The Bible in Deepest Darkest Africa!

If you want to see me squirm uncomfortably, put the words ‘evangelism’ and ‘Africa’ in the same sentence. There have been several moments when I’ve been sitting in some mzungu hangout, eavesdropping on the cringe-worthy conversations of Southern Baptists on missions to Uganda. Now, I do consider myself a Christian, it’s just that I’m kind of afraid of church and mostly suspicious of other Christians (R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion’ is something of a theme song for me). You know, the whole thing about the shoe-maker’s children going without shoes. Anywho, when I hear about some of the more…er…ethnocentric interpretations of Christianity, I try to take a deep breath and remember that Jesus loves vapid idiots too. My parents raised me all compassionate-like. And to shy away from judgmentalism at all junctures (*cough*).

The fact remains, however, that spirituality is ubiquitous here, and it takes many forms – from animism to ancestor worship to every denomination of Christianity and Islam. Even if I find some of it kind of scary or obnoxious (like the all-night hymn sings across the street from my house), it is refreshing to be somewhere where people at least talk about spirituality and aren’t afraid of it. Especially coming from Vancouver, I’m pretty sure over the last year I’ve had a million times more conversations about lattes than existentialism. I’m not saying we should be praying in public schools and getting slapped around by nuns again or any bullshit like that, but I’m of the opinion that instead of diversifying our spiritual education and being aware of other people’s beliefs, we’ve just chosen total ignorance of all faiths instead. Whereas in Uganda, I recently saw a young man wearing a t-shirt that loudly proclaimed: “Jesus Basketball!” I coveted it because I’m a sinner.

But I’m rambling! There was a point to this post, a Ugandan point! I had an interview with a survivor of the Barlonyo massacre, and when I asked him at the end if he had any questions for me, he very shyly said, “you know, I’m not a material person, but my heart tells me to ask you this because you look like a missionary [uh-oh! sang Letha’s brain]. The only thing we have to sustain us here is our prayers. I am a religious leader, but I have no Bible. Could you bring me a Bible and a hymn book in Langi [the local Luo dialect]?”

My first thought, I admit, was “how am I going to get a Bible to this guy without looking like some sort of moron in front of any passersby?” It’s not unusual to be asked for things here (especially if you look like me), and a lot of time has to be spent ‘managing expectations.’ I do what I can, but the sheer numbers of needy is just overwhelming. [Incidentally, I saw a picture of this man a couple days later when we were going over some archive photos taken the morning after the massacre, and I saw him standing amidst the bodies, digging shallow graves in the exact same tattered t-shirt and pants that I interviewed him in four years later.] But I decided that I really, really wanted to fulfill this wish, and I was so anxious to do so that I annoyingly asked the rest of the team (about once every five minutes) to remember to help me find a book store in Lira.

So I got some help in town and went and bought him a Langi ‘baibul’ and prayer/hymn book. When I brought it to him, he was so moved that my frozen-chosen (Presbyterian) heart stirred from its dark depths. He seemed like such a gentle soul, and with tears in his eyes he kept grabbing my hand and with much effort saying “God bless you,” repeatedly in English. This whole encounter was so sincere that it blew away any reservations I would have ever had about being a white person giving out a Bible in rural East Africa. But he asked for them with such humility and hope that I felt compelled to bring them. It was a reminder that while people need their food rations, their soul food is what keeps them together, especially here.

Yesterday’s Drama – The Ups and Downs of Research

There were some kids in the camp who had been rehearsing a drama about the massacre. They had invited us to go see their rehearsal after the Martyrs Day/Memorial Prayer Ceremony that had gone on for four hours. I was glad to have been invited, if only because it helped me understand why I had seen so many boys and girls wandering around with wooden toy guns.

Late in the afternoon, after much waiting around and me asking me repeatedly what we were doing, the group’s leader blew his little green whistle that called all the kids of the drama group to him. They began to gather around Ojibu and I, and Ojibu played with the kids while we waited (for what, I still don’t know). At the same time, one of the ladies of the camp approached us because she had cooked a meal for us (this happened the day before as well – people who own nothing but the shirts on their backs insisting that we share a meal at their expense). Ketty tried to explain that we couldn’t come straight away because we were meant to see the drama group, and this caused some sort of furor as well. I felt really bad about this, but I couldn’t communicate (I don’t know where my translator was at this point) and I was just waiting for the rehearsal to start.

A man then came up to Ojibu and started talking in a very animated way, and they were going back and forth at each other getting louder and louder while the kids watched. I was getting incredibly frustrated no understanding what was being said. Another man came up and joined the conversation (now an argument for sure) and through much questioning and insistence I found out from Emon and Ketty that the first man was angry about the drama and the toy guns. He was quite drunk and was accusing us of promoting and encouraging violence. The first man had said that he had been abducted by the LRA and was insulted by the drama, and the other man apparently defended the drama. No one asked the kids (most of whom had also been abducted) what they wanted, and they never got to show us their play. We decided (or rather, I was told we were) to leave. We walked back to the car and I hounded poor Emon the entire way trying to figure out who said what. Once we got back to the car, the drunk man came and yelled at us some more (home brew in hand) and Emon told me that he was blaming us (“you researchers”) for encouraging bad behaviour. It was pretty upsetting, particularly as I didn’t entirely understand everything that had happened and couldn’t really participate in the conversation.

So this is fieldwork here. People are variously suspicious, angry, afraid, welcoming, talkative, friendly, or chatty. You never know what you’re going to get, and it also shows the great diversity of opinion and experience in the people that live in northern Uganda. I’ve spent many days already going on wild goose chases to talk to someone, or getting the run-around, or been confronted with one-word answers to every question. It can be incredibly discouraging, and then someone will practically fall in my lap unexpectedly and give me some sort of mind-blowing insight into whatever it is I’m looking for. And when that happens, I feel like I’m high.

