Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a very happy and peace filled 2008 from chilly Toronto (I returned without incident late Saturday afternoon). I am grateful for a wonderful 2007 and at this moment want to thank you all so much for joining me in Uganda through this blog, by reading my ramblings and keeping my and my colleagues in mind as we listened and learned from the people about the recent war and peace talks in the north, the ongoing conflict in DR Congo across the border and the ongoing human rights issues that continue to effect the most vulnerable.

As we move into January, my 3 colleagues and I will be working on reporting our findings and making recommendations to CPT (and hopefully complete them by the end of the month or early February). This will include a public report on both Uganda (by all four of us) and DR Congo by my two colleagues who spent time there. If you'd like to receive copies of the reports, let me know and I'll pass them on once completed (patience is requested) - for those of you on CPTNet, it may be distributed there and may also be posted on our website, www.cpt.org.

I want to thank you also for your continued and generous financial support, without which my participation in this exploration would not have been possible. I am most grateful.

Now that I am back, I am taking some time off to decompress, so to speak, before returning to work.

After today, please email me directly at andrea underscore si at yahoo dot com as this is my final post until my next travels with CPT. I look forward to hearing from you and to the many conversations sure to follow.

Ofoyo

returning home

While there was a possibility that I would be in Uganda or DR Congo until mid January if necessary, at this time we have decided to all return home at the end of this week (arrive in Toronto on Saturday). For the time being, our work here is complete.


I plan to take some time off, likely most of January but will be back online at my regular yahoo account so please feel free to email me and I will start to catch up!


I very much look forward to seeing you in the new year (particularly those of you in Ontario) and my DC friends - I hope to visit in the spring!! For those in other parts of the world, I'm grateful to this wonderful (though sometimes frustrating) technology that allows us to stay in touch.


I will post one last blog when I arrive home.

Happy Christmas!!

Wanting to wish you all a very happy christmas and new year!

Cheers!

away and back again...

I am back in Kampala for the last couple of days but internet connectivity has been spotty here at the guest house and I have had no energy for the internet cafe's, so I am taking this opportunity to get something out. Last Friday we left Kampala after a few days rest.

We headed north east to Soroti to meet with an organization working with the northwestern Karamajong clans and their conflict with the people of Teso. These ethnic groups border each other - the Karamajong are historically nomadic cattle herders (similar to the Masai in Kenya - sharing a common lineage I believe) and are a warrior clan. The Teso are agriculturalists. The conflict centers around (bus is not limited to) access to land for grazing and water cattle. We met with a local grassroots organization that has been working with these two communities since 1991. The group is made up of Karamojong and Teso people who see a nonviolent alternative to the conflict and are in essence setting up peace villages in the most contentious areas to model peaceful coexistence. I was very moved by the work they do. They do much more than that but it revolves around this core.


In my guidebook all that was said about Soroti was this 'rock' that comes up out of the flat terrain and around which the town was built. Interesting...

From Soroti (6 hours by bus from Kampala) we continued on the following day to Lira (about 3 hours by minibus taxi) and spent some time with a 19 year old student we had met in Gulu at the girls tailoring centre (for child mothers and formerly abducted girls primarily). We enjoyed a night there and then continued north to Pader.

Pader is a town that came to be during the war because of the needs of the IDP camps. There are many IDP camps here and the town emerged primarily, it seems, to house local and international NGOs and is now a small town. This means however that it is not serviced by buses or even taxis. So, we get in the cab of a truck, carrying goods and people in the back as well and after about 2 1/2 hours we stopped at an IDP camp and the driver turned to us and said get out here for Pader. Well this was a camp and it wasn't Pader. He told us the truck was not going directly to Pader and Pader was 5 km away and he waved in the general direction. Okay - it's 1:30 pm and clear blue skies, not a cloud! and hot. But really, 5 km? We can do that. Yet, we hadn't planned on walking so did we have water? no. Had we eaten that day? not really very much. Was there any other option? no. Okay, off we go...below is the picture I took to mark the beginning of our trek...


