To the Bush!

I am currently sitting in the restaurant/lounge of the White House Hotel in Kasese town. Kasese town is the largest town in Kasese district and therefore offers the most modern comforts. This hotel is also the second nicest hotel in Kasese town. My room is self contained (so I don’t need to use the shared bathroom at the end of the hall), I have a king sized bed all to myself, there not only is electricity, it has yet to go out since I’ve been here, and the internet café downstairs has flat screen monitors and something resembling fast internet. All these luxuries are afforded me for 20,000 Ugandan shillings a night, which works out to about 11.75 USD, and is well within my research stipend of 25000 UGS/day. This is a welcome break from my most recent lodgings in the village of Kyanzi (pronounced Chensey), outside of the small town of Bwera (locally known as Mpondwe) located on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I have embarked upon my month long research project looking at the land conflict issues in Kasese between cultivators and pastoralists.
I am staying in the same village (and with the same family) were a few weeks earlier, I did my village stay. The family, and in fact the whole village has been very welcoming and has been assisting me in conducting my research in any way they can. On the first day of my research I had also come to Kasese town to meet with several officials and inform them of my presence and my research. The District Security Officer informed me that the people I was staying with was a “pre-capitalist society” and were therefore very welcoming, giving (since they had little concept of the market value of things, and of the principles of bargaining etc), and that he personally finds them “incredibly naïve”. Though I’m unsure how fair it is to label those in a “pre-capital state” which is, logically, the state that most of humanity has found itself in for most of history as naïve, nor am I entirely convinced that they are in fact a pre-capitalist society, I have found their warm, welcoming, and generous (despite how truly little they have to give). It is not, therefore the people, from which I am taking a welcome break. Rather the internet connection to the outside world, electricity, privacy, and flushing toilets are what I am appreciating about being here. Incidentally when checking in I foolishly only requested a toilet that flushes and so the first room they showed me had a toilet bowl, build right into the ground. Ugandans have really seemed to miss the point on this subject, while running water is certainly a perk, the nicest part about toilets is that you don’t have to squat down over a tiny hole in the ground, getting a full lower body workout while trying to do your business, all while trying not to fall over.
Since I am traveling alone, there is even less company away from the village, but I must admit that I am enjoying not having to spend ten minutes thinking up ways to phrase a question so that the locals will understand me, only to be answered with something completely irrelevant to what I’ve asked. I’m only just realizing how little interaction I’ve had with any native English speaker as I find myself speaking greedily long windedly both in emails and phone calls to anyone who will listen. Furthermore, while I miss the entire village of children that follows at my feet everywhere I go in the Kyanzi, I am also enjoying a break from this as well. Traveling alone has also forced me to socialize with random people. I am even writing this blog in between spurts of conversation with some Europeans here doing work with a local NGO. Also, my trip to Kasese has so far proved very useful in furthering my research. I have only arrived yesterday, and already I’ve interviewed a high ranking official in the district government who has had direct involvement in the land conflict issue, and three cultural leaders of the minority Banyabinde tribe of the district, who I admit I had until then neglected to consider in my work.
My solo adventure in western Uganda began Tuesday of last week. Two girls from the program who were also heading west and I, with all our luggage for the next month, trekked our way down to Bus Park (which is essentially the same thing as the Taxi Parks described an earlier posting, scaled up to accommodate old coach buses. As soon as we set foot in the park, we were swarmed by a herd of porters all grabbing at our bags, and yelling at us to come with them. We had to literally push them away from us while yelling that they stop touching our stuff. Finally we reached our bus, where we had to bargain them down from the Muzungu price, to what I suspect was probably a slightly lower Muzungu price that I had got when I had investigated the park the previous day. When I set foot on the bus, the first thing I noticed was there were pretty much no seats. I had foolishly assumed that they would only sell as many tickets as there were seats on the bus. Of course, like every other mode of transportation, they stuff it to capacity like a can of sardines (In the taxies meant to fit 14 they put a minimum of 17, on boda bodas meant to fit two I’ve seen 4, and in cars meant to carry 5 comfortably I’ve seen ten, including two people sitting in the drivers seat). I finally forced a rather rotund lady who was occupying two seats to move over and give me a seat. However, for the whole seven hour ride she absolutely refused to relinquish a solid half of my seat. She got a seat and a half while I got half a seat. However, I didn’t make too much fuss about it as I’m pretty sure that was as tight as she could squeeze, and it was certainly better than those who boarded after us who were forced to sit in on the floor in the aisle. The bus itself traveled down the poorly maintained Ugandan roads at incredibly unsafe speeds, threatening to overturn at every corner, stopping only to let vendors board in one town, walk through the aisle (over the people sitting there), trying to make a buck, before de-boarding at the next town.
After about five hours, one of the two girls, who were working at a forest reserve in Bushenye district, reached her stop. We said our goodbyes and she headed off into the unknown. As we approached our destination the bus finally began to clear out, and there was even enough space to take a seat next to my other travel companion, and discuss what a ridiculous day we had had so far. We pulled up to what appeared to be another roadside town, I believe we even got money ready to purchase a snack from one of the vendors we expected to board.
