A visit to Awere...the Orginial site

Today, Joanna, Abbie (the other teachers with me at my school) and I traveled to Awere's original site with our partner teachers. Like I said before, the school that I teach at right now, Awere S. S. in Gulu, is the displaced site for students that used to go to the secondary school in Awere before the war, and in February they are finally planning on moving back to the original site which has been refurbished, thanks to Invisible Children. This is really exciting for Invisible Children and for Gulu because Awere is the town that Joseph Kony is from, and moving back is kind of a big middle finger saying to him that the people have rebuilt and moved on.

The trip to Awere was kind of a long ride (emphasizing to me just how far these students and their families are away from home...and they have been for years) and I seriously had to pee (btw...I've conquered the latrine! and the outdoors!!!). As usual, our mutatu broke down...well, actually it got stuck in the mud about 800 yards away from the school, but it was all worth it. The new site is wonderful. There are new classrooms, new labs with prep rooms (the pics are a comparison of the labs from the current school to the new school),
great big chalkboards, proper walls and water pumps! It was so great to see the work that IC has accomplished through the Schools 4 Schools program. While I have been teaching at the displaced site, I have been so impressed with the quality of students and the quality of teachers...the major challenge for students inside the classroom (many many more outside the classroom) is the poor learning environment. They have to deal with SO much noise...that was the hardest thing for me to deal with because classrooms really are only separated by a tarp, so it gets really difficult to hear the lesson in your own classroom.
But at the new site, I really don't see that being a problem because the rooms are separated by concrete! I think they are going to be very successful at the new school!

After our tour, the school provided us with sodas and biscuits (a very nice gesture) and we got a chance just to chit chat with all of the teachers. Two really interesting things came out of that time. First, I've said before that there is a lot of litter in Gulu because people really do just drop on the ground whatever they have that they are finished with. For example, biscuit wrappers...as we were sitting there, at this beautiful new school, the Ugandan teachers were just tossing their biscuit wrappers on the ground...littering the place up. Which I don't mean in a negative way because it really is just their culture, it's just hard for the American teachers to see...and we certainly can't bring ourselves to do it to. I know it probably sounds like I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill...I guess it's kind of hard to explain. But anyway, not being able to toss my trash on the ground, I started collecting my trash and my friends' trash...and all of a sudden the Ugandan teachers started picking their trash up too...it was kind of like this mini little victory! The second cool thing was that while we were talking, one of the administrators started telling us his story of being abducted as a young boy and fighting for the LRA. When he was 15, the LRA stormed through his town and took him away from his family at gunpoint (the LRA targets this age group because they are still naive and impressionable). He was with the LRA for a year, and he actually sat with Kony just as close as he was sitting to me outside the school at Awere...it was such a surreal moment. Anyway, he told us that during his year with the LRA, he basically worked his way up the ranks to a position called "controller" where he was responsible for bringing to the battleground Kony's "magical water" that he taps from some mound (which we also saw) and mixes it with other "spiritual" things (i.e. crushed stone, vegetation, drugs, etc). It was so interesting to hear some of the strange goings on of the LRA. For example, soldiers in the LRA are not allowed to take cover, like hide behind trees, because that means that they do not trust God's will for them. Once a shot was fired, these untrained soldiers, young boys really, were expected to run toward the Ugandan army without taking cover. Another just crazy thing is that these young boys were given a list of rules and consequences. For example, if they told someone where the LRA was hiding, they would and did have their lips/mouth cut off. If they pointed to their location, their arms were cut off and it was up to the commanding official if the child soldier would be getting "short sleeves" (cut up to the shoulders) or "long sleeves" (hands cut off). If they tried to run, their legs were cut off...same concept as with the arms..."shorts" or "trousers." Anyway, working his way up to "controller" (a.k.a. sorcerer), this teacher earned a sense of trust and had very little supervision. So, one day, 1 year into his time with the LRA, he laid all of his LRA-owned guns, etc. and just walked away with a friend...he is one of very few that escaped and actually lived (probably due to him leaving the LRA possesions behind...if he had taken them with him...pretty much a guaranteed massacre). Today, he is a successful teacher/administrator and he is married and has a wife and two kids...see...resilience!