But I wasn’t on a high by the end of that day. After we got yelled at, I promptly got sunscreen in my eyes that would not come out. I had a horrible sunburn in spots on my back and shoulders (missed by my best friend, SPF 55) and my eyes started to water. I also had to pee and had bird crap on my head (that happened in the morning when I was given the ‘seat of honour’ and was promptly crapped on in front of several elders). So I got in the car, crying and unable to open my eyes, and we began to drive. We stopped about twenty metres up the path by all the masses of drunk camp residents (there’s not much else to do after the prayers are said). Emon and Ketty got out of the car to do something and talk to the people who had prepared us food and were upset that we weren’t staying. I felt really bad, but I couldn’t see a thing, I was so frustrated, and I knew that I couldn’t handle another meal of gwen (white ants). To top it off, there was also a chicken flapping in the seat behind me (the second day in a row of random livestock purchases by other members of the research team). It added insult to injury. A whole group of pissed-out-of-their-trees granny and grandpas came to stand outside of my car window, singing, shaking my hand until I thought it would fall off, playing little finger pianos and other homemade instruments, and dancing. It was nuts.

We finally left, and that was the day. I then went and got harassed in Lira market for being the only white girl in town. “Y’all act like you neva seen a white purson before!” was something that popped into my head a lot.

The end.

What happened on the 21st of February, 2004?

One February day in 2004, word came through the wires that a series of bombings had ripped apart commuter trains going into Madrid during rush hour. I was living in Scotland at the time, and had a Spanish roommate who poured over the news hour after hour, hoping that no one he knew was amongst the dead. As with all mass murders in certain parts of the world, all eyes were focused on this one tragedy.

In Edinburgh, one of the courses I was taking at the time was African Politics, and I was also taking Anthropology of Development. My assigned term project for the anthro class was focused on Uganda, a country that I knew next to nothing about. In African Politics, we lived and breathed case studies in several key countries, Uganda included.

Not once in my studies or research did I find out what else happened in February of that year. In fact, the terror of the Madrid Bombings paled in relative comparison to the horror unleashed on residents of Barlonyo IDP camp in northern Uganda. Within the space of two hours, over 300 (but perhaps hundreds more) had been murdered as they prepared dinner. Many were burned to death in their mud and grass huts, others were mutilated and killed with pangas (machetes), some were shot, some were beaten to death with blunt objects, and babies had their skulls smashed against trees. Pregnant women had their bellies slit open, their not-yet-formed babies thrown in the fires. Still others were abducted and marched to Sudan. Many died along the way of violence, sickness, or starvation. Others never returned and may still be part of the rank and file of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Do you remember hearing about the Barlonyo Massacre on the 22nd of February? How about the 23rd? Maybe you heard about it after they had counted the bodies that they could (those that hadn’t been immediately placed in shallow graves, and those bones that don’t linger in the outlying bushes or elsewhere on the route to Pader and Kitgum) and constructed a mass grave? Did you hear about the few survivors being forced by the army to dump the corpses into pit latrines to reduce the death toll? Or perhaps you heard about it when the President of Uganda attended a memorial prayer and told the mourners that “what goes around comes around” – implying that the victims, by virtue of being northerners, were directly responsible for atrocities in southern Uganda that occurred during his own guerrilla war? Where you angry when it was reported that the Ugandan army had withdrawn from the camp less than two weeks earlier, despite reliable reports of an impending attack, leaving the protection of many souls in the hands of 30 unpaid, untrained, scared locals? You probably weren’t, because it was never reported.

If you’re like me, you never heard about Barlonyo. Or any of the atrocious number of massacres that have happened in northern Uganda in the last twenty-odd years. You may have even been in an African Politics class with me, immersing yourself in articles about the Rwandan genocide, the violence of transitional South Africa, or even about the ‘new breed’ of African leader personified in His Excellency, Yoweri K. Museveni, President and saviour of post-Amin Uganda. You may have read the heartfelt apologies of UN officials claiming that they “didn’t know” about what was happening in Rwanda in April 1994, but you probably didn’t hear them say that northern Uganda was too dangerous to set foot in for their beloved employees.

What I do know is that four years later, the ghosts aren’t going away.

I’ve spent this week in Barlonyo. On Monday I interviewed a woman who survived that night, hiding in the bushes where she could see her house in flames, her family still inside. She lost 7 family members in two hours, and told me that they still haunt those that are left. Because, she said, if the dead see that you are suffering, they will do all they can to bring you out of the land of the living. Later, I interviewed a 14-year-old boy who was forced to be part of the attacking force that night that killed his parents, his baby sister, and several other relatives. He now lives with several other orphans in the very spot his 10-year-old self mutilated and killed during that February supper-time. We spoke to each other while sitting on top of the concrete-covered mass grave, because it was the only private spot we could find.

I don’t believe that any country, any culture or ethnicity, any religious group, or even any one period of humanity has a monopoly on suffering. I am sure that those killed in Madrid suffered no less than those in Barlonyo. But what I do believe is that the world has served a great injustice upon northern Uganda by ignoring all that has happened here, even in just a few short years. What makes a story news-worthy? Is a massacre only news-worthy if it involves bombs and loud explosions? Do people suffer less when they are hacked and burned to death in the secrecy of the East African countryside?

