The Only Mzungu

Well, I'm just about finishing my first two weeks in northern Uganda so I figured I'd give a little update. This week I have been visiting different IDP camps around the area leading discussions on improving sanitation. The Ugandans in these camps need a lot of prayers, because the war with the LRA has left them extremely vulnerable. There is a lot of disease and malnutrition, and the crops haven't been growing very well this season. Also, they keep expressing a need for more water pumps because usually there is just one for an entire IDP community. It is also difficult to see how much the conflict has affected all the people I am working with. There are so many widows and orphans left to fend for themselves, and a lot of people that had been abducted as child soldiers that are now trying to live normal lives. The war forced them to move into IDP camps, which are forced communities so that the government could protect them from the rebels. THat meant that they all had to leave their original home farms and live in an area where farming wasn't possible. Even though the LRA has been gone from the area for a couple years, most people are too afraid, or lack the necessary resources to move back to their land. THe farthest they've gone is establishing satellite camps halfway between the original IDP camp and their own land. But its still really bad, and they need a lot of help. I am one of the only mzungus in the central town of Pader...I see one once in a while but for the most part there are no other westerners. Its funny because down in southern Uganda most people assumed I was american, but here they keep yelling "Canada! Canada!" at me. I think thats because the majority of NGO workers are Canadian, and they rarely see any Americans. Well, I am heading to Kampala for a couple of days on Monday, so I will talk to everyone later!

Greetings from Pader!

Sorry I have not written in here for so long! I have been moving around like a madwoman, and I rarely have access to the internet (its a long process of dragging out the generator, hooking it up to a power converter, trying to find a connection with a little MTN wireless hookup...etc.) Anyway, I miss EVERYONE so much, and I can't believe all the USP people are back in America now! I originally came to Pader on the 9th, but we went to visit Reverend Kenneth's family in Gulu that following Tuesday. I just got back yesterday, and today was my first day where I officially sat down at my desk to get some work done for Emmanuel International.

I am staying in a compound right outside of the town center in Pader district in Northern Uganda. On the compound is my own little house (it looks like a two story silo, kind of. It has a straw roof, so think of a vertically extended African hut), where I have a bedroom (there are 2 other empty ones), a bathroom/washroom, and a little kitchen area where I cook my own meals. Kenneth, a Ugandan missionary, lives on the compound in another little house. We have a guard stationed at the front gate, armed with a bow and arrow (not kidding), a little area for the cows, a resource center (where they also hold the community's church services), and an office (where I now have my own desk as the Coordinator for Ministry and Education). A woman named Millie is also on staff here, and she is paid to clean the house and dishes for me lol. EI has a couple permanant staff up here, including counselors, and then a handful of volunteers.

The work I have started is going around to the IDP camps and giving lectures and demonstrations on hygiene and sanitation to vulnerable groups (widows, orphans, returnees from the LRA, child-headed households), and assisting the counselors to those same groups. EI has a couple other projects going, including bead making for widows to earn a profit, and seed distribution (which I'm also helping with). We have a lot to do, but it is very quiet here and I have a lot of alone time. I'm on page 850 of the book Atlas Shrugged, which I started a week and a half ago, so that should give you an idea of how much free time I have. Haha.

Anyway, I love you ALL and thanks for all of your financial and emotional support you've given me. I'm excited to work here, and I'll keep you all updated as much as possible!

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!