Karamoja

It was over a month ago that we enjoyed a trip to Karamoja in the northeast corner of Uganda along the Sudan and Kenya borders.  Here are some photos that tell at least some of the story.  My ineptness at blogging is keeping me from posting these photos in the order I'd intended, but I hope you enjoy them anyway

Steve hamming it up with some Karamojiang warriors.  The green hat identifies this young man as a "warrior".  While there still is cattle raiding that happens between Karamojiang tribes such as the Dodoth and the Jie, the "warrior" youth are not necessarily the bandits responsible for the raiding and the taking of lives.  These youth are simply identifying with a traditional term of respect.

I was told that the Karamojiang name their cattle and even write songs about their favorites.

Karamojiang girls' hairstyles may depict which clan they are from.

Karamojiang elders

Wednesday Cattle Market in Kotido.

Restaurant at Wednesday Cattle Market in Kotido

Cattle car and no seat belt laws

Colorful Karamojiang

I just loved the miniature donkeys

Pharmacy at Wednesday Cattle Market

People were friendly and happy to have their photo taken including this elder Karamojiang woman.

Karamojiang artisans

Entebbe

Entebbe explodes with sound in the morning.  The chittering of Red Chested Sunbirds, the guffaws of the Black and White Casqued Hornbills and the calls of dozens of other birds I haven’t identified yet.  When I wake up early and sit on the perch of the upper porch here, I am blessed with these sounds, and these sounds alone.  The 8 a.m. morning commuters with their motos, cars, trucks and boats have not yet begun their day, so I can enjoy the sounds of Uganda’s nature. 

Lake Victoria awakens with a tickle of sparkling ripples reflecting the bright, but cool African sun.  Distant islands define themselves in silhouettes, and an occasional fisherman slices the water silently in his pirogue.  Other fisherman are out as well.  Pied Kingfishers chase each other through the sky to take up their morning stations and wait so patiently to bring in that morning’s catch.  There are birds of prey that own these skies.   Each morning I sit on my porch perch, and gaze across the electric wires to the Lizard Buzzard sitting on his same perch like a sentry; such perfect posture, such a watchful eye.  Occasionally he swoops down, grasps a lizard and flies to a different perch to eat.  But he always returns to the same place on the wire for his hunting.  Yesterday he sat out there through a downpour.  The lizards had all run for cover, but hope sprang eternal with him.  He’s a cute fellow, looking more like a falcon than a buzzard (in fact his scientific name is kaupifalco monogrammicus).  Various Eagles ride the thermals overhead.  The most beautiful of them is the African Fish Eagle. 

Steve spotted a treetop so full of weavers that it looked as if it had suddenly burst out in a bright yellow blossom.  I’ve watched a pair of Hadada Ibis collecting nesting materials each morning.  My favorite of all sightings have been the Great Blue Turaco.  We see them in groups of 7 ot 8 in the evening hours.  You can hear their  call, like hollow wooden rattles, before they take off in flight from one particular tree to another distant location.  With their bright blue color, crested heads, and 30 inch wingspan, they are splendid birds that evoke excitement and a sense of blessing at just being able to see and hear them in the midst of their evening travel.

Steve and I are here for a couple of days R&R.  We are staying at the Bethany House, a small Catholic retreat center. It sits on a hillside lane overlooking the shores of Lake Victoria   During the summer months, when Father Emmanuel Kotongole is not teaching at Duke University, the center is bustling with visitors and activity.  But when he returns to Duke in the Fall, it becomes a much quieter place.  We are here with just the gardener and house administrator, and what a haven of relaxation it is!

Next door to us is the Jane Goodall Foundation.  Ever since I saw Jane interviewed on the Bill Moyer Journal, she has been one of my heroes.  Such a serene woman, and such a champion for African nature.  I must admit I’ve viewed activities at that house through my field glasses as well, but have had no sighting of any chimps nor of Jane.  Down the road to the right is the Ugandan Wildlife Education Center, lots of animal noises waft up here during various times of the day.

For my friends who are birders, I am going to list the other birds (aside from those mentioned above) we have sighted here in Entebbe:  Hammerkop; Marabou Stork (this scavenger is found in every corner of this country!  Very ugly birds with scruffy hairy heads);  Eastern Gray Plantain-eater; Blue-breasted Kingfisher; Common Bulbul; Yellow White-eye; Velvet Mantled Drongo; Pied Crow.

Imagine what a true birder could find here!

Homestay in Seeta

We are just finishing up a week of “homestay” in Seeta, Uganda. The purpose of the homestay is to provide Steve and I an opportunity for cultural immersion, and it has been that! We have not seen another muzungu (white person) all week long, have been surrounded by a welcoming extended family of cousins, aunts brothers and grandmothers, have eaten nothing but Ugandan food, and have participated with household chores such as hauling water, preparing meals and doing dishes in a set of basins. Marge has even been seen down on both knees serving tea to Steve, as it would be “impolite” to offer it on just one knee. Steve understands he is not to get used to this!




Our hostess has been Mama Kimera (pronounced Chimera). She has been most welcoming and gracious. The late Mr. Kimera, who worked for the Ministry of Justice, was a grandson of the then reigning Kabaka (King). So we have been hosted by a royal family, and treated like royalty as well.



