WE ARE PERSONS OF GREAT COMPLEXITY AND ENORMOUS
POTENTIAL, THOUGHTFULLY AND DELIBERATLY FORMED
BY THE ALMIGHTY!!

May 7, 2007
8:32 PM
Gulu, Uganada Africa

Hot and sticky, a loud crowd of people enjoying a loud football game just down the way, oh the fan feels good, Africa is so good!

Mango strands stuck in my teeth…I write to you tonight.
I’ve eaten six mangos due to my ferocious appetite! (they’re pretty small!)

As I overview the last few days, I am concerned I will not be able to share the highlights of each day… so many things can happen in just one half a day, let alone four full days!

On Thursday Richard, Brittany and I arrived at the bus station downtown Kamapala at the main post office. I did not learn until the middle of the 8 hour journey that the bus we were on was actually owned by the government and acts in addition to a passenger bus, as the ‘mail truck’. This bus that transported us from Kampala to Gulu stopped at every post office in every town along the way to Gulu. The ride started out relatively uneventful, of course, in Africa they like the music loud…, no blasting, even at the wee hours of the 7 AM morning!

Brittany quickly went to sleep, head cradled into my rather famous, 13 year old teddy bear which accompanies me on every world-wide journey I endeavor on. Richard and I began a very informative dialogue and chatted most of the way until reaching a town where we took a quick stop to deliver and receive mail. We stopped, which was the usual expectation. However, when the big ol’ diesel engine turned back on, we were not advancing forward as to be expected, but rather we were backing up.

Within seconds of backing up, most of the occupants of the bus began muttering, almost as if they knew what was happening. I looked out the window to see a couple of police cars escorting our bus backwards. Once we came to a stop, immediately there was a man dressed in army attire that firmly made his presence known aboard the bus. 10 minutes of talking in their native Lugandan language, the army general and the bus driver parted ways. The bus driver got out his side of the bus, the army general stepped foot off his side and now – to confront the police. Why was this happening?

Long story short, the bus apparently did not come to a complete stop at a checkpoint, however, due to the current scenario, it was impossible for the bus to stop on demand at that unnoticible checkpoint. However, it had stopped just 3 meters past the checkpoint and slowly began backing up. This created many problems.

The police did a thorough investigation of the paperwork aboard the bus and found that the bus was missing documents that it should’ve been carrying. This created fun for the policemen who appeared to be otherwise bored as they were previously just sitting on the side of the road before pulling us over. Within the next ten minutes, nearly every adult on the bus was outside arguing with the police and army men, and shortly thereafter, the crowd of over 50 people lined up one by one to begin testimony – oh the joys of African law. Apparently there are few.
….
Funny thing was that all during this time there was, underneath the bus in the storage compartment, blood that was being carried by the government official bus needed in a village three hours north of where we were for a blood transfusion. As you know, blood cannot be left out too long – this created even more dilemma in the argument between citizens and police/army men.

Meanwhile, Brittany and I took turns entertaining the young children aboard the bus as well as those on the sidelines observing the scenario. Children in Africa are everywhere. There were nearly 30-40 children at all times watching the ‘teddy-bear’ show from the bus window. Brittany would take Mr. Teddy Bear and play hide and seek with the kiddos on the street, do little drama skits with Mr. Teddy Bear, that would involve the children – soon the kiddos were basically playing the childs game, Simon Says, to the movements of the teddy bear. It was pretty dang cute! I took many photos, if I can find an internet café with decent connection, I will download the photos from this event!

After a nearly three hour hold up from the Uganda law enforcement, we were finally on our again. I was told the only reason we did not have to wait for another government bus to come and replace the one we were on was due to the fact that we were carrying the time sensitive blood. Thank goodness for the blood!

Arriving in Gulu four and a half hours later, Richard, Brittany and I hired a private hire car to take us and our luggage to the Hotel Diamond Complex where we are staying. Immediately after dropping our bags of off at our new home, we began by foot to find our way to the Action for Children office. Action for Children is a partnering agency to ChildVoice International and they are assisting us in this survey process as well as in many other ways. Upon arriving at the office we were greeted by three young and very generous staff members, Frances, Judith and Vicki. Here we developed a plan for the following day of working together. We agreed to meet up at our hotel at 10 AM and drive by boda boda to the village called Lacor where we would conduct our first 25 interviews with women who had been abducted by the Lords Resistance Army.

