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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adong maber (take care),

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

       We have officially hit the home stretch of our stay in Uganda. On
Saturday, I sadly moved out of my wonderful home stay and our project
came to a close with our end-of-program tournament. Despite the
heaviest rain that I've witnessed all summer forcing us to cancel the
second half of tournament games, the kids had fun, and it was a good
way to wrap up and celebrate the accomplishments of the summer.
       In our last full week in Uganda, two of our professors from
Northwestern made the trip out here to give us a little formal
education, and make us work for the credits we're receiving. I spent
Sunday, my first legitimately free day in two months, writing a paper
assigned for one of the classes. However depressing it is to return to
the academic world of critical reading and writing, the paper was to
be a reflection of one of the assigned readings in junction with how
it applied to our work in the field.
       The article I wrote about was on HIV/AIDS. It hypothesized reasons
why Africa is plagued by the disease so much more than the rest of the
world. Briefly mentioned was the difference in relationships between
Africans and Westerners, let's say, Americans. While on average
Americans have sex with more people in their lives than Africans do,
they are for the most part, serially monogamous, thus the rate of
transmission is lower. Africans, especially African men, the article
said, tend to be more likely to have sex with multiple people at once,
thus transmit the disease to unknowing partners.
       One reason the article gave for this infidelity was women in
"transactional relationships." Because African women often have little
power in relationships, and are dependent on their boyfriends or
husbands for money or support, they have no power to keep their
partners faithful. Without men, these women are ostracized.
Furthermore, these disempowered women probably don't feel able to
demand the use of condoms or other contraception.
       So…my genius solution to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, which surely
has been proposed by many before me, is to launch a massive women's
rights campaign. The results of a women's empowerment movement could
be immense; if the power balance between men and women in
relationships was leveled, men would be more faithful, and  women
could demand HIV testing and the use of contraception.
       Of course, this is highly idealistic and much, much easier said than
done, but it's an idea that I got excited about. I think it is time
that we start looking for new solutions to the problem of HIV
transmission, as abstinence and other campaigns have failed to
eradicate the problem in the past twenty years.

--Ann

I said goodbye to my host brother, Eric, yesterday.  He left for Kampala to start his first year of university.  Today at breakfast, my host mom (I call her “Nyabo”) told me that her sister lost a child, and that she will not spend the night at home tonight.  Since I leave Jinja tomorrow morning at 10 am to spend my final days in Kampala, I won’t see her again!  I’m surprised at how often death happens here – it seems someone is always attending some burial – and how quickly my family broke apart.  Now it’s me, Joy, Diana, and a visiting sister, Angela, and her young son, Jerry.

I’ve been taking photos of the things I missed – my bucket bath arena, latrine, sewing machine – and getting a little sentimental.  I’m not great with goodbyes.

Here are some funny things I’ll miss:

strange breakfasts – today I had popcorn and eggs, yesterday I had French fries and pink bananas, the day before I had a few bites of fruit…

music – you walk by a store, and… wait… is that Dolly Parton??  Yep, she’s huge here.  Ugandans dig old country music, gospel, and their perky native beats.  One of the songs on the music DVD I’m bringing home – Kiwaani by Bobi Wine – is huge right now.  Kiwaani means “fake,” and (from my understanding) the video is about a guy who fakes his own death and then coughs in the coffin.  Yesterday one of my work associates called the gold band on my ring finger “kiwaani.”  She saw right through me.

Fooooood – blackened maize, homemade popcorn (cocoporn), cheap pineapple, jackfruit, ripe tomatoes, millet, sautéed cabbage, groundnut sauce, avocado

Bargaining – fixed prices are such a bore!  I’ll miss whipping out a few Lusoga words to slash prices in half… I’ll miss the hunt

Pirated everything – at the Internet café I usually frequent, the walls are covered with American films you can have copied here -- Ring Around the Rosie, Prison Break, Half Past Dead 2, Wild Hogs, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shanghai Knights, Mr. and Mrs. Smith...  You can also find hilarious compilation DVDs like Bruce Lee vs. Van Damme or Justin Timberlake vs. Akon. 

I’ll miss saying hello to the person next to me on the bus, and seeing women breastfeeding everywhere, children everywhere, men working sewing machines on the street, coming home to my family, tea time, being outdoors so much, motorcycle rides, living with goats chickens and cows, nice weather, and the calm Ugandan walking pace.

