A Sunday in Gulu Town

I went with one of the Makarere University students, Pamela, to an anglican church this morning. We caught the last 20 minutes of the english service andthe first half hour of the luo service. The kids weren't payingattention to the service as the mazunga (sp?) (white person) in the church was much more interesting than the minister! haha! Pamela and I had a good time and I took my first boda boda (mortorcycle cab) back to the inn! I can handle trying that out better in a slow sleepy townlike gulu rather than kampala. More people have actual bicycles here so i figure a boda has the right of way!

On a personal note, I was having a bit of an issue with just being here. I had this weird guilty feeling and didnt' know how to shake it off. I had a great talk with a girl in my program named Melanda about Maslow's hierachy of needs and once yours are met the next step is to try to help others meet their own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow

She referred to my feeling of being subjected to a huge cultural gap as 'white man's guilt'. My cousin Mark also had some great expereinces of his own to pass on to me including this:

Taking the road less travelled and becoming incredibly lost can lead to the greatest of adventures; the biggest disasters make the best stories later.

Although I'm not looking for a disaster, ;) I am definately a little bit lost but will only find solid ground by heading down that untravelled road.

I am at the office of USAid funded organisation. We interviewd them yesterday and he offered up his internet access. This house has been refurbished into an office and i've already seen like 5 state of the art computer terminals. There are kids in town who have no shoes. A little girl beside me in church had a terrible cough, and a gentleman i shook hands with had only one arm. The LRA were notorious for chopping off limbs. Oh USAid, i hope some of the money gets to the right place!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRA

We are going to meet Sister Rosemary this afternoon. She was a recipient of the CNN all star heroes award. She used to train young women in sowing and now does computer skills, hospitality, etc. We are going to chat with a graduating class at 2pm. Many of them are girls who were abductedby the LRA. I'll report back as to how that goes!

http://www.archdioceseofgulu.org/update/CNNHeroes.htm

Haven't decided on a major paper, i really like it here in gulu town though. My original research was around acholi diaspora and maybe I could shift it a bit so I could do the bulk of the research here?

Another issue I wouldn't mind looking into are the terrible occurance of so many suitcase ngo's in Gulu town. There are so many aid workers here that ppl are bumbing in to each other. No one is collaborating. Well, many are not. The local ppl have a very bad idea of NGOs now and I find this terrible. Some jerks are taking advantage of the large amounts of donor money flowing into the area and pretending to set up an ngo but actually just taking off with the money once they receive it. Disgusting!

Must get back to the Inn, my mango tree is calling. Leave me comments!!!! I like to know if anyone is out there. xooxoxox

Much Love, Leah