Catching up and ISP!

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated my blog! Hmmm where to begin? Easter weekend was quite an eventful weekend here! On Saturday, our group threw a “stadium bash” for all of Gulu. Yes, like literally. It was CRAZY! Lewie and a couple of other people in our group worked really hard to put it together, and despite a few mishaps, it was a huge success!! We originally wanted to throw a block party for the whole community, but the road we wanted to block off is one of the main streets the buses use, so that plan was nixed. After much brainstorming, we realized that my host dad is the district sports officer and is in charge of the stadium in town. The district speaker in the local government happens to be our homestay coordinator, so he was helping us during our brainstorming session, and he said that we would be the first group to every throw a big free party in the stadium! My dad said he would let us use it for free as long as we cleaned up afterwards, and we were on our way! Lewie arranged for all of the biggest artists/bands in Gulu to perform, got a phone company to sponsor the party (paying for the sound system and stage) and got a beer company to sell beer, soda and water. The party went from 6pm-4am and our teacher estimated that there were 5000-6000 people there! I had randomly brought a pack of glowsticks with me from the US (to give out to the kids in my family) and a couple of us thought it would be so fun to wear them to the party… WRONG!! I have no idea why we thought that would be a good idea, considering we already stand out enough as muzungus and definitely do not need anything else to call attention to ourselves. As soon as we walked into the stadium, we were SURROUNDED by about 50 people, mostly young men. They all started literally grabbing at the glowsticks around our wrists, neck and in our hair, and one guy yelled, “Give me your fire!!” We tried to fend them off, and when we realized that that wasn’t going to work, we started trying to give them to the kids in the circle. The grabbing intensified, and we finally just through them up in the air and bolted out of the circle of people. It was quite an experience. It wasn’t all that funny at the time, but looking back at it now, it must have been quite a hilarious sight. Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be able to look at glowsticks the same way ever again!

The next day was Easter Sunday. I met a couple of the other girls to help clean the stadium and it was a huge mess! (Imagine 5000-6000 people in an enclosed structure in a country where it is the norm to throw trash on the ground…) It didn’t actually didn’t end up taking all that long since there we several of us. I then went to get come pictures printed of my host family and I to put in the album that I was going to give them later that day as a thank you gift, and then went home for our Easter/welcome Freesia/Good-bye Freesia feast. My family was so sweet and had made A TON of food, and some of the neighbors came over to join the party. I learned that in Acholi culture, it is traditional for the guest to eat the gizzard of the chicken because it is a delicacy. After eating SOOO much other food, there was just no way that I was going to be able to down that, so I luckily managed to pawn it off onto my host mom, who enjoyed it much more than I would have. I gave my host family the blanket that my real mom had crocheted for them as a thank you for having me and they really liked it! It was nice to feel like my two families are connected. My host dad had been asking about when he was going to get to talk to my real dad (because he had already spoken to my mom when I had run into him by coincidence while I was walking home talking to her one day), so after the meal I called my parents back home, and my host mom and dad talked to my real mom and dad! These two worlds seem so separate, so it was cool to be able to share a piece of the other part of life with each of them.

Sometime during the last week or so that I was with my family, my host mom told me a little about her experiences during the war as we were in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner. She said that for several years, she was constantly running, sleeping in whatever seemed to be the best hiding spot at the time. She had a baby and a three-year-old and she couldn’t carry both of them so she joined up with another group of people who could take care of the three-year-old. This part was a little unclear, I’m not sure if she was actually with those people the whole time or if she gave them her son to take care of for awhile and then got him back when it was safe to settle down again. She explained that it was not safe to live at home because the rebels might attack at any time, so it was better to be constantly moving. They had very little food and were often hiding behind trees, terrified of what would happen if they were discovered. The other people in my group and I had talked about the fact that for whatever reason, the conflict did not feel as real to us as the genocide had in Rwanda. These are clearly two very different situations, but when I was talking to my mom about her experiences, I realized that the conflict did not feel as real because I really hadn’t heard many people talk about their personal experiences of the war. As I was sitting with her, seeing the pain on her face and hearing it in her words as she described how difficult those years had been, the conflict felt much more real and personal.

