Onward...

I returned from Rwanda last week, and it was a really intense experience (and I will write about it when I have more time later). God really taught us all many lessons from that trip. Right now I am at the Emmanuel International house in Kampala with Anita Bertrand and another volunteer my age named Jacob. We are waiting until the 9h to go up to Pader, where I will be staying for the summer. But right now, they are letting me relax for a couple days, use the washing machine (a washing machine!!), swim in a nearby pool, and read a lot. More later!

End of the semester...

Well, I am officially at the end of the semester. I just took my East African Politics final yesterday, which consisted of four different essays: Political integration in East Africa, political coups in African governments, power-sharing deals (like the current government in Kenya), and the effectiveness of government intervention in the economy as a way to stimulate growth. This morning I have a final for Democracy and Human Rights, and I have a couple papers due between now and next Wednesday for Faith and Action and Ugandan Politics. Next week we are having elective workshops with some of the USP staff, and I am taking one on Christian Callings with Mark, and one on Peace and Politics with Brooke. I’m actually looking forward to my paper for Ugandan politics, which we have to write on a human rights issue of our choice that is a problem in Uganda. I have decided to write on freedom of the press as a vital human rights, which has really been neglected in Uganda. I’m actually reading a really interesting book right now that I got out of the USP library, called Media and the Rwandan Genocide, which is a collection of articles analyzing the role of journalists and media outlets in the time surrounding the events of the genocide. One article in the book contains a chart which shows that the O.J. Simpson trials got over double the coverage on mainstream news stations than anything to do with Rwanda! 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, and the news talked more about a celebrity murder case! Another interesting point made was that Bosnia, a similar atrocity, got far more extensive coverage at the same time, because it took place so close to many major news hubs in Europe, and therefore coverage was way easier for journalists. Most foreign reporters in Africa are based out of Nairobi, which is pretty far from action in Rwanda, and there are substantially less present than in a European country. One BBC reporter, Mark Doyle, recounted his time in Rwanda (he was often the only western journalist in the capital city of Kigali during the genocide) and said his editors back in London often tried to dismiss massacres as indiscriminate tribal killings in a chaotic African country. He had to fight to get the right wording put out, that the genocide was a well-organized, systematic method of eliminating political opponents. Anyway, I don’t know if I can get the book in America, since its published in Uganda, but I’m hoping to get it at some point.

If anybody’s interested, here are some articles I’m using for my paper on freedom of the press in Uganda:

http://www.cpj.org/africa/uganda/

Well, tonight at 5:30 we have orientation for our trip to Rwanda because we are leaving next Wednesday! We will be there until May 4 (I think), studying the genocide and visiting memorials, etc. It is actually the 15th anniversary of the genocide this month. We will all need your prayers though, as I’m sure learning about the things that went on, in a country very similar to Uganda not so long ago, will be pretty hard.


I hope everyone had a wonderful easter! Mine was somewhat uneventful, but improved when I got to watch videos my mom sent me of everyone from home saying hi! I also got to talk on the phone with my family (although I didn’t get to talk to my little brother, who I assume was at work). Well, I’m signing off probably until after Rwanda, so have a good two weeks!

Safari!

I just got back yesterday from a safari in Queen Elizabeth National Park, which is on the western border of Uganda. In fact, we could see the mountains of the Congo across Lake Edward from where we were staying! It was wonderful, being able to see all these amazing animals in their natural habitats. Over the weekend I saw herds of wild elephants, hippos, warthogs, buffalo, some really large species of deer, antelope (or gazelles, I'm not sure), and mongooses (mongeese?). Oh, and we saw one lion. Just one. At one point, a whole herd of elephants crossed right in front of our van, like 30 feet away!