I will not miss being called muzungu, being proposed to, getting ripped off, taking loads of foreign medicines, worrying about buying fake water, worrying about having water at all, having no trashcan, intolerance of (lack of exposure to?) homosexuality, dangerous boda drivers, and the way many women are treated here.

--Liz

We passed the weekend in Rwanda, and on the way there, I spent Thursday night with Megha’s family in Kampala.  So generous for opening their home to me, they let me eat their delicious food, use plenty of expensive hot water, watch DSTV, and play “bowling” with their 3-year-old daughter.  They were nothing but nice.  Still, the experience didn’t fill me with warmth.  For some reason, I found myself defensive… skeptical of their home and lifestyle.  Why?

First of all, let me explain a few things.  My Ugandan family lives comfortably.  They have the luxury of plenty of time to spend together; wear nice, clean clothes; have a DVD player and TV; and eat a variety of good foods (including meat fairly often).  They have an extra room to offer me!  They are well-off…

But when I went to Megha’s house, my family seemed poor.  Megha’s family lives in a new suburb of Kampala, where many politicians and “big men” also live.  Her house includes a garage because her family owns two cars.  The interior features white walls and spotless white tile floors (no small feat in dusty/muddy Africa); a kitchen with a stocked pantry and oven; fancy cable TV; a big refrigerator; and a bathroom with a sink, bathtub, handheld sprayer, porcelain toilet, and large mirror.  They have a house girl.  They wear gold jewelry and vacation in the United States and Europe.  Both parents are very educated (post-grad).  Their electricity and water are reliable.

My family has/does none of those things.  But like I said, we have more than we need.  Compared to the villagers I’ve met -- people who often can’t afford sugar or school fees or transportation into town -- my family is rich.

But compared to Megha’s homestay in Uganda’s capital city, my family still lives backwoods: no indoor running water, no expensive metal front gate (we use barbed wire covered with some straw-like material), no cars, few condiments, no alcohol.

At first I couldn’t deduce why walking into Megha’s house angered me.  What a lovely home!  It’s great that two people who work very hard can achieve such wonderful things.  How lucky they are to own so many pairs of shoes!

Was it outright jealousy at Megha’s comfort?  She can take warm showers, and rely on electrical hair tools, and brush her teeth with chilled water.  Jealousy alone can’t explain my sentiment, though.  She is one of my best friends in Africa, one of the people I get along with best.  She was assigned her homestay just like me, and what’s more, I’m happy she enjoys it so much, because that’s what matters.

When I stayed there, part of me wanted to defend my family, to tell her Kampala crew that, you know, I actually PREFER not using hot water… and that, you know, growing up in a home with lots of TV means that you spend less time talking to your family… and that even though my Jinja family SEEMS less comfortable in a material sense, we spend lots and lots of time together… and I can help my mom cook and bond because we don’t have any house girl doing that for us.  But why would I say those things?  Megha’s family didn’t insult mine.  I was their guest, anyway… and I’m sure my Ugandan lifestyle was far from their minds.

Another part of me wanted to scold Megha’s family.  What do you do for the community?  How do you give back?  If you don’t, how could you live like this, when so many of your neighbors’ children’s bellies grow fat with hunger?  Spending money on education is a good investment, but why must you wear flashy gold watches?  Do you really need to dig your own well to avoid using the city’s water (which, in their defense, the New Vision Paper reported recently turned green and was discovered to contain feces).

But in America, I come from Megha’s family.  My American family pays for my private university, orders take-out, vacations abroad, wears jewelry, and swims in our backyard pool.  By the standard with which I judge Megha’s family, those are all wastes of money, save education.  Who am I to claim such a thing?!  Nothing but a bloated hypocrite.

What’s more, one of my greatest delights in Rwanda was dining at New Cactus, a pricey French restaurant with brilliant views of Kigali’s nighttime city lights.  I spent $18 USD on my meal – vin blanc, mineral water, veggie potage, salade nicoise, and crepes – and felt nothing but joy doing so.  I justified it (I think we all did) by saying that I deserve such an indulgence after eating mostly starch for a month, by saying that my meals had been so cheap all along (a couple USD), I could afford this meal.  Needless to say, the concentration of non-natives in New Cactus proved significantly higher than almost anywhere else I’ve been in Uganda or Rwanda.

