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!

More adventures...

So I know I promised in my last post to write about the thrilling conclusion to our trip to the North, but I have just returned from our second excursion out of Kampala, and have a whole new set of adventures that I want to impart while they are still fresh in my head (Don't worry I'll come back to Lira some other time). We began heading west out of Kampala towards the town of Mbarara the main town of the country from which the current President Museveni. The Baganda, from the tribal kingdom in which Kampala is located are absolutely convinced that this region, in which the kingdom of Bunyankore is located, is given special treatment by Museveni, and are therefore the wealthiest part of the country. I don’t know if this is true, but I found it interesting that our first stop is this region was to the UN Millenium Development Village. This is one of a handful of villages selected by the UN (in conjunction with the local government) throughout all of Africa in order to basically perform a test run to see how much it will cost per village to fulfill the UN Millenium Development Goals in Africa. These goals include building of infrastructure, access to health care, food security, access to clean drinking water etc. The village itself was fairly impressive. The people in the village were Bairu, which I understand to be the agricultural sub-tribe of the Banyankore (their counterpart would be the Bahima, the pastoral sub-tribe). They had vast fields of matoke plants (for those of you just tuning in matoke is a type of banana/plantain that is served cooked, often mashed up, and the people here absolutely love), safe water, and a reasonable clinic, all implemented by the UN initiative. Of course, I can only speculate that the reason this area out of all the hundreds of tribal regions in Africa was selected was Museveni’s doing.

A note on tribalism, in the states, particularly in the Anthropology classroom, we are often discouraged from using the term tribe to define groups of people in Africa. This is because the term tribe is an incredibly vague term that could mean any number of things, and because it very often the connotation of referring to primitive people who wear masks and dance to animal skinned drums around a fire in hopes of causing rain. So for clarification, I just want to note that tribe here is used to refer to an ethnic group. For purposes of analogy I have describe myself as coming from America but belonging to the New Jersey tribe, or the Hispanic tribe. People here use the term tribe as a means of defining themselves, and while they are not tribes in the sense most American would consider a tribe, they are very real identities that have very real effects on politics and social relations in Africa, a perfect example is the case of Kenya in which the Kikuyos and the Luos (and basically everyone who wasn’t a Kikuyo) came into conflict over the election results. Another point of clarification worth mentioning is that kingdoms within Uganda normally refer to the kingdoms of the Great Lakes region in Africa before the arrival of Europeans (though in some cases they refer to newly formed kingdoms aimed at giving cultural autonomy to a certain group). These kingdoms exist today as cultural groups. The kings are not political but cultural leaders. Though they have political influence in that they affect the attitudes and ideas of the people within the kingdom, the kingdoms are not politically governing bodies in any way. In an almost contradictory way much as people refer to tribes in Africa, they will also make sweeping generalizations about Africa itself. This is another practice which socially conscious American are strongly discouraged from doing since Africa is such a diverse place that almost no generalization can be made about the nation as a whole. However, when explaining a certain custom an African will often start his sentence saying “In Africa we do ….” I find this amusing both because they are so visibly divided by tribe that its incredible that they can even identify with ruling state, much less an entire continent and because it is a little like an US citizen saying that “In the Americas we do ….”.

Anyway back to the trip. The next day we visited Rukararwe, a forest-conservation NGO which also focuses on researching traditional medicine. This was a very relaxing visit, including a walk through the forest I which we looked at trees with medicinal value. While the fifteen girls in our group were busy ogling over the diminutive French tour guide, Brendan and I enjoyed the nice scenery and the calm garden like atmosphere of the place. We learned that they were selling an herbal remedy to Malaria that several studies conducted by either Cambridge or Oxford scholars (I can’t remember which) concluded were more effective at treating the disease than the current medical treatment. This boosted my confidence enough to try a few herbal remedies for myself. I was feeling slightly congested that day and so I purchased two packages one which promised to clear the sinuses and the other which was a cold remedy. I have yet to try the cold remedy since it requires boiling the powder in a liter of water. However, the sinus decongestant was just a powder you were meant to snort up your nose. This caused a sneezing fit lasting about fifteen minutes which, while hilarious, yielded no signs of improved sinus congestion. I do not know if remedy would have worked given strict adherence to its prescribed application since after that experience I have yet to go back and try a second dose.