Today I hate Uganda

Yesterday (Friday) I was really tired from a long week, so I decided to go to bed early. Unfortunately, the Gulu Bible Church across the road had other plans, and decided to sing off-key hymns to Jesus for a good 8 hours (yes, even in the middle of the night). I had finally drifted off to sleep, when my phone rang. Then it rang again 30 minutes later. Then I had to wrong numbers. Then two text messages. (I’m not nearly as popular as this sounds.) Eventually I decided to turn off my phone and hoped that I would wake up of my own accord, without the cell phone alarm. Luckily for me, I did around 6am when my mosquito net collapsed upon me. At that point I had enough of trying to rest, and got up. I went and got my water basin so that I could ‘shower,’ and discovered a nice big, fat rat swimming circles in it. And he wasn’t cute like Otim Mickey.

I asked Bonnie to take it outside, but he refused and insisted on drowning it instead. So I stared at the wall for a while, in the other room, pretending that it wasn’t happening.

Super duper!

Piggery!

Today I was walking back to NGO Forum after lunch, and someone rode their bike past me with two little piglets hanging in separate bags from each side of the panier – and oh, how they snorted away. I found it immensely amusing.

Then, right behind him, another guy rode by with a much bigger and dead-er pig (the mumma?) on the back of his bike, and it reminded me of Kitgum Pig Man. I wonder where Kitgum Pig Man is today. I saw KPM leave Kitgum Matidi the same time as I did on Tuesday evening with a giant, floppy, dead sow on the back of his bike. He managed to be quite far ahead of us on the road (we had to abandon the road we originally took to Kitgum Town and backtrack because there were two trucks rolled up in the mud and blocking the road). The funny thing was that the next day, about 30 minutes into our drive back to Gulu, we saw the same guy on the road ahead of us, with the same dead pig that was definitely looking the worse for wear. It is this kind of health and safety in food preparation that explains battery-acid diarrhea and sudden projectile vomiting. And I’m not even going to talk about the camp stews.

That’s all. Pigs are funny.

In which I talk a lot about Erin and everyday terror (though they are not related)

Erin is in Uganda! It is good that she came 3 weeks after I arrived instead of with me, because I probably would have latched myself on to her and never let go if we had come together. This is not only good for my independence, but also due to the fact that about 8000 people have told me over the last 3 weeks that Erin is their mentor and that they hoped to spend as much time as possible when she is here. Get in line! This is what happens when you are close personal friends and sole research assistant to the patron saint of northern Uganda, St. Erin Baines of UBC.

Back in KM

Since Erin is here, we had a team meeting in Kitgum Matidi for two days to talk about our current research projects and some other things. By the end of both days I was exhausted and had a headache from all the smoke, flies, open sewers, and staring children. Erin informed me that Kitgum Matidi is rated as a 3-fly camp (like Michelin rankings!) – the 5-fly camps have places to stay in, whereas we stayed in Kitgum Town for three nights. And oh God, the latrine! It sounded like there was a bee-hive in it, there were so many flies, and the funny thing is that it was locked, too? Maybe because it’s a biohazard? I don’t mean this by way of complaint, but rather as a description.

On the first day in the camp, during a break in the morning Erin and I went for a wander around the camp (kids in tow, of course) and came upon lots of drunk men (it was about 10:30am). Erin is good at picking out drunk people like nobody’s business, whereas I tend to think people are very friendly (Erin had to repeatedly tell me to keep walking). I’ve always been bad at that. The night before, Erin and I went for a walk in the dark, electricity-free Kitgum Town, and we also stumbled upon drunken-men alley: it seems to be the only thing to do these days. (We also walked along all the verandahs on the main road, which a couple years ago was filled at night with the chattering of all the night commuters – the kids that came into Gulu and Kitgum in droves every night in order to avoid abduction.)

But I digress. We also stopped by an old mego (mother/old woman) mingling sorghum and maize flour in order to make kwete (home brew) (yum!). She and her cohort chattered away at us, and I felt bad because I had no idea what they were saying, but they clearly wanted something. All I could do was stand there stupidly smiling and taking pictures like some idiot tourist (they howled with laughter when I showed them the pictures – they found it very entertaining). A younger man showed up and said that they were asking for money for salt. (Money for salt!) So we promised to bring some back at lunchtime. We did end up buying a whole bunch of sugar and salt (all for about 2,500 shillings – a whopping $1.50) and dropped it off with what we hope was a relative (no one was there when we went back). We also hoped that we hadn’t started a fight over salt. Ah, the complications of giving.

The Everyday

On Tuesday morning, Ketty (fellow JRP researcher), Erin and I were eating breakfast together and Ketty told us that when she was in Senior 1 (I think that’s about grade 8), she and the other girls in her dorm used to sleep with their shoes on because they never knew when the LRA would attack – the rebels kept coming back for them and they would like in bed at night listening to the exchange of fire between the LRA and the UPDF guards just outside of the school. They could hear the insults being shouted back and forth, and in the morning they would wake up and there would be shell casings all over the ground outside. It’s crazy to me that someone as relatively-privileged as Ketty (from a northern Uganda sense) endured that as part of her daily life, and she told us this story nonchalantly over breakfast as if we were talking about the weather. She said that everyone was constantly worried at school, planning where they would run to every time they went to bed for the night, not knowing what was coming. Eventually, her parents pulled her out of the school and sent her south to Jinja, but there were certainly other girls who weren’t quite as lucky and ended up being abducted. This was around ’95, ’96, but Ketty said that a few years before her elder sister was abducted from the same school. Luckily, she was ‘just’ made to carry some luggage and then was almost immediately released.

When we had our ‘reflective’ time in Kitgum Matidi, more of these stories and observations came out when we prodded – stories that our colleagues find everyday and not worth mentioning. It really makes me wonder what other stories they have bottled up. I think this is also an issue of hierarchy – I noticed this in Vancouver before when people would come visit from Uganda, and it’s even more pronounced here – people really clam up if their superiors or anyone in a position of authority is in the same space as them. I think there is a very different philosophy to education as well, one that is much older than what we have in Canada. Thinking critically is not necessarily encouraged in Ugandan children, and the end result is a fairly subservient society. This makes research here pretty difficult – not only because people are scared out of their wits that whatever they say will come back to haunt them, but because people tell you a lot of things that they think you want to hear.