Maybe I reacted to Megha’s family the way I did because I didn’t feel a part of it.  In the U.S. I know I belong to a tiny, elite group.  I feel guilty about my consumerism, and believe in balancing opportunities between the rich and poor.  I believe in the Democratic Party, in volunteerism, in aid (a concept that needs further explanation elsewhere).  Many of my peers who come from similar backgrounds feel the same way.

Wealth is relative.  In America I belong to a privileged group, and I also know there are people much richer than me.  They buy $1000 martinis with real rubies inside and own private islands (we know this! it airs on TV!).  But I don’t normally have access to those people, so I’ve never felt as personally confronted by wealth as I did in Megha’s Kampala home.

Whereas normally I’m the person coming from the sunny side of the street – the one flying to Africa to check things out, to make a hopefully-not-too-misguided attempt at improving something – at Megha’s I felt like I stared myself in the face.  How can I reconcile that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apoyo,

Nikolai Anywar

We are in the fourth week of ENGAGE Namuwongo, the final week of the program. Next week, the kids will practice as we plan for the final tournament, scheduled for August 11^th. My time in Uganda seems to have evaporated before my eyes, and as I look back at the project we’ve done, I have some hindsight bias that would have been useful a few weeks ago.

            The most evident mistake we made, in my opinion, was not putting forth more of an effort to hand the program over to the Ugandan peer educators earlier. We made feeble attempts, but when there were not ample volunteers, or if their ideas seemed as if they wouldn’t work, we took over and ran the show. Part of this can be attributed to how much easier it was to do things in our own, familiar way. Part of it was our protectiveness of our project; we put so much effort and thought into it that it took some time before we were willing to let it move into different hands.

            This mistake has become apparent in the last two weeks, when workshops finally began to be almost totally run and organized by the Ugandan youth. I was dubious at first; I thought the activities were not going to be engaging to the kids, but Moses, the peer educator running the workshop, demanded participation from everyone, and commanded their respect in a way that our American group does not. Furthermore, in an end of the week interview with Edris, a peer educator who had almost no involvement with the workshop Moses ran, Edris was practically bouncing up and down from excitement at his peer’s success.

            So, the moral of the story (as I tend to like to end conclusively): the best way to make change is to empower locals to make the change themselves. This is easier said than done, but the kids in our program respect their elder peer educators in a different way than they respect foreign outsiders. They know the peer educators have experienced something like they have, so they are much more apt to listen to them than they are to care what Americans say.

--Ann

On Friday morning, in the Kampala taxi park, on the way to Gulu, we waited for about 2.5 hours for our big coach bus to fill before we could take off.  During that time, I alternated reading Herzog and the New Vision newspaper.  The paper had a center spread about the weekend’s Miss Uganda competition (with big photos, undoubtedly a paper-seller), and a fascinating article about a court case brought about by a lesbian couple dealing with right-to-privacy.  Apparently, it’s only the second such case in Africa, after South Africa, where homosexuality is legal.

The coach bus is roughly the size of the American charters (maybe narrower, it seemed to me): five seats wide, divided two-three with an aisle in between.  Additionally, the bus conductor added wooden stools to the aisle, making us a six-across fleet.  I’m 5’3”, and my knees touched the seat in front of me.  My shoulders touched Heidi’s.  The poor man on the wooden stool next to me had nowhere but my armrest to lean as the vehicle rocked across deep potholes.  Eventually, some sort of road authority stopped us and forced the conductor to empty the aisle and refund each passengers’ 20,000 USH.  So… after smashing themselves onto small wooden benches and paying the same fare as everyone else, the aisle passengers were abandoned near some random Ugandan village.  Apparently, they were supposed to catch taxis that passed… magically vacant taxis in rural Uganda.

The bus ride lasted about six hours from Kampala to Gulu.  We stopped – about 7 minutes at a time near the side of the road.  Any urination took place squatting in tall grass with strangers.  There were also “drive-thrus,” ie, groups of people who ran up to the bus’ windows with bottled water, grilled maize, grilled meat on sticks, bananas, nuts, pineapple, and/or cassava whenever we stopped.  They also sold live chickens, which fortunately did not make it onto the laps of any of our travel mates.

Gulu is quieter than Jinja – wider streets, fewer shops.  The GuluTeam describes its small town atmosphere; they often say hello to others on the street.

