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.