Experiences of the World

Hey Everyone,

Last update I wrote to all of you about explanations of the world, as a bit of a continuation, this time I want to share with you about experiences of the world.

Beyond logic, we understand the world through our own experiences. Our perceptions are tainted by the past, our emotions by our insecurities and moods, and our judgment by previous lessons. Yet at the same time, we do not live in the world alone, and sometimes in order to understand our common experiences with those around us, we also need to internalize the stories of others.

The recent floods in Africa have been devastating. The physical damage is easy to understand, see, and explain. But the emotional response is not as obvious, though equally as important. Rain is usually a blessing in many parts of Africa. In many of the places I have visited in Africa, the sound of water falling from the sky has inspired songs and dances in honor of the water that gives life. People pray for water and when it comes in its spectacular thunder and lightening, life is on hold while everyone hides under the nearest possible shelter. The calendar is based around water: rainy season and dry season. People’s lives revolve around the rains, deciding when to plant crops, when to harvest, and etc. And so it seems a cruel game of nature, or perhaps a retaliation to our cruel games with nature, to pour so much water on Africa in one short month that the dry land typically thirsty for a drop is now flooding.

Due to a few hills and good natural drainage, Gulu town has remained dry. Perhaps dry is not the correct word; it is muddy but thankfully has not flooded. I try to keep everything in perspective when I complain about having to scrub my clothes after yet another embarrassing fall in the mud.

Outside of Gulu, many of the roads are severely damaged and some of the bridges are covered in water. The main bridge going to Kitgum, the district north of Gulu where many of our students study, now looks like a waterfall. The students were on holidays when the floods began and the final term of the academic year has started two weeks ago. We found ourselves with hundreds of students at our office, seeking assistance to get back to Kitgum for their studies. Many had to wait days before we could find enough trucks that could go to Kitgum via a route that bypasses the bridge, but is also in very bad condition. They stood in the sun for hours, patient and anxious to get on the next truck. Until transport could be arranged, our office became a storage space for all their belongings: mattresses and boxes filled with few clothes and books. To other children around the world to whom free universal education is obvious, taken for granted, and almost an annoyance to their thriving social lives, it must seem absurd. I remember celebrating snow days back in high school. The only way to explain this incredible drive in youth to return to school is by understanding what school means to people in Northern Uganda. Beyond the pride of being a student, the joy of learning and being with friends, and the acquisition of new skills, school here means hope. Young people in Northern Uganda will likely have to work hard for very little their entire lives. It is not an easy place and there are no magic solutions, not even education. But having an education gives hope, that through hard work you can look after yourself and your family, that you can live and not merely survive.

The District Education Office decided that student preparing for their exams (the national exams are in the 4th and 6th years of secondary school) need to return to school immediately. They arranged for army helicopters to fly students back to school. One morning we were taking students to the air-strip, already going an hour late and hoping to find the helicopter is still there. We’re about to leave and a young student jumps out of the car and says she forgot something at home. She disappears for the next forty minutes and when she comes back with a bucket of odi (the equivalent of peanut butter), I am perplexed that she almost missed her only ride to school, to hope, for some grinded peanuts. A few weeks later, on a quiet weekend at home, Sharon, one of Betty’s daughters is sitting on the veranda peeling peanuts. I offer to help, and we sit for many hours peeling peanuts, an entire large sac of them. Sharon is making odi to take to school. It lasts for months and keeps away the hunger between long classes. We finish peeling and the peanuts are laid out in the sun to dry. A few days later I find her roasting them in a small sauce pan on the charcoal stove. I leave for a few hours and when I come back she is still roasting. A few days later, I join her on the veranda for peeling the thin brown skin off the peanuts. After a few hours we finish, and while I go to town, she stays to remove the bitter peanuts from the others. Eventually, weeks after our original session of peeling, she takes her large bucket of peanuts to the grinding machine, where she waits in line, but the power goes out and so she returns the next day. Finally, a few days ago she arrives at home with a small container of peanut butter. It tastes nice, especially with bananas for breakfast, and she’ll eat it slowly over the next few months. I think back to our student who nearly missed the helicopter for her bucket of peanut butter, and I understand. What seemed perplexing, even ridiculous at the time, makes sense because I see the process behind it.

I recently visited my friend and our office assistant Brenda at her small home and spent the morning with her frying dough into triangle-shaped donuts. We had a nice time, cooking outside and talking to the kids around. She sells these cakes at local shops for extra income. We worked the entire morning. As we left and I bought a few cakes to bring home so my family begins to think I have some domestic skills, I ask how much profit she makes? Very proudly, Brenda says she usually makes about 2000 Uganda shillings: a meager dollar and a half, and it means a lot to her and her family. From now on 2000 shillings to me means those few hours with Brenda. I can see her smile and the sweat around her hair from standing in the sun all day whenever I think about the number. It makes me so much more appreciative of what I have, and so much more willing to share.