It varied little. Well, I walk 5 km fairly frequently in Toronto and have an idea how long it might take. We think it was really 10-15 km. We finally saw Pader (see below snap) at the top of the hill at around 4 pm. We were dehydrated and exhausted and would have been seriously sunburned if I hadn't had the forethought to wear a long sleeved cotton shirt (do not travel in Africa without one!!!)


Pader is the same latitude as Gulu and is hot and dry. Sleeping was difficult as there was no air movement, but exhaustion enabled some sleep. The following day we met with an organization, Friends of Orphans, that works with returned and rehabilitated former child soldiers and other formerly abducted and vulnerable children, including child mothers. They have a vocational training school, human rights projects and HIV/AIDS education programs. They are a small staff, all war-effected themselves (their founder and director is a former child soldier himself). Again, a very moving meeting and inspiring people who are finding hope in the aftermath of this brutal war. I'll talk more about the war itself and the IDP camps in person - it's too much for me to sum up here)

Below are some images of Pader...




The next day we're up early to get the truck to take us back to Lira, to connect with the taxi to Soroti where we had a follow up meeting with the organization (Christian International Peace Service) that we'd met on the way up to discuss a possible visit to their project sites.

Well, we get to the truck (it's about 8 a.m.) and while one can 'book' the seats in the cab, when we arrived there were two women in the cab with very small babies. We weren't about to displace them. So, we climbed up onto the back of the truck and settled in with (at my colleagues count) approximately 35 other adults and children (most on their way to Lira which is the closest place to sell their goods or to buy many items). Needless to say we were packed in! I was very scared of falling off (I was sitting on a bundle of firewood at the edge of the truck, with my legs over the side) whenever the truck maneuvered around and through potholes, sometimes leaning quite far over. But, we made it with only one flat tire! Below is a picture of our truck as the tire is being changed on the other side - imagine it packed body to body!


And below is a picture my colleague took (she stood most of the way holding onto the bar behind the cab) of the density of people. Isn't she a beautiful little girl in purple? No complaints from most of the children. They are used to this mode of travel.


The trip took close to 3 hours and when we arrived in Lira - we were coated in red dust. But, we were safe and in one piece!


Another snapshot of people we saw along the way (really we can not even complain about our walk on Sunday - for most people here, it's not uncommon)

Finally, on Wednesday morning we boarded a bus back to Kampala - from Soroti the roads are good (mostly) and we enjoyed delicious fresh chapatis at the bus park in Mbale - see the chapati makers at work below.

We arrived back in Kampala late afternoon on Wednesday and last night were rejoined by our colleagues who returned from Goma and Bukavu (via Kigali in Rwanda) in DR Congo.

We are now preparing for Christmas here in Uganda.

A few days off and more birds...

So it's been a month since I arrived in Uganda and a few days off were warranted, though honestly not planned. As Christmas draws nearer we'll have some down time as NGOs close for the holiday season.

That said, I was happy to have yesterday and today as rest days. Yesterday, we spent the day in Entebbe at the Botanical Gardens (which is really an arboretum) and at the Wildlife Education Centre (a rehab centre for rescued wildlife - not quite a zoo, but almost)

Much to my delight, both sites had an abundance of birds and below are a few of them. The first one, however, the Shoebill Stork, was in captivity, the others just here and there. I've posted them in order of size for your viewing pleasure.




Tomorrow, we travel north to Soroti and then on to Pader town on Saturday. Get out those maps!! Stay tuned...

This lovely creature appears to enjoy the tree near my room. I saw a very similar one in Kitgum, though brilliant orange where this one is blue, quite stunning. A bit shy though, felt like it was eyeing me and quickly running up a few spaces if I got too close. Still, how lovely!

Am taking some time off today and tomorrow to deal with some logistics and planning for the weekend and next week, but I'm quite grateful for this downtime.

Now going to sit in the garden with a book of short stories I picked up and to enjoy the nature, resplendant around me.

Cheers,

Refuge in Uganda?

