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.