Besides that, there's not much going on right now. Classes end this week, and finals start soon. I am going to the Ministry of Internal Affairs tomorrow to apply for a special pass to extend my visa for the summer. It is a little strange knowing that all the other USP students are leaving soon, and are preparing for a transition back to America. It is a little hard, because it feels like another four months is a really long time at this point. But, I'm praying a lot and am still confident about the summer. I'm sure by the end it will have seemed like even eight months wasn't enough time in Uganda. I love and miss everyone back home, and don't hesitate to write or email! (Despite the rumors, I do receive letters here lol)

Happy day-after-Palm Sunday!

"In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

Rafting on the Nile and Other Adventures

Well, this weekend was really exciting! I left on Saturday morning to go to a place in Jinja where they take you white water rafting on the Nile River. The course has level 5 rapids (that's a high level), and some level 6 that we had to navigate around, because people have died attempting to go down them (one of the rapids was called "Dead Dutchman"). So Saturday morning they gave us breakfast at the hostel, then around 10 we set off for the river. I went with my friends from USP: Beth, Beau, Mary, and Katie K. We were put in a raft with two other people and our guide, who was named Paulo. Paulo is actually a two-time world champion kayaker, who's still trying to get into the Olympics! So we went down about 10 different rapids, had lunch drifting down the Nile on our raft (we had pineapple and biscuits), and ended around 4 o' clock for a barbecue back at the campsite. The rapids flipped our raft over about three different times, and one of the times I flew out of the raft and landed on a rock underwater! (I'm ok...not even a bruise to show for it). At one point we got stuck against a rock, and our raft was almost completely sideways, hanging over a waterfall! It's definitely an adventure!

Anyway, this past Friday I went on a class trip for East African Politics class to the Parliament building for the Buganda tribe, and the Kabaka's palace (the Kabaka is the King of the Buganda tribe). The Kabaka's palace was a crazy place. It sits on a hill overlooking the city of Kampala, and if you walk down one side of the hill, past a couple of houses, and through the banana trees, you come to something really unbelievable. It is a long stone corridor built into the side of the hill, with four large cells on the left side of the hall. Our tour guide said these were torture cells built by Idi Amin to detain all of his political prisoners in the 70s! The cells are about three feet off the ground, and apparently they would fill the corridor up with water, then kept a live electrical wire in the water. This was so if prisoners tried to swim away, they would be electrocuted. He said nobody dared come near the palace, so the torture cells were never discovered until after Idi Amin left. What would happen is that if you Idi Amin didn't like you, one day someone would just drive up next to you, shove you into the trunk of a car, drive in a circle for hours (so you thought you were going far away), then pull up in front of the corridor and walk you to the cell. Most people knew at this point that they were going to die there. It was a really sobering trip.

Ironic trivia: The word "Amin" in the Teso language, means "love"

Tonight USP is having a movie night in our lounge. We are going to watch the film Battle in Seattle, which is about the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization's attempted meeting in Seattle. Activists and labor unions in the city had a huge protest that actually halted the negotiations scheduled for that year. It's a great movie, especially since we've been talking about the WTO (and IMF and the World Bank) in our Contemporary Issues Seminar for Faith and Action class. We've been debating over free vs. fair trade in relation to development in Africa (the WTO has done a lot of harm for developing nations). Anyway, I highly recommend Battle in Seattle. Also, if you watch one documentary this year, make it "The Corporation". Seriously, Netflix it. It is absolutely amazing, and its about corporate control over the world (I think Shane Claiborne named it one of his favorite movies of the month, or something like that, on the Simple Way website). Well, God Bless and have a great day!

P.S. sorry if you've emailed me over the past week and I haven't responded...the internet has been out for a while, and just came back on! Oh, Africa.

Month Three!

It’s been almost three months in Uganda already! It feels a lot like we’re actually winding up with the semester, since we only have around four weeks left until we start exams. It’s very surreal that this much time has passed so quickly (a good description of the way time passes here is that the days are long but the weeks go by fast).

