Nakivale Refugee Settlement and first impressions of Gulu

On our way from Rwanda to Uganda, we stopped at a town in Southern Uganda called Mbarara to meet up with the other group for a couple of days. While we were there, we visited Nakivale Refugee Settlement. Nakivale is a refugee camp that was created in the 1950s and that houses thousands and thousands of refugees from about seven different countries. I wasn’t really sure what a refugee camp would look like, especially given the fact that it has been in existence for over 50 years. I was a little surprised to find that it pretty much looked like a town/village in the parts we were in. However, when I thought about it more, of course there is some infrastructure (people have been living there for so long) and I’m sure that there is MUCH MORE needed and lacking.

It was interesting to hear about how all of the different groups (from different countries) and how they live together in the camp. I wonder how the people regard the camp, and if the people who have lived there for their whole lives, or nearly their whole lives, identify more with Uganda and the camp, or with their home country. It is really strange to imagine not having a real place to call yours, because the country your family comes from in not home, but neither is the camp (or at least I imgaine.)

Our group broke into two, and half of us talked to Rwandan refugees while the other half spoke with Congolese refugees. I was in the group that spoke with the Rwandan refugees. I expected them to provide a different perspective than we had heard in Rwanda, but I did not expect it to be nearly as extreme as it was. The refugees we spoke to were nearly all (if not all) Hutu, and a couple of them told us that they had run away from the community service work camps or life imprisonment sentences. They began by saying that they should not have been given such long sentence and that the gacaca is biased and extended their sentences so that the Tutsi can take their land. While I really value hearing this perspective, they went on to suggest that they shouldn’t really have to serve time for their crimes, that far more Hutu than Tutsi were killed, and that the Tutsi are trying to make it sound much worse than it was. They were being completely disrespectful in the way that they spoke about the deaths of the Tutsi people and were spewing really extreme comments that went against everything we had learned in Rwanda. While it may be unfair to assume that everything they were telling us was outrageous and incorrect, they seemed to be using this information to justify their actions and legitimize their crimes. I think this experience was especially frustrating because of the strong connections I have made with genocide survivors. The words of these Hutu refugees seemed to still contain hate towards the Tutsi and did not seem to express any guilt or remorse for their crimes. It hit much closer to home, however, because it felt like the people they were talking about really are my friends and family. My host family fled Rwanda in 1959 because of violence against the Tutsis, and I became friends with several people whose entire families were killed in the genocide. Because of the connection I feel with people who have had to endure awful things in the genocide, it was especially painful to hear them denying and delegitimizing the pain and death. I had not realized that I felt so connected to the people I had met in Rwanda, but my gut reaction was to feel defensive of them when I heard this. It was interesting to see and acknowledge my own bias, to see how I have developed opinions and views about Rwanda, and to see myself have strong reactions in relation to them after just living there for one month. They also did tell us a lot about the problems they are facing as Hutu refugees and the problems that Hutus in Rwanda currently face, which made miss wish that I had heard this perspective while I was in Rwanda and could look into it further.

Another thing I couldn’t stop thinking about while I was at Nakivale was how this situation has the potential to lead to further conflict. These Rwandan refugees are overwhelmingly Hutu, which means that they are probably working each other up and possibly breeding more anger and hatred. While Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda are reconciling and learning to live together again, these Hutu refugees are isolated, are being treated poorly in the camp because it is very difficult for them to get refugee status, and are likely getting more and more angry. I really hope that this won’t lead to more conflict in the future, but the current situation makes it seem like this could be a possibility. This was not something that I had really thought of, but our translator suggested that this was what he had predicted would happen. Rwanda has been peaceful for about 15 years now, but it is scary to think that the upcoming elections have the potential to cause major problems for the country.

I left that discussion even more unsure of what to believe because we have heard such opposing viewpoints on the same topics, but overall I think it was really valuable to hear the perspective of the Hutu refugees, and I think it was really important in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the situation in Rwanda.

We then parted ways with the other group, and took a five hour bus ride to Gulu in Northern Uganda. We arrived in Gulu in the evening, settled into our hostel, ate dinner, and went to sleep, so we didn’t see any of Gulu beyond our hotel. This made me really excited to wake up the next morning for our first real day of exploring and getting to know Gulu. We had our first Acholi class in the morning and it was nice to jump straight into the language so that we’d have some Acholi words to use on our first day. We then had a drop-off, where we split into groups and explored different aspects of Gulu like health, NGOs, media, entertainment, etc. Sophie, Rachel and I were assigned to scope out restaurants and the market, so we decided to get some food before we headed to the market. We tried to get lunch at a couple of places that serve Acholi food, but none of them were serving lunch yet, so we ended up at a place that serves both Acholi and more western food. We sat down and opened the menu, and I was excited to see that the money goes to an organization that helps returnees which is run by a woman that also works for Invisible Children and that I have met through IC events in the US! I was comforted by the familiarity and Gulu already began to feel smaller. We got our food and began to eat and it was SO GOOD! Then, five people with IC shirts walked in. I asked one of them if they work for IC, and he sat down next to me. He told me that he is an engineer for the Schools for Schools program. I told them that my partner school for S4S is Anaka Secondary, and he told me that he is one of the lead engineers for Anaka Secondary! I couldn’t believe it, my first day in Gulu and I had already met someone who was working on the school I raised money for! The other four people sat down and it was so exciting to talk about IC’s programs here, what they do, etc. It turns out we know a lot of the same people and it was so fun to have such an engaged conversation and really be able to relate when talking about projects that we have worked on. It was like two pieces of a puzzle (as cheesy as that sounds)- I had worked on these projects from the US, and they are implementing them here on the ground, and through talking about it, we could really put the pieces together to understand how they work as a whole. It was one of those exhilarating conversations where we were able to feed off of each other and connect over our shared interest and commitment to something. Sophie and Rachel commented afterward on how happy I seemed and it was true- I really was just so happy to be there lost in conversation with these IC employees!