Suddenly there was a panic and a rush for the door. It seemed as though the locals were gathering around the bus and my first thought was that they were stealing bags from below. As I moved over to the other side of the bus to get a better look, I was pushed forward by a surge of people in the aisle. Through one of the open windows bellowed smoke coming from below the bus. In a panic, Sally (the girl I was traveling with) and I joined into the surge of people heading for the door. People were literally trampling over others trying to get off the bus. We made it out safely to find a crowd of people trying to put the mysterious flame under the bus out with jerry cans of water and dirt.
We were astounded to see the driver underneath the burning vehicle frantically putting himself in incredible danger frantically trying to extinguish the flame. I concluded that this bus must have been his only source of income and livelihood for him to have put his life so clearly in harms way to save it. There was suddenly a large boom as those under the bus scurried out all covered axel grease and oil. I have no idea what the explosion was and no one appeared harmed, but this was enough to convince us that we were simply not getting back on that bus. They finally got the glowing light under the bus under control, and as we were taking our bags out from underneath the conductor (man who collects money from people boarding and de-boarding) tried explaining to us that the problem was under control, the axel simply didn’t have enough grease. I peered over and saw the driver emptying a bottle of WD40 onto the problem area. The thought that a 1 liter can of WD40 couldn’t possibly make up for a total lack of axel grease on the rear wheel of a full sized coach bus, I steeled my previous conviction not to set foot back upon the bus.
Unfortunately, this left us with few options. We were totally stranded on the side of the road in the middle of Uganda, with no place to stay, and no where to go, it was about 6 o’clock and the sun was beginning to set. As I’ve said before, its advisable not to travel by road in Uganda after the sun has gone down. As we were bargaining with a bypassing banana truck to take us to the nearest large town where we hoped to either find lodging or a taxi that would take us the rest of the way to Bwera, a private hire driver approached us offering to take us the whole way. He was asking an exorbitantly high price, and naturally assuming he was taking advantage of some Bazungu we began to bargain down. Unfortunately, he would not budge on the price, apparently appreciating our predicament and seeing that we basically had no other options. Fortunately a few others from the bus that were heading to Bwera jumped in and helped bear the burden of the cost. Having the private hire was better than being stranded on the side of the road, but not much. Private hires in Uganda are unmarked, and the drivers carry no identification. We essentially got into a car with a perfect stranger, asking an exorbitant price, on faith that he would safely deliver us to Kampala, on top of this, there was no making it to Bwera before the sun set. It was not an appealing option, but like I said, we had no other choice. We’ve found that in Africa, you very often have to simply take what you are given (and be thankful for that). Sally later described her state on the ride as absolutely terrified. I’d call my own continually alert and suspicious. The fact that other Ugandans from the bus had also put their trust in this solution helped to ease my mind at the time, but in hindsight, they were in the same predicament as us, and so had as few options as we did. Fortunately, since it was getting late and we were expected in town, we received several calls from our AD’s, our friends in Kampala, and Solomon, our contact in the village. It was comforting to know that the driver knew that we were being expected, and that people were looking after us from both Kampala and our destination. Almost to my surprise we arrived in Bwera, at about 8:30, without any problems. We were greeted right in town by Solomon, a short (nearly all Bakonzo are short) but well carried man, with a big, welcoming hug. He arranged for a well known and trusted private hire to take us back to the village, and assured us that everyone was anxiously awaiting our presence, and had dinner ready and waiting for us. As the private hire pulled up to Samuel Matte’s (matte is short for Masereka, which means third born son, since I follow Bradley and Patrick in my own family, the village has also christened me Matte) modest brick home, all 9 children residing in the house (Samuel has 11 children but two are away at school and work) ran up yelling my name, taking my bags and offering hugs of welcome. I have never in my life so appreciated such a warm welcome, I felt like I had arrived back home (partly because home-stay families always speak of you in terms of family), and that the trials of the day had finally ended. As I had ate dinner by the now familiar lamp light, with all 10 children’s faces, they informed me that not much had changed since my last visit, but that the young ones had been missing me so much they had called my name in their sleep. Samuel walked in with a big smile, and greeted me with the lengthy traditional greeting. The greeting covers every aspect of your life. It begins by asking “how are you”, followed by “how is here” (referring to wherever you are at the moment), next you are asked “how is there” (referring to wherever you have just come from), then “how are they” (referring to those you have left, this question is often posed to me as “how are those sisters of yours” which always phases me for a second, they are sort of like my Ugandan family, but... not that literally), and finally “how is everyone from where you come?” (referring to your family and friends in America). To all of these questions the correct response is “fine”, if by some chance it is not fine, you say “fine, but…”. While such a long drawn out small talk can be annoying, at this point in time everything about Kyanzi was comforting. Exhausted from my day’s misadventures, I set up my mosquito net (more to protect me from rat dropping falling from the rafters than from any bugs) and slept like a baby in my home-stay bed.
