So, what are the differences?

Here’s one big question... where is the line between crushing poverty and a simple life? I know that research studies in this post-recession world state that having a high income doesn’t correlate with happiness but the same studies do make it clear that it is hard to be happy when you are poor. So, where’s the line? Similar studies state that it is easier to be happy and poor when you don’t have constant reminders of the differences between your standard of living and the amenities enjoyed by people who are well off.  

I don’t want to romanticize poverty and I don’t want to have to live in a hut but I have seen active community life and seemingly happy families living in little villages over the past week. I also don’t think that my observations are even close to sufficient for stating that “these people” are happy. Still, there is something to the feeling that I have when I am talking with boda drivers and school children that a quality of life exists here that doesn’t where I live. Maybe the mistake is to engage in comparison. There is definitely a difference and maybe that’s all I can say with any authority.

Three boys fly homemade plastic bag kites

Questions for newcomers

I woke up this morning and realized that I was becoming fairly acclimatized to things here. Then I panicked because being acclimatized means that I have learned something and haven’t recorded it. After interviewing students, teachers and ngo’s it occurs to me that they all plan their work with important background knowledge about their students. If we don’t have this information about our students in Winnipeg we will not be able to adequately teach them. So, here are the questions we need to find answers to...

What was the source of the conflict and how long was it going on?

Civil war is different in its effects on students than natural disaster, acts of terrorist destruction or other push factors for refugees and immigrants. Likewise, a localized dispute of a relatively short duration will not have the same destabilising effect on the cultural and family values of the students we are dealing with. 

Did the student come with family?

If a student came with a family it is essential that schools connect with them. War tears at the fabric of family life and we may need to spend as much time working with the family to acclimatize them as we will with the students. If the student doesn’t have a family we need to identify the supports the child needs and find ways to provide them.

Did the student leave from a village, a town or a city?

Each of these locations have very different approaches to and understandings of education and its purpose. The student will be the best guide to finding out what their home community has prepared them to think about education and the good life.

Did the student live in a camp before leaving – and if so, for how long?

Camp life is a category altogether different from any other category of community structure. Long term residence in a refugee or idp camp likely means disconnection from cultural traditions and community values.

What resources were available to the student in terms of health, education, psycho-social support?

Students who come to us are as varied as the circumstances from which they come. Generalizations like I have just made here can be shown to be completely flawed by individual students who have somehow managed to succeed and thrive because of protective factors they possess. 

Was the student an active combatant, an abductee or displaced?

As one of my teachers here told me, “we are all war affected”. However, there are large degrees of variance when it comes to depth of trauma.

What cultural beliefs, practices does the student remember or engage with?

Teacher after teacher has identified cultural traditions such as music, dance, drama and story as being key to returning students to the “normal life”. We need to learn more about them and implement them at all levels.

What family life skills and values (e.g. cooking, laundry, money management, conflict management, understanding of sexuality, etc.) does the student have?

When we meet a student, particularly an older student, we naturally make assumptions about their capacity to do the things we knew when we were that age. You know what they say about making assumptions.

Children leaving school to go home for the holidays

lira photos

People being trucked into Lira from a village for local elections

Young man in front of a mosque under construction - rebuilding after 20 years of war

A whole family enjoys watching a muzungo take their photo - yes, I asked first!

How Hippos Entered the Water

I keep bumping up against traditional culture here. I would love to dive into it and learn more but, wisely, the old stories are shielded carefully from us Muzungo - which by the way translates roughly into white person walking in circles. Pretty accurate description of me so I don't mind it much...

Luckily, sometimes I get a bit of a story here or there. I told our safari friend Hassan about the Sudanese boy who told me that he was given a special relationship with Hippos when he was a boy. This he credits to being able to cross the river out of Sudan when many of his fellow refugees were killed by the hippos in the river. Hassan told me of a man he knew who could cross the Nile on a cow hide and of another who could swim like a fish in the whitewaters at the source of the Nile so long as he didn't marry or get a girlfriend. Then he told me this about Hippos...