But some stories came out anyway – all on themes of death and fear, and most too harrowing to include here. Erin remarked on the coping skills of Acholi people in the face of death. She was here once when there was an ambush one night, and a friend was killed. In less than 24 hours the funeral was held, and everyone rallied – someone brought the food, someone bought the coffin, someone brought a tent and chairs, etc. Emon said, “Yes, sometimes we bury people on the same day – the same hour, even.” I said that I’d only ever been to one funeral of a person I knew in my whole life (my 85-year-old grandfather’s, so nothing earth-shatteringly tragic). Erin echoed this and said she had only been to two. This was shocking to everyone else – Emon said he’d already been to four funerals just this year.

When we had a party for Erin on Saturday at our friend Jessica’s house (Jessica is a lovely New Yorker who works for Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the biggest NGOs here), people got to talking about their old war stories (I felt like a grandchild) and I just listened. Someone said that every morning in Gulu, you basically went out to see who had been killed during the night; which friends’ bodies were rotting on the road or in the ditch. Erin told me about one day when she was standing in front of Mike (JRP Project Coordinator)’s house with Mike, Mike’s cousin-sister (yes, the genealogical categories here are different from Canada), and one other friend, just chatting about their mornings. Mike said that his neighbour was rapidly dying of Hepatitis because he couldn’t afford any medication. His cousin-sister said that her sister had stopped talking and moving due to war trauma, and apparently had done so before. Then their friend said that her sister was killed in a road accident the night before. This was their casual morning conversation; another day at the water cooler, as though they were talking about last night’s hockey game. Absolutely insane. Totally common.

Landmines

After our meeting yesterday, Jackie (FP) took us for a walk past the camp dumping ground to some big rocky hills on the outskirts – apparently where Kitgum was originally settled, but everyone left because of cen (haunting). Swarms of bees kept coming and attacking every once in a while, so they decided to move the settlement.

I was taking my time, wandering on the rocks, when Sheila (Focal Point from Pajule) shouted at me from the next hill over:

“Watch out for the landmines!”

“What?!” screamed I.

It turns out she was referring to the large piles of human feces everywhere. Wow – so pretty. I did see a lot of crap, it turned out, and even people lying next to the open sewers, coughing with God-knows-what preventable or treatable diseases. If it wasn’t for, you know, the endless amount of human suffering, Kitgum Matidi would be a pretty nice place. The views of the mountains (towards Karamoja in the East and Sudan in the North) were pretty spectacular.

There was a music group that was going to perform for us, but they ended up backing out because they were missing some people. Their t-shirt uniform was bright turquoise with “No thanks, Cholera!” written on it and a drawing of a man with giant teeth and a body made out of water. It was awesome and rad.

Wildlife conservation

Today at work I had a mouse on my desk for about an hour, and nobody batted an eyelash. I was more surprised than anything when some whiskers peeked over my laptop, but it was so much cuter than any spider could ever be.

Geoffrey (a manager at NGO Forum) called me a “wildlife conservation officer,” which I thought was hilarious. I am also a cockroach wrangler at home.

I took pictures of ‘Otim Mickey,’ as I call him, and he is my new friend.

Why I was in Kampala

The real reason we (JRP) have been in Kampala (other than the benefit of being able to find a doctor that graduated from a university) was for the 11^th hour of the peace process. Kony (LRA leader) has stated that his reason for not having signed the Final Peace Agreement (other than the ICC indictment) was that he wanted clarification on 1) how traditional justice will work for fighters coming out of the bush, 2) how the Special Division of the High Court will work (this is a court that is supposed to be set up in order to satisfy the ICC that Uganda can try war crimes and crimes against humanity in a national court), and 3) how the two systems will interact. So he asked they key cultural leaders (who are connected with JRP’s work and NGO Forum) to bring the answers back to him on the 10^th of May (today).

So Mike (our fearless leader, and also an elder for Ker Kwaro Acholi, the institution of traditional leaders and rwodi (chiefs, singular: rwot)) and Rwot Acana (Paramount Chief of northern Uganda, sort of like the king) scrambled and worked their butts off to get funding and send out invites and everything at the very last minute to pull off a workshop of experts to answer these questions. They really pulled it off and so this workshop had the “who’s who” of northern Uganda civil society. The group included MPs, religious leaders, judges and lawyers, a few academics and an ambassador or two, a representative from South Sudan, and several people from both the Government of Uganda (GoU) and LRA delegations. So it was interesting for me to put a lot of faces to familiar names, except for when I was in the bathroom, which was most of the time.

I found the LRA delegation to be a fascinating puzzle. I spent a lot of time staring at them, wondering what their histories are and what motivates them to represent the LRA. Most of them are lawyers, and I’m pretty sure none of them live in northern Uganda anymore. I’ve heard and read lots of claims that they are disconnected from the reality of the war, that they are all part of the Acholi diaspora in London, Nairobi, etc. (a very controversial group of people inasmuch as war profiteering is concerned) and that they can’t really represent the LRA because they haven’t really been in the movement.

I tend to believe these claims if only because Kony has killed and fired several of his chief mediators; they never seemed to have the pulse of the LRA. But I can’t say that I know that much about it. I do know that they all talked like lawyers, they were all dressed to the nines, and I sure saw a lot of gold watches. Are they in it for the money? Do they want the LRA to succeed? Or am I being too speculative: are they offering their services in the interests of peacemaking? It’s a mystery to me.

There was one man on the LRA delegation that lounged during the discussions and walked in an out looking disinterested, and one of my colleagues told me that the had complained to her during a break that the workshop was failing to answer any of the questions that Kony asked. She wondered then why he didn’t raise his voice at all.