The next day, after my obligatory visit to Kasese, to inform the officials of my presence and purpose, I dove right in to my research. I quickly found the land conflict so interesting that I decided to focus almost entirely on it for my research. Samuel has been instrumental in facilitating my research, both working as a translator, and an “in” to local officials and people.
Being alone in the village (Sally is also working in Bwera, but she spends most of her time at the hospital, and so I’ve not seen here since the first day) has given me my first real case of culture shock in Uganda. Last weekend, I showed Samuel one of my letters of introduction, intended to be shown to the officials wherever I went to conduct research. Surprisingly the letter mobilized Samuel into action trying to help me with my work. He said he had previously misunderstood the purpose of my research and now understood that we had to be doing much more work. I found this funny for a number of reasons, first of all the letter seemed to misinform him that simply because I am living with him that he needs to facilitate my research (while this is not true, I’m keeping my mouth shut because him taking this roll has in some ways come in handy, and I’ve since made clear that I reserve the right to take full control of the direction of the study if his help begins to lead me astray). Next the parts of the letter he sited as showing him what he had previously failed to realize were the parts that Helen (our program assistant who wrote the letters) had clearly BSed as totally filler, such as the goal is “to interact with people of all cultural backgrounds (both Christian and Muslim)”, a goal which is inherent, but also sort of ancillary to the real purpose of my study. I suppose along with being a pre-capitalist society comes being unaccustomed to bureaucratic jargon, which we capitalist can pick out a disregard from a mile away.
Anyway he insisted that we pack our bags this instant and spend the night a little to the south in Katwe, at the heart of the land in conflict, talking to local officials from the Basongora pastoralists and the Bakonzo cultivators. This happened to be exactly what I wanted to do so it worked out well, but this trip would prove a little more culture shock than I could handle. The interviews I got were actually very helpful, and were the first impressions I was able to record from the Basongora point of view. However, the time spent in between left me irritated and wishing only to conclude the trip. Samuel knew the area since he had been a headmaster at a school several years back. He had not returned to the area since he had left, and naturally wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to say hi to some old friends. Unfortunately saying hi in Konzo culture is a lengthy process that I believe has arisen out of the fact that in cultivating villages there is often NOTHING to do. I’ve already described the lengthy greeting speech which accompanies each meeting, but the process of “greeting” people is a little more complex. Basically you go into someone’s house, wait for them to come from wherever they are and say hi (or the lengthy greeting describe above). You then ask all the local news and see if any interesting conversation pops up. If there is you can spend anywhere from ten minutes to three hours talking with this person. If not, you wait till maybe the third awkward silence, and take your leave, making your way to the next house you intend to greet. The practice, which helps to maintain social relations and kill boredom in an interactive and healthy way, is in and of itself a fairly good thing, but when you have things to do it can get annoying. I assume since they presume they will later have nothing to do, if a Mukonzo has some errand to run, he will stop at every house he knows on the way to completing this errand, while it kills time, it makes getting things done in a timely manner difficult. Similarly the process of getting a hotel, meeting the people I’m meant to interview, and getting dinner, an extremely long drawn out process. What’s more is that like all Ugandans the Bakonzo have the problem that they fail to tell you their full plan (this is possibly because they themselves have no plan, Ugandans are terrible planners, and it is not uncommon to make plans with a Ugandan for the next day, the next day when you approach them and ask if they still want to do whatever it is you had agreed upon the day before, they will look at you as though they had never heard of the idea before and act as though you had randomly thought it up on the spot). To this end, Samuel would often say something like, “let us go check into the lodge”, only minutes later to say “let me first greet this friend”, this would lead to a series of greetings, each time he would assure that this is the last one, which added to my skepticism that I could not trust any info he was telling me. It was getting dark and I was worried that the lodge would run out of rooms, so I finally I insisted that before we do anything else we go and check in.
In a related complaint, Ugandans also continually make decisions affecting you without your consent. This is in part because Ugandans don’t seem to plan, but rather continually make a series of impulse decision (in truth the entire trip to Katwe was the result of Samuels impulse decision), in part because it is understandably easier to simply make decisions in their native tongue and relay the information to me once they have finished, and also partly because I believe that Bantu languages (I base this assumption on Swahili, which I consider the standard bearer of the Bantu language group) don’t use works like would, or please. To ask for ice cream, you do not say “Ningepende ice cream tafadale” which translate to “I would like ice cream please”, you instead say “Ninataka ice cream” or “I want ice cream”. Naturally this method of speaking rubs westerners, who spend a good deal of time figuring out how to delicately state their desires, the wrong way. So, I believe, when a Bantu speaker unaccustomed to English manners of speech asks you if you’d presently like to come visit his grandmother (as my home stay brother Gerald [pronounced somewhere between Gerald and Gerard] requested of me the other night) he will say “Now you will go see my grandmother”. I have found that I often get the impression that I am being ordered to do something. As a knee jerk reaction I am very often tempted to refuse merely on principle (sort of like how Mom always tells me of when I was two and she’d ask if I wanted ice cream and I’d say No, simply because I had just figured out that I could, so she’d have to explain to me that in fact I liked ice cream and so would probably enjoy having some). I’ve had to continually check myself.
