abductions and there were sex awareness drawings and posters all over the building. The drawings were very graphic and had people dancing with their clothes falling off and the girl saying "Does AIDS exist?" and the boy she is dancing with saying "No!". There was also a poster for their Girl Talk which is a girls only discussion that hopefully some of my female group mates get a chance to go too. There are also tons of NGO sponsored posters in both Acholi and English including tons sponsored by the German Foundation for World Population. Most of the posters are saying don't do gift for gift sex which involves being with someone because they give you a cell phone or some gift and then you have to have sex with them. You see the competition of different NGO stances as some say "Always say no to sex", another says "Always say no to premarital sex" and another says "use a condom".

The third NGO we visited was Health Alert-Uganda, a local NGO that serves youth in Northern Uganda with HIV-AIDS. Their entry point are clinics where they follow pregnant moms with HIV-AIDS and ensure that they don't pass it on to their newborns. They disclose the test results to their husbands for them as husbands often have negative reactions to such results. As an organization, they try to figure out the number of youth who have HIV-AIDS as no one has been able to release the figure ("we need an IT wizard'). When we were there, there were about ten Ugandan students doing fieldwork and there would be several more from Concordia in Canada who would be here for two months like us (he said, "this should be longer as the first month you get oriented and then the second month you get al these ideas and then you go"). The walls of their offices, like many other NGOs, were filled with posters about sex, but here there was more of an emphasis on contraceptives, including oral ones, and many newspaper clippings with different treatments that have been discovered.

We spoke with Obutu Francis, their Advocacy/Communications Officer, who told us that they are a small family with more room. He said that their project started in July of 2004 and then they stayed for one year lobbying for funds until Save the Children learned that this local CBO (Community-Based Organization) did not have the capacity to help the increasing numbers of kids testing positive. At first, Health Alert just tested mothers, so Save the Children did work for funding and then in September of 2005 Health Alert received the funding to start working with kids. They began with 67 HIV positive kids in programs; now they have 300 plus! There are many HIV-AIDS NGOs here, but health alert is the only one that zeroes on kids. They bridge the gap between health facilities (hospitals that simply give ARVs (treatment) and don't see the effects of the drugs) and the communities. The communities carry the largest burden as hospitals have few employes and many patients so kids are taken care of by "old grandmas" as their parents died from HIV-AIDS. The knowledge of the grandmas is so little so they don't consider the importance of taking the kids to the hospitals, but instead it is more important that they weed in the garden or attend to burial ceremonies.

So Health Alert educates grandmothers and other guardians on HIV-AIDS and the importance of medicines and a plan for disclosure so the guardian understands why the child is seeing the doctor and taking medicines. Health Alert goes into the community and counts the pills for them and if they see they are few, they remind "the grandmas to go and get more". Health Alert also checks in with the hospitals to see a list of kids who have gone in for drug refills and ensures they take their pills. It is also important to note that the policy to allow testing for kids did not come until 2004 so now they need to push for children to get tested especially if their parents die. These kids need to get tested ASAP so they can get enrolled in treatment and services that are available from government hospitals and different providers as soon as possible.

Obutu also talked about the huge stigmatization that occurs in the community with taking care of a HIV-AIDS child. He said that people have viewed caring for a child with HIV-AIDS as a waste of resources as they saw it as a chronic infection, but Health Alert believes that if they can prolong a life for two days, then it is worth the resources (sounds like Paul Farmer's Partners in Health (www.pih.org), see the book about Farmer called Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder or any of Farmer's books on poverty and health). These kids have rights to medical services and to the information on why they are taking the drugs. The aforementioned stigmatization also meant that often adults would seek medical help and the kdis would be left at home sick. So Health Alert works to fight the stigmitzation and enroll more kids for services as they are the ony organication that goes and finds these kids and tests them (actually they are the first of this kind in Uganda!). Obutu emphasized the important of not waiting for kids to come to them, but going to them and letting them know about treatments and testing.

Members in our group asked if they have experience in far rural places like in the camps, and they said this was a big challenge as they can’t cover all of Gulu district so it depends on their funds. I was thinking that Chaford could partner with them and together they could apply for funds to target kids with HIV-AIDS in far rural places. UNICEF gave emergency funds for one year (this year) to target areas that are hard to reach like Atiak. Health Alert currently needs a donor that will support them in HIV-AIDS counseling and testing. Most donors are encouraging NGOs to implement preemptive programs and not treatment, but there are more needs in the community than simply testing kids. ARVs (anti-retroviral virus) drugs do expire and people are dying in the camps day and night from the lack of active drug treatment, yet rigorous programs that seek out those with HIV-AIDS and monitor their drug use can and have worked to reduce these deaths.

Another way Chaford could partner with Health Alert came up in the discussion of nutrition and the importance of proper nutrition for children with HIV-AIDS. We were helping Chaford with a proposal for a small grant from USAID-VOCA that would provide them with funding to do agriculture and nutrition trainings in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camps, specifically including children affected by HIV-AIDS. USAID recommended that Chaford show partnerships with other NGOs to increase the expertise and resources of their grant proposal. Health Alert described how they have struggled nutrition-wise with the food that the World Food Programme provides for the Camps. The food that they provide is for IDPs and not for kids or those with HIV-AIDS because the food does not have the nutritional value that they need. So Health Alert advocates and is looking for funding to set up a nutrition program for the kids with HIV-AIDS to educate people for why they need the nutrition and the different measurements with the drugs and such. They need to have a “livelihood intervention to strengthen the families and educate them that the most important thing is that they take the drugs and need food with nutrients to do that as the kids are still going”.

He also mentioned that the Camps made NGOs work easy as it was easy to find those with HIV-AIDS. A big problem that they will have to consider is what to do once most people go back. Currently, Health Alert is a part of a consortium of HIV-AIDS organizations that can help them get funds and help the Acholi (the peoples of Gulu) best. Obutu emphasized the importance of this as they share who does what tasks so that they save resources and learn and collaborate and share skills at different partnership meeting that they have. Maybe Chaford should join or advocate for a consortium that focuses on rural development for the camps or one that works for Atiak?

He also described how there are lots of quarrels in the house from HIV-AIDS testing as families will yell at those who may have brought the disease. Obutu says that “Smoke has already entered the home, it doesn’t matter who let it in, let’s get ride of it”. Health Alert then went on to describe another problem of when men use women as litmus papers or use their kids and say if they are negative then I am negative too.

Obutu Francis is a very charismatic man who is known throughout Gulu as people listen to his health reports and advocacy on Mega 102.1, a local radio station. He once had the Minister of Health on the radio to speak and he made him promise to include children with HIV-AIDS in the government’s HIV-AIDS campaign and the Minister said he would. He has worked with many health and children’s organizations before, such as Uganda Red Cross, the International Red Cross, and SOS, an orphanage in Gulu.

Obutu ended with how Health Alert just celebrated Health Alert Day (July 17), which was the day they started, but that now they need funding to keep serving kids with HIV-AIDS in Northern Uganda. Kosko, a field officer for Chaford who was with us, said following Obutu’s talk, “Now we are brothers and sisters. Whatever problems affect me also affect you so we need to give a helping hand to link Health Alert to possible places. So if we can help with proposal writing or we have contacts with people who work with this population then we need to do whatever we can so Health Alert does not die and they can continue to serve the community. So if anyone can help do it”.

Obutu added that Health Alert provides help with their homes visits and follow-ups and seeing if kids are taking their medicines. Also, they help the environment of the kids by setting up school programs to educate students. They do not select schools but go where the kids are that they serve. He emphasized that everyone has been affected or infected by HIV-AIDS and that all our families have cousins so the problems are seen by all even if one’s immediate family has not been infected. He finished with “at the end of the day, all we are doing is to contribute to the community because you come here and it does not mean that there are not problems in the U.S., but here you see the need is so great”.

Telling you about Health Alert is especially important as their funding from DANIDA from 2005 expires in a month and they are trying to find funding or their organization will have to close. If you know of any organizations, foundations, anyone interested in helping children with HIV-AIDS, please e-mail Obutu at healthalertug@yahoo.co.uk.

The most recent NGO that we have visited in Gulu was Heifer International. We saw their sign up North from us so we decided to walk there and find their offices since several of our groups members have purchased cows and such from them as gifts for people. We walked everywhere for an hour and could not find their office and people from shops and other NGOs told us that people were always asking about Heifer (pronounced High-fer by Ugandans). When we found that their old office is now occupied by GUSCO, Rachael and I decided to take out their sign so that no one else would not find them. As we were almost done uprooting the sign, a man jumped off his boda (small motorbike that everyone takes as a taxi everywhere) and asked us why we were taking apart his sign. We told him how it was for “public service” as people would go looking for Heifer and not find it.