The day before we left our families we had a big party with all of our families and some of our lecturers. (That weekend involved a lot of parties I guess!) We ate dinner, people made some speeches, and we did some traditional dancing with a local dance group. We hadn’t all met each other’s families, so it was fun to meet them and be able to place the stories we had told about our experiences in our homestay. The next day we left for Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Kampala is about a five hour drive from Gulu. While in Kampala, we stayed at the same hotel we had stayed at for our first few nights in Africa at the very beginning of this whole experience, and the same hotel that we will be staying at for our last few nights before he say good-bye and fly home. It felt a little weird to be there because in my head I had kind of compartmentalized it as the beginning and the end, so it made me a little disoriented about where we were in the semester (that sounds a little weird, but it somehow made sense in my head…) It was really interesting to compare the way we all thought of the hotel compared to the first time we had stayed in it. We all agreed that we had found it kind of grundgy the first time around, but now we thought it was such a luxury! It’s crazy to see how perspectives change. It had warm water, toilets that flushed pretty consistently, air conditioning, and cereal for breakfast, all of which we were pretty excited about! We had the last of our lectures while there, and spent the rest of the time trying to eat as much American food as possible. I ate two cheeseburgers, two cheeseburgers, and two ice cream cones in three days! It was amazing! On our last day before the independent study period began, we all went to Jinja, a town about two hours away from Kampala. We took a boat on the Nile to this little peninsula. Our guide pointed to a spot in the water and told us that this was the source of the Nile, the exact place where it switches from Lake Victoria to the Nile. Apparently, a ton of different places all claim to have the source of the Nile, so who knows which is right, but it was still cool to see! Later in the day we went to another part of the Nile to look at these waterfall/rapid things. Our academic director told us that in two years, everything we were currently looking at would be underwater, because they are building a dam a little ways down the river in order to generate energy for Southern Sudan. It was so sad to think that such a beautiful place would seen be covered in water.

After our time in Kampala and Jinja, many of us took a bus back to Gulu to begin our Independent Study Projects. As we were driving into Gulu, I was relieved to be back and happy to find that Gulu felt like home! During the ISP, I am living with four of the other girls and I are staying in a hotel that is owned by one of the girls’ host parents. This has proved very eventful, including our attempt to make macaroni and cheese on a charcoal stove… we failed. For my research, I am looking at how leadership development programs for youth in Northern Uganda are trying to empower this generation of youth and end the cycle of poor leadership in Uganda. I spent my first week (last week) at a school called Restore Leadership Academy, which is a Christian secondary school that focuses on leadership and character development. I conducted three focus group interviews with the students, had the kids fill out some questionnaires and interviewed two regular teachers, the deputy head teacher, and the head teacher. It has been a little tricky because all of the schools are getting out for vacation this Friday, so the only two weeks that I am able to spend in the schools is during their exam period. I finished up there today, and I think I was still able to get enough information. The other initiative I am focusing is called KOBS (Knowledge of Behavior and Self) and is a curriculum that has just been introduced into the schools that Invisible Children works with. If it is thought to be successful in two years, then it will likely be implemented into all of the schools in Northern Uganda. The curriculum focuses on topics like self-esteem and friendship building, conflict avoidance and conflict resolution, motivation and goal setting and dealing with worries and stress. Last week I interviewed a teacher who helped create the curriculum and a teacher who is currently teaching the material, and on Thursday I will interview students who have taken the class this term. Though this curriculum is not specifically a “leadership curriculum,” I think it teaches many of the things that are needed in order for the youth of Northern Uganda to move past the difficulties they faced in their childhoods due to the war, and become successful leaders. I still figuring how it is all going to come together, but I’m really excited about this topic and think I might really want to continue focusing on leadership development for youth and adolescents when I get back to the US!

One day last week my friend Anne and I went with two of the Invisible Children engineers and the education officer to five of Invisible Children’s partner schools, including the one that we raised money for in high school! It was really exciting to see the schools and the progress that is being made on them, and to meet some of the teachers and headmasters. It reaffirmed for me how important the work that Schools for Schools is doing is, because these schools are really benefitting from the money that is being raised by the students in the US! Many of the schools were extremely damaged during the war or have always been lacking certain necessities, and by rebuilding the schools, IC is helping to create an environment that is much more conducive to learning. So exciting to see the schools in real life, especially to connect my experiences raising money in the US with the reality here!

Pictures of Uganda!

We saw zebras on the drive from Kampala to Gulu!


We got really excited about the source of the nile!


Part of my host family with the beautiful blanket my real mom crocheted for them!


My sister and some of the neighbor kids!


My host mom and I practicing our African dance skills!


We like to climb trees...

Gender issues in Uganda

A couple of weeks ago we visited the Acholi Cultural Center, which involves the local chiefs in preserving Acholi culture and promoting development in this region. We spent the majority of the conversation discussing Acholi views towards women and what they are doing to promote gender equality, which is one of their four main goals.

When we asked if women can hold the position of chief or if any other leadership positions in the tribe are open to women, he said that women are allowed to hold one of the highest leadership positions that exist- being a mother and taking care of the household. WHAT?! Yes, being a mother is extremely important, but that is not the same thing as actually having the opportunity to hold a leadership position in the tribe! He said that each district must have a female representative, but it basically sounds like this one woman is the main voice for the women in that area and is the token “women’s representative,” but that women don’t really hold many (or any) positions of power that are open to both men and women. He said that women are beginning to become more active in decision-making within the tribe. Women are now allowed to own land, but because certain cultural norms have existed for such a long time, it will be a process to change what people consider “normal” and acceptable. I definitely think that it has to be a process, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear how they (the men we spoke to) were talking about women, because it seemed pretty disrespectful towards women in many instances. They spoke about how in the past, it was completely acceptable for a man to force a women to sleep with him whether she protested or not, because “even if she says she doesn’t want to, she actually does and is just pretending.” Um, what? One girl in our group pointed out later in a debrief that women often pretend to want to sleep with their partner because they feel like they should, even if they don’t feel like it, NOT the other way around. I know that it is not like this anymore, but it was still disturbing to hear how these men were talking about rape so casually, and even laughing at times.