A long time ago the animals lived together and they could talk like us humans. At that time the Hippos were the most beautiful animal in the world with beautiful colourful fur. But then, like today, Hippos were greedy and ate a lot.
A long dry season came to the land and the grasses started to wilt and die. The animals held a meeting and decided that they would only eat during the daytime to give the grass time to cool off at night. Every morning when they woke up though, they discovered that the grass had been eaten. Everyone knew that the hippo was doing it but the hippos said, "No, I did not eat the grass!" The Elephants asked, the Giraffes asked, even the Warthogs asked and still the Hippo said, "NO!"
The animals came up with a plan. That night they set a small section of the grass on fire when everyone was asleep. They knew that the hippo would be burnt in the morning and they would have caught him. Well that fire got big and sure enough it caught the hippo - all his beautiful fur lit up and he ran from the fire in a mad panic.
When the hippo got to the water the crocodiles and the fish yelled to him, "Stop! We don't want your kind here!" The hippo was on fire and he begged and pleaded as all his beautiful fur burnt off. Finally he promised, "If you let me in I will protect you and never, ever eat anything in the water." The water animals agreed and let him in.
That is how the hippo entered the water and why it never eats anything in the water - but watch out if you try and cross when they are around.

I asked Hassan about these stories that come from Africa that seem so hard to believe and he told me, "There are many things that make people think in Africa, in fact, if you believe things here they just may happen."

I am going to eat right away but I hope to tell you about Acholi resiliency after the "boofay"

"Listen, do you know how the hippo entered the water?"

kampala market

This young man works outside of the Buganda Rd. market in Kampala selling little aluminum boys on bikes for $1.75 that he and his fellow orphans make at the orphanage. Uganda is home to many, many orphans after twenty years of war. According to gov't ads 46% are HIV positive.

pic

Three boys who graced me with their stories of struggle and resilence - and allowed me to share their photo with you

Gulu, here I come

This past weekend has flown. Left Lira after a wonderful evening spent chatting with Canadians who run an water remediation ngo named GARD and who love a drink served only to white folk called a screaming muzungo. Its made from Ugandan Gin that is distilled from Casava and mixed with Stoney Ginger Beer. I didn't have any. Spent the weekend at a safari and am in Gulu now - being rained on - more later.

Right Thing, Right Place, Right Time (A long one!)

It may be hard to convey just how amazing this place is without pictures or video but check out Jan's blog for some sense - I still haven't been able to get enough bandwidth to upload a photo.

Today I woke up and went for breakfast to find a young social worker who I had met at the phone store waiting for me. He just wanted to talk about his hopes for the future of this place. After I left him he spent his day bringing Lynn to NGO after NGO and making the necessary introductions for her. To help the children.

I left breakfast and went to 96.1 Radio Rhino's offices where I was introduced to muzeekazi (old workman). He brought me through a maze of back alleys to the Garden Inn where we sat for the next three hours beside a mango grove in a crumbling conference room held together with tree trunks. There he told me about his life as a poet and storyteller. After graduating from Makere University he took a job with the prison service. Motivated by his love for novels and story he began writing poetry. Under the name John Peter Okullu Arach he wrote every night at work. He had to smuggle in a pen, paper and cigarettes because the guards weren't allowed to carry them for fear the prisoners would take them. After every body fell asleep he would unwrap the contraband from his leg and write under the one light that was lit. As soon as morning came he would leave work and go to Radio Uganda to read his latest poems. The broadcasts were sensational successes. For the rest of his working life he was the poet warden and nothing escaped his view. Channeling the spirit of the bards who kept the history of the acholi people Okullu Arach absorbed the news and fed it back to his people.

Flash forward to 2006 and the end of the twenty year war between Uganda and Joseph Kony's LRA. In Lira, at an upstart radio station called Radio Rhino Okullu Arach put his poetry to a pointed purpose. The radio station sat beside Rachele School for War Affected Youth. From his microphone broadcasting into the bush were thousands of abducted children sat used and abandoned by the LRA Okullu Arach told stories and poems that asked them to come home, sit down at the table and discuss things. As the children started to emerge Okullu Arach interviewed them, sending their stories into Lira Town where their victims heard of the suffering the combatants had suffered. Over the cellphone lines he mediated the rehabilitation of parents and their children.

Okullu Arach bid me farewell and I wandered the rest of the day wondering about the power of story and what it would take for me to forgive someone who hurt me so deeply. There is an openess of the heart here that I decided to trust in. For the afternoon I spoke to everyone - remembering Yevgeny Yevtushenko's  Prologue and hoping to be rewarded. I was, richly.

