Reflections on our journey...

So, as we are now home and beginning to reflect on the experiences that we had in Uganda, it seems fitting to begin to process through our journey and answer some of the typical questions that are being posed. I realize that many people are curious as to what daily life was like for us in Uganda, especially since many folks have certain ideas in their minds about what Africa must be like. First of all, I find it important to address the term "Africa"... many people are curious to know how are trip to Africa was, or how is Africa? Africa is an extremely large continent with 54 countries and over a thousand languages are spoken there. Consequently, our limited experience in Uganda is not adequate enough to address the other 53 countries, or even adequate enough to address the conditions for everyone in Uganda, since we were only in the North and spoke one language out of the 56 that are in Uganda: Luo. However, we can describe the daily and beautiful life that we experienced with the people there. Here is a glimpse into that life...

Each morning we would wake up to the sound of roosters crowing outside and children laughing at the well pumping water even before the sun fully rose in the sky. Then, the most beautiful sound of music would fill the air at the Parish as the Christians met in the church for morning prayers. Some mornings we would attend and then take breakfast with the Fathers and other mornings we would walk to school for morning assembly. The walk to school was always exhilarating. We would begin moving to school when we would hear the echo of the hand bell being rung in the school courtyard. The sun would be large and glowing in the sky on the horizon, the morning dew would be covering the earth, and the crisp cool air of the rainy season left you feeling awake and energized. Walking to school would sometimes take much longer than the distance should require because each person passed along the path stops and greets one another. I will never forget the way that people genuinely greet one another and share true concern about how each person is doing. When arriving at the school, we would see all of the students standing in a semi-circle around the flag poles. Students, teachers, and the Head Teacher (principal) would get up and make verbal announcements to the entire school. This process would sometimes take even up to an hour, from 7 am- 8 am. Communication and honesty are highly regarded values in Acholi culture. After assembly, we would have class on certain days and on other days we would have planning time in the staff room (the school schedules are set up more like a college than that of our high schools and the teachers travel to the classrooms that the students meet in). Around 10:40 am the entire school has a break, and the staff have morning tea and breakfast together. This was my favorite meal of the day, we would have fried donuts with hot sweet tea... very delicious. Mid-morning we would have class and more interaction with students, go for a walk, play scrabble, go sit under the tree and have deep discussions with staff or students, or many different relational experiences... no day ever looked the same. We would typically take a late lunch around 2:00, and then return to classes where we would engage students through dialogue and active learning strategies (all of this we would do with our team-teacher, we weren't teaching by ourselves, because that wasn't the point- the point was for teachers to professionally develop together). Then after classes, around 4:40, we would have our club meetings... I would meet with the writer's club and Chris would meet with the service club to work in the garden at the Parish. The writer's club students were very inspired to use their voices in order to create a better community and a better Uganda. They are some of the most disciplined and self-driven students I have ever witnessed in my life. After club meetings, I would usually walk with Florence back to her home after school. The sun would be starting to descend on the horizon and the glow of the pink sky off of the grassy savannah made you feel as if all was right with the world, and it made it hard to ever imagine that war had just ravaged this place for 25 years. Florence and I would stroll slowly together and discuss our favorite parts of the day, or even laugh together about students. Her daughters and her granddaughter live there at her home, and the door would always be open for visitors. Acholi people are very communal. Their doors are typically open throughout the day so that people can stop in and say hello or even share a meal together. Afterward, I would sit on Jacob's stoop with the other I.C. teachers and have tea while watching the sun set or I would walk back toward the Parish and play with lots of the village children along the way. Each evening at the Parish I would be greeted as if the Fathers had not seen me in a while, so much joy and large smiles would be displayed as I entered the gates and walked toward the home..."Lamaro, welcome back." Chris and the boys would head back from the garden and we would all take coffee, eat g-nuts, or roast corn together before supper. The best conversations took place during this time... the time spent in the evenings outside in the garden or around the Parish table at dinner. Meals were always delicious and conversations always beautiful. The table would be approached with prayer and as we finished our meals we would end with communal prayer as well. We would start eating dinner around 7:45 and retire from the table sometime between 9:30 and 10. With no TV or constant electricity, we would head to bed to read or journal by lamp light, and then pray a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving for the blessings of that day.

