Some research adventures

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 one here to help us, but perhaps that there hare too many, making it difficult to tell who is genuinely interested and who would just like to make some money. We’ve had to be very careful about that sort of thing; we know we’ve been had once or twice, but now we’re a bit more savvy about who to trust and how to find the people we want to interact with.

The first week in Gulu was additionally difficult because, after interviewing individuals at different international NGOs, we got worried that perhaps the problem we’d found through extensive literature reviews simply did not exist on the ground. Most people had the same idea: that the reintegration of child soldiers was taking place without difficulty and all was forgiven for these innocent children. However, now that we’ve had candid conversations with a number of people, we see that the idea that the consequences of the war have been wholly forgiven and are now a thing of the past is both misguided and ineffective for the development of projects in Northern Uganda. Such a perspective ignored the experiences of the villages, and the people who literally lived in the bush, on the frontier of the war. These were the most affected, and the biggest victims of the war, but unfortunately, their stories are often not told. 

We’ve had our share of research adventures…

Last Thursday, someone from the university offered to take us “into the field” to do some surveys. In Africa, “the field” generally means villages that are often very hard to get to on your own because of bad / non-existent roads and lower local knowledge of English. So we went with him, but from the start, we knew we were just being used to make money. He overcharged for the gas in his car and then continuously asked for money for food, facilitator’s fee, etc. And we were only able to stay and interview four people. The best part of the day was definately playing with the kids and eating some fresh mangos.

The next day, we got set to return to the field with an NGO this time, “Trust Fund for Victims”. We looked them up to make sure they existed, and saw that they were affiliated with the ICC - safe, we thought. Our adventure to the field with them has been one of our most bizarre experiences yet. Turns out that this is not TFV, but an organization that gets some of its funding from TFV. It was started by an ex-LRA commander who joined the rebels in the late 80s, got to know Joseph Kony quite well, and returned/escaped over 15 years later to enjoy the benefits of Uganda’s blanket Amnesty Law for returnees who lay down their weapons and apologized to the state. It seems this man never really left the glory days behind him. He spoke fondly of controlling government helicopters with only his mind, empowered by holy water, and reliving the destructive Biblical story of Gideon. Turns out one of the victims we met was one of the founder’s comrades from the Bush, a one-legged ex-commander who was adamant that Alice Lakwena was a prophet-healer and that Kony would return from Sudan, as prophesied by the Almighty Lord. At the same time, we met a woman who had had her lips cut off by the rebels. This was a common tactic the LRA employed, a symbolic punishment for those civilians who were believed to have leaked to the government details about rebel locations and operations. No longer would they speak so freely. All in all, this trip was pretty creepy, but very interesting. Ugandans affected by the conflict frequently blur the lines between victim and perpetrator. Although you can place some at one pole of this continuum more easily than others, the all-consuming, total war that has happened in Northern Uganda has left no one unscathed, and has swallowed many in a vortex of complicity with evil.

Anyways we will continue the story tonight. We’re off to the field with a friend of Dr. Drale (the doctor my mom was working with) and with newly translated Acholi surveys, we should be able to get more people involved in the research!

More soon!