At work, I have continued to work on the protection policy for the organization. In order to get the staff committed to the idea, we had a 2-day training about human rights and protection. Once we all understood the importance of rights and the vulnerability of our beneficiaries, committing to the protection policy seemed obvious. The policy went from being a boring document adding to the heavy work burden to part of a more exciting story: preventing harm to youth. Similarly, setting up referral system for counseling and mental health services has changed the lens through which schools and teacher view students. Students are not simply stubborn or undisciplined (though some are…), but may also have stories that explain their behaviors and problems that may require some guidance or extra support. Getting teachers to seek these stories is challenging but is also helping us to identify students who can benefit from psychosocial support.

So whether at work, at home, or with friends, I feel like I am collecting stories. I am learning to see the world from other perspectives. I am storing in memory images, feelings, and ideas that allow me, not only explain, but to feel the world differently. Whether it is sitting on the floor on a bus to Kampala, visiting Makarere University for the first time, sitting around with 10 brothers and sisters and laughing at jokes, enjoying caramelized bananas at a café in Gulu for an evening chat with my manager, or talking to students at work these experiences become communal, not only mine, but ours.

Sometimes I wish that we could understand immediately the stories that shape a life. That you would shake someone’s hand and know their sad smile is the result of a complex relationship with a sibling, or touch a cup of tea and see the smiles of all the people cultivating for long days on the beautiful hills of Uganda. I think there would be a lot more empathy in this world if these flashes of feelings, stories, and humanity came to us as we interacted with the world. So I share with you, and I hope the flash of my story is pleasant, and that it encourages you to share yours and seek to hear others.

Thanks for being in my life.

Inbal


Our office as storage space and one of the trucks going to Kitgum


A picture from the BBC website of the Aswa River on the way to Kitgum



Views of Kampala

Sharon peeling peanuts and Brenda making cakes

Around Brenda's home

Our team outside the office.

Explanations of the World

For centuries, humans have searched for explanations about the existence of the world around us and our role within it. Some have found faith in religion; others discovered reason in science, and still others relied on cultural stories and practices passed through the generations. Though different, these avenues all serve a similar purpose in providing some comfort, understanding, and, often, happiness as the search continues for answers. Initially, adjusting to a new place involves simple adjustments: the tastes of new foods, finding a route for work, learning to co-exist with bugs (though I don’t think I’ll ever grow to like the cockroaches in the bathroom), and planning your day around the rainy-season daily down-pours. As time goes by, the adjustment becomes deeper and transitions to reconciling parallel explanations of the same world. We often get caught up in the names. But whether you call this universal human desire to understand the world around us the human spirit, mind, soul, psyche, essence, heart, inner force, intellect, brain, will, strength, none of these or all of the above, both the most enriching and the most challenging aspect of life at the intersection of cultures is picking treasures along the road without dropping your own essence along the way.

I had a beautiful afternoon a few weeks ago. I had been working in Kitgum district, which is to the north of Gulu en-route to Sudan. I am mesmerized by the hills and mountains in the distance, and on a sunny Sunday I convince a few friends to join me in climbing one of the smaller hills. We drive for about an hour and a half to get there, and find a medium-sized internally displaced camp at the bottom of the hill. We walk through Lagoro camp looking for a volunteer to take us up the hill. With the exception of small children waving at me and saying “Munu bye,” the equivalent greeting to foreigners of Mzungo how are you?, the camp is quiet. The huts are very close together and people sit around quietly, men discussing in small groups and women cooking. We climb the hill slowly and enjoy the beautiful views of the Agoro mountains on the border with Sudan and the endless green valley below. From above the camp looks so different, a complete change of perspective. I am surprised that while we were in the camp it seemed quiet and calm, from above we hear a loud sound track of camp life. All the conversation, jokes, radios, laughter and cries join into a loud and somehow beautiful human symphony. We sit at the top of the hill for a while, and my friend Sylvia tells me about her childhood growing up in Kitgum. There was a time when the rebels came to attack the part of town where her family stays. She was at home with her sisters and mother. They heard the rebels shoot at the door of a house and all the kids inside screaming, after which the rebels entered and abducted the children. The same happened at the next house. Sylvia’s mom told them to stay quiet no matter what happens. The rebels came, shot at the door, and when they hear no sound, they decided the house was deserted and moved on. That’s one of Sylvia’s stories, the strength of her mom, which she attributes to God. I look down at the camp below and think that each of the individuals there has a story, a quiet story. Together all the stories in the camp make legends, which are shared proudly and loudly. Even further, across the green valleys and mountains, as far as the eye can see, all the legends create the spirit of a place, the underlying beliefs, tradition, reasons, and habits that are so constantly in the background, we no longer hear them unless we’re new, and I’m still new, so I listen.