This not letting me in on his plans became completely unacceptable, however, when after my morning interview with a Basongora cattle herder, Samuel led me, unannounced to the place we had eaten dinner the night before. Though it was only nine in the morning the place was filled with men who had obviously been drinking for some hours. As they ogled over the Muzungu Samuel had dragged with him, he ordered a pint of the local brew himself, and thought nothing of it when I refused the midmorning drink. Thinking that perhaps this was just another greeting on our way to returning home, I sat and put on a smile and did my little Muzungu dance for the two soldiers and two other intoxicated men (I say muzungu dance because I sometimes can’t help but think, whenever I go anywhere with any Ugandan, that I’m merely being put on display for his/her friends). Finally, after about a half hour, I ask Samuel why we were here. He looked at me as if surprised that I didn’t already know, and said we’re here to eat breakfast, and that it will be out momentarily. After what seemed like an hour, I asked again where breakfast was, and once again received the answer that it would be out any minute. Finally, entirely fed up with having to deal with these people, (one of whom was still trying to talk to me despite the fact that he had become so intoxicated he could no longer speak English, and kept on addressing me in Lutoro the local language) while waiting for the breakfast I didn’t even know we were having and which I frankly wasn’t even that hungry for, I demanded that if breakfast wasn’t out in the next five minutes we were leaving (in retrospect I was perhaps a little harsh, but at this point I was entirely fed up with the whole situation and completely unconcerned with who I would offend). At this Samuel went in and saw to it that breakfast was ready to be taken in another room, away from the drunks, in a matter of minutes. By this point I merely wanted to get home.
At the time I was pretty fed up with Samuel, thinking that he had intentionally deceived me to have his own fun, and more or less had complete disregard for the purpose of the journey, which was to enhance my research. In retrospect, I now realize that I had judged much too harshly. In reality, the only reason Samuel had planned this trip in the first place was to help me in my studies, and I certainly can’t blame him for wanting to say hi to some old friends whom he hadn’t seen in years and likely wouldn’t get the opportunity to again any time soon. Everything else was simply the result of a difference in culture. A Mukonzo will see nothing wrong with socializing along the way to completing the task at hand, they are not accustomed to planning, there is apparently no taboo against morning drinking, (this coupled with crippling poverty is likely why there is such a high rate of alcoholism in Uganda), and I suspect since the village where we had stayed was largely a fishing community that this was the end of the day for many of the people in the bar, since they had been up since three fishing on the lake. Finally if you are going to eat at local restaurants, you must expect your meal to arrive according to the local time. Just the same, it was the first time that I really let culture shock get to me, which I think strange since by all accounts by now I ought to be reconciling my cultural differences to the Ugandan culture and “learning and growing from the experience”. Until now, I’ve found adapting to Ugandan culture, while by no means seamless, surprisingly easy.
Back at home, I have become increasingly fonder of my village-stay mother. On my first visit I interacted with her very little, since she speaks minimal English. Despite the language barrier, I’ve now managed to interact quite a bit by simply hanging around the kitchen in my spare time. She will allow me to try some traditional cooking method, and then laugh as I struggle to do it as well as she can. Because of this interaction, I’ve learned to crush g-nuts to make g-nut stew, peel matoke, catch chickens, mingle flour, and sift maize. Since there is little to do in my down time, anything that fills it up is much appreciated. I’ve also read about halfway through Crime and Punishment, which I find a fairly impressive feet considering it’s been less than a week since I started.
I’ve also interacted quite a bit with the children, in particular the three youngest boys, who are 3, 5 and 9. They absolutely love playing with me, and will often merely walk into my room, and stand there while I read. They speak very little English, but this hasn’t prevented a lucritive exchange of childhood games. So far I’ve taught them the hand slap game, that trick where you cross your hands and then try to move the finger your friend points to, how to make a whistle out of a blade of grass (which given how much wild grass there is I can’t believe they didn’t know before), that whistle where you blow in between you thumbs into your clasped hands, and I’ve tried with little success to teach them how to thumb war. In return they’ve tried to show me how to play marbles, although I admit I still don’t get the finer points of scoring (if anyone knows the rules and can explain them well in English I’d greatly appreciate it).
I’ve even tried to affect the methods of discipline in the house. The other day the youngest one Jolame Busa was acting up so his older sister threatened to smack him, thinking I’d appreciate the opportunity to put the fear of God into the kid, she asked if I’d like to do the honors. Personally I’m not entirely against the occasional spanking for a serious offense, but his testing his sister’s nerves hardly constituted that offense, so instead, I took him and put him in the corner. The whole family laughed assured that my mild punishment would never be effective. At first he just tried to run away, but I quickly caught him and put him back into the corner, this time staying close at hand to ensure he wouldn’t make another break for it, and that no fun was had while in the corner. To the surprise of everyone, myself included, he was surprisingly subdued for the rest of the evening, and even seemed a little embarrassed, or angry (it was sort of hard to tell) with me.