After this came the part of the trip I think everyone had been looking forward to most, the game drive through Queen Elizabeth National Park. The initial drive was actually quite disappointing. It was during the middle of the day, when most animals are hiding from the heat of the African sun. However, this safari drive was followed by a boat ride down the local waterway which more than sufficed for the lack of game viewing on land. Here we saw a plethora of hippos, crocodiles, various birds, water buffalo, and were even charged by an elephant. The elephant had been enjoying an afternoon bath, when we approached it with the boat. The elephant began to retreat as we approached, but then turned and began to run towards the boat, fortunately for us, the water became too deep for the elephant to charge. Next he began to splash about and spray water in our direction. It is entirely unclear if he was really trying to charge or was just playing with us the entire time, because whatever he was doing seemed rather enjoyable. All of this could not have been more than 15 yards away from our boat, and I managed to get some great footage of the giant at play.

The next day we left our hotel at five in the morning in hopes of catching a glimpse at some of the safari animals we had not seen on our game drive yesterday. As it turned out this was too early as we spent the first forty five minutes or so of our game drive in the dark of night, unable to see any animals. However, as the sun came up, we saw we were virtually surrounded by various water buffalo, gazelle, antelope and even some things that looked like the white tailed deer everyone hates so much at home (they are more exciting in Africa). This was all well and good, but no one goes on safari to see these animals. Given that in this area of Africa there are no giraffes, zebras, or cheetahs, we were on the prowl for some lions. We were on our way to a gathering of vehicles (usually a good sign that there are lions to be seen) when just 200 yards away or so, our van became stuck in the mud. We all got out and pushed and after a good ten minutes finally freed ourselves just in time to see all the cars pulling away. While disappointed we now knew that there were lions about. It didn’t take long for us to spot a male and a female about twenty five yards from our van. While this seems like a ways, when watching a beast that can cover this distance in about two bounds, it seems remarkably close. The male lion did not seem amused at our presence and began growling (which was awesome!). We soon learned that this was because it was defending a kill recently had. I kid you not the video footage I took here is worthy of National Geographic.

After this we were completely satisfied, and returned back to the hotel as breakfast was being served. After a mid-morning nap, we set out to the village where we would be spending the next four days in home-stay learning about rural life in Kasese district among the Bakonzo people. After several hours on mostly dirt road we reached the village, located in a mountainous region at the foot of the Rwenzori Mountains. The village welcome us, with a lengthy speech by their local representative most of which I was focused on the small boy (who I soon learned was named Allen and was my home-stay cousin) of maybe two or three years, trying to hug a turkey who though tied up at the leg was trying with all his might to get away. I think this was one of the funnier things I’ve ever seen. After this introduction and welcoming ceremony, we were shown the family with whom we’d be living with. I was introduced to my home stay father whose name was Samuel Mathe (meaning third born, in Bakonzo society the order in which you were born is somehow integral to your identity, although it does not seem to confer any particular advantage in terms of treatment or inheritance). Samuel is a very kind, intelligent man, with a pot belly that instead of making him look oafish as they normally do, gave him a dignified air and a presence that made up for his lack of height. He took me to his home where I met my twelve siblings (the names of which I still don’t know entirely) and my home-stay mother, who, though very nice, didn’t speak a lick of English.

The village itself is a poor (but not desolately so) place known as Chensey, about three kilometers from the boarder of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most people here engage in a mixture of subsistence and cash farming, almost all of the food they eat comes from their land. They also employ themselves in various other side jobs, the main one of which is brick making. The soil in Kasese district is perfect for this practice as it apparently has very high clay content. You simply add water, apply to a mold to shape the brick, let dry, and fire. Samuel told me that he has often paid for school fees by bringing a truck of bricks to the headmaster. In addition to these various subsistence strategies most people hold full time jobs. Almost all of the people who I met, including Samuel, were teachers, or training to become teachers. Because of brick production most of the houses are constructed out of brick, with ridged tin roof for water catching.