My only answer is that maybe he had diarrhea like I did.

When you’re sliding in to First and your pants begin to burst, etc.

You know what sucks about being new to Africa? Diarrhea. It stalks me like so-much tasty prey. I spent five days in Kampala last week and never saw the outside of the hotel, except for a trip to the doctor’s office. I wish I could write that I never left my hotel room because I was getting to know a buff, mysterious stranger, but we all know that’s not the case.

I can’t describe to you the terror of eating uncooked fruits or vegetables (which, by the way, aren’t that abundant apart from mangoes and cabbage – and I’m not counting the million types of tubers around. Oh, there’re also tomatoes, but I hate tomatoes and no amount of hunger is going to change that). But you know what? Sometimes a girl just needs more than cassava and greasy pork. I’m a bit of a princess that way.

In other gastrointestinal news, on Tuesday morning I woke up bright and early and felt completely fine. I went to work, opened up my computer, began checking my email, and then promptly vomited for no apparent reason. This is my life. I never know which end is going to explode.

I look forward to having my immune system kick-in. Any day now, immunity!

Peeing on oneself: all in a day’s work

I have been in Kamala since Sunday evening (it’s now Thursday) and have mostly been miserably ill up until this point. Yay salmonella.

I came down with horrible stomach pains on Saturday night and suffered the 7 hour drive to Kampala. I tried to sleep on the drive down (impossible) and got increasingly grumpy with the large amounts of unsolicited advice from my car-mates about adjusting to Ugandan food. At one point we got out and I found someone’s back-garden pit latrine. But you know what? People don’t always dig their pit latrines very deep, and splash back often occurs. So I returned to the car, hot, tired, grump, with stomach cramps, and pee all over my legs. I’m Uganda’s next-top-model.

Will you be my boyfriend?

Kitgum Matidi

Two days ago I went to Kitgum Matidi IDP camp with Emon (JRP researcher), Jackie (new JRP focal point – fps are the eyes and ears of JRP research in the camps), Walter (our jolly driver), and a young woman whose name I never learned (this happens a lot here – lots of staring and wondering and no introductions). We didn’t leave Gulu until about 11:30am at the earliest, which meant that I twiddled by thumbs nervously from 8:00 onwards, waiting to go. We stopped twice in town too, but I don’t know why. There isn’t always a lot of communication around here, and I’ve noticed you just have to go with the flow or it will drive you nuts (or more nuts than you already are, if you are me). Like Rachel says, you have to be like the water and not like the rock. Regardless, I didn’t actually know what the purpose of our trip to Kitgum Matidi was – but I was happy to come along for the ride.

It was a bone-rattling, white-knuckle drive that took two or three hours. I sat in the front and enjoyed the scenery when I didn’t feel like tossing my cookies. It was mostly red dirt road the whole way, with lots of obstacles to swerve around (people, pot-holes, animals). Walter and Emon told me that a couple years ago this road was virtually impassable due to the war, and extremely dangerous – yet Erin went on it all the time (with an armed escort) and I was told that she was “very daring.” This sounds a lot like the Erin I know. They would have to drive as fast as you could and never, ever stop for anyone, or you might get shot or something worse. In fact, there were a couple of burned out trucks on the side of the road, too, which Walter said were courtesy of Kony’s ambushes.

We drove through so many IDP camps that I lost count very quickly. We stopped in one and picked up the mystery girl. We also went through Acholi-Bur, which is the crossroads for Kitgum and Pader districts.

It was very green all around and there were some beautiful views – gently sloping hills, but you could see quite far; there were no huge trees. There was so much green land, but it just seemed empty. I guess this is because everyone has been forced to live in the camps. A huge track of land called Acholi Ranch was pointed out to me, and I heard mutterings between Walter and Emon that it is the source of lots of controversy. Apparently the Government is trying to sell the land. Now that’s justice – don’t protect the citizens, kick them off their land into internment camps (for their own “protection”) and then sell their only possession – their land – while they can’t even be there to protest. I think we need Dale Kerrigan to come to the rescue. I know that land is a huge issue all across Uganda, and I even saw at work that one of the student translators is working on an assignment to discuss compulsory land acquisition in the country. It sounds like people are in for a big struggle, not only between clans fighting over the same land, but between the people and the Government as well. If this war ever ends, this will be the conflict that comes after a peace deal is attained.

So we drove and drove and by 2:00 I felt very woozy and sick, but hungry as well (always an awesome combination), and dreading whatever Ugandan delicacy I was to be introduced to for lunch. I wished I had taken Gravol. I’ve never suffered from motion sickness, but it turns out that I’ve met my match with Uganda.

We finally arrived in Kitgum Matidi shortly after 2:00, and it was very much as I imagined it would be – a main road with some ramshackle trading centres, and then a lot of mud and grass huts crowded together. We opened up the JRP camp office (a very dusty place, as it has been vacant in the two months since the last focal point person left). It then occurred to me that we had come to Kitgum Matidi to drop off Jackie, the new focal point, to start her work. A wave of fear came over me on her behalf; I felt so bad for her coming from Gulu Town to be left alone in a camp for the first time. I thought she must be incredibly courageous. We then met the landlord of the building and found Jackie a place to live – lickety split.

At that point I very awkwardly ate a mango while a whole bunch of boys stared and me and giggled amongst themselves. They were very shy, though, and when I tried to approach them and take their pictures, they all ran like hell. I told Mum that I guess “point and shoot” doesn’t have the same connotation to them as it does to me!

