An update on our computer training project, with questions for you, and my favorite part of the trip: life with my host family as my mother opened up for the first time today about her experiences with and thoughts about the war.


Today, we visited the school where we will be doing computer training, and we discussed ideas for doing training not only for people within the school and for Chaford's Board, but also for other people in the community. We will have to think of sustainable ways to do this in the future as Chaford warned us against providing this training for students at other schools who don't have access to computers and who would not be able to practice what they learned outside of the trainings.

We were thinking of renting out an internet cafe for an hour or contacting NGOs with computers (though they apparently "never do this") so we are still brainstorming ideas. If you have any ideas or know where to find free programs online, such as anti-virus software, typing practice, Excel or Access training, etc., or if you would like to donate your laptop, printer, scanner, etc. let me know as they are very much needed.

I will talk more about our project as it develops and about all the different NGOs that we have visited in the past week (tons of interesting ones including a funny story of how we met the Heifer Public Relations Director by tearing down their sign!). For now, I have to type about my host family as they are always on my mind (I am missing basketball with them tonight to type this!).

The most amazing part of this trip so far has been time with my host family. I have tons of siblings who will play loud music on the radio and all break out in dance (I have tons of photos which I hope to provide you with a link too soon). For some reason, this only happens when my parents are gone, but they are often gone on the weekends as my father travels throughout the area watching and advising teachers as he is the Director of the National Teacher's College.

He and my mom also were gone this weekend to drive to a town several hours away to see Mary, yes the mother of God. She comes to this tree outside of a church there and people see her and she comes at this same time every year. He told me he saw her in a star and pointed the star to me. My mother mentioned how she is moving throughout the area and people are drawing her. I wanted to mention about the image of Mary that was seen on the underpass of the Fullerton exit on the highway in Chicago (which turned out to be a salt stain, but where there are still flowers and candles and people praying) or how Mary probably didn't actually look like a blue eyed, brown-hair, white women, but more Arab looking (as I learned from a National Geographic special).

I learned to just not get into such things, but my family does surprisingly let me share a lot about myself, my country and my controversial views on things (like why I disagree with the Catholic Church and why I "believe" in evolution).
I shared a book about Civil Disobedience called Love in Action by a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk with my sister and the book A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela with my brother. Also, I am just finishing up Pedagogy of the Oppressed (an absolutely amazing book on using education to empower all people, especially the oppressed) with my father as he and I are always brainstorming ideas to get students in this area to think more critically.

I read in the paper how a district to the South called Jinja (where another of our groups are working, Liz's blog) hooked up with the major Ugandan newspaper The Daily Monitor to distribute newspapers to the secondary schools. As we drank tea (my father from his Chicago mug which I bought at O'Hare), I discussed with my father ideas to get them to distribute this paper to schools in Gulu, especially as he said that students in these schools have had their studies disrupted from the war from materials, buildings and just the entire way of life "destroyed".

My mother is also jumping on my idea wagon as I noticed how many bottles of water I drink and that no one recycles the bottles here. Yet, as I walk to work in the morning, there are several old women along the market street who sell bottles to people to put cooking oil, homemade alcohol and other liquids in. Now, she and the other members of my group are saving our bottles to give to these women in a grassroots informal recycling effort. If any other monos (white people) in Gulu are reading this, please save your bottles and give them to the ladies to the east of the main market.

All the other family members are doing great. The past couple days I have come home from work early and my 7, 15, 17, 19, and 26-year old brothers and my 6 year old sister have all walked down to the local basketball and football courts (aka a field of dirt called Carribean Yards where people practice driving and where the hoops are made out of wooden planks). I have been reading a lot about the National Basketball Association's International Community Outreach Program called Basketball Without Borders, and Jacob and I are trying to get in touch with the NBA to consider doing one of their projects, such as setting up a youth center in Gulu that could also serve as a center for HIV/AIDS and conflict resolution education (we took photos yesterday of Lona, my youngest sister, sitting in one of the rims of the hoops that had fallen over!).

And don't worry, the turkeys are doing great. They walk blocks away from the home sometime as I can see them in the distance but they always return as they are well-fed. One of our chickens was not so lucky as my brother and I killed him for our dinner.

This morning, my mom, "Big Momma" (which Emily's mom is also called), talked to me about the LRA (the Lord's Resistance Army, the rebel army here that is fighting the military in the North) for a while this morning at breakfast. She told me how they came to her mother's house and robbed her of all of her possessions from her cows and goats to her plates and bowls. When she came to her mom's hut, her mom was crying and said they might as well have killed me. My mom here told her that your life is more important than all those as "who will tend the goats and put food on the plates if you are dead. You are what matters."

She also told me about how they would abduct children and people from her village to act as slaves. They would force those that they captured to walk through the Bush carrying the supplies of the LRA. She said, "They would make them carry very heavy things like beans or sugar that they stole from the village, and when the people would get tired or fall sick, they would kill them and leave their bodies there". She mentioned how the people, a majority being children, that would survive this and would get back into a town would have to go to a hospital as they would have cuts all throughout her body. She also described how they would take young girls who they would later use as sex slaves and they would become child mothers.
I could see the tears line around her eyes, though she didn't cry, as she told me about this. This was the first time anyone in my family went into specifics about what the LRA has done and about graphic acts of violence that she saw the effects of firsthand. Her family fled the village and she is now taking care of the children of her siblings (my cousins) whose parents are still in the camp.

She and my father (and some of the parents of my group mates) have told me several times that they want to take me to their villages and that they will move back there once the war is over. My father has described how the military came and took his cows and goats and how the people fear both the LRA and the military when they came as they would both steal. Both of my parents tell me about how they used to farm and the animals they had and how life was better before and things were cheaper at the market and that the war has changed everything.

We have been told that our host families are the rich ones, who have good positions in society and were able to "escape" from their villages. Yet, it seems no one is spared from the effects of this war and that is has changed everyone here.
I read in the paper a couple days ago that the LRA and the Ugandan Government just signed the third phase of the five phase peace deal. It has been a year since peace talks have begun and I have heard a mixture of reactions to the question of "Will there be peace?"

These people need peace, the war needs to end, but I do not know what will happen to those who have nothing to return too, whose homes have been destroyed and everything taken, who cannot simply buy new goats and cows like my father can.
I don't know.

I need to go home, these mosquitoes (or mo-keet-os as they say here with no q or s in the Luo alphabet) are annoying. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the NGOs we have visited and other funny words that get lost in pronunciation (like how our language teacher asked us if we wanted to go to the "Joo" (he meant zoo, but there's no Z's either!)).

Boot Maber (good night),

Nicky Mit (no H or S in Luo) Anywar