The first day, Samuel took me around the village so I could orient myself. While all over Uganda children get a kick out of seeing a Muzungu, I’m fairly confident that in this particular village many of the children had actually never seen a white man, and so there was literally a parade of small children at my heels for this entire tour. That night, back at my village home, I had the best meal of Ugandan food I have had so far on this trip. The “greens” which are normally just cooked leaves of what Ugandans call a dodo leaf, were boiled in some delicious sauce, the starches were rice and what they call cassava bread, or tapioc, which is a very sticky almost marshmallow like substance which is used as a starch. No silverware was provided and so we ate with our hands, taking the tapioc, rolling it into a ball, and then using our thumb to make a little crater which is used to scoop up the beef stew. On the side of every meal they serve a few bananas and a few avocados, both of which go surprisingly well with just about everything. Like I said before, nothing but the beef was purchased. Everything else came from their land. While eating the entire family, all twelve children, gathered round to watch in wonder. It was here that Samuel, gave me the middle name, Mathe, since like himself, I was my father’s third born son. He liked our similarity, but found it absurd that I was also the last born son, as a family of three would simply never happen in Africa.

That night, the Saturday before Easter, I gathered round with all the children, and listened as the older ones read the bible to the others (one would read in English while another would translate into Lukonzo for the younger children who had yet to learn English). In the small house, on small benches, some on the floor, everyone huddled around the dim light of a few candles to hear the good book, the image was absolutely picturesque. Afterwards, I slept in my small room, with a curtain for a door, which my homestay sister Jennifer, had been nice enough to give up for my stay. I slept fine but each morning I awoke to pellets of rat droppings in my bed. I suppose I was fortunate, as others apparently awoke to rats landing on them from the ceiling. In retelling this story the locals pointed out how hysterically funny it was that a person should fear a rat, as we are so much bigger.

The following day, after attending Easter services we ate a large Easter meal, and I was afforded the opportunity to spend some time with a few of my siblings. Though they were all very nice, communication was difficult. Even when speaking fluent English, Africans have a way of giving long winded responses without ever really answering a question. In our group we have come to call such occurrences “No Information Transferred” or NIT for short. NIT’s have occurred with lecturers, people we meet, even people working for the program such as Helen our beloved program assistant. Africans also seem to enjoy either not planning at all or keeping others in the dark concerning plans. It is common after a long day of traveling to pile into our van, fully expecting to go home, and pull up completely unannounced to some place which is not our hotel, is not on the schedule and to be placed in some activity we were completely unaware about. Donna, our program director Odoche’s wife, who is an expat Anthropologist from the states, believes African men like to keep women in the dark as a way of keeping them on their heels. So perhaps the fact that I normally roll with fifteen girls has something to do with why I never know what is going on. In truth she gives some pretty good evidence for her case. When she came to Kampala she had intended to stay for four days, give us a few lectures on performing fieldwork, and then return to her home in Kenya. However, when she arrived Odoche informed her that she would be taking us on a ten day trip to northern Uganda, and that he and Jamal were returning to Kenya, they would return when we got back. However, I have been on my own and come across NIT’s far too often to believe that women are the only ones subject to this treatment. At any rate, her solution is to talk about something other than the subject about which you are trying to get information. This as you might imagine is rather tricky, but there is some logic to it, I was once asking Samuel about how many people in the village originally came from Congo (this was not out of the blue we had been in a discussion about Congolese migration for a good ten minutes), he responded by pointing to a mother hen and say, “She knows how to care for her young”. There is simply no way he could have misunderstood me to be talking about chickens, he apparently just didn’t want to give a direct answer.