We then walked to the LC III’s office (LCs are local councilors; the number indicates their level of authority), a concrete block down the road. We met the camp Vice-Chairman in his office, which proudly displayed President Museveni’s photo, some UN and NGO posters, and a sheet of names detailing the camp government hierarchy. We each signed the visitor’s book and Emon introduced Jackie to the VC. It was really impressive how Emon explained the importance of introducing the new focal point to the local leaders, and it seemed that the effort was so genuinely appreciated. We talked about other organizations working in the camp and chatted a bit.

When Emon introduced me, the VC seemed rather excited and said he could tell I was from Canada because I was so fat. He rounded his shoulders and stuck out his arms in a caricature of me. Honestly, I was surprised that it took a whole week for someone to tell me that here – this is not a taboo in Uganda as it is in Canada. But it wasn’t said maliciously, so I took it to heart that he was referring to the wealth of Canada and “all the good food there.” It was humbling, actually, and I thought later that it reminded me of the story of the storeroom in Auschwitz – the room that held all of the prisoners’ worldly possessions that they were forced to abandon. The prisoners nicknamed it ‘Kanada’ because it was a land of such abundance. Take that, fatty.

When we got up to leave, the door-handle came out of the door and we couldn’t get the door open – a reminder of feeling trapped, but also of the squalid conditions people live in here, yet they still manage to rally and cope and make their offices and involve themselves with each other. It’s so resilient; I probably would have given up long ago and gone to get drunk under some mango tree (well….okay, this happens a lot too). But we did manage to get out.

We drove into Kitgum Town at that point and went straight to Kitgum NGO Forum. I have no idea why we went there, but we sat around and waited for something for about 30 minutes. I did try to go pee, however, as I hadn’t gone since the morning (it was about 4:00 at that point) and so I went to the pit latrine on the edge of the property. I turned around as soon as I saw the enormous human turd lying on the floor (someone had clearly missed the hole) and decided to hold it for another few hours. It’s my special power.

By 4:30 we decided it was time for lunch, so we found a pork joint (ominously called ‘Ground Zero’) and ate roasted cassava, cabbage, and pork muchomo (bbq). Gloriously, I kept my over-active gag reflex in check!

The rains came down and soaked us at 5:00, and it was time to go [doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo - I bless the rains down in Africa!]. We left Jackie in town and drove towards Gulu as the sun set, stopping for our requisite mystery reasons along the way (‘oooh, grass! Let’s buy some!,' etc.). We stopped at one camp in Pader where about twenty boys all ran up to stare and point at me from either side of the truck. Believe it or not, this gets old really quickly. I waved at them and they laughed uproariously, being much less shy than the boys in Kitgum Matidi. I took out my camera and took some of those proverbial and probably exploitative “African children are fascinated” shots, but the awesome thing was that an older boy came up to me and took my picture as well – I thought that was so cool. He must have a hut with a dark room! Mystery girl told me that when I took the boys’ picture, two of the older ones said that I would probably sell the photos. Ah, the commodification of children in northern Uganda. They were justifiably cynical of this mzungu – but I promise not to sell the pictures.

Shake Hands with the Devil – or is it the reformed angel?

The night after I had met with the young mamas, Bonnie and I went to Bomah for a late supper (the Bomah is a hotel in town that has some relatively not-scary food for foreigners, and as such is the most expensive place around).

As soon as we walked in, Bonnie walked right up to a man sitting eating dinner, and I realized as I was made to shake his hand that I recognized him. I recognized him because he was the senior rebel commander to whom my new friend Grace (see entry above) was given as a ‘wife’ several years ago. They had two children together; the oldest was killed by a bomb when Grace escaped during a firefight with the UPDF. This man was later captured and given amnesty (this seems weird because he didn’t surrender, but the action was out of political expediency – the Government likes to keep senior rebel commanders close for intelligence and political campaigning). He also lives in a big house in town with some of his teenage wives from the bush, and everyone has turned a blind eye to it. So after spending the day with Grace, I really wanted to wipe the shit-eating grin off his face. Also, he has a really small head that is out of proportion to the rest of his body. So there!

I hissed at Bonnie as soon as we sat down, saying “is that who I think it is?” And yes, Bonnie told me that he went to say ‘hi’ for my benefit. This commander in question (I’m withholding his name because, well, the war is still going on) preaches all about forgiveness while thousands of so-called ‘child mothers’ suffer from his actions and those of people like him. It’s really painfully unfair. Now, I’m not by any means a conservative when it comes to justice, and generally like the idea of reconciliation (hence working for the Justice and Reconciliation Project). I also recognize the enormous complexity surrounding justice issues in northern Uganda, and indeed believe these issues are shamefully simplified in policy programmes and in the minds of most legal experts and humanitarians. But I’m also not an idiot, I can see as clear as day the horrific gender gap that exists here. Women are not angels by definition, men are not naturally inclined to be devils; each individual is as complex as the war itself. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t patterns in politics and society, and those patterns show that girls and women in northern Uganda do not matter.

On May Day (holiday) I walked to the pool at Acholi Inn with an Acholi friend of mine, and I told him about my encounter at the Bomah. This friend of mine just chuckled and told me to give the poor guy a break. He was so dismissive about it that I was really taken aback and maybe even a bit pissed. Later that day when we were going back to my house for lunch, he opened the gate for me because I couldn’t seem to get it open. He walked in first (which was fine with me) then turned and told me that chivalry died with gender equality. I thought this was really rich given his ‘boys will be boys’ opinion on child abduction and rape, and that his female co-worker and supposed equal had showed up at my house at 9:30 on a holiday to clean and cook for Bonnie and I. She made a huge lunch for all of us and even walked around with a jug of water and washed our hands while we remained seated. No one lifted a finger to help her.