We arrived by boda boda (motorcycle) close to 10:45 AM Friday morning. The ride to Lacor was beautiful. As it is the rainy season in Uganda, everything is green and very lush. The banana, mango and avocado trees, the green grasses which grow so tall; these spread out over the rolling hills of the Lacor region – the beauty captivates me. The roads are mainly dirt, and lately mostly mud. It has been raining here quite a bit – this is the cause of the natural tattoos of caked mud upon our lower legs. Boda bodas don’t mind the mud, so they assume neither should its passengers! Many holes, some big, some small, are in high numbers - scattered throughout the roads. So many, that the second morning on my drive to Lacor, I took the maximum dose of Ibuprofren before beginning the second ride to Lacor! The headache from the ride the day before continued to linger to the following morning! The extra bumpy roads, combined with little to no shocks on the boda bodas creates a nearly over-stimulating journey!

Upon arriving at this IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in Lacor, we were greeted by 25 young woman and their children. Before beginning the surveys, the woman performed their traditional Acholi dance for us. It was highly intriguing to observe for the first time ever, traditional African dance. These 25 women are a part of a women’s group that was founded by a local man named Robinson.
Robinson was born in the Gulu area. However, just a few years later both of his parents were killed by rebels of the LRA. Having grown up with no family to call his own, as well as having observed the twenty-year war in Northern Uganda, Robinson decided he had to do something to help. Granted he works on a volunteer basis, Robinson has formed four groups for women with an average of 30 women per group, as well as over 12 youth groups teaching life skills and organized sports to the children of the IDP camps.

Because so many of these children do not attend school due to being abducted, and/or finances, they do not have a lot to do throughout the days after their daily chores of hauling water, watching siblings and any agricultural work they may be lucky enough to have. It was beautiful to see these children playing sports together throughout the day as I was interviewing the young child mothers. As I mentioned before, children are everywhere in Africa, this village of Lacor is no exception!

The IDP camps are surreal. When walking through the camp I continued to equate the IDP camp scenario with that of American college dorm life living. Knowing this is a far skewed analogy, it was the first thing that popped into my head. Many people living in very tight quarters, indeed there is a reason these are called camps… Due to the excessive number of displaced people due to the war, these camps are overflowing. The huts are built so close to one another that in order to pass between one hut and another, I have to turn sideways, and even then, the grass from the roofs brush against my body. In one of these small huts there can be on average 10 children and up to 20 + and a couple or more adults! As I was touring through the camp I took notice of the many ways that the locals were attempting to support themselves, some were selling small batches of tomatoes, others were drying beans in the sun, while others were away I was told, digging, preparing the small plots of ground that they rent from a local owner in order to plant mango and avocado trees, some planted the local g-nut. G-nut is likened to a small peanut, nearly the same flavor and texture. Very good flavor!

Brittany and I conducted the interviews on wooden benches underneath large mango trees, in an attempt to remain out of the heat of the day. Close by were the football (soccer) fields where the older children were playing game after game of football. The younger children watched along the sidelines or simply played with one another under the verandas of the nearby church. I must admit at times it was hard to focus on the interviews with all of the beautiful little African children frolicking around me!


The interviews went well. These first 25 that we conducted were a part of a pilot survey, in other words, testing out the survey we were using to see if there were any necessary changes that needed to be made in order to fully accomplish our ultimate goals. Indeed, Brittany and I agreed that it was a very good thing that we had this opportunity to test out this survey on a group of woman before calling the survey ‘final’. There were some very important changes that we concluded needed to be made in order to most effectively interview 300 more young child mothers. Over the course of Friday and Saturday we completed the pilot test surveys and returned home to our room to input the data on the computer in order to send the results back to America for the finalization of this survey.
Each survey takes approximately 40-45 minutes to complete and we expect to conduct approximately 15 surveys per day. It is not easy work – our experience was that literally, it was one woman after the next with no breaks in between except for the 15 seconds it took one woman to get up from the bench and another woman to replace her spot. Surveying women, asking each one the same question over and over and over again is interesting, in that every woman has a different story to tell. However, the nature of the questions does not allow us to go into depths – but rather at this point it is very factual. This is a little challenging as both Brittany and I are relational people and desire very much to gain deeper understanding of each woman’s situation and want to have time to pray with that woman, minister to her on any level that we can, rather then simply asking basic factual questions, congratulating her on her courage to be open and share what she has with us, give her another big ‘Afoiyo Matek’ (thank you very much) and move onto the next woman. Without complaints, I recognize this is the nature of the work that we are doing; conducting baseline surveys. This type of work is new to me and I am in the learning process of how to integrate myself into this line of work.