He said that their offices had moved down the road and that if someone would have told him, he would have taken down the sign earlier. He introduced himself as Amos, the Public Relations for the Northern Uganda branch of Heifer, and we asked if we could visit the office and exchanged contact information.

So after all that, several days later we visited his office which was just one small room (with a paper cow) in the ACORD, another NGO, offices as he was currently the only staff member for the Northern Uganda branch as they are in the process of expansion. He is hoping that USAID will give funds in September, “God willing”, to begin full operations outside their area and get four more people.

He said that Heifer has not been active lately because the insurgency has taken over the environment of the people they serve and depleted livestock and people have all been captures and forced to live in Camps where they rely on food from the World Food Programme. He said that before the insurgency (the war), every home in Gulu district had livestock and now once they are permitted to go back, Heifer wants to give them livestock to go home with. The numbers demand huge amounts, but the resources are limited.

Heifer gives exotic cows for milk production because if they improve households then it increases their choices rather than simply selling cows to be killed for meat. This is also important as their livestock were mostly left alone by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who stole the cattle at first to kill it for meat, but all Heifer animals are zero grazing which means that they stay in shaded homes and do not walk and so the rebels came to move them and the animals become aggressive and cannot walk so they kill them and the meat is not nice as they are exotic animals used for milk. So the LRA called them “muzungu cows” (foreigner cows; we are also called “muzungus”) and this saved their meat because all their dairy animals were left alone.

Heifer also does gender equity training as in families there is too much animal management that is gender-specific. So instead of doing it alone, they tell people to look collective management and see the animal as the family’s and not just the head of the household’s. This improves the relationships in the home. They also have micro-enterprise groups to sell milk and such from the animals, and most of the people in these are women while men are in animal traction, such as ox-plowing. We also asked what happens when someone in the U.S. buys a cow and he said it goes to a specific family in need.

A very unique aspect of Heifer is the pass on a gift program the family passes on the first female offspring of their animal to another family so it’s a way to sustain the process as beneficiaries become donors and Heifer can pull out of the area in the future. This program is “the benchmark for their operations and for their sustainability”. They trust the community to do it and they have project leaders and extenstion staff of Heifer who provide trainings and monitor the livestock. Amos was very knowledgeable and passionate about Heifer as he received a dairy cow from them and it is still living and he likes community work so he applied to help and he has been working for them for five years now. He is the definition of passing it on.

Some members of our group also visited S.O.S. (sos-childrensvillages.org), an orphanage, which is should not exist in Acholi culture as there is always someone in the extended family to take care of the orphaned child. Even if a member of the extended family would not takes this responsibility at first, social pressure is usually so large on the person that they take the kid in so as not to be ostracized. The fact that there is an orphanage shows how damaging the war has been to these people as there are not even extended family members alive, accessible, and/or capable of taking care of the child.

Finally, we also visited the Invisible Children's (invisiblechildren.com) bracelet making huts at the Camp where we are doing our agriculture skills training. The work at these huts depressed some people in our group as the artists did not have any creativity or initiative or input in what they were doing. They all simply made the same looking black bracelet and all they knew was that people in the US bought these and that some of the money from them would also go to fund students to go to school. Since Invisible Children does not do taxes we cannot be entirely sure where the rest of the money goes, and though this is an income generating activity that is providing income for these people there and letting them work in a shaded hut in their community, what happens when people in the US stop buying these bracelets? To see an organization that does fair trade crafts and clothes well, support Marketplace: Handwork of India (marketplaceindia.org) which always needs interns and which supports the creativity of the artisans who are a part of every facet of the company and are in control of what they sell. Also, see Maya Works (mayaworks.org) and go to 10,000 Villages if you're in Chicago.

Ok that was long, but I thought the visits were fascinating so I'll keep my later entries shorter (I'll try my best).
Afoyo,

Nikolai "The Last Born" AnywarGulu has a stimstamzuma (had to make up a word) amount of NGOs and we visited a small portion of them. They are all different, but some are doing a lot of sustainable effective work, but running out of funding so come on for the NGO ride...

Part of our program is visiting NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and there is no better place to do this than Gulu and Northern Uganda as NGOs are everywhere. We learn more about how NGOs operate within a conflict, or now a close-conflict area, and also to see the possibilities of partnerships with Chaford, the organization we work with here.

I think it is important to explain a little bit more about Chaford-Uganda as I learn more about them as the trip goes on since we were not told the full story at first for why they exist. Basically, Chaford, Charity for Rural Development, came about because no one was doing work in Atiak, a region that was absolutely destroyed from the war as it served as the crossroads for the Lord’s Resistance Army (the rebel army) and the military who would engage in heavy fighting in this region. All the board members are from Atiak so they set up Chaford to work with the rural population there. Each of the board members also work with different NGOs or schools and have experience in these fields. Many work with youth so that is a passion that Chaford has, but they do not have a consistent source of funding and are working on and applying for funds for several different projects so those are concerns that they are working on.

The first NGO that we visited was GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organisation (gusco.org)). They welcome anyone at anytime to visit (there were monos (white people) volunteering when we were there). They are an indigenous NGO that started in 1994 to take care of kids under 18 that were captured by the LRA. They have rehabbed 8,200 kids back into the community. They have community outreach operations and also centers (one of which we visited) where they provide clothes, food, counseling and help the children find their families. This is especially difficult with former child soldiers and those captured by the LRA as the parents are often now in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps and they were not in the camps when their children were taken. Once GUSCO reunites the child with their family (either guardians or extended relatives (they have never not found someone's family!), they also help counsel the family and make follow-ups for one year.

The Center has structured activities with a time table for every hours so the children feel busy all the time with the evening being for games and sports. They reminded us that they are a small NGO with not enough funding to pay for the children's school funds, but they help one time with clothes and materials for their formal education. If they come back and can't do formal education, they teach them technical skills. They also train teachers in primary schools with psycho-social support because the kids who have been captured will misbehave in schools.

Child mothers come here too as "they are given to men at a very young age". Here they get money (non-refundable) to start income-generating activities and get training in different activities. A majority of the activities are buying produce and selling it at the market. It is important that GUSCO provides a place for them as some parents do not welcome them back given their pregnancy. The GUSCO representative that was describing this to us pointed to some of the child mothers outside gathering food and water. I looked into the eyes of the babies on their back. They were so big, so full, he has done a lot while on his mom's back, worked, lived, struggled, but he's on there, and he's not crying from seeing me so he's not afraid of "munus" (foreigners). They currently have seven children living at the Center: 5 children from 14-17 and two babies. Six of the children are boys as they told us that there are usually more boys than girls.

They have a 300 kid capacity and they had this for quite some time especially during the military's Operation Iron Fist Campaign (www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/888) and then they would stay for 6-8 weeks. Now and when there are so few kids, they provide much one-on-one care and focus on field work. They also have programs to get kids from the center into town and they call these country walks. Their parents are also allowed to visit and do so. They tell us that the kids come from the Child Protection Unit where they are screened for injuries or diseases. The average stay is 3 weeks though there has even been a kid that stayed for three plus years because of their illnesses.

GUSCO relies on relatives to take care of orphans as the Acholi tradition is a relative takes care of orphans and GUSCO has never fostered a child! They do training for these relatives and work hard to find the families through family tracing rather than relying on the community or the family to find the kid. Some of the ways they would find this information is through rebels who would call and ask the kids who their family was doing or the rebels would ask this on the radio.

We also asked if a family has ever rejected a rehabbed child and they said very few do. We also asked the average time of a child in the Bush and they said it's hard to tell as a child can be abducted and the next day rescued. Child moms have an average time captured of six years. The reason why some kids hesitate coming back is because the rebels tell them that if they come back then the people in the communities will poison them so GUSCO brings support for them until that fear subsides and then the kids are able to open up. They keep them busy with football helps this and on Tuesday and Thursday they have dance and traditional ceremonies.

One of the things we realized walking around there were the walls on the inside of buildings have drawings of helicopters and big guns and gunfire as kids would even stand on windows to draw. GUSCO said when the kids first come to the center they draw things like this from the bush then about half way there they draw about the center like soccer and the dances and then towards the end they draw about wanting to go to school and stuff after the center. You can learn a lot from kids drawings here and what we learned from speaking with an art therapy teacher from the Art Institute in Chicago is that you simply let the child draw what ever is on their mind and don't tell them what to draw or try to interpret what they drew for them, but let them tell you. GUSCO does this as they simply ask them to draw what they think and the class therapy teachers at GUSCO keep the drawings and assess them.