This was a difficult week. On Tuesday, one of my team mates and I met with members of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and learned of the challenges the LGBTQ community faces in Uganda, which are great and in addition to being subject to hate crimes, harassment and discrimination are also limited in their access to HIV/AIDS testing and counselling. Amnesty International has more information regarding the situation I'll refer to for background but here is a link to an urgent action from last year http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR590072006?open&of=ENG-UGA. You can also find more information from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission at www.iglhrc.org.

Wednesday was a travel day for our team, as we headed over 400 km south to Kabale, where after 12 hours on a bus (that's a story in and of itself) we spent a lovely night each with our own rooms and for me my first hot shower of the trip!!

A view of the mountainside in the south west of Uganda in Kabale district. Incredibly fertile land, which as you can see, is cultivated at every opportunity.

The view from one of the mountaintops on our way to the camp, of the second deepest lake in Africa, if I recall correctly. I can't remember the name of it.
In the background here are three inactive volcanos, which border Uganda. On the other side is Rwanda.

Thursday morning we headed west another 100 km west to Kisoro district, where we first visited the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reception centre in Nyakabande, less than 15 km from the border. The reception centre was home to approximately 12,000 Congolese who fled the area and around Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As we drove through the mountains to the camp, a UNHCR convoy of nine buses passed us and we learned from the camp director that approximately 1,000 refugees were on the buses being moved about 400 km into the interior to the official camp – a camp that has services available and was used for Rwandan refugees during and after the genocide and was recently mostly vacant as most Rwandans have returned home.

Not a great picture but it gives you the visual of the size of the camp (the white tents) from the mountain road we came down on.

At the camp, which is basically a staging area for registering new arrivals and then preparing to move them to the internal camp, we met with Medicins sans Frontiers (MSF - Doctors without Borders) staff, who also gave us a tour. We were told that there were currently an estimated 6,000 people in the camp, mostly women and children. The numbers are based on their registration system but they said many refuse to register, as they do not want to move to the camp where they believe they will die as they have heard stories to that effect. Without registering you are not provided a tent to sleep in and these refugees are thus inside the camp area but have an area in the open where they live (below piture).

We were told most refugees stay 4-6 weeks before either being moved to the larger camp or either returning to the DRC or going into the forest. They estimated between 4-6,000 refugees have never come even to the reception centre and instead live in the forests along the border.

While MSF provides safe drinking water and has a medical clinic on site, no food is provided to the inhabitants. As soon as we arrived children, many who haven’t eaten in days if not weeks, surrounded us asking for food. The women and children might go to surrounding homes and villages to beg for food and while the Ugandans living in this region, including the Parishes have provided some assistance, they do not have the means to feed them. The policy of not providing food is that of UNHCR and the Ugandan government, as they do not want these refugees to stay in the centre, they want to move them. As the camp is so near to the border the fear is that the fighting could cross over into Uganda and that the security could be compromised. The refugees however, want to be close to the border so that they can return home sooner.

Some of the children in the camp - these would likely have been here less than 2 months.

I felt so utterly helpless as we went through the camp, as there is no way to help. I only hope that somehow the children survive (many children have already died here and in the interior camp) long enough to be able to return or for some assistance to reach them.

From the camp, we then drove to Bunagana, the small town at the border of DRC, where the streets are filled with refugees. They live on the street and in the ‘no man’s land’ between the borders. Again, we were surrounded by begging - a father telling us about his wife and 7 children who have been living at the border for a month and have no food. At that moment I was grateful for my limited French. What can I possibly say? A local priest told us about a donation of food he’d received but the food was so minimal that if he’d tried to distribute it he would likely have been accused of keeping the rest for himself, so the bags of food (maybe 8 bags) remain at his church, not eaten by anyone. His parish has opened the primary schools for refugees to find shelter, which was particularly helpful in the recent rainy season.

This is the border crossing at Bunagana - taken from the DRC side - the log across the road is the official border marker, but it is fluid to say the least.

Two members of our team have now traveled on to Kigali in Rwanda and will be continuing on into DRC to learn more about the conflict. What we know from recent news articles is that the rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda – who is responsible for this most recent displacement – has an estimated 4-8,000 troops. The DRC government has sent 200,000 soldiers to Goma to disarm the rebels and I fear the crossfire in the process, which is what people are fleeing.

