good classes, malaria, and guys’ night out.

sun, 6.24 through sat, 6.30 – we’re past the halfway point of the trip, and it’s kinda weird. while we feel like we’ve been here for a really long time, it still seems like we have a lot of time left. on Sunday, several of us got up and went to mass at holy rosary catholic church. it was a really awkward experience, because i felt like the people here really have no clue why they do the things they do, religiously speaking…it’s almost as if, in the gulu area at least, Christianity was simply another tool that the westerners used to colonialize the people here. many of the people here claim to be Christians and are even active in the churches; however, when they come upon a tragedy or a disease, they run to one of the remaining ‘doctors’ who still practice the tribal healing…’witch doctors,’ if you will. on top of that, the people that i’ve talked to about their faith have all pretty much just said the same thing…i felt like i was being read the contents of a religious tract. the depth is definitely not there in the instances i’ve witnessed. rather interesting.

monday, i only had one class, and i spent the majority of the afternoon running errands in town and planning for wednesday and thursday. tuesday, i didn’t have any classes, so isaiah and i stayed at the school for about 3 hours finalizing our plans for the rest of the week. class went really well on wednesday morning, and our weekly roundtable meeting with our ugandan team-teachers went well too. thursday morning’s class went pretty well too. the students have gotten pretty used to me and the ‘funny’ way i speak. they are opening up a lot more about themselves and their culture…it’s really neat. we’ve actually had a good time in class, and some of the poetry these kids have written would blow your mind!

friday was another low-key day…i’m kinda worried though, because isaiah (my partner teacher at gulu high) wasn’t at school today. he is at home, sick with malaria (yeah, apparently the locals get it as well…surprised me too).

saturday, we were at a teaching/learning conference with our team teachers, headmasters, and various other school representatives from the entire gulu district. some of the sessions weren’t bad, but others were PAINFULLY boring. it was hot, we were in dress clothes, we were hungry, and the speaker was droning on and on about something that, quite frankly, nobody in the room was really interested in.

after the conference, phil and i took josh out to dinner at a restaurant called bambu since he’s leaving on monday. we all had the grilled pork kabobs with fried cassava strips…it was delicious. walking home afterward, we saw the most beautiful moon i’ve ever seen. it was relaxing and a great end to a great week.

one week til we leave gulu…

perspective.

sat, 6.23 – today we visited an idp (internally displaced people) camp call Awer (pronounced ‘away’). it was a really really heavy visit, and it made me very contemplative afterwards. we arrived near the center of the camp because that is where the small hut where some of the bracelet makers for invisible children are located. **if you are unfamiliar with the i.c. bracelet campaign, you should go to invisiblechildren.com and read about it** we visited with them for a few minutes, saw where/how/by whom the bracelets are made, and then walter, the man who is in charge of the bracelet operations there and at 2 other locations (not in camps), assigned us various tasks to do around the camp. phil and i pumped water…at one of the four bore-holes in the entire camp…4 wells for 50,000 people! some of the rest of our group swept out and organized a hut, sold vegetables in the small market, cleaned and cooked random meat (i think i saw intestines in the pictures too…), and a few other odd jobs. after we finished working (about an hour), we walked through some of the camp. we were followed by a mob of children who were intrigued by this group of mzungus who was ‘touring’ their ‘home’.

i understand that the intention of having us do work in the camp was to keep us from seeming like we were there as simple tourists. ‘conflict tourism’ has become a rampant business in this part of the world, as people are becoming rich by marketing the ‘experience’ of interacting with these unfortunate people to westerners. as a result, many of the conscious organizations (such as invisible children) are making a concerted effort to avoid the appearance of such tourism. for instance, they asked that we only take one camera if we wanted to document the trip into the camp, and they have always emphasized the importance of asking permission before taking anyone’s picture. however, i felt that our doing chores in the camps was so contrived that it merely made our presence there seem MORE like that of a group of tourists. i mean, we drove in, piled out of the mutatu, met with the bracelet makers, ‘worked’ for an hour, went walking about the camp as if it were a zoo or aquarium, piled back into our vehicle, and drove back to our comfortable lives in our walled compound with our laptops and our running water and electricity. how can any self-aware person who is sensitive to the needs of the people around him NOT feel totally invasive, intrusive, and selfish in such circumstances? it was really a difficult emotion to wrestle with…the entire way home, i tried to work through all the feelings and thoughts running through my head – guilt, shame, disgust, self-loathing, awareness, etc. – but i could not come to terms with them completely. maybe i never will. maybe we’re not supposed to be able to…

my heart truly breaks for these people. i will, in a few short weeks, return to my home, to all of the hustle and bustle of my daily life. i will leave these people in their despair and empty lives to go back to my life…a life that i’ve complained and groaned about time and time again. back home, to all of the ‘stuff’ that i have worked so hard to accumulate. and even now as i write these lines, i have to choke back tears because i realize just how self-centered i am. i have a roof over my head that doesn’t leak. i have electricity and clean, drinkable, running water. i have family members who are all alive and healthy, none of whom carry hideous scars of torture or landmines or mutilation that act as a reminder of the conflict that destroyed life as usual. i have enough clothes to outfit a small army, enough food for way more than myself, enough money to merit throwing it away on things like movies, music, and books. and yet i still complain??? i am selfish, disgusting, and self-centered.

it is impossible to be here in this place, amongst these people, and not be changed. i am praying very sincerely that, as i return to the states and resume my life, i will be able to find the fine line between personal awareness and self-righteousness judgment of those around me. i wrestle daily with the idea of God’s sovereignty and mercy. it is so hard to accept the idea that He allows this to happen to these people while we live in such relative luxury. why should i be allowed to live comfortably while people here suffer? i certainly don’t deserve it any more than any of these people do. please continue to pray for me as i grapple with these emotional and spiritual obstacles.

if this blog achieves nothing else, i pray that it will make people more aware of the fortune and immense wealth that we live with daily as americans. please know that, regardless of what you do or do not have, there are millions of people here who have NOTHING.

i pray that the perspective that i’ve acquired here can touch more lives than just mine. i have looked into the eyes of these people, and the hopelessness and anguish that i have seen there is something that i will carry with me for the rest of my life.