Anyway, its been an interesting week, but now it is approaching the time for my meeting with the cultural leaders of the Basongora, and so I must take my leave. I suspect that internet connection will be sparse for the next two weeks (until my triumphant return to Kampala) as I do not think there will be time to make another trip to Kasese town and so I will likely post more blogs then. Till then I plan on returning to the village, doing some more interviews and then heading to the plans of Kasese district to live with the Basongora cattle keepers for a few days. As always, wish me luck!

Spring Break '08 Northern Uganda Pt 3: The Final Installment

As promised, here is the thrilling conclusion to my three part saga documenting my spring break in war-torn Northern Uganda. We packed our bags and headed north out of the dusty strip of road called Soroti. We left at the crack of dawn since Muna had told us that the road to Lira took a while. What we did not know is that the extra time allotted for the drive had nothing to do with the distance. I remember sitting in the van, engaged in a fairly interesting conversation (though I don’t remember what it was about), when we hit a bumpy patch in the road. These are fairly common in Uganda so I thought little of it, but the bumps made the van rattle too loudly to continue a conversation, so we paused. I remember thinking we would pick it up where we left off just as soon as the road got better. After passing over the bumps the road turned into unkempt dirt. After about a half hour of this, any attempt at conversation had been abandoned and any hope of resuming it was dwindling. For four hours we rode at a grueling 20 mph on this same dirt road. This was a true “now your in Africa” experience, although I have to admit I would have been satisfied, and would have felt I had something to write home about, had this particular cultural growth experience lasted only 20 minutes. The only road between two of the largest cities in Northern Uganda isn’t paved. To say it is not paved, however, is a great understatement, as it is really little more than a dirt trail just wide enough for two cars to pass each other when they meet en route. Once again, however, the beauty of the landscape, and the feeling of being right in the middle of it instead of merely observing it from the safely civilized protection of a paved road, made up for the four hours of noise, bumps, hitting of head on the ceiling of van, and moments when the terrain was so uneven I feared that it would flip sideways.
Along the way we passed tall, majestic forest of pines. Yes, evergreen pines only a couple parallels off the equator. The scene would have been awe inspiring in southern Jersey, or Northern California, but in Northern Uganda it just looked strange. The pines are not native to the region, and were introduced (along with the eucalyptus tree) as a source of lumber. While having a cheap, local source of lumber is great for the economy, it is terrible for the environment. In pine forest the covering is so thick that there is not enough sun below to support the local underbrush. This is disastrous for the ecosystem, and in the long run subsistence farmers will likely have a hard time cultivating enough food to feed themselves if these trees take off. Controlling the spread of these trees would be a hard job for a fully functional government in a developed nation. Imagine the odds they’re up against here in Uganda. Of course the allure of a quick buck (err... shilling) is too great of an incentive to consider these long term consequences. Even in the village in which we stayed in western Uganda, local farmers were proud to show off their newly planted pine and eucalyptus, as the trees would be sure to be great sources of income some day.
After four or so hours, about three miles outside of Lira, paved road resumed. Upon first glance it became obvious that Lira was by far the least developed town we have traveled to so far. The boda bodas so omnipresent in other towns (if you are wondering what a boda boda is, see next paragraph) are replaced by rusty bicycles with a seat on the back which slightly resemble those beach cruiser you see at the shore (except while they also look cheap and antiquated, it’s not because it looks cool). When I say the roads are paved, I mean the pavement only comes out from the center wide enough for one lane on either side. After that, it became choppy and fragmented where the dirt has begun to reclaim the path. One thing I noted, while there are no major university or college in the town, there are book stores everywhere. However, none of them have any books, just school supplies. I have no idea what this means, but I thought it was very curious.
