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?