GUSCO has also built two new large permanent housing structures as UNICEF said that they are expecting a lot of youth to come into town if peace is realized, while before there were mostly temporary tent-like structures. They always emphasized that people had freedom here. Also, when we left we saw two white flags on top of their huge protected barbed wire fence that covers the center. They said the meaning of the flags was when the rebels and government signed a cessation of hostilities. Everyone in the North had these flags up for a long time and they were for the kids here as a sign of no more bloodshed and as an expression of peace "that they can just look at each other and that people can be hopeful about peace here". The main offices for GUSCO are also connected to this center and the people on the board interact with people at the center.

The second NGO we visited was the Gulu Youth Center which targets youth (ages 10-24, though you are still considered a youth until 35 in Acholi culture) and kids in school come here for after-school programs while those out of school come here full time. The employee that we spoke with was named Kifola which means misfortunate, but there was a ceremony to lift the curse for all of the names so now she is fortunate. She told us how they are sponsored by Straight Talk, which is a non-profit that is sponsored by UNICEF. One of the main roles of the Youth Center is HIV-AIDS testing and counseling, which occurs on a first come, first serve basis as they open early and there are always tons of youth that come as there are more than the counselors are able to see. They also provide contraceptives, STI drug and treatment, have a radio show, do peer education, and distribute newspapers about issues kids face and social issues like the environment in the Acholi language of Luo and in English.

When we were there, we could see kids inside watching a film about abductions and there were sex awareness drawings and posters all over the building. The drawings were very graphic and had people dancing with their clothes falling off and the girl saying "Does AIDS exist?" and the boy she is dancing with saying "No!". There was also a poster for their Girl Talk which is a girls only discussion that hopefully some of my female group mates get a chance to go too. There are also tons of NGO sponsored posters in both Acholi and English including tons sponsored by the German Foundation for World Population. Most of the posters are saying don't do gift for gift sex which involves being with someone because they give you a cell phone or some gift and then you have to have sex with them. You see the competition of different NGO stances as some say "Always say no to sex", another says "Always say no to premarital sex" and another says "use a condom".

The third NGO we visited was Health Alert-Uganda, a local NGO that serves youth in Northern Uganda with HIV-AIDS. Their entry point are clinics where they follow pregnant moms with HIV-AIDS and ensure that they don't pass it on to their newborns. They disclose the test results to their husbands for them as husbands often have negative reactions to such results. As an organization, they try to figure out the number of youth who have HIV-AIDS as no one has been able to release the figure ("we need an IT wizard'). When we were there, there were about ten Ugandan students doing fieldwork and there would be several more from Concordia in Canada who would be here for two months like us (he said, "this should be longer as the first month you get oriented and then the second month you get al these ideas and then you go"). The walls of their offices, like many other NGOs, were filled with posters about sex, but here there was more of an emphasis on contraceptives, including oral ones, and many newspaper clippings with different treatments that have been discovered.

We spoke with Obutu Francis, their Advocacy/Communications Officer, who told us that they are a small family with more room. He said that their project started in July of 2004 and then they stayed for one year lobbying for funds until Save the Children learned that this local CBO (Community-Based Organization) did not have the capacity to help the increasing numbers of kids testing positive. At first, Health Alert just tested mothers, so Save the Children did work for funding and then in September of 2005 Health Alert received the funding to start working with kids. They began with 67 HIV positive kids in programs; now they have 300 plus! There are many HIV-AIDS NGOs here, but health alert is the only one that zeroes on kids. They bridge the gap between health facilities (hospitals that simply give ARVs (treatment) and don't see the effects of the drugs) and the communities. The communities carry the largest burden as hospitals have few employes and many patients so kids are taken care of by "old grandmas" as their parents died from HIV-AIDS. The knowledge of the grandmas is so little so they don't consider the importance of taking the kids to the hospitals, but instead it is more important that they weed in the garden or attend to burial ceremonies.

So Health Alert educates grandmothers and other guardians on HIV-AIDS and the importance of medicines and a plan for disclosure so the guardian understands why the child is seeing the doctor and taking medicines. Health Alert goes into the community and counts the pills for them and if they see they are few, they remind "the grandmas to go and get more". Health Alert also checks in with the hospitals to see a list of kids who have gone in for drug refills and ensures they take their pills. It is also important to note that the policy to allow testing for kids did not come until 2004 so now they need to push for children to get tested especially if their parents die. These kids need to get tested ASAP so they can get enrolled in treatment and services that are available from government hospitals and different providers as soon as possible.

Obutu also talked about the huge stigmatization that occurs in the community with taking care of a HIV-AIDS child. He said that people have viewed caring for a child with HIV-AIDS as a waste of resources as they saw it as a chronic infection, but Health Alert believes that if they can prolong a life for two days, then it is worth the resources (sounds like Paul Farmer's Partners in Health (www.pih.org), see the book about Farmer called Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder or any of Farmer's books on poverty and health). These kids have rights to medical services and to the information on why they are taking the drugs. The aforementioned stigmatization also meant that often adults would seek medical help and the kdis would be left at home sick. So Health Alert works to fight the stigmitzation and enroll more kids for services as they are the ony organication that goes and finds these kids and tests them (actually they are the first of this kind in Uganda!). Obutu emphasized the important of not waiting for kids to come to them, but going to them and letting them know about treatments and testing.

Members in our group asked if they have experience in far rural places like in the camps, and they said this was a big challenge as they can’t cover all of Gulu district so it depends on their funds. I was thinking that Chaford could partner with them and together they could apply for funds to target kids with HIV-AIDS in far rural places. UNICEF gave emergency funds for one year (this year) to target areas that are hard to reach like Atiak. Health Alert currently needs a donor that will support them in HIV-AIDS counseling and testing. Most donors are encouraging NGOs to implement preemptive programs and not treatment, but there are more needs in the community than simply testing kids. ARVs (anti-retroviral virus) drugs do expire and people are dying in the camps day and night from the lack of active drug treatment, yet rigorous programs that seek out those with HIV-AIDS and monitor their drug use can and have worked to reduce these deaths.

Another way Chaford could partner with Health Alert came up in the discussion of nutrition and the importance of proper nutrition for children with HIV-AIDS. We were helping Chaford with a proposal for a small grant from USAID-VOCA that would provide them with funding to do agriculture and nutrition trainings in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camps, specifically including children affected by HIV-AIDS. USAID recommended that Chaford show partnerships with other NGOs to increase the expertise and resources of their grant proposal. Health Alert described how they have struggled nutrition-wise with the food that the World Food Programme provides for the Camps. The food that they provide is for IDPs and not for kids or those with HIV-AIDS because the food does not have the nutritional value that they need. So Health Alert advocates and is looking for funding to set up a nutrition program for the kids with HIV-AIDS to educate people for why they need the nutrition and the different measurements with the drugs and such. They need to have a “livelihood intervention to strengthen the families and educate them that the most important thing is that they take the drugs and need food with nutrients to do that as the kids are still going”.

He also mentioned that the Camps made NGOs work easy as it was easy to find those with HIV-AIDS. A big problem that they will have to consider is what to do once most people go back. Currently, Health Alert is a part of a consortium of HIV-AIDS organizations that can help them get funds and help the Acholi (the peoples of Gulu) best. Obutu emphasized the importance of this as they share who does what tasks so that they save resources and learn and collaborate and share skills at different partnership meeting that they have. Maybe Chaford should join or advocate for a consortium that focuses on rural development for the camps or one that works for Atiak?

He also described how there are lots of quarrels in the house from HIV-AIDS testing as families will yell at those who may have brought the disease. Obutu says that “Smoke has already entered the home, it doesn’t matter who let it in, let’s get ride of it”. Health Alert then went on to describe another problem of when men use women as litmus papers or use their kids and say if they are negative then I am negative too.

Obutu Francis is a very charismatic man who is known throughout Gulu as people listen to his health reports and advocacy on Mega 102.1, a local radio station. He once had the Minister of Health on the radio to speak and he made him promise to include children with HIV-AIDS in the government’s HIV-AIDS campaign and the Minister said he would. He has worked with many health and children’s organizations before, such as Uganda Red Cross, the International Red Cross, and SOS, an orphanage in Gulu.

Obutu ended with how Health Alert just celebrated Health Alert Day (July 17), which was the day they started, but that now they need funding to keep serving kids with HIV-AIDS in Northern Uganda. Kosko, a field officer for Chaford who was with us, said following Obutu’s talk, “Now we are brothers and sisters. Whatever problems affect me also affect you so we need to give a helping hand to link Health Alert to possible places. So if we can help with proposal writing or we have contacts with people who work with this population then we need to do whatever we can so Health Alert does not die and they can continue to serve the community. So if anyone can help do it”.

Obutu added that Health Alert provides help with their homes visits and follow-ups and seeing if kids are taking their medicines. Also, they help the environment of the kids by setting up school programs to educate students. They do not select schools but go where the kids are that they serve. He emphasized that everyone has been affected or infected by HIV-AIDS and that all our families have cousins so the problems are seen by all even if one’s immediate family has not been infected. He finished with “at the end of the day, all we are doing is to contribute to the community because you come here and it does not mean that there are not problems in the U.S., but here you see the need is so great”.