But I digress. My point is that this principle of NIT combined with limited English skills at some points made communication with my siblings next to impossible. I soon discovered words like usually, how often, and how frequently were simply not in their vocabulary, making asking any question about frequency next to impossible. Often I found myself asking a question, then upon hearing a response that was not what I’d asked for, stopping my siblings mid-sentence, asking again, hearing the same response, and repeating, until finally they had said what they wanted to say, and I walked away frustrated at having gained no further information. I think this was mostly due misunderstanding, and not NIT’s, since when they did understand me they were as helpful as possible. Anyway, while hanging out with them I dispensed some gifts in appreciation of their hospitality. I gave them some coloring books, a couple of kites, a Frisbee, a few bars of all purpose soap (used for bathing, washing clothes, cleaning dishes and pretty much any other application where soap may be needed), a bag of sugar (these last two Muna assured us were always the things village people tended to appreciate most), and several kinds of candy. This instantly catapulted me to the status of hero, we spent the afternoon trying to fly the kite without wind, and tossing around the Frisbee (which took some practice as they originally thought it was a plate). My little brother Jolan, who is about three, runs around with a big hole in the front of his pants (which seem to me to completely nullify any purpose they might have served) and wore a second had “Proud to be an American” shirt, was so excited he would run around in circles and come give me hugs every couple minutes. He later expressed his excitement by climbing a tree and trying to pee on a girl standing below. I later found that these children had literally no toys, and so these gifts were pretty significant. Jolan and his slightly older brother Joshua broke out their toy box one night. It consisted of a deck of cards that had been torn up, a few empty makeup canisters, various bottle caps they had collected, and a handful of plastic marbles (which I suppose means they are not technically marbles). Similarly I asked on of the two older boys in the house who spoke English, Richard, if he played any sports, he replied that he had been on the schools volleyball and basketball team until the ball used for both burst. Suffice it to say that very often people in the village have literally nothing to do, so any form of entertainment is greatly appreciated. While there is certainly more to do in Kampala, this holds true to a certain degree in the city as well. Earlier this morning I walked out and saw my home-stay brother Joseph painting a room. I asked if he needed any help, and he replied that he was in fact just finishing for the day. There was still one part of the wall left unpainted, and when I asked him about it he said he would finish it tomorrow. It was only about ten in the morning, so I ask him why not just finish it today. He smiled and with a laugh replied “I could finish it today, but what would I do tomorrow?”

Several cultural practices have grown out of not having anything to do. First of all, people take their time doing everything. Absolutely nothing in Uganda is ever rushed. To an American traveler from the North-East this can sometimes be a bit frustrating. Second, they spend as little time at home as possible. They are always, as they say, moving around. Whenever they go anywhere, they will frequently drop by other people’s houses along the way. When they arrive, unannounced, the host will drop whatever he or she had been doing, and sit to talk, sometimes if the conversation is good, the visitor will stay a while before resuming whatever he had been on his way to do. However, such visits usually last no more than a couple minutes. Since most people in the village are family, people have no problem with this practice, and will often offer meals to visitors. I also hypothesize that this boredom attributes to peoples extreme religious zeal, very often the bible is the only book people here have, and nearly all Christians have read it cover to cover. Finally I hypothesize that NIT’s are also a cultural defense against boredom. When an answer is long winded, and yielding very little desired information, the response itself not only fills up time, but is also likely to incur more questions (although personally, I will often simply just say “never mind” and drop the whole conversation right there). This also explains why our introductory meeting took so long. Town gatherings are a special event, and a variation from normal activities, people look forward to them, and do not wish for them to end. On the first day our group could not wait for the meeting to finish, but on the second to last day, when our program director Jamal came by each house and informed us that the meeting had been cancelled, I was hugely disappointed. I had been sitting around, looking forward to this meeting all day. We did end up having the meeting, and though all points of discussion had been touched upon within the first five minutes, we stayed around and dragged the meeting out to a full hour.

