The Weekend and Laliya

July 10, 2007

Today is Tuesday, and since I have last posted many things have happened.

Friday the 6^th-

Today there was no school for any secondary students within all of Gulu District. This includes probably over a hundred schools. There was an Intercollegiate (college= high school in Uganda) Track and Field Sporting Event. It was amazing the number of students at Pece (peche) stadium. There was javelin, discus, and many different relay races. It was amazing to watch these students race around a “track” (read- slightly uneven painted lines, mostly grass, with some reddish brown Gulu dirt) and most of the students run barefoot. (How’s the sound for high school track, Jessi and Kelli? Fun?) The races were really cool, but unfortunately we got there late and didn’t see very many races. Of course, TIA…we always arrive on time, waiting for other Africans to arrive on time, but the one time that we are late, they have started on time, and actually get done early. You just never know out here. We also washed chalkboards at the school in the morning since there weren’t any classes. We had a group of boys (who board there) follow us from room to room. It was fun to just spend time talking to them. So much of my time at school is spent just inside the staff room.

After the Track and Field event, Sheargold and I went into town together. We ordered some Aluminum foil (which turned out to be a rip off, like $10 for maybe 10 feet) so we could use it this Friday for a Science Fair. The Ugandan Anglican Bishop is coming to Awere SS for a big confirmation service for the students. There will be all of this pomp and circumstance…or at least a lot of long Ugandan speeches! I’ll let you know how it goes, but I am at least really excited for the Science Fair some of the students will be doing, and showing the experiments to the Bishop. Woo hoo! :o)

Saturday the 7^th

This was the second and last “Teaching and Learning Conference” in Gulu. It was a combination of all 16 North American Teachers, all 16 Ugandan teachers, some Schools 4 Schools IC people, and many other Uganda teachers at other Secondary schools in town, and even some official school government officials (did I say official?). It was a good day, and I think many of the Ugandan teachers are beginning to think of their teaching in a new way, which is exciting.

What is not is exciting is that just after the conference the first group of teachers had to leave. The program is set up that there are 2 different groups of teachers, who spend about 3 weeks in Uganda by themselves, and two weeks combined. It just so happens that I am in group 2, so we arrived here, and the first group was already here for about 2 ½ weeks. Now we have about two and a half weeks left here without them. It is sad because they were all such great people…margot, catherine, bryan, danielle, phil, seth….oh, good times! I will miss them, especially since their group had a lot of people with a theater background, thus making them quite a bit louder than group 2, and at times more fun….but not always of course! Like on Sunday night, it had started to rain and we hadn’t had any water in like 36 hours in our house. So many people put their bathing suits on and took showers in the rain. It was great! Speaking of Sunday…

Sunday the 8^th

We went out in the morning to Bambu (bamboo), which is this restaurant here in town. It is owned and run by this man who is British and married to an Acholi woman. (pretty uncommon) They have this dish called Sweet Temptation, and it definitely lives up to it’s name. It’s French toast which has this sugary syrup on it (not really maple syrup) and then it has fresh bananas cut up on top as well. It was amazing!

I left there to come home and then bike over to Awere SS(like 1 mile) to meet Sheargold. Then the two of us biked about 30 minutes out to his home. He lives in the village of Laliya (la leah), shortly outside of Gulu town. It was like nothing I’ve done before. We biked out on this road, and then biked past this little market. (All the while children calling out “Munu” to me as I passed by). Then we started to bike past these grass huts, and homes of people. Little did I know that they were Sheargold’s neighbors. I had kinda thought I would be going to like an IDP camp where he lived, but he is now living with his family on their family land. He lives in this grass hut, with other grass huts around, all of which belong to different people in his family. I met his children, his wife, his brother and his mother. Technically I guess some of the children there were his nieces and nephews, but in Acholi culture they are all considered ‘your’ children. (watch out Christie, that means Jack is my child also…except maybe when he has a really dirty diaper, or is crying at 2am. Then you can have him) Actually that brings up an interesting point. In Lwo (language spoken by the Acholi) there is no word for orphan. There are no orphans, technically…or at least not until recently. It was always thought that you would take in the children of your brother, sister, friend, etc. So even though children may not have had their real parent alive, they would not be parent-less. Too bad American’s aren’t this generous.

So anyway, I was able to sit under this little beautiful tree and talk with Sheargold and his brother John Powell, while his children Desire, Claira, Diana, and Ambrose all played in the tree and around us on the ground. I really wanted to play with them a lot, but it was hard to communicate with them because all they spoke was Lwo. They were also a little scared of me as they have not really met a munu (moonoo) before. We were definitely out near the bush, pretty far from town. It was really pretty neat to see how he lived, in community with his family members, each of them getting their own hut on their family plot of land. (oh, side comment, I forgot to mention that Sheargold’s sister had a baby boy. I had mentioned it in another blog, and forgot to give you all an update. Unfortuantely I do not remember his name right now. I will find out and you can ask me when I get home.) Anyway, The largest hut was one that Komakech Sheargold built himself, back in 2003. He actually told me the story about how he had finally finished his home, and had decided that he was going to stay in it that night. He was proud of it, and did not want to sleep in Gulu, in a rented apartment on the first night that he had finished his hut. It turned out that night the LRA came and abducted him and others from Laliya. He is about 3 years older than I am, so he was definitely an adult when he was abducted. Actually he was already a teacher when he was abducted. Apparently he had medicines or drugs in his house, so they thought he was a doctor. They wanted to take him back to the bush because of that. As you can imagine, the story is much more involved than that.

Anyway, we had dinner at his house. It was really different than if you had guests at your house in America. His mother and wife made the whole meal for us, and then they ate it in the kitchen with the children. There like 8 or 9 huts on Sheargold’s family land. Each person in his family owns a hut, and then there is one which is like the kitchen hut, and a really small one is the latrine hut. So, his mother and wife, and children did not eat with the rest of us. Although by the rest of us I mean Sheargold, John, and I. That was the only awkward part. If I were Acholi, I would’ve been in the kitchen with the women, but because I am munu, I am an honored guest, and I get to eat with the men in their hut. There are all sorts of things like this which are apart of their culture. These things would not happen in America, but it’s Uganda…Africa, not North America.

Speaking of North America, here I am sitting in the IC Volunteer House, which his basically like a little North America within Gulu. Someone was just talking about Ben Franklin, and they said that he invented electricity. It was like this Franklin Institute instant reaction went off and I began to defend the name of science before I even knew what I was doing. Such an engrained reaction after working at TFI for so long. It’s like someone inventing air…kinda absurd. Although when someone else mentioned that he definitely had many girlfriends, that I could not defend. Sorry Ben!

So here are a few things to look forward to in the next few days…a Students vs. Teachers Futbol game after school tomorrow, Alka-rockets in class tomorrow, a trip from the Anglican Bishop on Friday-which makes for fun times at school, and this coming Sunday Fall Out Boy will be here in Gulu. We’ll see how that turns out.

So in typically Acholi children fashion, I will leave you with the typical greeting you would hear as you walk down the road and pass by children… “Munu byeeeee!”