It has been really interesting to speak with both men and women here about their perceptions of the current status of women in Uganda. Both men and women have told me that women face many challenges, especially in terms of marriage. Because of the tradition of bride price (the same as a dowry), the man’s family pretty much buys the woman. This means that if they have marriage problems or if the woman is being abused by her husband, her family will often force her to stay with him because his family paid for her. Because of this, many women are trapped in bad marriages, and if they do leave their husband, they are left with nothing. I imagine this must create a feeling of helplessness among women in this situation-you have no support to leave, but it is also miserable to stay.

Another issue people have mentioned is polygamy, which is still largely practiced here. One woman I met told me that it can be very upsetting for a woman to be in a marriage like this because the wives are often not treated equally, and some are treated much better than others. (I met a guy who told me that his dad has 15 wives and 48 children!! He said that this is extremely rare, but still!) She said that this can create tension between a man’s wives, and sometimes a man will get tired of some of his wives, (when he has many) he will get rid of some of them. She also said that even if a woman thinks she is in a monogamous marriage, there is still a large chance that her husband is cheating on her. She told me that she would leave her husband immediately if he tried to get another wife, but since she is working in Gulu and he is working in Kampala, she just has to trust that he is staying faithful to her.

It has been interesting to study the dynamic in my host family because my dad has two wives. One of them is younger (31) and does not speak any English (I don’t know whether that indicates something about her education level because all of the children are taught English in school?) She seems kind of quiet and pretty subservient, and doesn’t seem to interact very much with the husband. The other wife is older (about his age), speaks English pretty well, and seems to have more power in terms of running the household. It’s hard for me to get a sense of the dynamic between the two women, but they seem to live together fine, eat together, and share a lot of the housework. I haven’t seen any animosity between the two women, but I’m not sure if they are particularly close either. One of my mothers explained to me that a big problem for women in Uganda is that they have to do all of the work in the household, while the man does nothing around the house. This means that the woman is constantly working, which is exhausting and can lead to major health problems. I think that this is a huge problem for women all over the world, and one of the first steps towards changing the status of women is to begin within the household. This is such a difficult process because it involves fighting long-standing norms and requires the cooperation of both the man and the women- the woman has to be strong about the role she wants in the relationship, and the man has to support that and take on an equal share of the work in the household. The structural changes need to be made to enable women to gain leadership positions and have equal opportunities and rights, but I do think that both here and at home, changes within the household would be a major first step.

In the few weeks I have been in Gulu, I have seen/heard of many instances of domestic violence. One night during dinner we heard a ton of children suddenly begin crying and yelling nearby. My mother and siblings all ran over to see what was happening, and it turned out that our neighbor’s husband had just gotten home drunk and was beating his wife in front of their children. My mother told me about it when she returned home, and it was really disturbing to me how commonplace this seemed. A few nights ago, there was a woman eating dinner with us who I had never seen before, and my mother told me that she is their niece, who had run away from her abusive husband. Both of her parents have passed away, so I think my family was her closest family, and so she had ridden on the back of pickup trucks and taken many different taxis to get to our house. She explained that this woman’s husband is very stubborn and beats her badly. She said that she will likely stay with us until her husband comes to get her. It is awful to think that this woman will probably have to go back to her abusive husband. Last night, the woman’s mother in law stayed at our house, apparently to speak with the woman and with my family about what they should do about the situation. Apparently the father-in-law will be coming to our house in the next few days, and then shortly after that the woman’s husband will come to work things out and bring her back with him. It is so interesting how involved the two families are in the relationship between this man and woman, and it was really interesting to sit in our kitchen hut eating dinner with my mother, this woman, and this woman’s abusive husband’s mother, an unusual combination! I wonder what the role of the mother-in-law is in this situation, and if she sides more with the woman or with her son.

I have heard really mixed opinions on the progress that has been made for women. Some people have made it sound like it is much better now, and other made it sound like there are still MAJOR problems. My guess is that both are true- it has gotten a lot better but there is still a LONG WAY to go. In order to change the situation, initiatives are going to have to be taken on several different levels- in government, through legal mechanisms, within the community, and on the family level, and target many different groups-men, women, government officials, villagers, etc. This is definitely not unique to Uganda however, I think initiatives like this need to take place in nearly all (if not all) parts of the world.