While village life is not exactly the most exciting lifestyle, do not get the impression that I spent four days in complete boredom. To the contrary, I learned more in those four days, and had more new experiences than I can even impart here. My village stay was by far one of the best parts of my time in Uganda, has afforded me memories that will last my whole life through, new relationships that I hope will continue throughout my life, and has altered my perceptions of the world around me. I had a wonderful experience, and apparently, my family had a wonderful time with me as well. They told my program directors that I had really adapted to the village way of life, as I would try anything they asked of me, and was generally a fairly easy guest. I also heard rumors circulating that the neighbors were calling me the “chief of the village”. I was honored that they thought so highly of me, and in truth I was happy to try whatever they wanted me to. As I’ve said before the food here was better than food I’ve tasted anywhere else in Uganda, I learned a lot about the local agricultural practices, and got to help out with daily chores like fetching water from the river, making bricks, weeding the crop fields, and washing clothes. Apparently in Bakonzo society, refusing an offering is somewhat rude, so though at times I felt like I was taking more than my fair share from people who in fact had very little, by trying a bit of everything, I was actually acting properly.

Like I said, to try to impart to the reader everything I have experienced on this trip would be impossible, and already I’m finding this post a little long winded (almost Africanesque), so I’ll just give you one last highlight. On the last evening of our homestay, I took the kite, and about half a village of small children (who in the village are much more autonomous than in the states, they are treated much more like an adult both in the work load they are given, and in the freedom they are afforded; pretty much all of them, some as young as three, gave no word to their parents as to where they were going, and just saw me coming and began to follow) down to the schoolyard. On the dusty field we tried to get the kite to fly, but the wind simply wasn’t strong enough. Fortunately most of the children, having never seen a kite before, were content to play the game, see how long you can keep it in the air and then try to catch it when it falls. After this, one of the children came out with a soccer ball made from bundled together plastic bags, held together by rope. So we all joined in a large game on soccer, playing barefoot on a dusty impromptu field. Of course, even the small children were much better than I, but I was at that moment right in the middle of what felt like an incredibly iconic image of the third world, school child with no shoes, no money for a real ball, using what little resources they had to play their favorite game.

The next morning before we set out, my home stay family gave me the gift of a table piece which one of my sisters had knit, and a brand new button up shirt. I was touched by their kindness, but slightly embarrassed to accept such a gift from a family who didn’t wear new clothes themselves. In fact, a new shirt is actually pretty hard to find in Uganda, since so much of the clothing industry is fueled by the second hand industry. Also my brother informed me that he had awoke at four in the morning in order to go to town and purchase the shirt before I left. At any rate I thanked them profusely and went on my way, hoping to someday return to Chensey and see all of my news friends again.

I soon learned that while many of my fellow students had similarly wonderful experiences in the village, I learned on the bus that some had not enjoyed themselves as much, and could not even see their way to completing the village stay, so radically different was the lifestyle from what they were used to. At any rate I had been looking forward to our reunion as a fun time where we could trade the crazy stories we had aquired over the past few days with the only people who would really be able to relate. I was sorely mistaken. In truth for a group whose composition is 88.2 percent female, we had been exceedingly fortunate to make it this far without any significant drama. But in our final stop on this trip, Fort Portal, our luck ran out. On the bright side, the excess of petty bickering, gossip, underhanded insults provided excellent research material for Brendan and I’s soon to be published joint study entitled Girls are Weird: An Ethnographic Study of the Little Understood Upper Middle Class American Female. The next day was even worse. We went to Semliki Nation Park, a rainforest preserve where there were supposedly chimps, monkey’s and forest Elephants. This should have been a highlight of the trip, but the ride there was took three hours on a windy dirt road, many were feeling under the weather from whatever they had eaten in their homestays, and when we got there the weather was too rainy to really do anything, so we basically piled back into the vans and headed back. This was truly bad luck, as this is the only rainy day we have seen since we have been in Africa. Even in the rainy season it normally only rains for about half an hour, and that’s normally at night. Needless to say everyone was pretty miserable, and with tensions already fairly high, it didn’t take much to send people off. When one van mistakenly ate a Pringles can that they did not know had been intended for both vans, shots were fired. Brendan and I could do nothing but keep our mouths shut and watch the ridiculousness unfold. After lunch we headed (unexpected) to a village of African pygmies known as the Batwa. While everyone was excited to see them, this also ended up adding to everyone’s misery. These people had been chased out of the rainforest where they used to forage, and left with no subsistence strategy except to prostitute their culture to tourists. We went their and they literally put on a song and dance (that I’m convinced they made up as a tourist gimmick), and overwhelmed us in a sea of vendors trying to sell us crafts. One thing I did learn is that pygmies actually are much smaller than the average human.

