Friday, July 30, 2010

A Modest Attempt at Summarizing My Time in Gulu


I know I haven’t exactly been a saint at keeping up with my blog, but still I felt the need to write a final entry to attempt to sum up my time here (even though that would be impossible). I hate reading sappy blogs about how much you loved the sunset and the people and the kids and how much you hate to be leaving and can’t wait to return. And I hate writing blogs like that even more. As much as that may be true, does anyone really want to read your sentimental mess? So... I’ll condense my sappiness into a list. Yes, it gets a little cheesy in the “Things I won’t forget” section, but allow me a little cheese, please. You’ll see I’ve compiled three lists: things I learned, things I won’t forget, and things I want to forget. I’m not going to sugar coat it and pretend that every day on this trip was the best day of my life. So you get to hear about some of the bad days, too. But I hope you’ll notice that “things I learned” and “things I won’t forget” far outnumber the list of “things I want to forget.”

Things I learned
• How to strategically walk through the dry mud after a rain shower
• How to successfully hail a boda and get the right price
• How to speak a little bit of Luo
• The grueling process of getting funding for your project
• The grueling process of transcribing interviews
• How to conduct an interview
• How to cook chapati, greens with eggs, cabbage, and stewed chicken
• How to clean like an Acholi woman (still not good at it, though, so don’t worry)
• If you want to go somewhere in Kampala that’s only 11 km away, plan for 2 hours of travel time
• How to plan my day around the impending rain showers
• I love roasted pork. I just love it.
• The appropriate times to use “Apwoyo,” “Apwoyo-ba,” and “Apwoyo-rii ba”
• Most cats here are NOT nice and neither are the dogs
• How to kill a chicken
• It is not easy to find a house in Gulu, and once you do you’ll probably have children peeping in your windows in your new neighborhood
• Publishing a comic book is difficult... until you remember the resources at your disposal and send out a mass email
• When you’re putting on a concert for a fundraiser (FUNDRAISER), you still have to let in all the artists and their buddies for free
• The proper channels of bureaucracy at Gulu University and what happens when you don’t follow the bureaucratic rules
• I am addicted to Coca-Cola
• Self-directed research is not easy, and it’s even intimidating at times
• How to convert meters into feet, kilometers into miles, liters into cups, etc.


OurJuly 4th dinner..... before it was cooked.
Our beautiful stack of perfect chapati.


Things I won’t forget
• All the sunrises and sunsets I had the honor of witnessing
• The big, BIG sky
• The long rides I spent looking out the window and being amazed at where I was
• All the friends I’ve met
• Dinners out at our favorite restaurants in town (Sankofa, Tom’s, MealTime, Bomah, Indian, Ethiopian, etc.)
• Interviewing residents of Gwengdiya Parish in Awach Sub-County
• Interviewing women in Aworanga (and having dinner there!)
• Traveling to Madi-Opei – a village on the border of Sudan and climbing the mountain
• Traveling to Baker’s Fort (and the unexpected lonnnnnng car ride)
• Killing the chicken (see: Things I want to forget)
• Our July 4th Celebration
• The wonderful weekend vacation in Jinja, the boat ride on the Nile, and the untamed rapids around the islands
• The weeks I spent working with Pincer
• The moment I read the kids evaluations from CreatEd and felt like we had actually accomplished something worthwhile
• Alll the lunches at pork joints around town trying to discover the best one (it’s the one by Independent Hospital, by the way. Pieces of pork fried with tomatoes, onions, cabbage, Irish potatoes and Royco.... yes, please!)
• Traveling to Entebbe with Andrew and Jayanni to see the beaches – Lake Victoria is beautiful!
• Foot-bowling on July 4th
• CreatEd classes at Koro Secondary School and Gulu High School and watching the kids really get excited about something
• Early morning Luo lessons in Phoebe’s apartment
• The energy, excitement, and joy you can see when people are really performing traditional dances
• Reading Eat.Pray.Love
• Girls’ night at Bomah
• Watching the first appearance of the Gulu Elephants Rugby Team
• The day that Sankofa opened and I had a glorious pizza in Gulu
• Cooking traditional dinner with Sam, Jeff, and the girls
• Nights out in Gulu and Kampala and all the fun we had dancing until the early morning hours
• Hearing the call to prayer at the mosque at 5:00 and 5:30.... and at 6:00.
• Mango Season. Enough said.
• All the fun I had shopping for skirts, dresses, and crafts
• Seeing Chairman Mao (not the Chinese one) deliver his speech for the launch of his Presidential campaign at Bomah grounds in the rain
• Attending the wang’oo in Bungatira (and ALL the stars you could see in the sky!)
• Beatrice, Tom, and Milton and the rest of the wonderful team at Pincer
Forgot this one: the safari in Murchison Falls


View from the mountain in Madi-Opei. Why yes, that is Sudan.

Beautiful Lake Victoria!

Hippos in Murchison Falls

Cleaning the compound in Aworanga

Baker's Fort: Beautiful scenery with a tragic history.

And things I want to forget
• The all-hours traffic, boda men, and drunk men noise outside my bus park window
• Long bus rides
• Riding bodas home in the rain and the mud
• Cockroaches. Cockroaches. Cockroaches.
• Any and all overly dramatic moments that occurred between the months of January and August
• Killing the chicken (See: Things I won’t forget)
• Being bombarded by children every time we left the Pece house (and those same kids trying to steal things)
• That one time I tried to start jogging and almost got hit by a car, then was sore for a week
• The horrendously frustrating act of having to call school teachers every Tuesday and Friday to remind them that we ARE coming, only to sometimes find out that we can’t because of some program or other
• The July 11th bombings in Kampala and the paranoia that ensued
• Cold showers/Bucket showers
• The terrifying way your room can be dusty again the day after you cleaned it
• Sitting in various ticket booths for hours on end hoping we were making some money for Music for Peace

That chicken never stood a chance.


Just outside my apartment. A bus park full of men ready to call me "mzungu" at the first chance.

I think I have enough sentimental sap in my lists, but I just need to say that it’s a strange feeling. It’s strange how I’ve been here, building a life, a social network, a working network – and now, in just 5 short days I’ll be going back home. I’ll be reorganizing my days for my American schedule and my American timeframe and goals. I’ve been here so long that nothing feels unusual anymore. This is truly my second home, and it is devastating to know that I won’t be back here for a year. I have to say, though, there’s something about leaving that makes you oddly sentimental about your surroundings, and you start to look at everything again as if it was the first time you were seeing it. Things that used to annoy me on a daily basis now have the ability to make my day. So, with that said, thank you harassing boda men for making my last few days in Uganda so memorable.

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