We visited an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp full of tightly-crowded mud huts.  In addition to the Jinja Team (5 members) and Kampala Team (5 members), one of our program directors, Chris, brought his wife, Jessica, and 2-year-old blonde son, Sam.  On Saturdays, apparently adult camp members travel to their fields to work, so a pack of minimally-supervised young children greeted us.  They swarmed particularly densely around the blonde in the stroller, and stuck close to our whole group.  They fought with each other (pushes to catch up with the visitors, smacks on the head), and grabbed our hands.  Some doubled up on each hand, so occasionally I walked as a molecule of five people.

I don’t know what I thought about the camp.  I’m still thinking about it.

Here are some things that stuck out to me:

*Children fighting.  Did the scuffles occur because their parents were gone (woohoo!, I remember the feeling)?  Is it my imagination, or did they seem particularly aggressive… particularly apt to cry?  Were those two boys really fighting over one straw from someone’s roof?

*Bracelet making.  Inside one hut, camp residents made black bracelets “to sell in America.”  With the resulting funds, residents pay their children’s school fees, among other things.  Our Ugandan camp guide told us that someone informed him that the bracelets were a “mark of honor” in America.  My numbers are fuzzy, but he said they started with about five bracelet makers, but thanks to great demand, now use about 50.  Invisible Children does a similar program.  I don’t know if this was affiliated.

*Brewing alcohol.  As I said, few adults hung around during our visit because they were working in the fields.  Many of those who were present brewed alcohol inside their huts.  I think they can make 30,000 USH from their labors, a l-u-c-r-a-t-i-v-e business… certainly more lucrative than most of the farmers and second-hand clothes vendors I’ve talked to.  What are the numbers?  Who are their customers (neighbors, I assume)?  What does alcoholism look like within the camps?  Child abuse?

-Liz

I took a while reading and rereading this book and meditating and reflecting over a lot of what Freire says and a lot of people in my group wanted to read it (and hopefully will), but I took so long on it so sorry, but I recommend this to everyone.  I was able to reflect a lot on my religious/political/economic/social beliefs and all the cycles of poverty I have seen in Milwaukee with loan and housing discrimination and under-funded schools and in Northern Uganda with a similar discrimination and under-funded education and a war, which has all its own generational cycles.  Ahh, here are quotes from Pedagogy and some questions and thoughts of it that this program keeps bringing up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Funny Stuff From Gulu:

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

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

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

And More from My Family:

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

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

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

Adong maber,

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

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

We discuss a lot. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday, we finally got around to visiting NGOs and asking them if they would sponsor our end-of-the-year tournament for ENGAGE Namuwongo. I was sure doors would be slammed in our faces, however, the end of the day left me hopeful about our potential sponsors, but also slightly disillusioned with the policy of NGOs.

We broke into two groups, one visiting Save the Children and World Vision, and the other, my group, visiting MTN (the giant cell phone company in East Africa), World Food Program, and UNICEF.

Much as I expected, MTN basically shrugged us off. However, the two massive NGOs, World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF were much more receptive. The people we talked to, these men and women who spent their days behind desks in air conditioned offices, were incredibly kind to us, giving us contact information and promising that they would get back to us soon. They seemed to care about our project, yet made less idealistic comments that occupied the center of my mind for the rest of the day.

The first came at WFP, where the lady we were talking to said, “I just don’t see these kids as needy.” The second came at UNICEF, where our contact asked us, “What category are these children?” Apparently, the categories are “orphans,” “street children,” and “vulnerable children.” These questions and comments left a mark on me. I understand that NGOs, especially giants like UNICEF and WFP, are concerned with helping the most desperate people, but their attitudes proved what misgivings I’d had in the past about NGOs. In order to receive aid, people are forced to prove how terrible their lives are; if their situations improve, funding is removed. So instead of seeing our group of very poor and malnourished youngsters from Namuwongo with potential and the desire to learn, they saw them as kids who did not fit into the category of “orphans” or “street children.” Even if these kids’ parents were alcoholics or abusive, it didn’t matter, because they weren’t orphans or on the street.

So, at the end of the day, I hope that WFP and UNICEF see our requests as small enough to grant, and maybe even send a representative to our tournament. Possibly, they could learn something from us the way I learned from them yesterday.

--Ann