It is too bad that our time in Fort Portal was marred by such inner group strife, since it was one of the nicest places we have stayed so far. Our hotel was right on a lake, the rooms were thatched roof huts (ironically, we left the village where they stay in brick houses with tin roofs, to the fancy resort where we stayed in “authentic” mud huts with thatched roofs). Every night the hotel would make a large campfire and the guest could sit around and talk, and around about four in the afternoon monkeys would come by knowing that guests at the hotel would feed them.

While this was rather picturesque, I was never so happy to return home to Kampala, get away from these crazy girls, and see my home stay family again. It is now Sunday; hopefully by school on Monday, everyone will have had the weekend to cool off, recollect themselves so as to at least feign civility, and come back good as new.

Spring Break '08 Northern Uganda Pt. 2

So I last left off having just finished our exciting romp about in the forest (and spread out villages) around Sipi Falls. After our day of adventure, we checked into a mountaintop hotel known as Noah’s Ark. We were originally supposed to stay in The Crow’s Nest, an inn overhanging a cliff that looks down upon the falls, but unfortunately it burned down. When we arrived there all Muna exclaimed “Something is wrong” when we asked what, he replied “The hotel is gone”. In talking with our tour guide Moses, who works for Crow’s Nest we learned that they had concluded that the fire was the work of arsonists. They said they suspected competing hotels in the area as the culprits. We took note that in this small mountain village Noah’s Ark was likely the only competition and so burning the building down had worked, though we were slightly worried about a retaliatory attack while we were staying there. Anyway the landscape around Noah’s Ark was incredible. It reminded me very much of farm and grazing land in the Rocky Mountains, except more ...African. Also the hotel had good food (including fried chicken), and the setup, individual rooms surrounding a courtyard I thought created a nice feel. I am apparently the only person in my group who like this hotel. Others on the trip will tell you that I only liked it because I managed to take a shower before the water turned off. However, this is untrue as the water actually quit while I was in the shower fully lathered in soap, I had to run around under the dribble coming from the faucet to get it all off. That night, the mountain air was actually cold. By cold I mean absolutely temperate but this is the first climate that has been anywhere close to cold in all of Africa. While it was still probably warm enough for the usual outfit of jeans and a t-shirt (it is inappropriate men beyond schoolboy age to wear shorts), everyone was so excited for the cold that we all busted out our hoodies and long sleeves. That night there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They say that there is no other night sky like the African sky. I had not realized the truth to this statement until that night. Stars I didn’t even know existed appeared bright as any other, and familiar stars, those in Orion, the Big Dipper, etc, were so bright you almost couldn’t look directly at them. The sky was incredible. Perhaps it was this more than anything that biased my opinion in favor of this particular stop on our trip.