This is just a glimpse of two of the most vulnerable populations in Uganda today.

images from kampala

We're back in Kampala for a few days and I appear to have a fast enough internet connection today to post some photos, at long last! A break in all the text. So here goes.

First some birds...

This one is a type of vulture, I think and it's bit, at least a metre high, if I wager a guess. The baby you see is probably bigger than the birds below.

These two are called Plantain Eaters, self explanatory.

Not a great pic, but I love the blue of this tiny bird in the Hibiscus bush. What you can't see is his blue crest and his long, thin and hooked beak.

The one in the middle is the same vulture type as the top pic, no idea what the white one's are but they were so graceful flying together.

Earlier today I saw a beautiful bright orange breasted bird, robin sized, with black wings and a black head with a white stripe above each eye. Very striking, of course I didn't have my camera with me. And many others of course, many I see from the window of a bus where I can't take a good picture, but still, just lovely to see all the bird life here. I looked at a bird book in a book store, over 1000 types of birds in Uganda. Needless to say it was a big book and I didn't plan to haul it all over the country, so will have to identify the birds in the future.

In Kampala there are several artisan markets, below is the outside of just one of the shops in one of the markets where I perused for a few hours and the one below is of necklaces, the beads of which are made of paper strips and then varnished to hold their shape and presumably to make them water resistant.

This one is for Mark - thanks for the heads up on the taxi park, it's exactly as you described! This is one of two taxi parks in Kampala. Chaos about sums it up - at least the feeling - it's surprisingly organized. All taxi's (14 passenger mini vans) going into the city appear to end in the taxi park so when you're ready to leave downtown for a particular destination it's easiest to go to the taxi park and find the taxi going in your direction. If you don't know, a bunch of young men usually approach and offer their assistance - usually it's helpful, sometimes it's a bit much as they can be rather aggressive in their helpfulness. Once in the taxi, it waits until it's full before departing - thankfully this hasn't taken long but building extra time into one's schedule is essential!

Below, a slightly scary moment for me - I saw this bridge on our way to Kitgum from Gulu - and knew I had to get a picture on the return trip. The driver speeds up and just flies over this bridge - it's the only one I've seen like it - the others are not brick and have guard rails. It's only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Yikes.

So that's all for now. Unlike what I said at the top of this blog, while I do have a high speed connection, uploading pictures is painstakingly slow! But at least I can give you a quick snapshot of a bit of Uganda.

Kitgum

Yesterday, our team traveled 100 km northeast of Gulu town to Kitgum town. In a mid-size bus which seats four across (including a seat that folds down into the aisle) they packed us in 5 across. so a bit tight. The road however was not as bad as the one from Kampala.

The further north in Uganda, and thus closer to the Sudan, the more vulnerable the area feels. Before reaching Kitgum we passed at least a half dozen IDP camps. Mostly, when passing the camps we see many children and few adults. The adults, we've come to learn, leave the camp first thing in the morning to walk or bicycle (though most walk) to an area in or near their original homestead to start to till the fields. This morning when we left Kitgum, we saw just that. Women, their babies on their backs, a hoe or spade over their shoulder and a bundle on their heads, headed out from the camps. School is almost out for the term so more children will join their mothers in the fields in December and January.

While in Kitgum we met with a retired Anglican Bishop who is actively involved with the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Iniative. This group is ecumencial and has representatives of all the Christian denominations in the area and works closely with traditional elders. They have been deeply involved in the Juba peace talks. The Bishop was very honest with us and while he told us of the relative calm of the past year and of people beginning to return to their homes, he also told of us the government atrocities that were committed and how the peace talks do not include holding the government accountable for it's human rights violations. Rather the international community is focused on the rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army. He also spoke of restorative and transformative justice in the traditional practice and said how this is not possible without addmission of wrong doing and ultimately forgiveness by the survivors or victim's families and the entire community (this is very simplified but I will go into details about this process in the future) . He said that Museiveni, the president of Uganda, is not committed to peace as he is not prepared to enter into this type of justice nor to see himself as having been a perpretator of crimes against humanity. It's such a complex post conflict situation and one that appears to be tenuous at best, regardless of if the peace agreement is finalized. The Ugandan government's position is backed by the US and the UK, neither of whom are committed to a dialogue peace process. It's frustrating to know our western governments complicity and I struggle to imagine how to engage, but do think I may pay a visit to foreign affairs Canada when I return and I may just be asking everyone to write letters if and when a date is set for the peace talks.