This week has been super busy, with a bunch of papers due for several classes. I wrote one for Democracy and Human Rights on the difference between classical and liberal democracy, one for Ugandan Politics on stability and representation, and another paper for East African Politics analyzing the book White Man’s Burden (which argues against international aid and intervention).

Today I am meeting with a woman Myla that is in charge of the HIV/AIDS prevention project for Emmanuel International, and we are going to discuss a little about what I’m going to be doing in the summer in Pader. Actually, there is a big focus on AIDS in Faith and Action this week as well. Tonight we have a lecture on AIDS in Uganda, and on Saturday we are visiting a center in Luwero to spend the day with victims of AIDS.

With classes and just time spent here in Africa, I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences in culture with how I interact with other people. The book Compassion talks about giving up the “American” concept of time, which is usually that the busier you are, the more successful or better you are. But here, there is a lot of time just spent in presence with other people. You don’t necessarily have to intentionally seek out more “meaningful” conversation just to talk, but instead focus more on simply being with people. Especially on the rural home stays, there was a lot of silence, but it’s not necessarily empty. It will be interesting to try and translate that back into the American context, where silence is usually seen as awkward or meaningless.

Oh, it is wonderful to get letters while I’m here, so I just wanted to hint that I always appreciate them *wink*. My address here is:

Katy Slininger
Uganda Studies Program
Uganda Christian University
P.O. Box 4
Mukono, Uganda

Just in case! :)

Have a great day everybody!

Compassion

We're reading a book called "Compassion" by Nouwen, McNeill, and Morrison in Faith and Action class, and I just wanted to share a short excerpt:

"Instead of striving for a higher position, more power, and more influence, Jesus moves, as Karl Barth says, from 'the heights to the depth, from victory to defeat, from riches to poverty, from triumph to suffering, from life to death.' Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there. God's compassion is total, absolute, unconditional, without reservation. It is the compassion of the one who keeps going to the most forgotten corners of the world, and who cannot rest as long as there are still human beings with tears in their eyes. It is the compassion of a God who does not merely act as a servant, but who expresses the divinity of God through servanthood."

A Week's Worth of Updates

We just got back from rural homestays yesterday afternoon, and since there is so many stories, I thought I would just copy excerpts from each of my journal entries over the week…

Sunday, February 22, 2009
…I am staying with the Okol family, and they are of the Teso tribe (which I just learned today have been split by the border of Uganda and Kenya). When I first arrived yesterday morning, I was greeted by Mama, who gave me a tour of the compound. There is one main house made of brick and a tin roof, then there are four traditional mud huts with straw thatched roofs (I slept in one of these). Then down a path, there is a tiny hut as the latrine. They grow many things on their land, like avocados, oranges, mangos, guavas, and sweet potatoes, but since it is the dry season nothing is ripe. Anyway, that first day Father (Stephen) was gone the whole day to attend a funeral. I spent about an hour cracking open ground nuts (similar to peanuts) in silence with the girls that live here, since they don’t speak English. There is a lot of silence here, but its so peaceful…We went to church this morning, where I was welcomed with a song and a “big clap”. I was asked to give a sermon, so I used the passage in 1 Corinthians about the body of Christ. Afterwards we walked into Kyere town to buy some greens for lunch, which of course turned into a several hour ordeal, since we must greet every single person that walks by. I must have met about 200 different people.

Monday, Feb 23, 8:00 a.m.
Last night as I was falling asleep, I tried to imagine being back in America, but it is getting harder and harder to remember what it feels like, especially living in a rural area like this. I kind of feel like I’m in a weird cultural purgatory, where the African culture is foreign (although I’m starting to feel accustomed to it), but if I was back home, the American culture would be familiar yet unappealing…The days here are incredibly long, and I am amazed when they finally end. Here are some random observations:
-chickens/goats everywhere
-donating and selling eggs for church donations
-Karamajong tribe has stole my family’s cattle 20 years ago
-Guests eat meat and eggs, so everyone was surprised to see me carry greens (similar to spinach)
-“snaps” = photographs (i.e. “Let’s take a snap”)
-Had conversation with host dad about Amin. He was fine saying that he was just put in place by God. It was a little frustration to see apathetic attitude about someone like Idi Amin, but I don’t know if its necessarily wrong.
-Passed an empty ginnery that used to be owned by Asians, but they were run out by Amin
-Had terrible dream about being forced to eat a chicken gizzard

