Once was enough

Rachel and I took the trip of a lifetime last week...we went to Gulu and Kitgum (in the north of Uganda). My motto for the trip became "Once was enough" which kind of clues you into how the trip went. To be blunt, the whole experience was pretty awful, but there were definitely some good points and things I'm glad I saw.

We stayed in Gulu for a day, and were able to see an IDP camp (internally displace peoples camp). These camps are like refugee camps, but for people who are refugees within their own country. The particular camp we went to (the picture of the huts is in the camp) was started in 2003, but people in the north have been displaced from their homes since the mid 1980s because of the LRA (Lords Resistance Army) activity. The rebel activity has calmed down a lot over the past few years, so many people have left the camps and returned to their villages, which is good. While people are glad to be able to return home, they are still really worried that the rebels will come back because the rebel leader (Joseph Kony) refuses to sign a peace agreement. The camp we visited seemed nice compared to the descriptions I've heard of other camps, but the pe0ple we talked to said that life there is very hard because there is virtually no food. The UN stopped passing out food last June, so people have had to somehow come up with food for themselves. One man we talked to said that the UN decided last month to hand out food to the disabled people in the camp, but he said it wasn't enough, and he didn't know when/if they were going to give out more. My impression of the place was that it was a nice place for people to come to feel safe, and even though the war has stopped for now, the whole situation can definitely still be classified as a crisis because people are stranded in these camps with no way to get home and no access to food.

One of the men we talked to was a very elderly man (in the picture). He said he has been displaced from his home for about 10 years. A while ago he returned to his village with a group of people to try and find some food, but while they were there, the rebels attacked them. Everyone started running away, and he tripped and fell into a ditch. Falling probably saved his life because everyone around him was shot, but when he fell, he dislocated his hip (I think), so now he can hardly walk. His children are with him in the camp, which is good, but he's stuck sitting there all day because he isn't able to go look for food or try and find work. It's really overwhelming to think about how many stories there are like this in just this one camp, let alone in northern Uganda, let alone in East Africa, let alone in....you get the point.

After Gulu, we took a bus to a town/village called Kitgum which is pretty close to the southern border of Sudan. We met some really neat people while we were there, and decided that about 15 hours in a village was more than enough for us. We slept in the village, on the floor, and the second we laid down to go to bed, started hearing every kind of creepy noise imaginable. For some reason, the people we were staying with decided it would be a good idea to slaughter a pig at midnight...it made some interesting noises, to say the least! Sometime during the night, Mr. Buggy McFangs decided to bite me, and I woke up feeling like my arm was on fire. I laid there in the pitch black thinking of the worst scenario...it went like this, "First my arm is going to go numb and become paralyed. Then the poison is probably going to reach my brain at which point I'm going to start having seizures and die because we're in the freaking middle of nowhere and there's nothing anyone can do." I think that might have been a little of an overreaction. There wasn't even a mark from the bite when we woke up, and I can still move all of my limbs. Anyway, I happily jumped out of bed at 5am to catch the bus back to Jinja (this was the first time in my life that I've been happy to get up at 5 in the morning).

Soooo, the good points. The stories we heard in the IDP camp were incredible, for one. When we reached Kitgum, a couple guys took us around their village (which has been converted into an IDP camp) and told us about the night that the rebles attacked, killed 40 people, and abducted many children. We walked past about 15 graves in the span of 5 minutes or so, and 9 of these graves were from one family. It was really sad/eerie/strange to walk through a place where such horrible things have happened, and talk to the people that survived. Most of the women in Suubi are from areas around Gulu and Kitgum, so it was great to see where they are from. I expected it to be really dry and desert-like, but it was really green and very beautiful! Also, the stars we saw in Kitgum were unlike anything I've ever seen before. There weren't any lights for miles, so I'm pretty sure we could see every star in the sky. It was awesome.

I have 2 weeks left here, which is crazy! In some ways, it seems like I just got here. Some days I feel like I haven't really done much or experienced many things, but when I go back and read my journal (thanks to my Mom for getting me a journal...it's come in very handy!), I can't believe the awesome people I've met and the incredible stories I've heard! I'll definitely have a place in my heart for the Suubi women and their families long after I've gone home!