Telling you about Health Alert is especially important as their funding from DANIDA from 2005 expires in a month and they are trying to find funding or their organization will have to close. If you know of any organizations, foundations, anyone interested in helping children with HIV-AIDS, please e-mail Obutu at healthalertug@yahoo.co.uk.

The most recent NGO that we have visited in Gulu was Heifer International. We saw their sign up North from us so we decided to walk there and find their offices since several of our groups members have purchased cows and such from them as gifts for people. We walked everywhere for an hour and could not find their office and people from shops and other NGOs told us that people were always asking about Heifer (pronounced High-fer by Ugandans). When we found that their old office is now occupied by GUSCO, Rachael and I decided to take out their sign so that no one else would not find them. As we were almost done uprooting the sign, a man jumped off his boda (small motorbike that everyone takes as a taxi everywhere) and asked us why we were taking apart his sign. We told him how it was for “public service” as people would go looking for Heifer and not find it.

He said that their offices had moved down the road and that if someone would have told him, he would have taken down the sign earlier. He introduced himself as Amos, the Public Relations for the Northern Uganda branch of Heifer, and we asked if we could visit the office and exchanged contact information.

So after all that, several days later we visited his office which was just one small room (with a paper cow) in the ACORD, another NGO, offices as he was currently the only staff member for the Northern Uganda branch as they are in the process of expansion. He is hoping that USAID will give funds in September, “God willing”, to begin full operations outside their area and get four more people.

He said that Heifer has not been active lately because the insurgency has taken over the environment of the people they serve and depleted livestock and people have all been captures and forced to live in Camps where they rely on food from the World Food Programme. He said that before the insurgency (the war), every home in Gulu district had livestock and now once they are permitted to go back, Heifer wants to give them livestock to go home with. The numbers demand huge amounts, but the resources are limited.

Heifer gives exotic cows for milk production because if they improve households then it increases their choices rather than simply selling cows to be killed for meat. This is also important as their livestock were mostly left alone by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who stole the cattle at first to kill it for meat, but all Heifer animals are zero grazing which means that they stay in shaded homes and do not walk and so the rebels came to move them and the animals become aggressive and cannot walk so they kill them and the meat is not nice as they are exotic animals used for milk. So the LRA called them “muzungu cows” (foreigner cows; we are also called “muzungus”) and this saved their meat because all their dairy animals were left alone.

Heifer also does gender equity training as in families there is too much animal management that is gender-specific. So instead of doing it alone, they tell people to look collective management and see the animal as the family’s and not just the head of the household’s. This improves the relationships in the home. They also have micro-enterprise groups to sell milk and such from the animals, and most of the people in these are women while men are in animal traction, such as ox-plowing. We also asked what happens when someone in the U.S. buys a cow and he said it goes to a specific family in need.

A very unique aspect of Heifer is the pass on a gift program the family passes on the first female offspring of their animal to another family so it’s a way to sustain the process as beneficiaries become donors and Heifer can pull out of the area in the future. This program is “the benchmark for their operations and for their sustainability”. They trust the community to do it and they have project leaders and extenstion staff of Heifer who provide trainings and monitor the livestock. Amos was very knowledgeable and passionate about Heifer as he received a dairy cow from them and it is still living and he likes community work so he applied to help and he has been working for them for five years now. He is the definition of passing it on.

Some members of our group also visited S.O.S. (sos-childrensvillages.org), an orphanage, which is should not exist in Acholi culture as there is always someone in the extended family to take care of the orphaned child. Even if a member of the extended family would not takes this responsibility at first, social pressure is usually so large on the person that they take the kid in so as not to be ostracized. The fact that there is an orphanage shows how damaging the war has been to these people as there are not even extended family members alive, accessible, and/or capable of taking care of the child.

Finally, we also visited the Invisible Children's (invisiblechildren.com) bracelet making huts at the Camp where we are doing our agriculture skills training. The work at these huts depressed some people in our group as the artists did not have any creativity or initiative or input in what they were doing. They all simply made the same looking black bracelet and all they knew was that people in the US bought these and that some of the money from them would also go to fund students to go to school. Since Invisible Children does not do taxes we cannot be entirely sure where the rest of the money goes, and though this is an income generating activity that is providing income for these people there and letting them work in a shaded hut in their community, what happens when people in the US stop buying these bracelets? To see an organization that does fair trade crafts and clothes well, support Marketplace: Handwork of India (marketplaceindia.org) which always needs interns and which supports the creativity of the artisans who are a part of every facet of the company and are in control of what they sell. Also, see Maya Works (mayaworks.org) and go to 10,000 Villages if you're in Chicago.

Ok that was long, but I thought the visits were fascinating so I'll keep my later entries shorter (I'll try my best).
Afoyo,

Nikolai "The Last Born" Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 10 (7/17): Ways You and I Connect Communities

2007-10-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

Ways you have and ways you can continue to help us connect our community here in Gulu to your home!

Nathaniel, our program director, talked about how these blogs and this trip as a whole can create bridges for those back home and to make them care about the people and societies that we are living with and in. Especially, given that we live in such a media-saturated world where people constantly hear about “the worst humanitarian crisis” or “the crisis no one knows about”, it is important to have something to connect to and care about because we simply are not capable of knowing and caring about everything.

This thought about the importance of creating bridges from here to home has come up for me many times. I have realized that these bridges have been created in my own life through previous trips that I have been and through this one as I do not think my family would know about (and thus, have the ability to care about) Northern Uganda if I was not here (and probably me neither). My mother sold products from Maya Works, not because she visited the store due to her love for Mayan crafts, but because I met Mayan widows at the Mission I volunteered at in Guatemala who relied on selling these crafts for their livelihood. We are able to give our families and friends the ability to engage with these communities in a new context!

Friends of our group have already responded. A friend from my old high school donated three PDAs for our computer training, Rachel’s family’s friend has provided us with countless computer programs and resources, and Sophie’s friends have donated a laptop! To keep this spirit of connecting communities going as we still have almost a month of work to be done with students on our computer training project, below is a description of our project so please send it to anyone. Afoyo mate:

Brief Description of Our Project:

We are a group of six Northwestern University Undergraduates doing computer trainings with the secondary school (high-school) Alliance in Gulu in Northern Uganda. Many of the students (60-70%) at the school walk to the school from Internally Displaced Persons Camps, which are refugee camps where they are forced to live because of the 22-year old war that has completely changed the way of life for people in Northern Uganda.

We will be helping the one computer teacher at the school train the students in basic computer skills, Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, and the Internet. The school has five computers and only one of them has internet. We are also bringing a laptop and PDAs that were donated so as many kids can be trained and have practice as possible. Any help with computer training programs, donations of computer products, anything would be greatly appreciated and please pass this on to anyone you know. My e-mail is smith.nikolai@gmail.com

Afoyo Mate,

Nikolai Anywar “The Last-Lost Born”

Uganda Blog Post 9 (7/12): Gulu Rhapsody: My siblings' words/drawings, desensitization/student, and Malcolm X

2007-10-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

I try to finish typing about all these NGO visits (I'll talk about them soon), but my siblings distract me so here are their words/descriptions of their drawings and random thoughts I've had with a Malcolm X quote to top off the Queen song. Also, for photos of my family, go to: northwestern.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081853&l=1cfe5&id=2412657 More to come, they love taking photos.

I come home to type my thoughts so then I don't have to sit in an internet café and do it (so I save money, my older brother's idea). This means that I sit and listen to Arcade Fire in our little family room as half my siblings watch me. I gave them paper to draw and they asked what to draw and I told them just draw their gon or pacho (words for "home") so that I could type up my notes from visiting NGOs.

Ochii Okello, my 15 year old cousin, drew a map of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (that he copied from a newspaper on the table), but he also drew a hut with a door under the map that was about the size of his Uganda. He said that this was his home in the village and that was the first time any of my siblings under 18 had talked about their home (as they have not learned much English in school). He came up and put his hands in his pockets and his head down and told me about his father who is a drunk and his mom who lives in the camp with his 6 brothers and 3 sisters. He asked if I would be his brother forever. Lona laughed at the word camp, she also is now dancing across the floor to Beck. She likes all my music.

Lona, my youngest sibling at 6, drew a large three story house with lots of windows but then people and her name and trees around it, but also guns and a woman getting shot by a man and the word fire and flames and for the first time here I cried and I couldn't stop crying and I hate this damn war and all she does is smile when I ask her what she drew and she goes on to keep drawing and smiling and dancing and hula hoping with a bike tire to the Bob Marley I am playing now and her dress she wears every day with her bald head as all the kids in primary school have to shave their head.

