How Ugandans are celebrating July 4th (big stuff) and specifics on the project we will be working on for six weeks.


Shouts of joy from children screaming with happiness and adults shaking hands and pumping fists of robust excitement fill the streets as everyone here is celebrating the glorious 4th of July, the great hegemony's Birthday Bash. There is a giant Oreo Ice Cream Cake filled with justice and peace in the Gulu City Center with 231 huge, glowing candles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All of the American monos (white people) here are getting carried through the streets, including myself as I am typing this...

Ok, I had to have a little fun before work. Happy 4th of July and all, but no one here cares so I'll move on to the project our group is working on.

Five students and I are working with a community-based organization called Chaford (Charity for Rural Development) on a Skills Training and Agriculture Income Generating Activity. Chaford has contacted a community leader at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp called Koro just North of where we are located. He has organized a group of 20 youths who are at the secondary school age level (high-school), but who do not have access to secondary school because there is none at their camp. We will be providing the supplies (tools, seeds, fertilizers, etc.) for the project and we will work with Chaford to train the youths about not only agronomics, but also group dynamics and different business skills training from savings to selling at markets.

We will do a training session once a week and will visit the camp as much as we can to help where we can and also for the monitoring and evaluating of the project. All the manuals that we will hand out will be in Luo (the language of the Acholi) and we will have to depend largely on translators in working with the youths, but our Luo language lessons will soon focus on vocabulary about agriculture and for the project work.

I have to go to work at Chaford now, but I will be posting soon about our recent trip to an IDP Camp, which was this past Saturday.

Afoyo Mate,
Nikolai Anywar