After visiting the child protection office of the local police (the only cops I've ever met who wished that god would guide me on my journey) I got hot. Stinking hot - and had to sit down. No shade available except for that offered by three bicycle boda drivers. "Muzungo - sit with us". Trusting their goodness I sandwiched myself between them where we talked about the local elections. The primaries are going on today and people have flooded into town on the back of trucks to vote. Everyone, even the boda boda's who have never gone to school, has opinions and are engaged. Democracy here is corrupt but it is vital. Vital enough to share with a crazy Muzungo.

Next I met four guys sitting on a pile of iron who sent me to the local welder/blacksmith who couldn't believe that people still hammer metal in Canada (He wants to meet you Matt and has sent one of his punches as a calling card). An instrument salesman sold me a harp and drum for 15 dollars. I offered more, he said no. On the way back to the hotel, pudgy Muzongo carrying African instruments garnered a lot of attention. Four other boda's took the bait and called out, "Muzungo can you play?" "Teach Me?" I replied. They grabbed the drum and adungo (harp) and began to play the local Jita which brought out two dancers from the tailor's shop and then a personal lecture for me on how to attend church and praise God here.

I went to the hotel praising. Not God so much as my wife, Tamara who bravely agreed to my departure and who is keeping my family present and to be safe for me. What a day. The world is so incredibly big and small.

Love to you all,

Marc

stuff to buy in the market

In the Kampala post I mentioned that there was an amazing array of stuff to buy in roadside markets and stands along the way to wherever you might be going. Here's what I could have bought had I wanted...

Art/Sculpture, Toilet (concrete pad with footstep marks or regular), Wood, Carpentry (bed, chair, shelf), Overstuffed Couches and other Upholstered Furniture,Carpets, Fabric, HIV counselling (not that I need it!),

Haircut, Shoes, Mattresses, Metal gates, Plants, Hardware, Baskets, Oil, Tailoring, Dental work (kind unspecified), Hair Weave and Manicure, Bricks, Stone, Phones (cards, airtime), Bananas, Grasshoppers(for snacking on), Pork Joints, Paint, Luggage...

More to come...

link for photos and much more

Hey All,

I have had no luck in posting photos but the amazing Dr. Jan has at her blog. Over on the right side of the page you will see the link to Janstewartblog. Follow it for more photos and info...

Marc

Lira update - sorry for the lagtime

First Contact

We made it to Lira!

There is a drive thru right before the bridge over the Nile that sort of divides Northern Uganda from Southern Uganda. Everyone gets snacks there and then throws them out the window a few kms after. As a result there is a troop of baboons who hang out just off the side of the road in the jungle waiting for the scraps. Jan revealed herself to be a sadist when she asked our driver to stop and wait for them to come get us. I steeled my nerve and watched as they approached then, as if on cue, the biggest male began to move menacingly towards the car. I took a defensive posture – head in hands between my knees and miraculously emerged unscathed miles later in Lira.

Lira is the opposite of Kampala except that it is still in Africa. 75% of the people here get around on bikes or their own two feet. Of course, there are still boda boda’s but the most common kind are bikes not motorcycles. So, if you can imagine this... 200 hundred pound me with a thirty pound pack on the back of a single speed bike pedalled by a eighty five pound twenty year old up a hill for three kilometres being chased by schoolchildren yelling “Mzungo, where are you going?” and dodging between a small herd of cows crossing the street... you’ve got the feel of the place.

Commerce is still everywhere but there is a distinctly laid back and accepting feeling here. People stare at me, of course, but instead of feeling like an outsider I feel like I am a welcome curiosity. (Speaking of which, I bought a phone for Lynn from a vendor in the market here who popped up from behind a counter after he greeted me to reveal that despite having a strong Lango accent was white – an albino local – imagination that!). 

I have done a focus group and three interviews so far with many more scheduled. The students I first met with are at a school exclusively for war affected children. Their grace and optimism is inspiring. They told me that the largest barrier they had to overcome in order to come into the world of people from their bush life during the war was to learn that all humans were equal because they had been taught that civilians were like animals. Now, they want to be doctors, lawyers and teachers – all of which requires a prohibitively expensive university education – but which still speaks to the inexplicable redeemability of the human spirit. Another boy said that his biggest challenge is forgiving himself – I already do.

And here’s one for my teaching buddies in the inner city. I asked a teacher at a school with lots of war affected students today why he chose to teach there instead a place where students may be less challenging. He told me that we are all affected by war – just some more directly than others. He also told me that when his life was spared, by chance of where he happened to be when the rebels ceased their advance, he decided that his life would be remembered as one that made an important difference. For him, the choice of how to make that difference was clear – teach the people that need your help the most.

