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?