The whole thing just reminds me that plenty of ‘modern’ people (men and women included) have a lot of ideas about equality, but when it comes to personal lives they tend to remain oblivious to its implications. My friend’s girlfriend had their first child on Monday morning, and he was expected to be at work on Monday afternoon (and people even seemed grumpy that he wasn’t there on Monday morning). I know that this sort of thing could easily happen in Canada as well (to an extent), but I still found it kind of shocking. Later that day, my friend even came over to play Scrabble with me (which I selfishly enjoyed), but I kept wondering why he wasn’t at home with his newborn son.

It turns out that he is going to go on parental leave for work, which I thought was a good sign. Then he told me that his parental leave is a whopping six days long.

This isn’t fair to men or to women, is it?

The never-ending stories of injustice

A couple days ago, someone came looking for me at Gulu NGO Forum. She walked into the office and I recognized her immediately: Grace, one of the most famous of the Aboke girls, a group of 30 girls who were abducted by the LRA from their school (in Aboke, south-east of Gulu) in 1996. (The Aboke story is quite famous – if you want to find out more about it, I highly recommend the book “Stolen Angels” by Kathy Cook, who is a Canadian journalist.) For those of you who came to the Peace Girl event at the Liu in April, you may remember Grace from the video interviews we featured on the laptops – the interview she gave within days of escaping from the bush during a firefight (she is also featured in the Peace Girl book Erin and I made).

Grace is one of thousands of girls who have been kidnapped in northern Uganda over the last 20 years, given as ‘wives’ to rebel commanders in the bush (usually because either the ‘Holy Spirit’ dictated that they should be given, or as a reward to brave commanders who have risen the ranks by virtue of their ruthlessness). Lots of these young women have escaped and returned to their communities with their children (born of rape), only to face the harsh realities of abject poverty and stigma. Still, many, many others are still held captive with the LRA, and now there is even an entire generation of children who have grown up in the bush, knowing nothing but a completely militarized society.

We stared at each other nervously for a few minutes (oh, what to say?), but very soon we were talking and getting to know each other. She told me about a group she and a few fellow former-abductees have formed; a group designed to advocate on behalf of and address the problems that formerly-abducted young mothers face in particular: poverty, stigma, lack of access to basic medical care or shelter, inability to pay school fees for themselves or their children, and the psychological and spiritual trauma caused by their horrendous experiences.

I am consistently amazed by the courage and resiliency that Grace and her peers are showing (I was also introduced to Janet and Victoria, also Aboke girls). They each have at least one child to take care of, but are trying desperately to finish their high school educations. All dream of going to university. Yet they have spent their spring holiday visiting local IDP camps to collect the names of young mothers, recording their dates of abduction and return, the names of their commander ‘husbands,’ and the names of their children.

It’s groups like this that Peace Girl aims to help, providing financial and moral support and connecting them to others with experience and skills to share. So, I promised them some money and we are getting a bank account set up for them so that they can at least start with some basic income-generation, school fees, etc. We also agreed to meet the next day so that I could meet some of the young mothers she had met at Laroo Forest, one of the camps near Gulu.

So today I waited in the office for these mummas to show up, not knowing what I was really getting myself into and not knowing how many were coming. Around 10:30 I started to see lots and lots of young women and some babies gathering under the big fig tree in front of NGO Forum. There were so many of them that I thought “that can’t possibly be them,” but sure enough, they were all waiting for me. Evelyn, a student translator who works at NGO Forum, came out with me and I introduced myself to the about-20 girls under the tree. We all shook hands and many girls curtsied low. We decided to walk to the Acholi Inn (local hotel) and find a big mango tree to meet under.

We talked for about an hour and a half, and I asked them to tell me about their problems. I was so terribly nervous, not wanting to say the wrong thing or make promises I can’t keep, so I kept it simple. I’ve been trying to remember that just simple kindness can go a long way in these situations, especially for people like these girls who are so beaten down and rejected by society. So the first thing I said to them was that I had heard many of their stories and that I felt very bad for them, and I said that people in Canada want to help them; that people care about them. Then I told them about Peace Girl and congratulated them on all coming together to find strength in one another. They said apfoyo (thank you) and even clapped!

Someone said that they are tired of white people coming and writing down their names and details and they don't get any benefit from it, and that lots of people come and are interested, but they go home and the girls have no one to get help from. I said that I hoped that Peace Girl wouldn't be like that, that we could try to hopefully always have someone, an Acholi, to be there when the whiteys are at home. We really need to hire someone like Grace! I told them that we didn't want them to feel abandoned. I really hope I can live up to that. I worry about this a lot – how do we keep this project sustainable? It’s not acceptable to come over for a summer and then go back to my life in Canada and never think of them again. If I do that, I might as well have never come at all. So I really hope that we can secure enough funding to ensure that this stays as grassroots as possible, and by that I mean run by the girls who know - better than any Canadian university graduate ever could - what they need to improve their lives and those of their children.

After that, they all took turns telling about stigma, lack of funds for education for them and their kids, trouble finding shelter, paying for medical bills, and the struggle of caring for their kids while being themselves orphans and often having brothers and sisters to take care of. One girl also talked about the problem of land access - how most of their husbands in the bush are dead, and when they take up with a new man it usually turns sour and they are forced to move around a lot - but they have no land rights of their own. In Acholi, land passes only through the male line, and children are considered to belong to their fathers’ clans. So these children are mostly rejected by their mothers’ families and communities, called ‘rebels,’ ‘killers,’ ‘bush children,’ etc. People are afraid to have their children associate with these ‘rebels’ because they are also thought to suffer from highly-contagious cen (spiritual haunting), a result of experiences in captivity. Cen is known to cause madness, misfortune, and even death.

