Reality Strikes

Our time in Gulu had been a peaceful affair thus far, everyone goes around their daily business with little worry or regard to the war that ravaged the north for so many years. As we’ve moved about town, we’ve seen the occasional man or young boy missing a limb, but these realities hadn’t really struck home as if the causes were shrouded by the dust that swirls around the streets on a windy day. However, last night we decided to go to a bar where some students from Concordia University had recommended we go to. As we were traveling up the road towards the bar, a road that I’ve walked tens of times, a man runs up frantically beside us yelling, “Stop, stop, landmine up ahead.” Sure enough not 50 meters ahead of us, the road was taped off and there were warning notices of landmines. We veered of the road onto a side path up to the bar with a sick feeling in our stomachs as reality struck that, indeed, Gulu remains a war torn area.

When we arrived at the bar several others were buzzing about the landmine news, which was shocking in itself that few landmines have ever been detected in the city. It seems that the heavy rain had worked its way down in the earth revealing the mine. One of the guys at the bar was an Irish guy actually working as a de-miner, who was quite excited at the prospect of working on the mine.

On every other Sunday HAU has close to 200 children come for a big program filled with education and fun. We spent the day playing soccer, talking with kids, taking pictures and eating with the kids. There was also a dance troupe from Awach composed of 30 boys and girls, only a few years younger than us, performing skits and doing local Acholi dances. It was great to see so many lively children playing, and while each was HIV positive, their status made no impact on their joy and ability to enjoy the activities put on by Health Alert. I worked to write down the names of all the children who arrived. It proved a very difficult task because so many of the kids, and even the adults speak extremely softly, not out of timidity, simply as a general practice in the community. I learned how to ask all of the questions in Luo, but figuring out the names was the hardest. Each person has an Acholi and English name. So you might hear, “Brian” at the end, but there is also a difficult Acholi name that precedes it. One of the kids I bonded with most was a young guy, about 12 who helped me at first in picking out the names and spelling them. He was incredible at soccer and in talking to him later found out that he played on a U12 team in town.

The week otherwise has been low-key in ways only Africa can be. Wednesday was Martyr’s Day, a national Christian holiday, and we were therefore given the day off. With a whole day of uncalculated rest, we decided to go to the only pool in Gulu, at the Acholi Inn and enjoy the afternoon there. We finally met one of the guys working with CVAP (Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program) and befriended him quickly. We had originally been planning on staying with the Concordia students, but those arrangements had fallen through due to their limited space at their accommodations. We had up until this week remained fairly isolated in our area of town and had not ventured to the locations where many of the whites in Gulu hang out. Nevertheless, meeting some interesting students and young professionals who are working in the multitude of NGOs in Gulu was enjoyable and exchanging stories was a taste of social interaction that we had been lacking since we’d arrived.

At Health Alert this week there has been a workshop going on in partnership with Save the Children Uganda, so many of the staff have been busy working with the people at HAU for the workshop. I’ve been working on my goat project steadily and adapting it to fit the needs of the community as I continue to learn about the challenges faced by individuals enrolled in HAU’s programs. I have also been doing some grantwriting, which is by no means glamorous, but educational and interesting nonetheless. We are applying to a grant from the independent Development Fund that will hopefully be used to expand Health Alert’s projects and give the initial input for a wide reaching IGA (income generating activity) program for 100 families with children enrolled at HAU. The grant focuses on providing children’s rights so I have been learning a lot about the UN Convention on Human Rights and how it relates to HIV/AIDS and the advocacy work that HAU does.

I’ve also been working hard on the projects that others from GlobeMed are trying to get started. We will be bringing back locally made beads, which are made from paper and rolled into some of the most beautiful beads I’ve seen before. The necklaces, despite being made of paper are simply beautiful and look as if they were made of glass or stones. The beads are going to be used for future fundraising for GlobeMed and the proceeds will be brought back to HAU with future interns. We are also getting some of the women who create the beads to come to Health Alert on one of the Children’s Sundays and teach some of the interested kids how to make the beads.

One of the key challenges that we’ve seen at HAU has been the amount of time required to visit field sites and the intense requirements of community volunteer counselors to collect info and bring it back to Health Alert monthly. Oftentimes these volunteers are required to walk or bike as much as 70km just to drop off their forms. We had been in contact with two organizations that work to alleviate such issues commonly faced in the community based volunteer structure of medical treatment and counseling. The first is FrontlineSMS that provides a centralized hub for information to be sent to via custom designed templates where data is entered and then texted from phones to the central location for compilation. Each CVC and peer educator working with HAU will be receiving a phone from Hope Phones and each phone will be equipped with the openware software that FrontlineSMS provides (hopephones.com and frontlinesms.com) If anyone has old cellphones it would be great if you could send them to Hope Phones so that they can continue to supply projects like the one we’re trying to get off the ground. Looking at costs, even though HAU will have to pay for airtime for its CVCs, it currently provides a travel stipend for all the CVCs working with HAU and therefore the costs will be cut to a quarter of what it currently is. In the same vein, we are looking to partner with BOSCO, which is a Gulu based NGO that provides some of the IDP camps with internet. They believe that the flow of information in and out of Gulu is essential to the development of the area, as stories of the war and a life in Gulu get out into the world, and all the information on the internet is able to be accessed by individuals in the community. However, with central hubs in several areas of Gulu, CVCs can similarly use the computers to transmit information collected in the field back to HAU where it can be filed digitally while relieving the time and cost of transport. BOSCO however, only operates in a limited area and therefore the project will be useful, but no to the same extent that the FrontlineSMS initiative will be.

One of the most interesting encounters we had this week was with a middle-aged man at a random electronics shop in the heart of town. He had one of the biggest and warmest smiles I’ve ever seen; pausing with every smile to ensure that we all soaked up its warmth. He chatted with us for nearly half an hour, telling us about the importance of animal husbandry, discussing an upcoming event at HAU that he had coincidentally been asked to provide a sound system for, and culminating the conversation with a prayer circle. He was very impressed and grateful for us coming to Gulu to help at Health Alert (as I’m writing this he surprisingly and ironically walks through the door) and was particularly fascinated by Hanna’s Psychology degree. At the end he grabbed my hand and held it, telling me there was something special about me and that he saw me returning to Africa and getting “a promotion.” It was a heartfelt interchange and definitely made my night.

This weekend we are traveling to Kampala to restock and recharge, no pun intended. We have all read the books we brought with us and my camera battery is dying and I forgot my charger. It is also about halfway through our time at HAU, although Aurelien and I will be traveling in Uganda and Rwanda, unless the FrontlineSMS program doesn’t get off the ground. I don’t know if I included my number in previous emails or posts, but I have a reliable local number +256 777564781 if anyone needs to really get a hold of me for any reason.