Many people are beginning to open up conversations with us about our trip with statements such as, "Wow, I bet you are so glad to be home..." and then they mention something about our suffering with malaria or ecoli. Indeed, I am thankful to see my family, friends, and new students...but, if "I bet you are so glad to be home" is inferring that I would not want to be there in Anaka, then that statement is not true because home is a place where you are connected in a deep way to the people who dwell there through genuine relationship and love, therefore one new home for us is Anaka... and we miss the people there dearly. Most conversations and even recent e-mails received have had genuine (and some not so genuine) concern about our physical health. Hopefully, many of you read my last post, "A heavy heart and a mind enlightened"... but as stated in that post- malaria, and my experience with that disease, drew me closer to understanding the plight of many people around the world and it also provided an amazing opportunity for Christ to show up and display the power of his love that is at work in the Body of Believers.

It seems as though some people believe that when Chris and I have travelled to other parts of the world to serve others, that we are going there on a mission to rescue people. But the truth of the matter is that while we were in Uganda God rescued us from our own brand of poverty. He rescued us from the Western poverty of individualism that is focused on self. When a person from the West travels to a war torn region it is very easy to sink into the mindset of "savior," believing that the people on the margins need us way more than we need them. All of us desperately need the economically and physically vulnerable, the "least of these" to help us see ourselves, and God's kingdom, differently. This revelation was in the forefront of my mind throughout our experience, but it so evidently occurred to me while I was sick with malaria. There I was in bed at the Parish, and the very people that I came to serve, people who have seen so much suffering and pain in their lifetimes, were there by my side serving me with the love of Christ and I desperately needed them. A passage from one of my favorite authors, Shane Claiborne, rang through my mind in the midst of that moment...

"Take care of the sick and give a cup of cold water to the least of these, Jesus taught his followers, and you enter into a mysterious and profound encounter. And of all the holy moments I experienced while in Northern Uganda, it's fair to say that this was the holiest- and the most disorienting. For in that encounter, I went from serving the least to becoming the least, and in the process I remembered something about myself I'd forgotten. I remembered that despite my economic security and relative power to affect change in the world, I'm as poor in spirit as anyone. I'm not anybody's savior; I'm just another vulnerable human being. To remember this fact was to be rescued from my own self-sufficiency and from an inflated sense of my own self importance. This experience of seeing myself as one of the least was both painful and beautiful at once, which is often what it feels like to be ushered a step further into the kingdom of God."

Without the pure and gentle reminders about Truth from my dear Acholi brothers and sisters, we would continue to be impoverished- but when you draw near to people and yoke your lives together- to give of what we have and to receive from them in kind... everything changes. Life changes.

If you truly desire to know the details of our trip or how our experience went, then please know that we, two vulnerable human beings, travelled and met with other vulnerable human beings, and our souls connected through grace, joy, and love. We lived life together for 6 weeks, and none of us will ever be the same. And, through this, I pray that we may all open our eyes and begin to live life together wherever we are.

WWII vet in Acholi land?

I walked down the dirt path very eager to see the home of one of the students from Anaka named Denis. He had invited me to visit his village while we were working in the garden at the Parish transplanting trees the previous day and I immediately accepted. We approached the three huts that make up his family's homestead. The huts sat on freshly swept dirt and were surrounded by fields of simsim, g-nuts, and corn. Baby goats grazed outside of Denis' personal hut, they were trying to get milk from their mother as we walked inside. We were waiting for Denis' mother to come and greet us. After a few minutes, she came and I found out she did not speak any English. However, she expressed to me that I was more than welcome by the bright smile she wore and the gift of millet and g-nut paste that she brought for us to eat.

After lunch we walked about 70 yards to his grandfather's house who I was very excited to see and interview. The day before, Denis had told me that his grandfather had actually fought in WWII. This came as a shock at first, but Denis explained that his grandfather and many other Acholi people had been rounded up and forced to fight by their colonial masters, the British, during the war. As I walked onto his grandfather's land, we found him taking his rest under a shade tree sitting in a chair. We exchanged greetings and Denis, who acted as the translator, got his permission for me to interview him on my video camera. Here is his story.....

When Denis' grandfather was 16 years old, he was taken out of school and forced to fight in a war that he didn't have much knowledge or stake in. He was a member of the Acholi tribe who were seen by the British as a being very strong and brave and therefore useful as manpower in their fight against the axis powers. So at a young age he was put on a plane and shipped to Ethiopia to fight in a land he didn't know and for a country he didn't belong to. Without the motivation of a sense of duty or patriotism, his sole reason for fighting... was survival. Kill the enemy and get back home was what drove him. During his time he met people from all over the world, Israel, Japan, America, Europe, etc. but he really desired to be back with his own people. After two years when he finally did make it back, he danced for joy on his native soil that he thought he would never see again.

