Dan Calls it Being Half-Born

He has captured the problem. Who will be a solution?


Thanks Brian.

A Surprise

My friend Kevin and I have been working on a new journal of arts.  It's called "Rubanga?", and is designed to give those concerned with northern Uganda a forum to share their artistic creations.

In this first issue I personally have a couple of poems published, and most of the photos used for backgrounds and on the cover are mine.  There are some excellent pieces by others as well, so please check it out.  Right click (or control click, my Mac friends) on the cover page below and choose "Save Target File" or "Download Linked File" or whatever option sounds like one of those.  Other wise you can open it in your browser and save it from there, but it might take a while to load.  You can also find it in the sidebar.

For this first issue we limited our pool of contributors, but next issue the floodgates are open.  If you're reading this blog you are most likely concerned in some way with northern Uganda, and are therefore qualified to submit to "Rubganga?".  You can send writing, photos, or any other art that can be digitally published to rubangamara[at symbol]gmail[dot]com.  Not all submissions can be used, but we appreciate each and every one.  More detailed jargon can be found on page 2 of the first issue.

Enjoy!

Simply Devastated

Those of you familiar with Shane Claiborne and his Simple Way community will be saddened to hear that the home of the Simple Way, and several others in their neighborhood, were destroyed by a 7 alarm fire two days ago. If you'd like to contribute to the Simple Way's efforts to rebuild their neighborhood, you can go here.

Displace Me Koro, Day 3

I'm sitting in the Brussels airport, reflecting foggily back upon Koro and Uganda, waiting for a connecting flight to JFK, then San Diego. My laptop bears the rust red markings of Ugandan soil nested in scratches from hard use. My shoes also hold the red soil, and the nose pieces of my glasses.

The morning of our third and final day at Koro was far better than the previous morning. I had been too tired to worry about rats and mosquitoes that second night and had slept deeply to the rhythm of Martin's snoring. This morning being Sunday there would be no digging. I woke with the family and immediately knew something was planned. Martin was delaying in the room and looking outside anxiously. There's always something planned.

Within 30 minutes several more bracelet makers arrived in Martin's little home and sat in the small wooden chairs. Martin's wife Susan brought in tea and began preparing it - three heaping tablespoons of sugar to each small cup. She stirred thoroughly. With tea she brought deep fried mundazi. Sugar and oil - everyone's favorite beginning to a day. After downing the sweet crystal dregs of the tea, Martin brought out his surprise - soda and cookies. I was given a Marinda Fruity, an ostensibly fruit flavored soda that tastes consistently like carbonated sugar syrup. And Martin, with a wide grin, handed me a small package of cookies, which I immediately offered around the room for fear of having to finish them myself.

Once my blood glucose was sufficiently elevated, like a jet elevates, we walked through the camp to David's place. His family immediately ushered me into his hut where I was served, wait for it, sweet tea and mundazi. We left for church directly afterwards, my hands shaking around my Bible.

The short Anglican service was held in an elementary school across the street, in one of the dim, worn classrooms with a scarred chalkboard hanging behind the priest. It culminated in an offering, the men competing against the women to see who would give the most. Pauline, David's wife, handed me, Tiffany and Kerri each a 100 shilling coin to deposit in the waiting baskets. In this moment she had more than us, and she wouldn't let us miss the opportunity to give.

After church we had planned to visit Abole, a resettlement camp about 2 miles from Koro. Resettlement camps are small areas where people from the larger IDP camps can move to be closer to their homes. The government and some NGOs have encouraged people in the large camps to find these smaller sites and move there, though in practice it hasn't been as simple as it sounds. These resettlement sites aren't served by the World Food Program, which IDPs rely heavily on, and often times they don't have clean water or provisions for sanitation. And when stats count people who have 'resettled' they often include these people who have simply moved to a smaller camp.

David had requisitioned about 7 bicycles for our ride to Abole. I rode on the back of one of them, with one of the bracelet makers peddling. As we traversed the dirt road to Abole David pointed out large swathes of land on each side of the road - this one belongs to Jimmy, that one to Issac, etc. In all he pointed out the farms of eight bracelet makers, neglected farms with falling homes.

This is where they should live. On they way back from Abole I borrowed one of the bikes and raced with them back over the rough roads, past their bright green land, past their weed filled farms, past their crumbling homes, and finally back into the crowded, impoverished camp. They smiled and laughed the whole way, enjoying the fact that a white man can ride a bike, just like them.

Just as we were preparing to leave the camp, Martin invited us to his home. I told him that we didn't have time to stay there, and he said we wouldn't stay, but he wanted us to say goodbye to his family. I knew he was lying and I told him. He assured me he was not. I knew that he was still lying.

But we walked there nonetheless and found his wife Susan with a freshly prepared chicken and some rice. A last, desperate meal. We laughed as I nicknamed Martin The Deceiver, and his wife The Delayer. As we neared the end of the chicken, all of us late for something in town and ready to leave, Martin handed me some part of the chicken, specially reserved for the guest of honor. At first he said it was the gullet, but it didn't look like a gullet, and one of the other Ugandans said that it was near the liver. I tried to politely decline, and when that didn't work I tried to rudely decline. Still they insisted. I split it with the girls, after much coaxing.

It's so strange to me that he would lie in order to be hospitable, and that he would force people to eat what they don't want in order to show respect.

When we finished I offered to take a photo of Martin and his family. They posed in front of a heavy metal gate, painted green, guarding the building they live in. A gate that is afforded them by the money from my bracelet program. A gate that they need because that money makes them richer than everyone else in the camp. It's a gate that protects them from their neighbors, blocks their friends from view, gives them a sense of security and prestige. It's the same gate that lines our border with Mexico, that confines our news programs, that relegates stories about the poor to page 10 or midnight infomercials. It's a gate in the mind and the heart. It's the same gate I walked through when I first entered Koro two days before.


Martin and his family have no choice but to walk out of it every day and experience the world around them as it is. We have that choice. We can stay inside, guarded in our little compound, or we can choose any one of 100 ways out. The choice is always yours.

We began walking back to Gulu town under a torn sunset. Like my thoughts at the time it was disorderly, improvised, bright, fading.