Tomorrow I get to interview an elder who works with local Radio preserving and presenting the folk tales of Uganda... pretty excited.

Things I have learned so far... Kampala (in the order that they are occurring to me at this moment)

Intermittent internet here – abbreviated post follows with pictures to come (soon?)

Today Dr. Jan Stewart and Dr. Lynn McBrien (Jan and Lynn forever more) finished our two days of acclimatizing and preparing with a trip to Jinja to paddle on the Nile. I felt a little bad about having so much fun on this work trip but Jan assured me that hard work starting in the morning will put it all into perspective. Tomorrow we leave at dawn for Lira in the North and begin our interviews. So, before all that work begins here are my first impressions of Kampala....

Number one:

Cars are in charge here, followed by buses and boda bodas (insane motorcycle taxis)  and then, maybe, pedestrians. I was crossing a spot that I think was even marked as a crosswalk and had a car come directly at me as if it was going to hit me – which it was. I learned from a kindly woman on the sidewalk that were I not to give way to cars I would “get knocked”.

Number two:

Nobody is old in Uganda. Very strange feeling to be 36 and quite obviously one of the older generation. I don’t know if it is the cumulative effect of HIV and war or something else but everyone is young here.

Number three:

If you drive along one of the roads that lead outside of town you will be able to buy anything. Today on the way to Jinja I saw things you would not imagine set up inside or in front of sales shacks that ranged from six to thirty feet wide.  I will keep a running list and post it later.

Number four:

Drive thrus are universal – sort of... Today on the way to Jinja we pulled into a roadside stand and were swarmed by boys and girls in official drive thru smocks offering us street meat, water, pop, newspapers, you name it – through the window of the car.

Number five:

AK-47’s and pump action shotguns are really threatening, at first. Then when you see them slung over the arm of every policeman and security guard they sort of get normalized. Then when you realize that because there are no old people here the policeman is really a police boy of the ripe age of 21 and you think about what you were like when you were 21 they become threatening again.

Number six:

Uganda is beautiful. Lush green foliage framed against rich red soil and improbably bright and audacious flowers adorn every valley and hilltop.

Number seven:

Sewage smells bad whether it is in North America or in Africa.

Arrived!

Safe and sound at the hotel metropole in Kampala. Full of crunchy, bubbly anticipation. The air is moist and people are smiling - even the armed guards who opened the doors at the mall where we bought water.

I'm pretty overwhelmed by twenty four hours or so of flying and all the differences so I'll blog more later or tomorrow, but wait, by my time it's already tomorrow - or yesterday.

Cheers!

My Questions

It is somewhat pretentious to think that I can anticipate what I might learn while on this trip. However, I do have some questions that I would love to have answered. In my time working with refugee students I have been amazed by the resiliency that they show in navigating the myriad barriers that stand between them and the good life. I'm equally amazed by the fact that they seem to have a much more concrete sense of what the good life looks like. Many of my students have shown a belief in and understanding of what life should be about that I have never had.

In two weeks I don't expect to gain any such insight and I know that every person is different and that I just engaged in some pretty sweeping generalizations. Still, I have to wonder if I will see or experience some of the keys to the confidence and resilience that my students have shown me.

At the least I'm on the lookout for a couple of things.
What things, customs, people exist in Uganda that have no corollary here? What things do people in Uganda take for granted that I have never seen before. I figure if I can record my surprise I may at least be able to generate a list of things that people here in Canada should know that newcomers are looking for when they arrive here.

Apart from that, I hear that Nile Special beer is amazing. And, it goes without saying, I will always have my eyes peeled for the menacing monkeys that are no doubt laying in wait for my pale, tasty hide....

Flight leaves in 12 hours!

First Post

30 tonnes, 30 mph

So, just to get this out of the way - I have no idea how often or how well I will be able to update this blog. If everything goes well it should give me a space to let people at home find out what is happening and a place for me to record things so as to make sense of them later on. I apologize in advance for infrequency, incoherence and lengthy ruminations on just how truly terrifying monkeys are in real life (although hippos are apparently a more reasonable cause for concern)


The rough itinerary:
Arrive November 19th and spend two days prepping in Kampala
One week in Lira conducting interviews with teachers, community leaders, parents and students
One day in Murchison Falls National Park
One week in Gulu doing the same as in Lira
Home on December 4th (ish)