So, I should devote a little bit of time to discuss boda bodas, since they are a pretty big part of Ugandan life. Boda Bodas are hired motorcycles/trained Muzungu killers always seeming to steer directly across the path of where your trying to walk. They are literally everywhere, and on every corner you’re guaranteed to find a small pack gathered around looking bored. One will inevitably look at you, and ask in simple English “we go?” to which the answer is always negative (I wonder how often people actually stop whatever they were doing before and say “well I wasn’t looking for a ride a minute ago, but since you ask why not”). I believe the enormous number of boda bodas is a) evident that there are too many young men in this country who can’t find a better job than waiting around most of the day for someone to want a ride, and b) because of the high traffic density and total lack of traffic rules, which makes them the fastest way around most major cities. We are actually forbidden by our program to use them. However, this is strictly for insurance purposes. Literally everyone on our program has used one at one point or another. At most times we students willingly adhere to SIT’s regulation, traffic here makes riding these guys (who fearlessly weave in and out of jams) pretty dangerous. There are, however, instances when taking a boda boda is simply unavoidable. For example, one of my friends home stay families insist that if she get home before dark, she must take a boda boda from the taxi stage to her home. This is because the road is apparently full of roadside thieves (that’s right they actually still have highway robbery here, so much so that we will not travel in between cities at night) waiting in the bushes so it is simply be too dangerous to walk home. Personally I will only consent to using one of these in extremely extenuating circumstances, and even then only at night, outside of downtown where there is considerably less traffic and for very short distances. Apparently boda boda drivers are generally looked down upon by the greater Ugandan community. In one of the primary schools we visited, among the signs on the wall warning about the dangers of unprotected sex, stay away from sugar daddies etc. was one that read “avoid boda boda life”. Now you may be wondering if boda boda is some strange sounding Luganda word for motorcycle (in truth the Swahili word “piki piki” isn’t that far off). However, the origins of boda boda apparently date back to the time of Idi Amin’s tyrannical reign. Men would get motorcycles and offer to smuggle people out of the country to safety. They would do so by yelling “We go to the boda, the boda!” In Bantu languages words normally end in a vowel, and so they have a pretty hard time with -er words like border. Anyway this mispronunciation (I’m assuming this is a mispronunciation although often Bantu languages will adapt English words but change the ending to better suit the language e.g. Komputa) stuck and while they no longer sneak people past the border, that’s what they are known for.
Anyway, back to Lira, after checking into our hotel, we headed over to the UN-OCHA organization Lira. OCHA is the UN association responsible for humanitarian and developmental initiatives. After a brief talk they took us to another IDP camp. As literally the entire town gathered around us in wonder and amazement, the LC1 (equivalent to the mayor of a very small community, maybe closer to the head of the home owners association or something like that) gave us a talk about the massacre which occurred here a couple years ago. They were very unwilling to talk about it but the official story is that the LRA (the Lord Resistance Army, or the rebel group in the North, I should at some point go into this history but it is exceedingly complicated) came to these peoples home, and told them to remain inside and they would be safe. Once inside fire was put to all the buildings burning many alive. This apparently caused a clash between the UPDF (the army of the government) and the LRA right in the center of this village. While this is the official story, it doesn’t really hold water. For one thing, these are people from the north, and so the LRA who is fighting primarily for equal recognition for these people seems to have little motivation to randomly kill a village of them. This must be taken with a grain of salt of course because the LRA has been terrorizing the people it claims to represent for years, abducting children from local schools and turning the boys into child soldiers and the girls into sex slaves. But in this instance they seem to have stood to gain very little by killing these people. Furthermore there were reports of UPDF soldiers dressing as LRA and telling the people to stay in their homes. Finally the UPDF was right there, and so their presence in the first place is very suspicious. Furthermore, for whatever reason the government clearly doctored the death count. One military spokesperson initially set the body count at 60 people. However, a record keeper working for the government visited the scene several days after (giving the government plenty of time to clean up the mess) and marked the total at no less than 120. Mysteriously, on the way back to Kampala, this spokesperson died in a car crash. The official death toll was left at 120, but folks around those parts, know that the numbers were upwards of three hundred, and are seriously suspicious about the governments roll in the killings.
At any rate in the wake of the massacre, amidst a wave of publicity, President Museveni promised to compensate for the communities loss by building a medical clinic, a school and various other basic amenities. However, once the publicity died down he failed to come through on virtually all of these promises. It is common knowledge that the north feels betrayed by Museveni, who for the past twenty years has failed to protect them from the LRA. Museveni acknowledges that he has no support in the north, and so will not get any votes from the region anyway, and has essentially abandoned them. This is a vicious cycle, I do not know exactly where it started, but for all intents and purposes, the government has no interest in helping the North, the section of Uganda which clearly needs the most help. Anyway, the LC1 ended his speech with a plea to tell his story, and to remind Museveni of their plight and his promise.
Very often, especially in the villages, people will think we must be very important, and have some political leverage, simply because we are white. They feel that even “big people” will listen to us, just because we come from a developed country. Sadly, this is to a large extent true, as I have said before many of the people we have been fortunate enough to rub elbows with here in Uganda (often on an extremely casual basis) are in positions that would make them completely inaccessible in the states. However, to think that we could call up Museveni and in the course of a casual conversation remind him about his promises to a small IDP camp/village in Lira is completely unreasonable. Feeling extremely disheartened and disempowered, we tried to communicate that we were only students and quite unfortunately had no real power to do anything. They seemed unconvinced. At the very least, they said go back and tell people in your country that there are places like this, and such injustices that occur unchecked. So that is exactly what I am doing now. Unfortunately I think it takes actually seeing places like this, where people have no place to go, not enough food to eat, no means of generating income, no government they can trust in to protect them, no security on a day to day basis, and no means of filing grievances, in order to fully understand the severity of the situation in which these people live.