Yesterday was Sunday, Brittany and I took a boda boda to the Gulu Baptist Church. Here we met some fantastic people! Everyone was extremely welcoming and very generous in their support of to mzungu’s (white people) being in their country. Immediately after church we got another boda boda and headed back into town to hit the internet café in order to download for Conrad (Director/Founder of ChildVoice International) and Tae (developer of the survey) the results of the pilot survey and the suggested changes/questions we had come up with.

Now I knew the internet cafes in Africa were slower then in America, so I was prepared when I got to the internet café. However, I did not anticipate a 17 minute wait just to open the front page of my mac.com email account!! Then to sign in took me another 7 minutes, and to upload my first email (thanks mom!) took yet another 11 minutes. Oh my oh my… I was at the internet café for nearly three hours yesterday. During that time managed to write two emails, one to my mother, and one to Conrad. (this was after three failed attempts to email Conrad. I would just have gotten everything downloaded to send off to Conrad, a total of nearly forty-five minutes of work, pressed send, only to receive a ‘Request Failed” sign without the option to move forward or backwards.

If anyone manages to read this far, and still wonders why they have not received a personal email from me, please understand that it is not that I have not tried, and I am thinking of you!

Until the survey is officially finalized, we cannot conduct any interviews. In the meantime Brittany is working on a project she participated in down in Soroti where she spent a month working in IDP camps assessing the needs of the camp. I am working on all of my readings required for my internship. This summer I am taking 18 credits worth of classes through my college, Alaska Pacific University. Any spare time I have I must be diligent to do my required readings and writings, because otherwise, the workload when I return to America will be great!

I am currently reading four different books. One I must admit, takes more discipline to read then the others. This book is titled Conducting Research in Psychology; Measuring the Weight of Smoke by Brett W. Pelham. This is for my Research Methods class. The other three books are Armies of the Young; Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism by David M. Rosen, Child Soldiers; From Violence to Protection by Michael Wessells, and lastly, a small handbook written by the Office of the Prime Minister, Department of Disaster Preparedness and Refugees of the Republic of Uganda called The National Policy for Internally Displaced Persons.

I had a friend email me and ask what the food is like in Uganda. I have found the food here to be very much like in most other developing countries I have been to. Most things are fried, some are roasted and when lucky one can find boiled food. Ugandans eat a lot of beans, although I have yet to find them in a restaurant, cassava – a starchy tuberous root from a tropical tree – texture similar to a potato, I have found it roasted or fried. Fish, goat or beef is found in the restaurants. These meats can be ordered fried, or as a ‘stew’. This stew resembles an oily tomato sauce with the chunks of cooked meat sitting in the sauce accompanied with rice and matoke. The rice and matoke is usually combined with the sauce and meat. Matoke is similar to a plantain and is found fried, cooked in the leaf and served similar to mashed potatoes or grilled and eaten as you would a banana. Some people choose to put salt on the grilled matoke and cassava.

Beef and goat sticks are common especially at every bus stop. As the bus comes to a stop all of the street vendors swarm to the sides of the bus holding their cold water bottles for sale, the meat sticks, grilled matoke, or cassava, to name a few. One of Brittany’s favorite foods in Uganda is the Chapati. This is a combination wheat flour, water, salt, and oil and is fried like a tortilla. She claims to love this because of “its simplicity that expands all social classes, rich and poor eat it, and its delicious!” Personally I don’t care for this stuff! Breakfast at the hotel is the same every day; either 2 boiled eggs, 2 pieces of white bread, hot milk, a choice of instant coffee or tea, or it is fried eggs and chapati, and if we are lucky we may get a banana! Interestingly, here, they do not use hot water for tea, but rather, hot milk – same with the coffee. Along the sides of the streets one can always find mangos, bananas, avocado, potatoes and tomatoes.

With all the talk about food, Brittany is ever so patiently awaiting my closure of this letter. We are both quite hungry and she knows, it will be a couple of hours minimum at the internet café just trying to send this off to you.

Here’s saying a goodbye to you!!
With much love and blessings on you!

The extraordinary team of the Brendsel and Cushing!