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?