As we left that day, the downtrodden locals all waved goodbye with big smiles, I believe still clinging to some hope that we would be able to enact some change on their behalf. As always the children ran after the van till it was almost out of sight, screaming and waving there hands, but this scene which normally fills us with enthusiasm and joy, didn’t quite fit our mood. We returned to the hotel disturbed and exhausted, but thankful, and perhaps a little ashamed, that these were our biggest causes for grief that day.
The next day, a good night’s sleep renewed our spirits as we set out for the day’s activities. First we stopped at the International Rescue Committee a group which focuses on the displaced people caused by the violence in the North. This was refreshing since it was the first place that we got anything resembling straight answers about the North. I’ve already mentioned the issue of No Information Transferred (NIT), which we have dealt with everywhere in Uganda. Compound this with a fear of talking about certain subjects and gathering any picture of what is really happening at all is next to impossible. Apparently, answering certain questions in the North is unsafe to do. Once we asked the name of a certain village that we had been discussing in the lecture, the lecturer, who had been friendly and amiable up to that point, drew his face tightly, and said very sternly that he was not at liberty to disclose such information. There is a lot of mistrust in the North, since people working for the LRA and people working for the government are considered the enemy, and people are very careful when discussing any issue involving either.
Our program director, Odoche (Donna’s husband), is an Achole, a tribe of Northern Uganda central to the conflict. He now lives in Kenya, but once told us an anecdote about the complexity of relations in the North, and just how uneasy people are about certain subjects. He was visiting relatives in his old village in Kitgum district, and he staying at his brother’s house. He was talking to someone whom he believed was in the LRA (in the north relations are very confusing, soldiers of an extremely brutal group are often intermixed within local communities). However, Odoche knew nothing of this at the time and, simply as a way to start a conversation, asked the man what he did for a living. The man became visibly enraged at this and refused to talk to Odoche for the rest of the night. Apparently because of the danger associated with discussing anything regarding the war, asking such questions in the north is considered extremely poor etiquette. Afterwards, Odoche’s brother approached him and said that he should leave the gathering, go to his room and go to bed. Odoche, having lived in Kenya for the past twenty years, did not know what he had done, and since it was still light out he began to protest. His brother stopped him, and told him that he must simply trust him, it would be much better if he just went to bed.
At any rate, at the International Rescue Center, though we still had to deal with the issue of NIT, we got the straightest answers regarding the extremely complicated matter of the war that we had received anywhere.
From here we visited a small NGO run by a Norwegian couple (the husband was actually a Ugandan who had applied for citizenship in Norway where he had found and married the love of his life). They had returned to Uganda to open a center for disabled children. The center, known as The Fritis Rehabilitation and Disable Center was open physically and mentally handicapped (most of these were physical disabilities caused by poor healthcare and malnutrition that given proper medical attention likely could have been prevented). They also accepted former child soldiers who needed to reintegrate into society.
For those of you who are like I was before coming to Uganda, and understand little about how armies enlist child soldiers, I will briefly explain what little I know about the extremely traumatic and detestable method. Children are first abducted by the LRA, normally from a school that is raided. Next they are told to kill someone very close to them, normally one of their family members. If they do not comply they will be killed themselves. Once they kill a family member they know that they cannot return to their home, since they will be social outcasts. Since they are young children, they have no where to turn but to the LRA. The army then takes them in, and trains them as their own. They are placed under the surveillance of their peers. Children remain there since any defector is to be killed by one of his age bracket. Since they are young and impressionable, the children quickly become desensitized to violence and are easily molded to do what is asked of them (addictive drugs are also often used, since people with an addiction are more easily made dependant and more willing to do what is asked of them in exchange for the drug). Life at war in the bush quickly becomes the only life they know and so they are completely un-acculturated to normal society. At the Fritis Center, they told us how they child soldiers were obviously the most psychologically unstable, but that they were also by far the best disciplined. They stayed amongst themselves, but among themselves naturally chose a leader who ensured that they all followed every command given to them by their therapist. They explained how it was eerie to see children as young as six behave so disciplined. Even eerier is the fact that these six year old have essentially been brainwashed to be killers. At the center they told us a story of a returned child soldier who had not been fully reintegrated into society. He was helping his father farm in the field, when the dad asked him a question about how life in the bush had changed him. The young boy calmly responded that for one thing, he could kill the father right now. Thinking the young boy kidding with him, he began to laugh and resumed work. Without even thinking about it, the boy grabbed a hoe and hacked his own father to death.
While these stories are incredibly gruesome they are important to hear in order to know just how awful this war that has lasted over twenty years, has been. Child soldiers are also help to understand the complexity of the issue, since the war is neighbors killing neighbors, and family killing family. Many people want to bring the LRA out of the bush and bring them to justice, but many people also have children in the LRA. In fact the issue of child soldiers has seriously complicated any attempt at peace talks. There is a strong desire to judge the atrocities committed by the soldiers as harshly as such atrocities deserve, but this war has been going on for so long that nearly all current LRA soldiers were at one time child abductees. So while they are the culprits committing the atrocities, they are also the victims of the atrocities. So how much can you really hold them accountable for their actions?