Later that day…
I went to fill up their jerrycans with water from the local well, which is about 1 mile away. The sun is brutal here, and I felt like I was going to pass out because I was so thirsty. It really made me remember the people who live in conditions like this, and actually have zero access to water. I just ate lunch while watching a 6” mini tv that Father had hooked up to a huge battery for a couple minutes. They were covering the Oscars. It was very surreal to see that while sitting in the middle of Africa.

Tuesday, February23, 2009 8:00 pm
The biggest spider I have ever seen in my LIFE just ran in front of my feet (Antony stomped on it, thankfully). [Ellen, if you are reading this, I don’t think you could come to Africa…this spider was a monster] If God protects me from getting crawled on by that during this homestay, I will never complain about insects ever again. Ever.
This morning, I left around 10 a.m. with Father to bike ride to a nearby church for a baptism service. The ride was about 30 minutes long, through the Kyere village, and was just wonderful. It was a rough dirt path, with picturesque African bush all around. I was (yes, once again), spur-of-the-moment asked to give a sermon, so I used Galatians 3:26 and told the people that their American brothers and sisters in Christ keep them constantly in their prayers…After the service, Father had to stay around for a meeting with other teachers to talk about a school they might be building in the area. The meeting lasted for a good four hours, with me just sitting there daydreaming, because I couldn’t understand anything that was said. A good description of my experience that came to mind was that it compared to Merry and Pippin’s at the Meeting of the Ents in Lord of the Rings. When the meeting ended, we all rode our bikes to a close home for lunch. All the teachers were astounded that I was eating the local millet bread (which I happen to love. Side note: the best description of this bread is that its crap-colored, snot-textured dough. Don’t ask me why I like it). Father translated for me what everyone was saying about me. He was telling them that I eat all the local food and do all the same house work as the rest of the family. A woman teacher told me that it made her so happy to see white people like me, that learn their culture and assimilate fast.

Wednesday, Feb 24, 2009 ?p.m.
Today I stayed at home the whole day while Father and the children went off to school. I helped my host mother wash dishes, I washed my clothes, went to the bore hole (pump well), and carried the jerrycans on my head for the first time! After lunch, I toop a nap, during which I dreamt I was standing in a parking lot in America, dancing to a Sam Cooke song [interpretations, anyone?]. I think my brain is trying to adjust to the lack of musical stimulation, since I spend so much time listening and playing music back in America. Today, while washing clothes, I tried to sing one song from every Beatles album in chronological order, just to keep that part of my brain stimulated. After lunch I walked with Father to this huge rock formation and hiked up it, and we got a wonderful view of Soroti. I also saw three monkeys! While today was great, I admit I was getting really tired of being white, and everyone making such a big deal over me. I want so much to just blend in, and not make babies cry. . . Just got back from prayers and dinner. I really enjoy singing hymns in the Teso language.

Thursday, February 25, 2009
I can’t believe I have gone almost an entire week without so much as seeing a single other white person or talking at all to another American. Around 5 p.m. I walked with Father to a neighbor’s house (aka a mile away), because the man has really innovative farming techniques. He gave us a tour, and apparently people from all over Uganda (including the government) come to learn from him. He does a lot of cross-breeding with plants and animals and is working on new irrigation methods. It was really interesting especially to see how the people here are taking their future into their own hands and being innovative. I’m about to go to sleep…I am getting picked up at 10 in the morning tomorrow. It’s been a wonderful experience.

P.S. The Teso phrase after sneezing, translated literally, means “grow up”.