"You are Welcome!"

"You are welcome" is a phrase that Ugandans use to welcome their guests.  They certainly have welcomed Steve and I, and we do indeed feel that we are welcome!  I am posting a video of some school girls singing a welcome to us when we visited them last week.  These young women are students at the Stella Matutina Secondary School.  It is a boarding school for girls run by a very committed Order of Sisters.  I will write more about the school later.  For now, just enjoy the visuals and the a capella welcome!  

Well, it looks like I'm out of luck to share that video with you!  It has been uploading for the past 30 minutes while I've brushed my teeth, read a book, started writing my next blog, and packing for another road trip, and it has still not completed uploading.  Too bad, it is a lot of fun to watch and would surely have made you smile!  

Access to the Internet has been limited, so I have not had the time to really learn how to use this blog.  Friends have asked for photos, and I am finally learning how to upload them, though the formatting still eludes me.  Anyway, here are a couple of photos I thought you might enjoy.  

Car windshield being transported on streets of Kampala.

Source of the White Nile where it leaves the waters of Lake Victoria.

Steve shaking hand of Congolese boatman now living in Jinja, Uganda

Hoima

I have also added some photos to older blogs below. Many thanks go out to our predecessor, Dale and Gann Herman for making many of these photos and video clips available to us.  Our camera batteries died after we left Hoima, and we couldn't find good quality batteries until we returned to Kampala!

Giants

Bishop Ochola and Sister Tarcisia of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative

Although in titling this entry “Giants”, I could be giving a physical description of the people in NorthernUganda, who rival Steve in height, I am actually choosing this title for more profound reasons.  The last three days we have been surrounded by the giants of the peacebuilding world.  I can’t begin to describe the courage, passion and commitment that these people demonstrate in their day to day interactions with people living in a post conflict society.  The need for trauma healing is tremendous and pervasive.  There is probably no single person you can meet up here who hasn’t been traumatized by the two decades of war out of which Northern Uganda is emerging. 

Adolescent boys and girls who were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army were forced to become “wives”, porters or soldiers.  As these children grew into adults under captivity, they mothered children, were forced to commit horrendous acts of violence against people in their own or other villages, or were brutalized if caught trying to escape.  Those that were fortunate enough to escape came back to a complexity of problems they are still struggling with.

When a young woman marries in these societies of Northern Uganda, she moves into her husband’s clan.  Her well-being and that of her children become the responsibility of that clan.  When these LRA “wives” escape with their children, the young woman may be welcomed back by her family as an unwed daughter, but her children may not be welcome in a clan that is already struggling to feed and clothe its members.  The young woman then faces the trauma of choosing between the security of living with her family, but without her children or an uncertain life with her children on the street.  Some families, but not all, are breaking tradition and accepting the children into the clan along with their daughter. Those women and children who are not integrated back into the mother's clan become marginalized and carry on as best they can with broken spirits.  Thank God for the Giants who are working on their behalf!

Another trauma that the society is dealing with is reintegration when returning from camps for the internally displaced.  Many children and families have been living in these IDP camps for the last 20 years.  Their needs have been met, however meagerly, by rations from the UN or other aid agencies.  They have had no opportunity to engage in agriculture, which will be their main means of existence now that they have returned home.  Children who have grown up in the camps are now faced with the task of providing for themselves through subsistence agriculture, something they know nothing about.  

Land disputes are a major source of conflict in this “post-conflict” society.  When families return home from the IDP camps they may find someone else farming their land.  From the little that I have learned it appears that land ownership is not established with land titles, but rather through a history of living on and working the land.  So whose land is it when it was left behind for 20 years during life in the IDP camps?

Mennonite Central Committee Current and Past Advisory Team Members

Conflict beyond conflict!  Against this background of such a conflicted society it is hard to know where to start, yet one feels the urgency to begin post haste!  The complexities of the work to be done are overwhelming, but MCC’s partners persevere with a resilience and sense of hope that humbles me.  I will write more about these Ugandan peacebuilders in the days to come as time allows.  

Road Trip in Uganda

JULY 12, 2010

Let me begin this with assurances that Steve and I are both fine and well.  We were saddened to hear the news this morning that there had been two bombs in Kampala at locations where people had gathered to watch the World Cup.  Such a random and senseless act of violence is hard to understand, and we are deeply saddened by it.  We are on a rod trip far from Kampala, and won’t return until next Saturday, so be assured we are alright. 

We are on the second day of a road trip to visit Ugandan Organizations with whom MCC partners, to familiarize ourselves with the projects they implement, and to meet MCC volunteers who are seconded to these organizations.  The Mennonite Central Committee does not implement projects in Uganda, but rather supports Ugandan organizations who are implementing projects of peace, reconciliation, trauma healing, and community development.  We loan, or “second” volunteers to some of these organizations to help build their capacity in areas such as program planning, implementation, financial accountability, and technical expertise.  Many of our partners are with the Ugandan Anglican Church, while others are with the Catholic Church, and some have no religious affiliation at all. 

We left Kampala yesterday afternoon to drive to Hoima where we partner with the Bunyoro-Kitara Diocese of the Anglican Church, one of our longest standing partnerships.  The drive was somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours over a paved road.  There were a lot of major potholes and also speed bumps to slow us down through the villages, so the drive took longer than it would otherwise, but we got to see a good deal of the Ugandan countryside.  It becomes more and more beautiful the farther you get away from the congestion and haze of Kampala.