One young woman named Mary told us that she was wary of telling anyone about herself, because some people have big mouths - it backfired on her when she confided in a neighbour. She and her mother were kidnapped by the LRA when she was 2 years old, and they killed her mother. The UPDF found her and managed to trace her uncle, and she stayed with him until she was 8 and was abducted again. This time she told us that a young boy tried to escape but was caught, and he was pierced repeatedly with a spear and decapitated. All the new abductees, herself included, were made to line up in a row and pass his head from one to another, saying "if I ever try to escape this is what will happen to me." That story has branded her as a rebel killer in the community.

Mary’s is frighteningly typical. It’s hard to keep my head straight on in the face of such intense and unrelenting suffering. There was no joyous homecoming for these women, no parties or parades. Just fingers pointed and insults hurled. Most have returned to find their parents dead and their homes destroyed. It’s a grave injustice when many rebel commanders, the brains of the operations, have received amnesty and are living off the fatted calf in relatively luxurious surroundings in Gulu Town. But the difficult question here has always been how to convince people to come out of the bush without these concessions. After all, as many elders have argued, it is the lives of thousands of abductees that hang in the balance.

Erin and I have been joking for months that the song ‘Apologize’ by Timbaland/OneRepublic should be the theme for the Accountability and Reconciliation agenda of the Juba Peace Talks. Guess what song started playing on a nearby radio when we were wrapping up? It was the funniest part of the whole afternoon.

Celine Dion moves from Vegas to Gulu

I complained to Erin about the constant noise in Gulu at all hours – she said that there is no social contract when it comes to noise [apparently this is affecting my brain as well – in my journal I have written “noize” several times]. There is a lot of reggae and (in my humble opinion) bad R&B, rap, and (ironically) God-forsaken Christian rock which is just DEATH – all of this is blasted at anytime, night or day. My neighbour (who hangs out just outside of my bedroom) plays the same song over and over and over for hours, and sometimes in the middle of the night. I haven’t yet been able to identify who the singer is, but the song is a sappy, Celine Dion-esque ballad that has something to do with catching falling stars. I hope a meteor does land on the record company that brought this song to the world.

However, the radio in Gulu does make me laugh. It’s a mix between English and Luo (the local language), and often switches between the two mid-sentence. Some of the announcers also use hilarious gangsta slang in their heavy accents, so I have heard the term “bling bling” repeatedly. I also heard, “I’d like to dedicate this song to all my homies in Gulu.”

The ads are also funny (and sometimes abrasive – think high-pitched shouting about cell phone plans) – one will be for the local clothing store, then the next ad will have the radio announcer say, “May 11^th, come and repent! Enjoy turning from your wicked ways at the all-day Gulu prayer festival. Hooray!” Hmm…praise Jesus.

The Itchy & Scratchy Show: now in Uganda

Dear Bloggees,

Welcome to Edible Rat, home of Letha's random, irreverent, and hopefully inoffensive blog page.

If you are reading this, you are either stalking me on the internet (I love you, too) or I finally made contact with you to let you know that I have decided to start communicating with my friends and loved ones while I am away from your loveliness. I will first answer a few questions:

Letha, where are you? I'm glad you asked. Since April 25 and until August, I am based in Gulu, Uganda. Check out the map.

Gulu is the main town in Acholi-land (composed of Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, and Amuru districts), part of northern Uganda and close to South Sudan. While I'm here I will spend a lot of time outside of the town, in various IDP (internally displaced persons) camps and smaller towns in Acholi.

Ginger, what are you doing? Angelina Jolie is my mentor, and I thought I would be like her and try to adopt abroad. You know, for shits and giggles.

Actually, I am working as an intern for the Justice and Reconciliation Project, for which I have been a researcher for the last year (but from the Vancouver office at the Liu Institute, UBC). I am also launching the research on a new project called Peace Girl.

Northern Uganda, and primarily Acholi-land, has been in a war for the last 22 years. Over 60,000 kids have been abducted and forced into service in the Lord's Resistance Army, while over 90% of the population have been forced to live in IDP camps. JRP (which is all staffed by locals) conducts research in these camps, meeting with war-affected people and finding out how justice and reconciliation can be realised for them. I'm here to help with that research and with the writing of reports.

Lots and lots of girls have been kidnapped as well, and forced to become the 'wives' of rebel commanders. Some have escaped or been rescued, but they come back to lives of stigma, poverty, and despair. They come back with children in tow and have no way of taking care of themselves, let alone their kids. Peace Girl is trying to help them help themselves and each other.

I am perfectly safe and have nothing to fear security-wise (except for maybe from the R.O.U.S.s: see below). The area is the safest it's been in years and the final peace agreement is just waiting to be signed. People are starting to gain confidence that they might be able to go home soon.

Weirdo, why is your blog called 'Edible Rat'? First of all, why not 'Edible Rat'? Secondly, I decided to give it this title because in northern Uganda, people eat edible rat, and as a munu (foreigner/whitey) I find this delicious, from a cultural (not a culinary) perspective. Edible rats are different from household rats (although some people do eat household rats too; poor Rizzo) in that they are large (think corgi-sized) and generally inhabit the forest. Although to date I haven't tried edible rat, I've heard that it does not taste like chicken: it tastes like rat. Yummy!

Munu, why are you so slow to write? It turns out that culture shock is shocking, and it has knocked me flat on my intellectual butt for the last two weeks. I also have a very sporadic internet connection, and my laptop only works when it's plugged in (and I often have no power at home). These are my excuses.

I have been writing everything down, though, but haven't really wanted to share anything up until this point. So from now on I will be blogging and picking out the juicy bits from my journal (so, there will be a bit of a back-blog for a little bit as I get you caught up on my adventures).

So sit back, relax, and enjoy my heavily censored blog entries. I hope you still respect me in the morning.

P.S. This post is called the Itchy and Scratchy Show because my feet and ankles are really itchy from a lot of mosquito bites. That is all.