Today we are back in Gulu.

Ofoyo

Ofoyo – it is a Luo word, spoken by the Acholi people here, that has several meanings as both a greeting (hello and good bye) as well as thank you. Ofoyo ba - an enthusiastic hello. We learned it yesterday and when we started to use it were greeted with wide, evidently pleased smiles.

Yesterday (Sunday), my team mates, B, J and I headed 30 km south of Gulu to Manikulu to meet with an Italian ngo, Operation Dove (OD). OD works closely with CPT in Palestine and is similar in its ideology. They have projects in kosovo, Palestine and northern Uganda. We shared some absolutely delicious espresso (instant coffee just doesn’t cut it after a while) while learning about their work in northern Uganda and they then invited us to join them as they visited two families who they have been assisting in near by villages. (our initial plan for a day off to the Murchison Falls National Park didn't pan out as logistics became quite difficult)

The first stop was 15 km into the bush in OD’s 4 wheel drive – a 4 wheel drive which was necessary to get us through a mud patch on the dirt road. It’ likely the road is very difficult to negotiate, if not impassable, during the rainy season. We stopped near a path to the side of the road and then walked in, about another 20 minutes to the family compound we were visiting. We were accompanied by one of the son’s who lives nearby. We met an elderly couple who had left an IDP camp approximately a year and half ago to reclaim their land. The compound contained 3 small mud huts, about a dozen chickens and a few goats. The woman sat on a grass mat in the shade of one of the huts, next to her 3-month-old grandson. The baby’s mother had died not long after giving birth and the father had also died some time ago. The grandfather used a cane to get up from his chair, where he’d been sorting seeds that he hoped to plant. As the provider for the family it was hard to imagine him, leaning heavily on his cane, as being in any condition to till a field, plant and harvest it. Their children are grown and while they care for their parents, it is not enough. Now they have this grandchild to care for. The baby, at 3 months, weighs only just over 2 kilos (sorry I don’t know how many pounds that is, but it’s absolutely tiny).

OD is helping families that are returning to their homesteads with specific needs. In this case, someone had approached them about the health of this orphaned baby boy. The grandparents struggle to care for him – they are not able to pay for the milk needed to feed him and when provided with the milk they do not prepare it properly nor clean the bottle as thoroughly as is desired. OD took them to the hospital in Gulu a few days ago and the doctors said that the baby could survive if it was properly fed. OD will provide the milk, one litre/day, which is to be mixed with milk, boiled and cooled before being fed to the baby throughout the day. This visit was to give these instructions, including utensils for preparing the milk and feeding the baby. The couple does not speak English so their son was interpreting these instructions and promised to try to get them to understand what was needed.

This was a very moving visit – this couple, in their advanced stage of life, were trying to re-establish themselves on the land and now, to care for this new baby. It is what is done, but what happens next?

After we left this family, we traveled to another village compound – again by dirt road and then walking into the bush – I can tell you, as we walk through the bush, the grass is higher than my head – this is partially why the rebels were able to get so close to villages and camps in order to abduct children. It is very easy to get lost in the bush. As we continued to this compound, we found a family that OD was helping to rebuild their huts – which had been destroyed during the war. The family was making the bricks (soil mixed with water, shaped into cinder block sized bricks and then baked in the sun) and two huts were finished and two halfway completed. Cut grass was drying nearby which would be used to thatch the roofs. When a hut is completed, ashes from the cooking fire are mixed with cow dung and presumably water to create the plaster like exterior of the huts, which seals the hut. The exterior often has some design or coloured pattern or stripe as decoration as well.