We met with the Anglican church partners today, opened the morning with devotions and an introduction to staff and then made a tour of projects they implement both with MCC and with other organizations.  It was a very impressive array of programs in the areas of health and education.  The program we support there is the Living With Shalom project.  I discussed that in an earlier entry, so won’t go into it here other than to say it is a peacebuilding and youth empowerment project  for youth from all over the country.  The volunteer who is seconded to this project is Patrick Monk, a delightful guy from Virginia who is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite University.  The key partners we met with were Reverend Samuel, Sister Rose, and Reverend Paddy.  What a fun and committed group of people they are!  I think I am going to love it here!

Today we continued on to the town of Masindi where we met with Bishop Stanley of the Masindi-Kitara Diocese.  This diocese has sent youth to the Living with Shalom Trainings, has hosted a SALTer (a college grad from the US who comes for a year of service), and has also sent a young adult to Canada for a year through MCC’s IVEP (International Volunteer Exchange Program) program.  We will have dinner with Bishop Stanley and his wife in about an hour. 

View of Masindi from Hotel Bijja Balcony

I am sitting on the balcony of our hotel room overlooking the rolling green hills behind Masindi town.  There is a lightening storm off in the distance and a hint of rain in the air.

Tomorrow we travel to Lira to meet another long-standing partner, the Stella Matutina school.  More on that later.

First Days in Uganda

Our time in Uganda, though short, has been packed full of learning and adventure!  Kampala itself is a large, congested city of over 2 million.  They say that it swells to nearly 3 million during the daytime when people come in from surrounding towns to work, and the traffic is a testament to that fact!  You need to drive using a different set of rules from the ones we are used to! 

The temperature is very tolerable.  I would guess it is in the 80s with about 50-60% humidity.  I can wear short sleeves and be relatively comfortable without any air conditioning. 

Our home is lovely.  It is a modest stucco and stone construction with three small bedrooms, two baths and a nice dining/living room area next to the kitchen.  It sits on a hill with a great view over the city.  There is a B’hai temple on a distant hill that graces the view.

The Ugandan people we have met are the friendliest, most engaging people.  We have had dinner with the families of a couple of the people we work with.  The conversation was so informative of local culture and politics that we feel we have learned a lot in the short time we have been here.  Too much for the purpose of this writing to go into detail!

Our first trip out of Kampala was to the town of Kamuli.  We visited Ugandan NGO (non-governmental organization or “aid agency” as they are sometimes known in the US) that we partner with called AIDS Education Group for Youth.  They are implementing three projects in Kamuli.  The first is one for children who have been orphaned when their parents died of AIDS.  It provides education for the children.  The education is free at the government school for children through grade 7, and we provide funding for the students who are older so that they can continue through high school or some type of vocational training.  We also provide funding for uniforms and schools supplies for all 212 students age kindergarten through high school. 

Their second project is a home visitation project for people living with AIDS.  It provides education and counseling for them, support groups, and income generation projuects, mostly goat or pig raising.

The third project trains youth in conflict mediation skills so they can help with peer mediation in their high schools.  Hopefully they will carry these skills forward into adulthood to be conflict mediators in their communities. These youth are alseotrained in constructing “Lorena stoves” and then go back back to their villages to train others how to make and use them.  The stoves burn a lot less wood, so are better for the forests, the air quality, and also reduce the amount of firewood a woman must gather and carry every day to meet her household needs.

AEGY runs these programs with very little assistance other than funding and training.  We will also be seconding a volunteer to teach English in their school for the coming year.  The project manager and officers are very committed, well spoken and extremely capable people.  It was inspiring to see the work they are doing and the passion they have for the work that they do!

On the way home we stopped in the town of Jinja and had lunch at the Kingfisher Resort.  It sits right at the source of the Nile River where the river flows out of Lake Victoria.  It was such a picturesque scene with the lake and the river in the distance,  the beautiful rolling, manicured lawns and landscaping, and a host of tropical birds to grace the scenery with their colors and their calls.  We saw a Crested Eagle, a mmanikin, red-cheeked Cordon Bleus, a Black Kite, and an assortment opf cranes and loons.  At least that is what I was told by our hosts, Gann and Dale Herman who are the current MCC Representatives we will be replacing.  

Grasping for Entebbe

We got stopped short en route to Entebbe, Uganda today.  The plan was that we would be landing at the airport there about one hour from now (as I post this blog) , but so it goes for best laid plans.  

Yesterday we took off from Akron, PA at 11:30 am to catch a 6:30 flight from JFK Airport outbound from New York City to Amsterdam.  We finally got off the ground a little after 7:00pm, and then about 1 ½ hours into the flight, over the Atlantic Ocean, the pilot announced that there was a technical problem that required us to return to JFK.  As it turned out the technical problem was that one of the engines on the Airbus had lost power.  It made for a very rocky and somewhat frightening landing, but we all arrived safely back to the point of our original departure!  

We had another lengthy wait there while they fixed the airplane, and finally at 3:30 am we took off for Amsterdam again.  We arrived in Amsterdam about 5:00 pm Amsterdam time, way too late to catch our 11:00 am flight to Entebbe.  After another long wait at the KLM help desk we are now rescheduled to fly, via London and Addis Abbaba, to Entebbe tomorrow evening.  So if all goes well we will arrive in Entebbe Sunday morning, July 4 at about 7:45 am.  We may not be bright eyed and bushy tailed, but we will be running on adrenaline, so can probably keep up with the Sunday schedule of orientation which is pretty mild.

We are staying the night in a nice hotel here in Amsterdam, and were able to watch the last half hour of the World Cup game where the Netherland’s “Orange Army” upset Brazil for a 2 to 1 win.  People are jubilant here!  Next blog will be from Uganda!  Finally!