Anyway back to the center. We got the impression that the two Norwegians who ran the place saw an area in need and have incredibly big hearts. They both abandoned relatively comfortable lives with good jobs in a country with one of the highest standards of living to come help vulnerable people in the poorest, most unstable region of one of the UN’s Ten Least Developed Countries, and in doing so have barely been able to make ends meet. While their heart was absolutely in the right place, it seemed as though the place needed some organizational management. For one thing, I didn’t make a typo two paragraphs up when I said it was The Fritis Rehabilitation and Disable Center that is actually the name on the sign outside the gate, grammatical errors and all. Fortunately, one of my fellow program members is doing her independent research project helping the center to write grants. She figured that if their English skills were actually that limited, applying to English speaking aid organizations for money must be very difficult. This is likely one of the main reason they are having such problems finding funding.
We took a brief tour of the place, culminating in the physical therapy room, where the Norwegian wife, in broken English nervously tried to explain the absolutely state of the art therapy tool that could heal pretty much everything. Apparently is was invented in Sweden and is so new on the market that it hasn’t even made it America or most other of the developed nations yet, she was just fortunate enough to personally know the inventor. We had a hard time understanding what exactly it did, since when she turned it on, it looked like a series of small, extremely bright lights that were shined onto the disabled area. She said it was so effective that the staff would use it to cure back pains and it had fully rehabilitated several children. It pretty much sounded like this machine could do just about anything.
After the tour, we got to have lunch with the children staying at the center. This was incredible. Since the center provided us with a free lunch, we spend our per diem lunch money on buying toys for each of the children. We figured that since they had so little, (many were orphans) and that which they did have was used communally, that they would greatly appreciate some private possession. Bringing the toys out was fantastic, since most of the children spoke very little English. While we couldn’t communicate with words, everyone can speak play. I spent the greater part of the afternoon playing catch with a boy who looked to be about seven, but was actually around fourteen. He had some mental developmental issues, and could not walk so he would scoot around on his knees chasing after the ball with a huge smile on his face. He couldn’t catch for his life, but he could throw like a champ.
There were no former child soldiers staying at the center when we went to visit, so we never got the chance to interact with one, but they said that with the upcoming peace talks they expect to be receiving many in the near future. I sincerely hope my friend’s grant proposal writing helps the center, otherwise I fear they will be unable to accommodate the incoming flux of children.
After this we went to visit CARITAS, the Catholic aid organization. This talk was definitely not the highlight of the trip. We had already had a long day, and were very tired. On top of that the person who gave the talk was a fill-in for the regular and looked extremely nervous, apologizing several time (once when he noticed people were asleep) for not being the best speaker (people close to the front said they could see the poor guy shaking). Unfortunately, our group, though composed of a strangely large number of devoutly religious people, is also composed of extremely liberal people many of whom despise the catholic churches position on condom use, abortion, etc. They showed no mercy as they grilled into our ill prepared speaker on how the church viewed condom use as a preventative measure against HIV/AIDS and so on, asking questions they already knew the answer to so they could grimace disapprovingly when they heard him say it. Worse yet, the man was relatively uninformed and on several occasions gave answers which contradicted current church doctrine. At any rate, I was happy, largely for the speaker’s sake, when the talk was over.
The next day we road back to Kampala, where without our noticing (since we were up in the more arid regions of Uganda), the rainy season had begun. On the way home we saw some baboons along the side of the road and gave them some bananas. This was awesome. They came right up to the van and grabbed bananas out of people’s hands, scoffing them down in one bite. I’m upset that my camera was in the luggage rake because people got some great footage of these guys.
Anyway back in Kampala the rainy season started. Now if you are like me and got most of your info on Africa from the National Geographic channel, you would think the rainy season is that time of year when it pours nonstop for like three months to make up for the rest of the year when it never rains (come on that’s how they show it on NG). This is not true at all. In fact we have only had what you could call a rainy day once on this entire trip. While it does rain more during the rainy season, (which happens twice a year alternating between the two dry seasons) it only rains for about twenty minutes everyday. When it rains, however, it absolutely pours. Fortunately these torrential downpours normally happen at night, so while they wake you up if you have a tin roof like I do, they don’t disturb your day. The rainy season is actually very nice, since it makes the days much cooler. My home stay family will actually bundle up in sweaters before leaving the house in the morning. They are always amazed that I am not cold, but it never actually gets below seventy here. For a muzungu used to the freezing cold winters of the North-Eastern United States, this is perfect weather.
So there you have the conclusion of my first adventure into the Ugandan countryside. My next adventure will be a return to the west to conduct my independent research on the Bakonzo farmers I stayed with earlier and the Basongora pastoralist group. My access to internet (and electricity for that matter) will be ever more limited than it is now, but stay tuned as I will do my best to keep this blog updated. Till next time wish me luck!