Since Mama Kimera is of royal lineage, the family lives in a larger home and is able to afford househelp. This means that there is much more spare time in this home, than in most, for receiving visitors and visiting others. It was explained to us that visitors are seen as a blessing. The more visitors, the richer the home. So a lot of time is spent making visits and receiving visitors. Much of the spare time after dark is spent watching television. One of the most popular tv shows is “La Tormenta” a marginally acted Argentinian soap opera which is poorly dubbed in English. The story line takes place on a ranch, and the women are scantily clad in pseudo western outfits. Also popular seems to be slapstick Ugandan humor in the Lugandan language. There is a Christian channel that offers the best that the Evangelic churches of the west have to offer. Among the more cerebral offerings is the nightly news. The Kimera family regularly watches the news and is well versed in current events.



Mama Kimera is known for having raised many children of her extended family. Winnie, one of the “daughters” who spent a good part of her childhood at Mama Kimera’s accompanied us on our homestay, along with her 2 year old son, Mishak Prince Otim. Winnie’s husband, David, works for MCC as our Peace Program Officer (I might add that he is stellar at the work he does), so that is our connection for this homestay. We have met several of the other relatives who also live in Seeta. Mama Kimera’s late husband’s very younger brother, Nathan, told us that Mama Kimera had raised 15 children of the extended family.



Three boys remain at home- Andrew, Robert and Nathan. Andrew is a University student, studying business, Nathan is finishing high school, and Andrew works as a youth pastor for a church-related NGO that organizes study tours for American and European youth. They are all bright, engaging young men, well versed in local politics, and with an opinion on nearly any subject you might choose to discuss. Mama’s sister, Auntie Nampina also lives in the home along with another female relative named Zaina. Mama Kimera, sadly, just lost her youngest daughter to an asthma attack last December. Sylvia is a young woman who does much of the cooking and housework. She lives in one of the rooms out back with her darling 3 year old daughter, Shadia.



So it is in this very vibrant environment of extended family that we have been spending our week. The younger members of the family are quite fluent in English. Mama Kimera is also conversant in English, though much prefers Luganda, so we have been surrounded by a lot of the Lugandan language here as well. We have learned phrases like, “So happy to meet you”, “Thank you for the meal”, “Thank you” “My name is…” and the numbers one through 99 (though only with some difficulty).



Our day starts out by doing dishes from the night before. I seem to have assumed this task for the most part, as other members of the family and Sylvia (the househelp) are all busy doing other things and this is one of the few things I know how to do without training and supervision! So I wash the dishes in the first basin, rinse them in the second, and give them an additional rinsing in the third basin. They are then put on a metal grating to dry. All this is done in the cool of the Seeta morning outdoors in the back courtyard. Steve, meanwhile, gathers water from the storage tanks into gerry cans for our use in dishwashing and laundry. Thankfully I have been spared the task of doing laundry by hand, largely because we brought enough clothes for the entire week. We then have morning “tea”. This consists of black tea mixed with fresh….VERY fresh- as in freshly delivered by the dairy farmer- milk that has been boiled over the outdoor charcoal stove. It is fabulous! There is some type of “matoke” offered as breakfast. Matoke, the staple food, is unripened plantain, a starchy, unsweet banana. The morning matoke is usually stewed in tomaotoes and onions. The first morning it was also stewed with offals (tripe, intestines, and other organs), much to my chagrin. I tried to get away with just eating the matoke, but Winnie commented that I hadn’t tried the offals, so I was obliged, though my serving was a small one. We then do the breakfast dishes, usually Winnie and I together.



The rest of the morning is either spent visiting with each other, visiting relatives in town, receiving visitors or preparing some of the meals for the rest of the day. My participation has been in shelling beans and slicing the peel off the matoke (done only after greasing your hands to make the black juices remove more easily when completed). Steve has helped make chapattis in the afternoon for evening tea. Lunch is served anytime between noon and two pm. It consists of matoke that has been steamed in banana leaves, and some sort of stew. The stew has been chicken, beef, offal, or dried silver fish (tiny little things that look like minnows and are very salty). The stews all have a tomato base. Sometimes rice is offered, and sometimes poshoe (kind of like thick, pasty grits) is offered. Sometimes all three starches are offered at the same meal, and sometimes there are a variety of stews offered. Beans seem to be served with about a third of the meals. There is little in the way of vegetables, though today we did have stewed cabbage.



Around 5 or 6 pm we take “evening tea” which is my favorite meal of the day. The evening milk is delivered and we take black tea, this time with the addition of a wonderful herb called omijaja. The food with evening tea is something much more inviting to the western palate, consisting of any combination of roasted sweet bananas, roasted peanuts, bread and jam, popcorn, and on a couple of occasions homemade chapattis.



The boys get home from work or school between 6 and 9 pm, and then we all have dinner around 9 or even 10 pm. The offerings for dinner are similar to lunch. It is off to bed for Steve and I then, as we are not late night people. The next day is much the same.



One regret that I have is that we haven’t been able to benefit from the wonderful stories Mama Kimera must have to offer. We don’t speak Luganda, and Mama Kimera is not comfortable enough with English to recount the many chapters of her life which would be fascinating to hear. She is certainly a woman who is much revered by her family and the community at large. Hers is a home richly blessed with visitors!

"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.