Later that afternoon we moved in with our host families. My papa came to pick me up and brought me to our home in Pece (which is about a 40 minute walk from town.) My mama, grandmother, and sisters were all sitting in front of the house on grass mats, and they each shook hands with me and welcomed me. After I settled into my room, my 19-year-old sister Durcas took me on a brief tour of the area. We walked through a maze of grass huts, goats, chickens, ducks, dogs and children playing around in the afternoon sunshine. Women were sitting on grass mats outside of their houses cutting vegetables and socializing with the other women, while the occasional man whirred past on a bicycle. My sister brought me to the village market, which was filled with women selling fruits, vegetables, fish, and grains either from the ground or from or from wooden stands. We bought cabbage, tomatoes, ocra and fish to use as ingredients in the dinner we were soon to prepare.

We walked back to the house and sat down with the other women in the family. They showed me how to chop cabbage and alternated between laughing at my attempted and gasping when I nearly cut myself in the process. I eventually mastered the art of cabbage chopping, and began to chop them at almost the same pace as the other women. At the beginning my mama would give me a small piece to cut while she worked on a much larger piece. By the end, (it was a long process because we had several cabbages to cut into small pieces) she proudly handed me a large chunk of cabbage. You gotta enjoy the small accomplishments in life, right? :)

I helped my sister to cook the rest of the meal in the kitchen hut. Cooking a meal is such a different process here than in the US- instead of utilizing the convenience of a microwave or an electric stove in a kitchen with cabinets, counter space, and a fridge, we were cooking all of our food in one pot over a small charcoal stove in a grass hut. Dinner was also a very different process than it is in the US. My sister and I divided the food onto three large trays. We brought one tray to the group of women and children sitting on grass mats in the front yard, one tray to the men and boys sitting on plastic chairs a couple of feet away, and put one aside for my father for when he got home. My sister and I sat down with the other women, which consisted of my two mothers (yes, my father has two wives! More about that next time…), my grandmother, and a couple of children. My sister served the food for me onto a plate and then told me that I would learn how to eat with my hands. She laughed as I took my first few bites with my hands (it took a couple of days to get my hand-eating skills to meet her approval), and then the rest of the women began to eat out of the serving dishes. Several of the women only speak Acholi, so as they conversed in Acholi, I took the opportunity to soak up this place and situation-my new home- and fall into my own world of thought. Besides our house, I was pretty much surrounded by grass huts, each home to an Acholi family. The stars were like nothing I had seen before- the sky was literally COVERERED with little specs of light. Chickens and ducks waddled around, and the family cat wandered on and off our makeshift grass mat dinner table. I could hear a baby crying in the distance, and the sound of music coming out of a radio nearby. The balmy African air had cooled off since the afternoon, and the breeze was refreshing after a hot sweaty day. This world was very different from my world at home, and from the one I had become accustomed to in Rwanda, but I felt surprisingly at ease. The food was fresh, the sense of community was deeply present, and we were eating under a beautiful starry sky- at that moment I knew that even though there would be many challenges in adjusting to this new place and coping with the difficult subject matter (the war), I was ready for them, and ready to soak in this culture and lifestyle.

Sooooo umm that was two weeks ago! Haha, I thought I should talk about my first day in detail since it was really great, but now I’m behind on the last two weeks! Basically we have class Monday-Friday from about 9-3:30 or 4. After that we generally go into town to go to the market, grab a snack, use the internet or go to visit offices of NGOs. We left Gulu for three days and stayed about two and a half hours north in a town called Kitgum. One of the days we drove to Lukung, which is on the border of Uganda and Sudan, and conducted a conflict assessment in a former Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp. This basically consisted of breaking up into groups and speaking with different groups of people in the surrounding area about the conflicts that currently exist in the region, the problems they are facing, and what their lives are like. It was pretty intense, so I think I’ll talk about that more later. Other than that, we have visited another IDP camp, had all kinds of different lectures, gone swimming on the weekends, spoken with a lot of interesting people, and gotten to know Gulu a lot better. We live with our host families for another week and a couple of days, then we go to Kampala (the capital) for 4 days, and then we begin our Independent Study Projects!! SO CRAZYYY!! I miss you all so much and hope everyone is doing well!