This is the year.

Just a short post today. We just got back from the field with an organization that provides a lot of rehabilitation support to war victims. Their project is funded by the ICC's Trust Fund for Victims and they do both reconstructive surgery (for victims who's lips and other body parts have been cut off) as well as rehabilitation for other injuries from the war. While they talked to different victims who will be went to Kampala for surgery, we did many interviews with people from different villages. One of the most interesting things we heard was when a man told us in response to which members of society are having the most problems after the war: in some ways, it was better to be an LRA commander than to be a regular citizen in Uganda after the war. This is because Uganda seems to always choose peace over justice. To help bring an end to the war, Uganda passed the Amnesty Law, making it illegal to punish a rebel for their crimes during the war. It also offered many resettlemen...

Just a quick update ... internet cafe is closing But check out the news summary report we made for the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative! http://www.arlpi.org/situational-reports -- the May 2011 report. We'll be updating these monthly and also working on the website. We'll also be documenting their work. They do some very good land conflict mediation and reconciliation work so we'll be sure to put more information about that up on their website. More updates soon! 

Our internet stick is broken :( so no emailing except when we venture out to the Muzungu cafe. Its such a weird place though. I feel like I’m back in Canada… We came back from Lira yesterday and had a very nice time. Lira is a nice town - there are parks near the centre and a lot less NGOs. For this reason, the district of Lira is more dependent on itself, making it highly reliant on agriculture. From talking to people there, it seems that its fertile land, as well as a strategy of community farming, has led to more development than in other regions. What was also interesting about travelling to Lira was the fact that it allowed us to leave the Acholi district and travel to meet the Langi peoples. “Acholi” and “Langi” are two of the 53 clans in Uganda. In the South, especially in Kampala, are the “Luganda” peoples, and there was yet another clan in Bushenyi where we were the first week. Each of these clans speak their own local language and many harbor tensions towards the other cl...

Breakfast is a very slow process at our hotel. But we usually get a nice big meal which is good cause the heat makes you so hungry all the time. People drink a lot of tea here. Its called “African Tea” and tastes like a very milky chai tea. I like it, but with the heat I miss juices and anything cold! We had a good day yesterday. We went to the board meeting of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative and met the people implementing very important reconciliation projects across the northern region. We’ve been working with them on a peace and conflict news monitoring project. The first report should be up on their website soon! On our way out, we saw a children’s nursery and noticed that there was also a vocational centre for women. We decided to stop in and learn more about their work and were immediately surrounded by kids. After speaking to the nun running the centre, we saw how committed she was to her work and how concerned she was about the suffering of the women and chil...

We thought we’d write this post a little differently - hope it still reads well! We’ve each written different sections until Sal gets his own blog. It has rained like crazy the last few days. We got stuck in a huge storm and Sima fell into a lake (or at least a puddle that came up to her knees, which really isn’t saying too much…). “Doctor Mamma” left on Wednesday and everyone misses her. Gone is our fellow card-player, our safety escort, and the only person of us that anyone was ever very excited to meet. We hope the ultrasound machine she left for the doctors and sonographers at Gulu regional hospital will encourage them to help us a little on our research. I miss you but I know everyone at home is happy to have you back!! We’re now looking forward to seeing Baba in Kenya in a month! Research is hard. We came here with a proposal, with contacts, with a survey, and with ambition, but we’ve had some trouble getting out vision off the ground. In some ways, its not that there is no...

So its been awhile since we gave an update - but its just taken longer then we expected to get socialized and become productive… so not as positive an experience so far as we’d hoped but we’ve still learned a lot. Just thought I’d start with a few of my own thoughts. Gulu is the regional capital of northern uganda. First, this means it is a very large town of 150,000 with many hotels, shops and restaurants. There are no high rises or very fancy areas, but it is always bustling, day or night. What surprised us more than the size of the town was the number of NGOs it is home to. The NGO industry currently employs most of the younger population of Gulu as well as police and private security personnel. Having walked around town a lot, we would estimate about 100 NGOs in Gulu, but residents have told us there are over 300, and many more existed during the war. It is absolutely incredible. Some could see this as a very positive thing. People around the world clearly care about the plig...

Sorry this is a few days late - we lose power very often in Gulu. Over 50% of the time there isn’t power and so we need to try to save our computer battery for research work. But here is an update of what we did up till we arrived in Gulu! Update on Gulu coming up soon… Day 8 On Friday we left the South-west district of Bushenyi. We had visited five centres across the district run by Compassion International and met amazing people. The project directors at most were so passionate and dedicated and really cared about the kids they were helping. And the kids were always so happy. These kids really were “the poorest of the poor” (this is an explicit requirement in their recruitment objectives) but the centres had given them a shot at living a normal life. Say what you will about the proper place of religion in humanitarian work, there’s no denying that these kids are better off irrespective of how they’re being helped and by whom. Religion is actually one area in which Uganda is ver...

Day 4 in Uganda. We are currently doing work with Africa Youth Ministries in the Western part of Uganda, in Bushenyi District fairly close to Rwanda. South-West Uganda is very pro-Museveni - he was born in the region - and every store has his picture up and we have eve seen a few kids wearing Museveni buttons. So no protests here. Our trip to Bushenyi was totally unexpected. Sal, who had arrived in Uganda a day before and Mr. Albert Kunihira, Director of AYM, picked my mom and I up at the airport and we had to make a virtual split-second decision whether we would join Mr. Kunihira in Bushenyi rather than travel to Gulu, where we are supposed to do our research. Because of the expected protests/riots throughout Uganda, we decided to delay our trip North. We were off to Bushenyi without even getting out of the car. Having been told that Bushenyi was roughly three hours from Kampala, we went along somewhat reluctantly but with a positive attitude. However, when (too many) women piled ...

A lot of people have asked what I’m doing across the world. Studying peace and conflict studies in Canada, I often feel removed from everything I read and write. This isn’t only an issue academically, but also because one sometimes forgets why the study of war and peace is so important. I met a young soldier last summer who shared with me his experiences as a child soldier with the RUF in Sierra Leone. It was his hope and resilience that left such a lasting impression on me. Reading about the Acholi people of Northern Uganda and some of the work of the organizations there, I was touched in the same way. Development work can have its issues, however I have a strong belief that some problems, especially those outside people’s control and directed towards the most vulnerable populations, need additional aid. With this suffering persisting around the world, caused by war, droughts, disease, I believe that if one has the means, they should attempt to help in whatever ways possible. So thi...