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