This did not keep them occupied enough so they watch me type now and wanted me to type what they say so here is what they are saying (in both Luo and English, my sister translated):

Fred (7) is a big tall large man. Fred is the biggest, tallest, largest man in the world. Fred can dunk on a basketball hoop that is 4000 meters high.

Lona (6) is a big tall large woman. Lona is the best basketball player at Carribean Yards. She dunks on all the guys.

Okello (15) is the best football player in all the land. Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool all wanted him on their team, but he said "no", I play for Nicky's team, and I won't join yours.

Nicky Smith Anywar (20) is the smallest, tiniest, little man in the world.

Fred fred lolakica ojok fred fred euneice apiyo lona mary Massimo priska akello ochii (their and their sibling's names)

Jesus mary joseph holy rosary church (the church here)
Ojok Fred. Jesus. Pepe cocktail pepe (lona typed this, her favorite movie)

John nicky anywar fred ochii lona ocii jasus

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY AND Z

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Ok, time for two random thoughts I have had that I can't get rid off: desensitization and wanting to do more, but still a student learning:

I was reading my friend Rajni's blog (http://rajni.vox.com) as she is doing work at a school in India and she talked about the desensitization that she has experienced from seeing all the poor in India and simply walking by it and turning one's face like everyone else. I did the same thing when I walked and drove throughout India, but I would look too long and the images don't leave my mind. It is the same with visiting the camps here. I throw around the term IDP Camps and child soldiers and kids with HIV-AIDS that I forget to think about why these people are suffering. We have few discussions over why the military and government and LRA did such things, but instead we talk about them as facts and label them, and we have not been discussing enough of what people are actually experiencing and why people are experiencing it. And now when I think about it, and about how much it takes to correct it (given the lack of government assistance), my head cannot handle it all. So I push aside or turn my head and I can just talk about these labels and the NGOs that use them and respond to it and there are so many of them and I can see the work they do and the results, but is it enough or has this war done too much damage, too much destruction to this entire region of a country.
Another thought which Jacob and I had was how we want to make as much change as we can. We both want to be senators because it is a way to make structural change and too many of our political leaders don't care about people and don't recognize how many lives they can change with policy and with listening to the people and providing for the least (so many preventable diseases kill so many, so many kids go to schools that are violent, under funded, understaffed, so many problems for the richest country in the world with 11 trillion dollars!). I hear people's stories everywhere from the projects in Chicago to the rural communities in Guatemala and the people here and they all tell us their story as we "will be the future leaders and we can make the change". I feel an obligation to do that since I am so fortunate with my background and education to do something, just what do I do now, I learn, listen and keep going, looking for ways I can do things now as a student.

On a brighter note, I'd like to end with one of my favorite quotes from Malcolm X (read the Auto-biography, please). Salaam...

In an interview with Gordon Parks in 1965 Malcolm X revealed:

"I realized racism isn't just a black and white problem. It's brought bloodbaths to about every nation on earth at one time or another."
He stopped and remained silent for a few moments, then stated,

"Brother, remember the time that white college girl came into the restaurant -- the one who wanted to help the Muslims and the whites get together -- and I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying?"
He also later reflected:

"Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a [black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then -- like all [black] Muslims -- I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me twelve years."
"That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those days -- I'm glad to be free of them."

Uganda Blog Post 8 (7/10): Project Update and War and Life with My Host Family

2007-10-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

An update on our computer training project, with questions for you, and my favorite part of the trip: life with my host family as my mother opened up for the first time today about her experiences with and thoughts about the war.

Today, we visited the school where we will be doing computer training, and we discussed ideas for doing training not only for people within the school and for Chaford's Board, but also for other people in the community. We will have to think of sustainable ways to do this in the future as Chaford warned us against providing this training for students at other schools who don't have access to computers and who would not be able to practice what they learned outside of the trainings.

We were thinking of renting out an internet cafe for an hour or contacting NGOs with computers (though they apparently "never do this") so we are still brainstorming ideas. If you have any ideas or know where to find free programs online, such as anti-virus software, typing practice, Excel or Access training, etc., or if you would like to donate your laptop, printer, scanner, etc. let me know as they are very much needed.

I will talk more about our project as it develops and about all the different NGOs that we have visited in the past week (tons of interesting ones including a funny story of how we met the Heifer Public Relations Director by tearing down their sign!). For now, I have to type about my host family as they are always on my mind (I am missing basketball with them tonight to type this!).

The most amazing part of this trip so far has been time with my host family. I have tons of siblings who will play loud music on the radio and all break out in dance (I have tons of photos which I hope to provide you with a link too soon). For some reason, this only happens when my parents are gone, but they are often gone on the weekends as my father travels throughout the area watching and advising teachers as he is the Director of the National Teacher's College.

He and my mom also were gone this weekend to drive to a town several hours away to see Mary, yes the mother of God. She comes to this tree outside of a church there and people see her and she comes at this same time every year. He told me he saw her in a star and pointed the star to me. My mother mentioned how she is moving throughout the area and people are drawing her. I wanted to mention about the image of Mary that was seen on the underpass of the Fullerton exit on the highway in Chicago (which turned out to be a salt stain, but where there are still flowers and candles and people praying) or how Mary probably didn't actually look like a blue eyed, brown-hair, white women, but more Arab looking (as I learned from a National Geographic special).

I learned to just not get into such things, but my family does surprisingly let me share a lot about myself, my country and my controversial views on things (like why I disagree with the Catholic Church and why I "believe" in evolution).
I shared a book about Civil Disobedience called Love in Action by a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk with my sister and the book A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela with my brother. Also, I am just finishing up Pedagogy of the Oppressed (an absolutely amazing book on using education to empower all people, especially the oppressed) with my father as he and I are always brainstorming ideas to get students in this area to think more critically.

I read in the paper how a district to the South called Jinja (where another of our groups are working, Liz's blog) hooked up with the major Ugandan newspaper The Daily Monitor to distribute newspapers to the secondary schools. As we drank tea (my father from his Chicago mug which I bought at O'Hare), I discussed with my father ideas to get them to distribute this paper to schools in Gulu, especially as he said that students in these schools have had their studies disrupted from the war from materials, buildings and just the entire way of life "destroyed".

My mother is also jumping on my idea wagon as I noticed how many bottles of water I drink and that no one recycles the bottles here. Yet, as I walk to work in the morning, there are several old women along the market street who sell bottles to people to put cooking oil, homemade alcohol and other liquids in. Now, she and the other members of my group are saving our bottles to give to these women in a grassroots informal recycling effort. If any other monos (white people) in Gulu are reading this, please save your bottles and give them to the ladies to the east of the main market.

All the other family members are doing great. The past couple days I have come home from work early and my 7, 15, 17, 19, and 26-year old brothers and my 6 year old sister have all walked down to the local basketball and football courts (aka a field of dirt called Carribean Yards where people practice driving and where the hoops are made out of wooden planks). I have been reading a lot about the National Basketball Association's International Community Outreach Program called Basketball Without Borders, and Jacob and I are trying to get in touch with the NBA to consider doing one of their projects, such as setting up a youth center in Gulu that could also serve as a center for HIV/AIDS and conflict resolution education (we took photos yesterday of Lona, my youngest sister, sitting in one of the rims of the hoops that had fallen over!).

And don't worry, the turkeys are doing great. They walk blocks away from the home sometime as I can see them in the distance but they always return as they are well-fed. One of our chickens was not so lucky as my brother and I killed him for our dinner.

This morning, my mom, "Big Momma" (which Emily's mom is also called), talked to me about the LRA (the Lord's Resistance Army, the rebel army here that is fighting the military in the North) for a while this morning at breakfast. She told me how they came to her mother's house and robbed her of all of her possessions from her cows and goats to her plates and bowls. When she came to her mom's hut, her mom was crying and said they might as well have killed me. My mom here told her that your life is more important than all those as "who will tend the goats and put food on the plates if you are dead. You are what matters."

She also told me about how they would abduct children and people from her village to act as slaves. They would force those that they captured to walk through the Bush carrying the supplies of the LRA. She said, "They would make them carry very heavy things like beans or sugar that they stole from the village, and when the people would get tired or fall sick, they would kill them and leave their bodies there". She mentioned how the people, a majority being children, that would survive this and would get back into a town would have to go to a hospital as they would have cuts all throughout her body. She also described how they would take young girls who they would later use as sex slaves and they would become child mothers.
I could see the tears line around her eyes, though she didn't cry, as she told me about this. This was the first time anyone in my family went into specifics about what the LRA has done and about graphic acts of violence that she saw the effects of firsthand. Her family fled the village and she is now taking care of the children of her siblings (my cousins) whose parents are still in the camp.