My work with Windle Trust continues to be very interesting. On of the advantages of working for a small, under-staffed NGO is that I have a lot of responsibility and I am learning so much. In the past few weeks, at different times I have been the psychosocial coordinator, field-office manager, accounting assistant, protection officer, and monitoring and evaluation consultant. I really enjoy the work and am getting a lot of support from my work colleagues. One of the highlights of the past few weeks was organizing a two-day teacher training for fifty-five teachers from forty-eight schools. The training was about teachers as actors in the provision of psychosocial support to youth. Topics included trauma and depression among youth, peace education, guidance and counseling, and monitoring of students’ well being. The teachers were eager to learn and participated with amazing cooperation. When I was not running around worrying about the logistics of the next session, I learned a lot. The session about guidance and counseling emphasized that although it is easier to give people answers in the form of advice, a much more helpful method is facilitating the personal search for solutions. I’ve found that extremely helpful in my work, and really see the difference when I treat beneficiaries as the responsible young adults we expect them to be. Making plans for the psychosocial support programme has been very fun. I feel like I made a wish-list of all the interesting projects I would like to work on, and have been approved to have a budget to implement them. In addition to continuing with the teacher training courses, we’ll also be creating a mental health referral system, youth groups, student workshops, and community meetings. The work on psychosocial support in consultation with many local experts has been a positive experience in how often beyond cultural difference hide complementary explanations of the world. The psychology language is laden with technical terminology: post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, inter-personal group therapy, networks of social support, etc and etc. The local explanations of youth affected by conflict sound drastically different. When a person kills another he is forever followed by the spirit of the victim. The spirit causes nightmares, strange behaviors, and even violence. The community responds by conducting traditional ceremonies including cleansing that pushes the evil spirit out and community discussions for reconciliation. The terms seem worlds apart, but beyond the language, they are quite similar. Possession by a spirit explains similar symptoms to many psychological disorders, cleansing is a process of dealing with guilt, and reconciliation is like counseling to find a way forward together. Perhaps psychologists are the spiritual healers of our times with similar potions and medicines and the ability to guide our feelings and thoughts.

Many aspects of the conflict in Northern Uganda which I did not understand before begin to make sense when I look at the situation through the local explanations. I’ve often wondered how people could forgive Kony for all his rebel activities and atrocities. A friend doing research on spiritual practices explains to me that many people think Kony is possessed by a spirit. He’s only agreed to peace talks because the spirit has left him, and in someway people see him as a victim. On the other hand people are extremely angry at the government for failing to protect them. Perhaps politics is beyond the realm of spirituality and without explanations for the hardship suffered at the hands of the government, people cannot forgive. When people talk about local justice and using reparations as a form of punishment, my initial reaction is how can a cow or the first harvest of maze replace a child killed or injured? On the surface, it is easy to ignore the spiritual consequences of these punishments: the local perceptions of working your own land for others as a debt for your crimes, and so they seem too weak. However, if peace is going to be sustainable, these local perceptions are as important as our international standards of justice and accountability. Perhaps most perplexing to me has been the mix of traditional beliefs and Christianity. On Sundays, any street leading to a church is flooded with people in their best clothes. To my close friends I ask tough questions, about how they can believe God looks after them when so much war and misery has happened? Their answer is simple but makes sense: among all the bad things that happened, they survived, they endured, and they are thankful. We define the world around us in contrast to our immediate surrounding. My immediate surrounding are spread out, and so I compare, and I feel sad that these days children here are thankful that finally they can sleep without anxiety of abduction. The sadness is because the gratitude reflects a tough reality that existed before which I wish no child ever had to go through. In Northern Uganda, people are thankful for improvements; they compare to the past and pray for a better future. As I discover local perceptions, attitudes and practices around me begin to make sense.