Both families we visited today, were very welcoming to us and appeared happy to show us how they lived now that there was peace, even as they continue to struggle, to re-establish crops, to rebuild homes, to find safe water…

Ofoyo

quick update

This will be short as my connection today is slow and the old sticky keyboard makes this a difficult process.

In Gulu we've been staying at St. Monica's Tailoring School for Girls. Six nuns (Sacred Heart - I believe is the order) are at it's helm, with two serving s teachers (the other 20+ teachers are local Ugandans) and one is the principal/director. All of the students here were effected by the war. Some abducted as soldiers, while most were abducted as what are known as "war wives" - taken by the Lord's Resistance Army to serve as their cooks and also as concubines. Many of the girls, when they escaped, now had a child or two in tow and they are not yet 18. Some do not have families to return to and those that do may not be accepted back. This school is their refugee. The sisters help build bridges with families, provide housing and day care for the young mothers and their children, as well as for the other girls. And with peace talks pending for the last year, there is a calm that hasnt' been felt in Gulu in over 20 years and the girls sing and dance and appear to be so happy. In addition to schooling, the girls here receive trauma counselling (as do the nuns before they come here). As they are in the middle of exams we have not yet met any of the girls formally, but they are friendly and welcoming to us. It's an amazing place to be staying while in Gulu.

Tomorrow is a day off for our team and we hope to work out a way to visit Murchison Falls National Park (google it for info) to see some Elephants, Giraffe's and the like - if we can work out transportation - tourists only go via Kampala - no one has come from Gulu or north in decades. Will see what comes of it!

PS - please feel free to use the comment section of the blog as I will check the blog before I check email if internet is slow so am more likely to respond. thanks!

Traveling to Gulu

so yesterday, we were up early for a team meeting, packed up - leaving some things at the guest house until we return next week, and started calling contacts to set up meetings in the northern districts we planned to visit and then headed to the central bus station after lunch.

The way buses heading out of town work, is similar to my experience last year in Hebron - once the seats are all full, the bus leaves. So we got on a bus at about 2:15 or so and it was nearly full - not completely full. And then we sat, in the heat of the bus with vendors coming to the windows constantly with food and all sorts of items for sale - until finally more people came at about 4 pm. Once the seats were filled (5 seats across - 2 on one side of the aisle, 3 on the other) the aisle was then filled with cargo, boxes and bags of all sorts - large and small, that didn't fit underneath the bus. Getting out would prove difficult. Finally we were off - it was now 4:15 or so and rush hour in Kampala. Absolute chaos. The roads are shared by minibuses (14 passenger vans), boda-boda's (motorbike taxis), bicycles, trucks and private cars and pedestrians all in the mix. I was happy when we cleared traffic and wer on the main highway north - there is only one. We had good authority that the bus ride was 4 hours at about 100 km/hr but that the pot hole filled road would be bumpy. Well - we arrived in Gulu at 10:45 pm, after encountering road construction, huge potholes and speed bumps and a few stop offs along the way. There was an occasional smooth stretch of highway where it was possible to go 100 km/h and then they sure did! but after being jammed in the bus and bumping through endless and deep potholes, I was grateful to get out - climbing over all the boxes in the aisle to walk to the girls school where we will be accomodated until Monday, when we continue our travels.

I can no longer complain about Greyhound!!

That said, the trip itself, was spectacular - we passed through areas of dense sub-tropical forests, agricultural land, marshes and open fields. Villages along the way - at first the children on their way home from school in the uniforms and then as night fell, small fires as the women cooked their evening meal. With nearly a full moon it was so well lit and beautiful to see. When we finally crossed the Nile - which I'd been waiting to see - it was stunning, a wide, fast flowing, mass of white water radiant in the moonlight. I look forward to seeing it by day.

We arrived at the school for girls at 11:30 to find two of the nuns awake and with warmed up food for us and tea before we called it a day and slept very soundly.

Now we are in Gulu - and after a meeting today with the Refugee Law Project, tomorrow continue a series of meetings with NGOs.