She and my father (and some of the parents of my group mates) have told me several times that they want to take me to their villages and that they will move back there once the war is over. My father has described how the military came and took his cows and goats and how the people fear both the LRA and the military when they came as they would both steal. Both of my parents tell me about how they used to farm and the animals they had and how life was better before and things were cheaper at the market and that the war has changed everything.

We have been told that our host families are the rich ones, who have good positions in society and were able to "escape" from their villages. Yet, it seems no one is spared from the effects of this war and that is has changed everyone here.
I read in the paper a couple days ago that the LRA and the Ugandan Government just signed the third phase of the five phase peace deal. It has been a year since peace talks have begun and I have heard a mixture of reactions to the question of "Will there be peace?"

These people need peace, the war needs to end, but I do not know what will happen to those who have nothing to return too, whose homes have been destroyed and everything taken, who cannot simply buy new goats and cows like my father can.
I don't know.

I need to go home, these mosquitoes (or mo-keet-os as they say here with no q or s in the Luo alphabet) are annoying. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the NGOs we have visited and other funny words that get lost in pronunciation (like how our language teacher asked us if we wanted to go to the "Joo" (he meant zoo, but there's no Z's either!)).

Boot Maber (good night),

Nicky Mit (no H or S in Luo) Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 7 (7/9): "Working" in an IDP Camp and Changing our Project

2007-10-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

So last Friday we went to the Koro IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp about a 20 minute drive from where we live. Like our visit to the Unyama Camp the previous week, we had to go meet with the district leaders to get permission to visit the Camp and again, we were granted permission given the "work we were going to do as an NGO".

The reason I put "working" in quotes is because we were not really working. We were going to the Camp for the first time to meet the people that we would be doing our Skills Training and Agriculture Income Generating Activity with. We knew that our first time at the camp would just involve be meeting the people, preparing the nursery bed for the seeds, planting the seeds, and not getting too much in the way. Yet, we were told that we would be working with 20 youth (around secondary school ages, such as 17-20) who did not know much about agriculture and of which half would be women.

Instead, we found a group of under 15 people, which consisted of a few women, a vast range of agricultural skill levels (including working on a farm from the time a man was six), and ages that ranged from 17-35. Our Program Coordinator with Chaford, who contacted the youth leader at the Camp to identify and form a group of 20 youths, said that it was very difficult for the youth leader to attract youth to do agriculture. This was not our only concern with the project as we felt like we were getting in the way as the "youth" knew what they were doing and the people at Chaford would speak to us in English about the preparing the seed bed and planting the seeds. We are here to learn, but we also want to contribute our assets and learn without hindering the benefits of those we are working with. We also felt that this was a project that Chaford could largely do without us (and had set up without us) and that we were essentially simply contributing funds, something else we did not come here just to do. Finally, the language barrier and gap in agricultural knowledge between us and the participants were too large. Many of us were frustrated due to all of this and met to discuss ways that we could contribute to the Camp in a different way or to work on another project entirely.

As a result, we will still contribute funds for the Agriculture project and we will visit the Camp once a week to help where we can. We are planning to work with a local high school to educate teachers and students about computer skills (which we all have) from typing to Powerpoint to Word. We will also work with this school to see if they are willing to allow us to bring kids from the Camp to the school and to train them as well. We will also pursue side projects, such as an arts initiative at the Camp or coaching a youth sports team.

I will keep you posted on how these projects go and in my next post, I will talk about the three different NGOs we have visited thus far. Talk to you then.

Adong Maber (stay safe),

Nicky Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 6 (7/7): Firsts: Visiting One IDP Camp; Working in Another

2007-10-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on our visit last Saturday to Unyama Camp, an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Northern Uganda, and then thoughts from our first trip this Friday to Koro Camp, the site of our field work. To see photos from our visit to Camp Unyama, see http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081703&l=63bd4&id=2412657

Due to the slow internet, frequent, random blackouts, and an overall busy schedule, thoughts from our first visit to an IDP Camp, which was to Unyama last Saturday, have not been typed. I wrote them in my journal last Sunday and I want to share them as they can show the change in thoughts from an immediate reaction to a Camp, and then thinking about working in a Camp and the longer reflection that it takes. So my thoughts from last week's first-ever visit:

"On Sunday morning, as I was in Mass with my host father, I used the time to meditate/pray over/think about what was saw in the Camp yesterday. It was one of those experiences of my life where it was too much to think about and where I thinking about challenging, reaffirming or changing every part of my life in some way. Then, I just want to cry, not out of sadness necessarily, but because it is just simply too much: too much to empathize with, too much to solve with a project or a policy or hundreds of them. The effects of a 22-year war in which almost TWO MILLION PEOPLE have been internally displaced and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE have died and visiting a camp that is very representative of the negative effects of this are just too much to think about, respond to, or understand/empathize with for a visiting American student.

This is just one of fifty plus camps and there were too many kids, too many adults, and too many huts that went on for as long as the eye could see and they were too close together and there were too few projects and NGOs and this war needs to end, but will that end this? Will the people return to their respective villages and homes peacefully? Or will many people just form smaller camps on the outskirts of their villages and do like others who have started to go home? I have heard that every war has its end, but there are too many children who have grown up only knowing this war and our host families all talk about "life before the war". Is this what life is? People should not live like this!"

Ok, I was planning on putting my thoughts since that initial first reaction to the Camp and our firs trip to the Camp where we are doing our field work, but typing the previous past reflection took enough out of me for today so I'm going to go play football/basketball/seven stones/frisbee/jump-roping with my host brothers and Jacob now. I'll post about those other thoughts later when I don't feel like crap.

Afoyo,
Nicky Anywar

Uganda Blog Post 5 (7/4): Our Project-Agriculture Skills Training

2007-10-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

How Ugandans are celebrating July 4th (big stuff) and specifics on the project we will be working on for six weeks.

Shouts of joy from children screaming with happiness and adults shaking hands and pumping fists of robust excitement fill the streets as everyone here is celebrating the glorious 4th of July, the great hegemony's Birthday Bash. There is a giant Oreo Ice Cream Cake filled with justice and peace in the Gulu City Center with 231 huge, glowing candles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All of the American monos (white people) here are getting carried through the streets, including myself as I am typing this...

Ok, I had to have a little fun before work. Happy 4th of July and all, but no one here cares so I'll move on to the project our group is working on.

Five students and I are working with a community-based organization called Chaford (Charity for Rural Development) on a Skills Training and Agriculture Income Generating Activity. Chaford has contacted a community leader at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp called Koro just North of where we are located. He has organized a group of 20 youths who are at the secondary school age level (high-school), but who do not have access to secondary school because there is none at their camp. We will be providing the supplies (tools, seeds, fertilizers, etc.) for the project and we will work with Chaford to train the youths about not only agronomics, but also group dynamics and different business skills training from savings to selling at markets.

We will do a training session once a week and will visit the camp as much as we can to help where we can and also for the monitoring and evaluating of the project. All the manuals that we will hand out will be in Luo (the language of the Acholi) and we will have to depend largely on translators in working with the youths, but our Luo language lessons will soon focus on vocabulary about agriculture and for the project work.

I have to go to work at Chaford now, but I will be posting soon about our recent trip to an IDP Camp, which was this past Saturday.

Afoyo Mate,
Nikolai Anywar

4th Uganda Blog Post (7/1): Life in Gulu and with Our Families

2007-10-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

A week’s worth of thoughts about life in Gulu and life with our families. Posts to come on our visit to an IDP Camp and the projects we will be doing...

Sorry that this is the longest and most thought-filled and random journal post that I have made. In the next couple days, I will also be posting about the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp that we visited on Saturday and a post about the projects that our group of students we will be doing with Chaford (Charity for Rural Development).

I have been wanting to try (it is hard to put it in a text box) to describe my family and Gulu Town (where the students in my group and I live and work) to you since we have been here. We have only been here a week now, but I feel it has been a month like how I felt in Guatemala and other experiences I have had abroad where there is less of an emphasis on time and people aren't constantly checking their watches and pdas and in front of laptops all day. Gulu is similar to towns throughout the world in ways, but it is truly different from anywhere I have ever been. Here are the things that stick out the most for me: My family is absolutely freaking amazing or kope mate (very great) as they say in Luo. There are 12 of us total and a female turkey who sits in a laundry basket on top of 6 recently hatched (three days ago) baby turkeys (does one call them chicks or what?) and other unhatched eggs and then 5 bigger turkeys (including Papa turkey or Gobbles as I call him) in a cage. Two nights ago a couple street cats came under our gate door and were going crazy at the turkeys (and I mean crazy, the loudest hisses and “reowwwwws” I have ever heard). As you can tell, I am quite fond of the turkeys.