One of the things that frustrates me about some of the schools I visit is that I don’t sense the joy of education in the air. I think that education should be an opportunity to learn about the world and about ourselves and it should be fun and exciting. Instead, some schools are run like prisons: strict rules, rice and beans to eat everyday, being told when to read and what, and very little time for personal discovery. I recognize the importance of discipline, but I also think students would be more motivated if school was an encouraging environment. I am most surprised when I talk to students and they don’t expect any better from the schools. Through conversations I realize that education here is such a luxury, a privilege that so few can access, that the hardship at schools is viewed as the fair price to pay for education. I am touched by this dedication, but I continue to expect more. I believe that assisting students to think about their goals for education can happen without disregarding local practices but walking side by side. After all, I learn so much from adjusting to life here, and perhaps speaking out on some important issues can make that enriching cultural learning bi-directional.

I’ve also been working on a protection policy for our beneficiaries. Protection is an incredibly complex field of work and when successful in preventing harm to vulnerable people, it is almost impossible to measure or see. As I spend hours by the computer writing staff codes of conduct, reporting procedures, and plans for education and training, I start to ask questions. Protection from what? I’ve always had a view that childhood and adolescence are precious times in life and children and youth deserve to have happy and love-filled beginning to their lives. When I look around, this view of children is challenges. Children are always working here, whether it is at school or at home, they’re always cooking, washing, taking care of siblings, sweeping, digging in the field, and fetching water. It is rare that they just get to play. Although children are extremely precious and loves, adults are harsh with children, often reprimanding them for not doing enough work or not being obedient all the time. Most difficult for me is when children are punished physically. When I hear children crying, even screaming, I cannot understand how a parent can inflict such pain on his or her child. I find it difficult to understand how loving parent-children relationships can develop when children live in fear of being beaten by their care-givers. When I voice my opinion against beating, I am told that it is a tough world out there, and out there misbehavior has much more serious consequences. Unlike my view of children as special members of society with special privileges and rights, here children are mini-adults in training. I see there is some value to the local perspective of seeing children as capable members of society who contribute meaningfully to their families and are raised to be independent and strong. But I can’t make the leap to the other side, I still think there is value in protecting the joys of childhood. I stand at the intersection of cultures, and I feel lost.

I’ve really enjoyed my time in Kitgum. I made some new friends and got to know more family members, as Betty’s husband stayed in Kitgum with another an entire crew of children and youth they support. I shared a room with the girls, and the first night I could not sleep, being unaccustomed to the constant traffic in the house. A few weeks later, back in Gulu, it feels oddly quiet sleeping in my own room, and I miss the sounds of not being alone. I am amazed at how much we can get used to if we open our mind and heart. Probably my favorite aspect about Kitgum is the view from our office. Around five in the afternoon, when everyone is finished work and school, the field and the road to town fills with people, bicycles, cows, children, and motor cycles moving back home, sharing with others at the end of the day. It is a beautiful painting of life and oddly it reminds me of the crowds on the T in Boston or the Ottawa market on a busy summer day; human life is strangely similar. It has been raining a lot for this time of year (it is even cold at night). People are thankful for the rain, but are also weary as this unusual amount of rain goes against the seasonal cycle of planting and many with lose their crops. The river has come up higher than usual and there are always crowds around the river, making use of the additional water for washing, bathing, and the occasional group of kids having a fun time playing. At the same time, people tell me that when the river is high and helps people, it will require payment, and when it goes down it will take someone with it. Sure enough, life is both blessed and cursed by the rain. The valleys are amazingly green and some crops are flourishing, but others, like millet and sorghum are unable to cope with the water and wasted seeds litter the fields. People are saving the rain water and there are basins everywhere to ease the daily journey to the bore-hole, but at the same time, diseases like diarrhea, and even cholera, increase when water floods the densely populated area which lack proper sanitation. There is so much life around, from the cat that sneaked into our room to give birth, the tiny goats I helped feed at Sylvia’s house, and plants that are thriving you can almost see them grow. Yet, sure enough, in a few days, I hear a young boy has drowned in the river. Despite our efforts to control the environment around us, life, anywhere in the world, seems filled with good and bad, blessings, and troubles, birth and death, and the story about the river seems as good as any to explain these mysteries.

At the intersection of explanations, I chose not to chose, to accept parallel stories when I can, and to contribute to discussions when I disagree. Perhaps it is the strong religious and spiritual essence of this place, but I often find myself thinking of a prayer my mother told me once: “God, give me the courage to change the things I can, the strength to accept those I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.” A recent musical version of the prayer by musician India Arie adds a final line. As I think about the moments of pure magical happiness and the times of intense frustration that are
both baggage on this road of cross-cultural explorations of the world, I join her in asking beyond differences and similarities to also always have “the serenity to love [those around me and these fascinating experiences] with an open heart.”

Thank you for being in my life!

Sylvia with Children at Lagoro Camp


Lagoro Camp from Above


The view from the top of the Lagoro hill





Enjoying life with family and friends in Kitgum