My first week in Gulu

I cannot believe that the first week has already gone by. This week has been CRAZY!!! Getting to Gulu was quite an interesting experience….the road to Gulu from Kampala is under construction, and so the way that they make travelers drive slowly is by putting the MOST obnoxious speed bumps in the middle of the road, and they last for MILES. It was hilarious…and bumpy. We did this for SIX hours! In that time, one might expect that people would have to go to the bathroom, right? Well, one would be right…some people ventured the “peeing in the brush” option….I held it! Not yet ready for that adventure. Slow and steady wins the race (as I’ve been told). :)

Eventually, many bumps later, we finally reached the Invisible Children house. While my first impressions of the house weren’t that favorable (it is a lot like Rocky Vine, but a bit more quaint), I now realize that we are living in the lap of luxury! I kind of feel like I am cheating a bit. We have running water…most of the time. Most people here don’t have that…I frequently see children or women with babies wrapped around their backs carrying buckets of water, either on their head or in their hands, back to their homes from various bore holes around the area. We have electricity...also most of the time, but sometimes it goes out if it rains. I share a room with four other girls and we sleep in bunks that are three mosquito-net covered beds stacked on top of each other (mine is in the middle…which I strategically picked!). :) We have a cook named Doreen










Doreen Agness bathtime!!!

who prepares breakfast and dinner for us every day, and a house lady named Angess who takes care of all of the household chores.

Basically, my day starts out by waking up…way too early, :) maneuvering out of my middle bunk, through the mosquito net, tuck the mosquito net back in, try to become somewhat presentable (yes, I am still wearing makeup), have a couple of orientations, lunch, walk around town, dinner at home and try to take a shower if the water is available to get all of the red dust off my feet! You would NOT believe how dusty it is here. Oh, and I have to be sure every night to take my malaria medicine…very important! This first week really has been filled with a bunch of orientations, whether it be on the status of education in Gulu, we have had a lesson in Luo, the local language, we travel around town and get oriented with the city, things like that.

Gulu is a very interesting town. There is so much poverty, but EVERYONE has cell phones. :) To get around, you either walk or ride the boda bodas. If you ride the boda bodas, you MUST negotiate price before hopping on back of the motorcycle, and prepare to have an eyeful of dust! Even with all of the poverty and hardships and trauma the people from Gulu have seen, I have never met more friendly and welcoming group of people. And they love seeing white people around town. Today, I was walking around the town and people just kept staring at me like they had never seen a white person before. I try talking to them in their language to show respect, but I really only know one word, so when they deviate from that one word I am totally lost and I end up saying something completely ridiculous and they start laughing! :) For example, Apwoyo, the only word I know, means Hello/thanks/goodbye….that kind of thing. However, if you change the inflection of your voice (which I still haven’t figured out how to do) then you end up saying rabbit. Can you imagine someone walking around the states saying “rabbit” to you thinking that they are saying hi? Haha…it is so funny. The kids are the best though….some shy away if you say hi to them while others run up to you to shake your hand or give you a hug, and then they go and get their brothers and sisters so they can see this “munu” that has come to walk through their village! They love it! “Hi munu!” “Mzungu!!!!” LOL. It is so much fun.
Through this experience I have become SO impressed with Invisible Children as an organization. It has progressed so much since the video that we saw at church! Not only do they do things like Schools 4 Schools and provide academic scholarships, they even have economic development plans, like the bracelet campaign (which btw is being phased out and replaced with MEND, making handbags) where they employ people in microeconomic development programs and show them how to save. What I love about this program is that there are no handouts! They show people how to help themselves. For example, with the bracelet campaign, IC doesn’t just give people money. They enroll them in this microeconomic bracelet program, where they pay them for the work they do making the bracelets. But in addition to that, IC shows them how to save the money they make, and the contingency for anyone who works for them is that they have to come up with future business plans to use the money they saved during their time with Invisible Children. Also, when Invisible Children helps provide money to rebuild a school or part of the school, they require that that school provides 5% of the funds for the project. This sounds weird, but the purpose is to (1) give the school some ownership of the new buildings and (2) show them how to save 5% of the funds because that is the cost of maintaining the buildings once IC has finished building. IC doesn’t want to build a school that becomes unused because the school doesn’t have the budget for up-keep! It’s awesome. They don’t enable the people, they really work to help them help themselves. And they have already made so many improvements with the schools around the area. One of those schools is the original site of the displaced school that I will be teaching in. This next week, I get to meet my teacher, tour the displaced school and start observing the classroom setting. I can’t wait!