I was thrilled to have had the opportunity to hear this man's tale, but the last question from our interview was for me. He asked if I thought the British were ever going to pay him and his people the money that was promised for the work that they did during the war. I felt a little awkward, but told him I was unsure of Britain's intentions. However, in my head I was thinking that there is no way that this man is ever going to see a dime for what he did during those years of war. I thanked him for his time and Denis and I walked back to the school.

It is so amazing the people that God allows us to meet in this life. I am forever thankful for moments like these and it really makes me value the power of people's story to help us better understand ourselves and our world. May we all continue to have an open mind, to have conversations, and to have a greater awareness as we journey. Peace.

The Ethics of Aid

The title from this post comes from an article we discussed at one of the conferences in Gulu. It calls into question just how much good Aid really does for developing nations. This Aid could take the form of economic, food, clothing, or even military. In his book "A Continent for the Taking," Howard French says,

"Uganda had posted an 8 to 10 percent growth rate throughout the 1990's...because the growth was brought about largely through massive flows of aid from the United States, Britain, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The almighty international financial institutions had become a government in absentia for the entire African continent in the post-Cold War era."

On paper the economies of many developing nations can seem to be showing signs of growth, but this is an illusion. You have Western powers handing money to corrupt governments and the people never see any benefit whatsoever. If you work in many African governments, there is no need for you to work with your own people to develop your economy and infrastructure because you know that the aid money is coming in every year. This leads to a cycle of corruption on the part of developing governments on the one hand and a cycle of irresponsibility of the part of big governments, banks, and corporations on the other. This is why it was no surprise to me that while we were in Uganda the members of parliament gave themselves a raise from 15 million schillings a month to 20 million schillings a month, or around $8,000. Meanwhile teachers and other professionals are struggling to survive amidst rising food and gas prices on a mere 200,000-400,000 schillings a month or $150-$350. The question would be why do the economic powers of the world continue to condone or turn a blind eye to this obvious abuse of power?

Meanwhile, the average person in the west hears the word aid and assumes that it is a good thing (I know I did). But when you start to think about donating food and clothes to these countries you begin to see that it is only putting a bandaid on something that needs surgery. In 2008 my class raised money for an orphanage in Kenya. Along with money, we sent over some boxes of clothes, which I assumed was a fairly good idea for children in an orphanage. However, when people in the west send all these unused and unwanted clothes to the people in developing countries, it knocks the bottom out of the prices for their locally made textiles and never gives them a chance to develop there own economies. So the people who make clothes in Uganda for instance, have to rely on tourists and wealthier Ugandans to make money. Why would the people by clothes if they can get them for free?

Likewise, food aid also knocks the bottom out of the price for locally grown crops keeping farmers always struggling to make it in the globalized world. For instance, the U.S. subsidizes corn from Idaho and sends it over to countries that have plenty of people who can grow corn. On top of that, the seed that gets sent as "aid" is often genetically modified which makes the farmers unable to harvest the seed from that crop because that seed won't produce the following year. This breeds dependence for farmers who have to buy new seeds every single year. This isn't to say that people don't need food aid. Right now in several East African countries there is a famine going on and people can not farm because of lack of rain and are in need of food. What I am saying is the west needs to quit giving handouts to people who have the means to farm and who have been able to grow their own crops for thousands of years.

With a new context to understand global aid, I asked many of our Ugandan teachers what they thought was the best way for a person in the west who genuinely cares about people to help developing countries? The answer was almost unanimous across the board: By-pass the corrupt governments and work directly with the people on projects that help them live a sustainable life and develop their own country. This takes a bit more effort on the part of westerners to do some research into the projects they are giving money to. A good place to start would be education and micro-economic projects. An education gives all of us a better understanding of our world so we can all begin work to weed out corruption, war, greed, self-interest, and begin to substitute these things for peace, justice, compassion, and a selfless love. Invisible Children has a great scholarship program that supports kids in their learning and keeps them accountable for doing their best. IC also has micro-economic programs that give people skills, dignity, and the profits from their labor. My hope is that those of us who have the resources and means and the love in our hearts to help will put forth that effort and begin to give a lasting aid to people who deserve to have basic needs met and who deserve to be loved.