The next day we set off for Soroti. Whereas Mbale and Sipi Falls were in the far east of Uganda, almost to the Kenyan boarder, Soroti is more centrally located, but much further north. As we progressed toward Soroti the landscape once again began to change. The mountainous terrain slowly became flatter, and all lushness gave way to dry grassy savannah. This savannah was much drier than the savannah around Mbale, and slowly we began to peel off our hoodies, beanies, and long sleeves and the temperate mountain air gave way to blisteringly hot dry heat. This was the Africa you see on TV. The land was characterized by those dry, unending plains lands that emanate waves of heat in the distance. Along the way we pointed out at least ten random rocks amid the savannah that could easily have been pride rock (from the lion king). As we rolled into Soroti, I got the impression that it was a quite old western town (sorry to keep drawing comparisons to the western United States but that was the association I made in my mind, and the best comparison I can think of to help paint the picture). Like Mbale, Soroti is essentially a strip of buildings along dusty the roadside. The central feature of the town is incredibly large rock (mountain-like in scale) that is a backdrop to the whole town. Muna, still excited that he had someone to go exploring with, asked if I would go climb the rock with him. So Muna, about half of the group, and I trekked out around six in the evening with the hope of climbing the rock in time to see the sunset from atop. What none of us knew is that at the base of the rock lay an IDP camp full of those who had been displaced by the fighting in the North. With Muna as our fearless leader we walked around the outskirts and eventually right through the camp. It was incredible seeing just how little these people had. They have been forced to flee their homes, and gather in these camps, in squalid conditions amid literal drifts of garbage. They have next to nothing, with no means of sustainable subsistence (nearly all calorie in-take in such camps is donated and so their diet consists of high carbohydrate food and lacking in sufficient protein, vegetable matter, and anything else a human might need to be healthy) and no land of their own. Muzungus are a sight to behold for children all around Uganda, but in walking directly through this camp, you’d think that these children had never seen a white person (in truth the reason they were so excited is probably because they have only seen whites who come as aid workers, and so were expecting food or small gifts or something along those lines). Anyway by the time we had passed through the camp we had an entire village of children at our heels. It was sort of like the really corny commercials were a few people are walking down the street singing a song or something, and little by little they gain a following until they’ve got all of downtown New York following them dancing and singing and so forth, which is supposed to give you a warm fuzzy feeling as they tell you about the cool refreshing taste diet coke (they love such commercials here btw). Anyway at this point we were totally unsure as to what we should do with this horde of children following us. Naturally, Muna had a plan. He had us circle up and grab hands with the children. At first most of the children were to afraid to touch a white person, the brave ones slapping out extended hands and then running away with a triumphant look on their faces. Eventually, however, they got used to the idea and consented to join the circle. Once we were all organized, Muna began to sing a song in Swahili that none of us knew but tried to sing along. Once this ordeal was done both the children and random onlookers seemed as thoroughly confused as we were. Nonetheless this gesture seemed to do the trick breaking the stigma around our presence and from then on there was always a group of younguns at our feet as we began to climb the rock. It should be noted that these younguns (who were nearly all barefoot) were usually busy running ahead of us and then waiting up as we trekked up in step by step of the nearly vertical climb (on which someone had been nice enough to build rock steps) all completely out of breath. When we finally reached the top the view was (as usual) breathtaking. You could see for miles along the flat un-featured plains. Slightly further down the rocks were some monkeys hanging out and enjoying the view. Monkey’s always make things a little bit cooler. We wanted to have a look from the other side of the rock, but the locals told us that that was a military watch-post, and so unless we wanted to be shot at, we should simply stick to this side. Naturally Muna ran off to see if we could bribe the military men to let us have a look. The soldiers said that under normal circumstances they would have been glad to take our money in return for a look at their rock, but that since the sun had nearly gone they could not allow it. I didn’t quite get the rationale behind this, but they had the guns, so I didn’t argue. In looking at the sun, we saw that we had at least half an hour of sunlight left. This combined with the realization that we’d rather not shimmy back down the hill and then walk through the IDP camp in the darkness of night, convinced us not to wait for the sunset. Back down the hill there seemed to be a party coming from somewhere. I had earlier expressed to Muna my desire to try marua, the local brew of Soroti made from millet, which was served warm and had the consistency of a thick stew. My home-stay brother Joseph had told me about the brew and said he thought it was quite delicious. Furthermore, Professor Stone who taught my Africa: Peoples and Cultures class, had spoken extensively about his time among the Kofyar of Nigeria, who based much of their subsistence strategy around work parties, in which a days work on someone’s farm was exchanged for a party at the end of the day in which the workers would drink such millet beer. These work parties were called mar-muos, which I thought bore stark resemblance to the name for the beer they had here in Soroti. Anyway, he advised all of his students to try it if they ever got the chance, and so I was on a mission to find the stuff. Muna said we should check out the party, and naturally when we got there, there was a group sitting in a small circular hut sipping on some freshly brewed marua. Muna told the group we would like to have a taste, and they, excited by their foreign visitors welcomed the few brave souls willing to try the strange concoction. The room was full of people sitting around a pot placed on the floor in which the marua was poured. Everyone was given a bamboo straw about four feet long so we could relax and sip our marua. The locals all got a kick out of seeing our faces as the first drop of that bitter, warm, vaguely alcoholic liquid touched our tongues. The taste wasn’t awful, but it was enough that I was happy to be able to say I had tried it after a few sips (I believe that an uncertainty about the sanitation level involved in preparing the brew also prevented us all from taking much more than that). Anyway, upon emerging from the hut we found a crowd gathered around a few from our group who had begun to dance with the children to African music we had heard upon coming down the hill. The whole town seemed to be enjoying our presence. As we began to leave some walked locking arms with the children, when we reached the end of the camp the children had to be escorted back so as to keep from following us all the way back to the hotel. Though we hadn’t actually done anything to help these people I think we all walked away feeling both disturbed at witnessing how these people live, but also content that we our presence seemed to have brighten up their evening on that particular day.