I also love my family as Toni, the eldest son at 26, speaks the best English out of the family and calls me Smith as we talk for hours about everything. He works for Invisible Children, an NGO here that works with youth that have been affected by the war. Recently, we talked about how he doesn’t like Shakespeare since he can’t relate to his poems (“the smells of strawberries, the cold of the winter, and all those Thous and Thees) and the different “camps” that have occurred in the past century, such as the camps here in Northern Uganda, the Jewish Concentration Camps, Native American Reservations in the US, and refugee camps throughout Africa and the world. He has many thoughts on NGOs and he is very conscious of the situation that his people are facing in the North.

My father, David (same name as my real dad and brother), is a very, very tall man with a big smile and laughter that travels lightly throughout a room. He is very Catholic (we went to mass this morning) and is the Director of the National Teacher’s College, which is actually located in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp that we visited on Saturday (I interrupted his meeting as he ran out to greet me). He moved from Gulu when the war started to Entebbe where he taught at a school by Lake Victoria and then to Kampala where he taught President Museveni’s son who rumors say may run for President in time. My father moved back to Gulu seven years ago where he build a huge compound that houses all his children (9), six cousins, and me and the turkeys. He wants to show me the village where his family’s (our family as he says) land is and where he will plant and have cows once the war is over. He also likes the Beatles and dislikes the President and government of Uganda. All in all, he and the rest of the family are amazing (also, my mom, Santa (I wish it was pronounced the fun way), is a huge smiling women who burps and spits and is amazingly kind).

Hearing about the families that other NU students are staying with is amazing too as Emily’s had her cut a rooster’s head off on Saturday and prepare it, Rachel’s father takes her out for beers with his friends (though he doesn’t drink; I’m invited!!), Jacob’s had a chess tournament in which Jacob’s father beat him in the championship, Allie’s sister took her to church today, and Sophie has a bunch of different people living with her so she can tell you about that sometime ha.

We have discussed the different frustrations living with out host families and a big theme seems to be addressing and responding to things that we see as wrong or want to change and that seem hard for us to do anything about it since they are part of the culture. For instance, many of us have had problems with the gender divide that occurs in our homes where the women serve the men and the men largely sit around and do not do much in the homes. Allie’s blog on the Center for Global Engagement (CGE) website goes into this divide more so check it out at the CGE website. Also, Jacob and I and others in the group have tried to do things on our own rather than be served, but often we are treated as a special guest rather than a member of the family. I also hold back on really telling my father what I think about religion (how I am not fully Catholic, but still questioning if there is a higher power), but I can discuss my qualms with the Church and what I like about it with Toni. So it works out.

Ah, I could go on about my family forever but I need to go eat dinner with them (we eat late, 9 o clock late, and they try to make us all fat so here comes a big meal) so on to some thoughts on what life in Gulu town is like... NGOs (non-governmental organizations (hey, my mom reads this and not everyone loves acronyms)) are everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE in Gulu Town. We see vans from the UN, World Vision and the Norwegian Refugee Council. In my morning runs, I go by the giant stone-walled, barbed-wire fences that protect CARE, WarChild Holland and Canada, all just to the North of my house. On my way to work at Chaford from home, I pass by three NGOs in the span of 10 feet: one with funding from Japan, another for youth, and another for women and microfinance, all three tucked away in a small patch of police huts and wooden stands that house soda and barber shops.

I can see the presence of NGOs without moving my head from this screen as my peripheral vision allows me to see that there are four white guys (all doing non-profit work (I asked; they’re filming a movie) in this internet cafe with four Ugandans (given the only whites I see are aid workers and they are all found in Internet cafes) and the files saved on the desktop of this computer have titles like Needs Analysis, Assessment of Gulu Schools, the Self-Help Approach (Gulu’s NGO equivalent of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), and A Report on Gulu Aid. Seriously, ABCD (www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.html) is a amazing and two professors at our University started an Institute for it so check out their book as the approach has been used throughout the world on every different community project imaginable (including the Grameen Bank (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Bank and read about the work of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus).

The U.S. needs more freaking permanent outdoor markets. They are everywhere else in the world and they are amazing. There is a huge one a block away from my house that is outlined with hundreds of small stick made stands that sell everything from radios to sports equipment to school uniforms. When one enters, the sun light disappears and the smells of meat, onions and g-nuts destroy your nose. Ah I could go on forever on these, but please, if you have a store in the US, turn it into an outdoor market stand.

It may be the rainy season, but the clouds here are amazing as in one day you see all 14 different types of clouds (our kindergarten classes cheated us, there are more than three according to the airport magazine I read on the way here, and they can all be seen in Gulu) as they whisk and change and grow angry and beautiful and I see every shape and object in them and if I am ever overwhelmed by the idea that there are millions of people in internally displaced persons camps in villages all around me or overworked by the small change that I can personally make as a student here or stressed out by all the children at my house then all I have to do it step outside and look out (actually, it is hard to get too far in a building here that one cannot just look out and see the sky). Right now I can see a ferocious bear-clown attacking a soft, humungous white (of course) fluffy (yeah I see originality) puppy as a giant tree bark with an old man’s face in it looks on.

Since I’ve looked outside, a man has rode by on a bike while dragging a goat behind him on a leash, a little boy has walked by heading the other way with a goat on a leash, six women have walked by with buckets on their heads, and countless numbers of bicyclists, bikers and people of all different ages (mostly kids in flip-flops) have all gone by and the clouds have changed colors and now a tiger with wings is flying and exploding at the same time.

Ok, that was too much, but I have been busy and electricity goes off here so internet cafes are slow and undependable, but I’ll try to post more often and do so concisely. I need to go play football with my older brothers or basketball at the Gulu Hawks outdoor court where Jacob is the only white guy and the guys there talk American smack to him (“Yo, you got some beef”) in Ugandan accents and where the community team practices and where there is a giant dirt field where people practice driving and where white people play soccer and all laugh at them.

Or I can play 7 stones: a game like dodgeball but better as two people stand about 15 yards away from each other and use a small soft (hopefully) ball to try to hit a person who is in the middle and who can catch it and throw it back or dodge it in order to keep setting up either bricks or stones or some set of four objects. Basically, the middle player needs to stack these objects and knock them down a total of seven times to win but if you are hit (even if it bounces!) you are out and then they yell Enter! and you throw and someone new comes in. We first saw it at the Camp and my siblings love to play it and they say that I am good (for a tall mono!). My siblings now need to teach me other games kids play here like skipping (aka a jumprope game) or rocks (aka hopscotch). In candlelight (as all the power went off here), I taught them tic-tac-toe last night, though we had to play with I’s and O’s as there is no X in Luo! Ah, I could go off on my family forever (this morning we all sat around watching Days of Thunder, eating G-nut butter (small peanuts) and bread, and waiting for the rain to lessen so we could go to school/work). Hope you got some insight into how a Ugandan family lives in Gulu.

Afoyo,

Nikolai “The Lost/Last Son” Anywar (the name they gave me)

3rd Uganda Blog Post (6/26): Naming Ceremony & Welcoming to Gulu

2007-10-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

We meet the board members of Chaford (Charity for Rural Development) and had a naming ceremony.

Itye ningo (good afternoon to an old friend who is an elder such as yourself),

You can call me Anywar now (pronounced Anuwaa). The five other students in my group and I are in Gulu now and we met the board members of Chaford (Charity for Rural Development) who named each of us.

Robert Anywar, our program director with Chaford, gave me my name. Acholi names come from the situation/setting in which one was born (Acholi is the group of people that we are working with in Northern Uganda. They are also found in Sudan and other towns outside of Gulu). My name means stubborn, not that I am stubborn (because I am not, ok?), but that someone was stubborn around the time when I was born, such as the pregnant mother or a family member (which my Mom can comment on).

Other names were just as interesting (and a little more complimentary). Sophie is named Lakar who was the Queen of the Royal Family in Atioch, Allie is Aber or beautiful, Christopher Day (our program director for our trip) is Okotbete (the greatest Acholi Poet), Susannah is Anwaduek (as bright as the moon), and Jacob since he is the first twin is Opio and his brother and the following siblings all have names dependent on their position.

It was amazing to hear that every name had a meaning and to meet the board members who come from a variety of professions and who also shared the meanings of their names.

Time to run back to my host family (who is amazing and has turkeys and has 14 kids and 7 cousins who stay with them), but I will post soon and describe our language lessons and work.

Afoyo (spelled Apoyo (there are no Fs in Luo)),

Nikolai Anywar

2nd Uganda Blog Post (6/22): Before Uganda and Initial Reactions

2007-10-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

An introduction to the Gulu group of the Engage Uganda program, our preparation and experiences before the trip, and some of our initial reactions upon arriving in Uganda.