Signing off as I head back to the girls school for a team meeting and supper with the Sisters.

heading north

So with the Royal visit looming, downtown Kampala is utter chaos - taxi's jacking up their prices and traffic is nightmarish. With many road closures expected and most of the NGOs we'd hoped to meet involved in the commonwealth meetings in some form, we have decided to head up to Gulu (about a 4 hour drive north of Kampala) tomorrow (Wednesday). We will leave our relatively comfortable guest house and arrive tomorrow to stay with a group of nun's who run a school for girls and begin a round of meetings with human rights orgs in Gulu and also possibly Kitgum, the district neighbouring Gulu. Among our meetings we will also likely be out to visit one or two of the Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps. The people we've met with here in Kampala have all tried to prepare us as they, locals and internationals alike, have been quite traumatized by their visits to the camps - even those who visit on a regular basis.

Our meetings today were very informative and we left one meeting with a stack of literature on the situation of human rights defenders in the region, that will likely be my reading for the next few days. In some ways I feel as though I am back in a classroom and need to discipline myself to keep up with all of the work! Next I need to type up all the meeting notes I took today and I am grateful that we rotate that responsibility - one of my least favourite tasks.

Meeting with the groups in Kampala, I feel a bit like we're "inside the beltway", getting a perspective of people working on similar issues but from a different point of view. I look forward to travelling in the region and getting information on the ground.

Everyone has said it is now relatively safe to travel up and in the region we'll be, however we were advised that two UN relief workers were killed two weeks ago in a robbery ambush. However, we will not be traveling by private car (rather in a large, packed local bus) and will not be in the same area, though near it. While this restricted travel for a few days, it is still considered safe, with usual caution, to travel.

We will be in the north until early next week.

May we have safe travels and I hope to write from Gulu in the next few days.

Kampala

So a week after my departure from Toronto, here I am - sitting in Kampala at a lattitude just north of the equator, but at an elevation that makes for a delightfully temperate climate. It has been raining nightly, though often the ground is dry by 7 a.m. when I sit in the garden of the guest house, enjoying the silence before my colleages join me and the incredible view of the city from where we are staying.

After several days delay for one of my travelling companions, all four of us were finally together on Friday, but the delay was welcome for those who needed the time to let their bodies adjust not only to jet lag but also to anti-malaria meds. Luckily, I have had no difficulty with either!

The talk in Kampala since we arrived has been CHOGM 2007 (http://www.chogm2007.ug/) the gathering of the Commonwealth (53 heads of state and 5000 delegates convening in Kampala). The Queen and, I presume, her husband, Prince Charles and Camilla are scheduled to arrive tomorrow and it's all anyone talks about and why a lot of internationals are in the city. Talk about timing. Public holidays have been announced for this coming Thursday and Friday and street closures for security purposes may be obstacles for our non-royal purposes. However, we hope to travel north by the end of the week.

I'm not sure what I can really say at this point as to this point we have only met with one NGO and a north american based one at that. We'll be meeting with local NGOs this week in Kampala and then with groups in Northern Uganda. From now we should have more reliable access to internet.

The country itself, is stunning. The earth, red as brick. All manner of birds (more than 1,000 varieties in the country) distract me continually and while I've been able to get some good shots with my snazzy new digital camera, and I will post some soon. Everyone we meet here is very welcoming and friendly and I so look forward to meeting people in different parts of the country.
We have two mobile phones so should anyone want to give a call (no charge for incoming calls!! what a concept!) let me know via email and I'll send you the number.

That's all for now, this is more just to let everyone know we did indeed all arrive, we are all healthy and I hope to have another update soon.

before i go

As I prepare for my upcoming CPT delegation to Uganda, I thought I'd take an opportunity to share some of the news I've been reading on the current situation as it relates to the peace process. Here are links to two BBC articles on talks happening this week.

Uganda rebels release peace dove http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7072701.stm

Why peace is coming to Uganda now http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7072834.stm

For background information on the 20 year civil war in northern Uganda, use the links on the sidebar of this page.

Also, below is a map of Uganda to give you an idea of where I'll be spending my time. We'll be spending our first week in the capital of Kampala before heading north to Gulu.