The next day we visited the Ugandan Red Cross for Lira. The Red Cross took us back to the camp to show us one of their community initiatives. It was a woman’s empowerment group who took women from the community, and gave them jobs. When we got there, however, we learned that their work consisted of taking the rock we had climb the other day, breaking it into gravel of different sizes and then selling it. In the hot sun (in Soroti the sky is so large if feels like there is no place to hide from the blistering heat) these women (and some of their children) would work all day burning tires underneath large rocks in order to break them into chunks that could then be attacked with a sledge hammer. They had no advanced equipment, no method of effectively storing their gravel, and were consumed in doing work normally reserved for prison work gangs, in order to sell their product at a marginal profit. Though one woman said she had earned enough money to send her daughter to school, it was apparent that they were all still living in wretched poverty. The grime scene despairingly reminded me of the myth of Sisyphus.

Later that day we visited Christian Children’s Fund. This is one of those groups you see on TV, preaching that for just one dollar a day you can support a child in Africa. What surprised me is that when you sponsor a child, the money you give actually goes to that one child. I had always assumed they pooled the money in order to help many children and just sent you a picture of one of the many you were helping. What is unfortunately about this system is that, should a donor decide to discontinue funding for any reason, that donor’s child loses sponsorship, and is cut off from support. Aside from this minor draw back, they generally seem to help children quite a lot. Often they will invest in a child’s school funding programs to build proper lavatories, purchase proper supplies, and so on.

That night we had a panel discussion, in which the LC5 (Ugandan equivalent of a state governor) of Soroti district was a member. Afterwards we invited the panel to stay and eat dinner with us. For no other reason than to feel important, I struck up a nuanced discussion about the Land Amendment Bill on which I had just completed a research bill. Over dinner, my theory that Ugandan’s can’t resist questioning Muzungu’s about gay tolerance held true, and even the “governor” of Soroti felt compelled to ask about it. However, the discussion did not progress very far as the man couldn’t stop laughing. He said that the mental image of two men together was too comical to handle. He did say that he believed it was wrong because if everyone was gay no one would make babies. Several of the girls on the trip brought up the idea of artificial insemination. This was a classic Ugandan moment, only here could a bunch of Muzungu’s sit with the head of a district to argue the finer points of test tube babies.

Alright that’s all for tonight folks. Mama is calling me to come to her political club meeting. Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to the three part saga of my adventures in Northern Uganda. I’ll tell of the city of Lira, roadside baboons, eating bugs, and the coming of the rain season. As always kwaheri!