Hi, my name is Nikolai “Nicky” Smith, and I am a sophomore at Northwestern University. I am participating in the Engage Uganda study abroad program where three groups of students are each working on different projects with a community-based nonprofit. Five other students and I will be working in Gulu in Northern Uganda with the nonprofit Chaford-Uganda. We will be focusing on projects that have to do with youth development, and I will get into detail about these projects as the weeks progress.

Our group and all the other trip participants have been working together for several months now as we took a course together at Northwestern to learn about development in Uganda and other parts of the world and to begin conversations with the organizations that we would be working with.

From talking with my other Gulu group members, I found another similar experience that we have had before Uganda. Upon telling people that we are studying abroad in Uganda this summer, all of us often heard: WHY??? People wonder what we can possibly do in Uganda and what exactly we are studying. When I tell people that we are collaborating with a nonprofit on different projects and also receiving local language and cultural lessons they still ask why. This is a different response then I am used to when I have told people about my other trips abroad. When I say that I am studying in Mexico, France and China next year or that I have done service in Guatemala people leave it at that. People don’t question why I studied Arabic in Jordan last summer, but they would most often remark how valuable a language that is these days. Yet, when we tell people we are going to Uganda we are all continually questioned about the purpose of studying there. These raise questions for me (questions I would like you to comment on), such as what can we learn from cultures and languages that don’t directly impact our lives? Is it valuable for me to be studying the culture of the Acholi in the North and their language of Luo or would my time better be spent studying Mandarin or Arabic?

This brings up another important question that I have wrestled with which is what does study abroad exactly mean? Is studying more about lectures and books than hands-on experiences and conversations? On this trip we are trying to blend both by having weekly readings and a two-week seminar at the end of the course, but the majority of the program is focused on the projects and our interactions with our respective nonprofits. In the past, I have learned better through the latter, but Universities are hesitant to accept credit for such programs, and it will be interesting to see how the study aspect of this program plays out.

Right now, all of the students in the Program are in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, having a week to get adjusted and have orientation. I have asked people about their initial reactions upon coming to Uganda. Those that have traveled to developing countries say that Kampala and the surrounding area is very similar to industrial areas in the other countries that they have visited. Jacob, one of the students who will be going to Gulu with me, said that the biggest thing that has surprised him is just how big the British influence in Uganda has been. We knew that English was the official language, but the impact of British and generally Western culture is seen throughout Kampala. For instance, almost everyone wears “dress” clothing, such as the men wear suits, dress pants and shoes and the women wear dress skirts, high heels and have leather purses. I have only seen several women wearing what looked like the traditional dress in person and more images of women wearing this dress on advertisements than in person. Emily, another student going to Gulu, said that she feels comfortable here and that Ugandans have been very accepting and excited to see Americans. I believe that throughout the program we will be discussing both benefits and costs of Western influence in Uganda and how they play out today.

We will be driving to Gulu at the end of this week to begin working with our organization and to meet our host families. I was told that my host family has 14 kids! I have been very excited to stay with a host family and to work in Gulu, but I always have doubts about how accepting people will be, especially when we will be working directly with the people. I will all be wrestling with questions of who gains more from this experience, us or the people we work with, and if we can really make a positive difference in these areas. My time is short at the internet café as I would like to type so many other initial reactions and conversations I have had with Ugandans and with Northwestern students, but I have to run. I will be posting several times a week as the ten-week program progresses so please stay posted and comment on what you read. Please pass the link to this blog to everyone.

Afoyo (thanks in Luo (the language of the Acholi (in the North (of Uganda)))),

Nikolai Smith

HEALTH & SAFE WATER

2007-10-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

The post in this blog post will be focusing on one of the activities of Rural Health Care Foundation (RHCF) where i have agreat experience in providing clean safe water to the disadvantaged communities in the rural areas of Uganda most especially in mubende District, Rural Health Care Foundation (RHCF) is anon profit making and comunity based organisation. The organisation came up with an intetion of improving the Health status in rural areas in Uganda

According to the work carried out in Water, hygiene and sanitation we have realised that one of the big problems faced by the communities is that of getting a safe clean water, mostly women and children walk along distance to get safe clean water about 3 to 5 miles, we have been moblizing communities through sensitization, Training them in hygiene and sanitation,

water borne illineses in the rural areas like diarrhea kills more people than HIV/AIDs and Malaria, there are many organisation and even individuals striving within water, Hygiene and Sanitation sector to improve and provide safe clean water in the needy communities, i ve been working with Rural Health care foundation since 2003 in constructing and protecting water sources in communities,

There have been community participation during the construction of water sources, and the community used to provide food for masons, providing clays, sands and even bring hardcore stones to the site where the water source is constructed, all the community residents have to participate even children at the time when they are not at school

Rural Health care Foundation recieves help from Organisations based in Europe like AIDLINK, and Simavi big funders plus even individuals across all nations, because of the funding are limited the Organisation moblise locally available resources to help the needy, through uplifting thier helth standards by sensitization etc.

Now some communities recieves safe clean water in the communities they apreciate what is done for them in the communities, because there many communities without any source of clean water and the world is not aware i decided to call on all world communities on 8th-11th of July 2008 to an International Health and safe water for the world conference to be held in Mubende District you can see it at http://www.stopwdi.net/CleanWaterConference.htm or a facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=4051529682

shallow wells, one of the shallow well constructed recently to provide safe clean water to school and the communities around, more blog posts are comming

1st Uganda Blog Entry (6/18): Time in Kampala and Other Thoughts

2007-10-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

The blog posts in this blog will be from my trip this Summer to Uganda where I worked with an indigenous NGO (non-governmental organization) called CHAFORD (Charity For Rural Development) funding and planning a agriculture and business-skills training with youth farmers on an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp. We also worked at a Secondary School on computer training with a teacher (our age) who had classes of 30-80 students and who worked with constant power failures and only 4 computers. We are working on getting them further resources as they are "Your Computer School" for the war-stricken region of Northern Uganda. We also worked on a women's literacy project at another IDP Camp. Hope this blog provides you some view into Uganda, specifically Northern Uganda and the problems that the 22-year war has caused for this area and the projects and work being done and the hope that we were able to see in the people there.

The entry below is from our week in Kampala (the capital) visiting Uganda Crafts and the National Museum (amazing websites to check out) and some thoughts on the trip to come. For photos from our visit to Uganda Crafts, see http://northwestern.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080805&l=9f732&id=2412657

Our internet cafe in Kampala closes at 10 so I'd like to get some thoughts down before we go rafting in Jinja in the Nile and then leave for Gulu where all I will want to do is interview people there and tell you about our research and all the work our group is doing.

Before I forget, Jacob, another Gulu Team member, and I are researching how the 21-year long war in the North is portrayed through educational materials. The war in the North has reached a ceasefire and the Ugandan Government and the rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army are now in peace talks (For a synopsis of the war and to learn about a non-profit started by two Notre Dame students and a Northern Ugandan that is working to mobilize the conflict, go to: ugandacan.org).

Currently, Jacob and I are looking through history textbooks that either exclude any information on the war or marginalize Northern Ugandans. I will get into this as he and I are able to research this question directly in Gulu and talk with our host families as our Dads include a Teacher at the local University and the Director of the National Teacher's College.

Well, I only have ten minutes so I really want to tell you about several places in Kampala. The first is Uganda Crafts, which is a fair trade co-op that empowers local Ugandans to make crafts, clothing, jewelery and more and then sells them at a fair price. Please check out their website at http://www.aboutuganda.com/crafts.html and I will soon provide a link to a site with the many photos that I took of the Craft shop.

The second place is a photo exhibit called Through the Eyes of Refugee Children at the National Museum. The exhibit is photographs taken by refugee children and then descriptions by the children of their photos. The photos were powerful, but the descriptions made it clear that the children were coached to take certain kinds of photographs. I recommend checking out Project Focus for a non-profit that does this type of work amazingly well: http://www.projectfocus.org/

Well, my time is almost up. I also wanted to tell you about the most amazing market and experience of the senses (I saw fish/chickens/pigs getting ripped in half as blood spurted everywhere and endless miles of shoes, purses, oranges, bananas, underwear, bags of flour and spices and onions) that I have ever experienced. I will describe that soon and provide a link to photos from that experience.

Finally, for me, I see this blog as a way to share the amazing work, people and places that we are able to see, to ask questions and seek comments from you about the struggles and experiences that we are having, and to share my own personal experience and thoughts. I have read through the other Engage Uganda blogs that my fellow participants have done and they are great and I hope you continue to read all of ours. I want to remind anyone on our trip reading this that you know much, have many skills to offer, and your capacity to learn and grow is unlimited. I cannot wait to be immersed in the culture of those in Gulu town in Northern Uganda and to learn from them more than any project could ever accomplish. But while we are planning to work hard, why not accomplish both (us learning and also collaborating successfully with our respective organizations)?

Apoyo, Nikolai