March 7-10: Trip to Gulu & Lira

Journal – March 5-12, 2007

Tuesday, March 6, 2007


Driving up through Lira onto Gulu reminds me that four months is a very short time in which to try to understand a culture and fully appreciate its beauty and its hurts. Simply watching the breathtaking landscape bump by as we ride in our little ambulance reminds me I have so much yet to see. Broadway’s version of the Lion King is the perfect soundtrack …. Africa is so beautiful and so wounded.


Right now we’ve just entered an IDP camp. The bandas (thatched-roof mud huts) are so close to each other you could reach into your neighbor’s window. I can’t imagine the frustrations of living in temporary housing in such close quarters for decades. We’re in northern territory now, where the LRA has ransacked and killed over recent decades. Who would have thought I would be driving here when I watched “Invisible Children” almost exactly a year ago?

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Yesterday we actually got to visit the Invisible Children office (check out www.invisiblechildren.com). Adam introduced us to James, who gave us a tour through the buildings. There are sixteen mentors who act as role models for about 600 children who escaped from the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), and IC has started a Schools to Schools program through which American schools sponsor Ugandan schools. It was crazy to finally see the programs born out of all the hype about the Invisible Children in Uganda.


Justin Onen, one of CURE’s doctors, said that children still travel from the villages to the towns to sleep in safety away from the LRA. The numbers have diminished, but it still happens. I didn’t know how to feel last night when I looked out the window of my secure hotel room, knowing that there were children sleeping in the streets alone.

Aubrey with Weston Hall, a Salvation Army worker, at a preschool in an IDP camp

Today CURE held a clinic at the Gulu Regional Hospital; about sixteen patients came for follow-up. Aubrey and I wanted to see what other NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) did in the area, so we called Weston Hall of the Salvation Army, and he kindly picked us up and let us follow him around for the day. We visited UNICEF to discuss in-kind donations and funding proposals and then headed out to the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. These people had to move out of their villages because of attacks by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army a decade or so ago, and conditions in these makeshift villages are awful. If you’ve seen the Invisible Children update DVD, it shows a shot of IDP camps outside Gulu. Bandas are everywhere, and up to ten people can sleep in each one. I’m sure there is no privacy, not to mention nothing to do other than school and the occasional football (remember, that means soccer here!) game. The social worker there said that GBV (gender-based violence) is a huge problem there.

We visited a preschool, a tin roof with no walls. These children truly are poor. We see the poor at CURE, but these children’s clothes were completely brown and ragged. Their stomachs are bloated from worms and almost all of them have runny noses. But they happily sang us songs and eagerly reached to shake our hands: “Hello, mzungu!” The teachers encouraged them that someday that might achieve great things like us. I didn't know what to say.

Thursday, March 8, 2007


Carol Higgins picked us up this morning to take us to PATH ministries’s Okino-Waa (“Our Children” in Luo), an orphanage started by herself and her husband on the outskirts of Lira, a town a few hours south of Gulu. It was so encouraging to walk through their community and see the amazing opportunity given to orphans who were abandoned, whose parents died, or whose families were attacked by the LRA.

Aubrey and Christine walk into one of the homes at Otino-Waa.

There are about twenty huts in the community, each housing nine children and a woman who acts as their surrogate mother. Each house has bunk beds, a bathroom, a private room for the mother, and an outdoor kitchen and eating area. The children are given a monthly allowance of their own currency to buy things like soap and clothing from the orphanage’s store to teach them responsibility. A nice primary school (up to grade 7) is available for all of the children, and they go to boarding school for secondary school (secondary school covers 8th grade thru what would be 13th grade). Seeing these healthy and happy children living in wonderful conditions with loving mothers was wonderful. We can make a difference.

We ate lunch at one of the houses. I'm here with Mama Florence and her "kids."

Saturday, March 10, 2007


Aubrey and I started our first day with The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) yesterday. We’re enrolled in their TEACH program (I can’t remember what that acronym stands for!) for the next three weeks to learn about community support and programs available for AIDS clients here.

We spent yesterday doing home visits and discussing options for tackling problems that come with AIDS in Africa. We spent a few hours bumping through “roads” (dirt with lots of potholes; sometimes, it’s only a dirt path, and we just drive through the bush!).


One of the men told me to write about it so I could tell everyone in America “what the rural people live like.” He said, “We’re not sick, we are only suffering. We hope to live many more years.” His wife and four-year-old son are also HIV positive. I could barely look at the boy without a lump forming in my throat and tears blurring my vision of the hot African landscape. Sometimes I wonder if I can handle working with the disadvantaged.