Yesterday I had the opportunity to travel to the seat of the District Government and participate in a meeting with several key Ugandan local and national government officials. I traveled with several representatives of the GDPU and also the Country Program Coordinator for Survivor Corps Uganda, John Francis Onyango. We sat with the District Speaker, the Chairmen of the District Social Services and the District Public Works committees, a Member of the National Parliament, and several other representatives.

The goal of the meeting was to express how important it is to consider persons living with disabilities when creating and finalizing a government budget. In Uganda about 12% of the population is living with a disability. Surprisingly, this is lower than both the United States (19%) and Europe as a whole (15%). There are more than 600 million people worldwide living with disabilities, and that number is expected to increase dramatically over the coming decades. Expanding by as much as 39% in the developed world and 46% in the developing world.* Because there is such a strong link between poverty and disability, any country which wants to effectively manage development and reduce poverty must address the needs of persons living with disabilities also.

The meeting was a large one, with about 20 representatives present, and there were several different viewpoints. Some were enthusiastic and in complete accord, some were apologetic and explained that there simply wasn’t enough funding to change anything. Some were evasive and tried to deflect this issue off to other NGOs. It was interesting to watch the process, because these people are the ones who ultimately hold the power to effect real change and real progress in Uganda as it rehabilitates itself after the war. Admittedly, funds are limited. However the Member of the National Parliament, Betty Aol, make the best point of the day when she said “It’s not about the resources, it’s about how you use the resources.” This is a wonderful mentality, and one that will go a long way in Africa. There will never be enough money to do everything that you want, whether you live in Africa or America or Australia.

The meeting was fairly successful, and the District Public Works committee made a commitment to ensure that all new construction projects will have provisions for accessibility for PWDs. This is important, but must also be combined with the rehabilitation and readjustment of existing buildings to meet the needs of PWDs also. The GDPU will be following up and encouraging the government to take larger steps towards providing for all of its citizens. After such a brutal war, with so many lives and livelihoods lost, Uganda is in a unique position to rehabilitate not only its infrastructure, but also its people. Let’s hope that those with influence realize that you can’t do one without the other.

*Making Development Inclusive: Project Cycle Management Guidelines for European Community 2008

On Saturday, June 20th, I went out to the village of Palenga to meet one of the beneficiaries of the GDPU’s many projects. We left Gulu, and after driving through thick bush for about 30 minutes, emerged into a whole new world. Palenga is close to Gulu in proximity, but incredibly distant in terms of development. There are Mud huts spread few and far between, connected only by maize fields and criss-crossing footpaths that lay mostly hidden by the dominating plant life.
We finally came to the home of Onen Francis, a client of the GDPU and a survivor of an LRA raid. During this raid in 1988, Onen was only a boy, maybe 8 years old. When he and his family heard the rebels coming, they dropped everything and ran into the bush. Onen got out of sight quickly, but then fell awkwardly and broke his back, suffering a serious spinal cord injury. Later that day, his family found him and carried home, but not to the hospital; it was too far away to carry him, and too expensive to arrange for transport. Instead, he stayed at home, healing naturally. And slowly, and excruciatingly painfully.

20 years later, Onen Francis is still showcasing the amazing strength he had so many years ago. He has several physical challenges, but even in the face of these difficulties, he is still someone his family can rally around. He is quick to smile, and he never complains about his situation. Him and his family have worked hard to move out of the Internally Displaced Persons camp in Northern Uganda and are working to rebuild their home in their ancestral village; the same one that was destroyed so long ago by the LRA.

The GDPU is working hard to help people living with disabilities, whether the injuries are a result of the war in Northern Uganda or not. Onen Francis is a great example of someone who has benefited from the actions of the GDPU, but the crucial factor is Onen’s own personal strength. He spent more than 20 years fighting and surviving on his own before the GDPU’s assistance, refusing to lose hope or to let his family do the same. It is people like Onen Francis that are the inspiration to the many people and organizations working to put Northern Uganda back on the path to peace and stability.

This is Justin Odoch. He was 9 years old when he was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and taught to kill. 24 years old now, Justin spent 3 years fighting in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. He first was a prisoner of war, and then became a soldier for the rebel movement led by Joseph Kony He knows that he has killed at least four of his own countrymen in battle.

When he came to check the bodies of the soldiers he had killed he found the men were from the Acholi tribe, just like him. “It makes me feel very guilty,” he said “that I have killed my own people from my own village. “

Justin told me that there are hundreds of people like him who have been forced into the LRA, some of them as young as seven years old. Kony cuts an imposing figure, says Justin, he has taken about 35 wives and people do his bidding because they know that the penalty for disobedience is death. “He has a demon that tells him what to do,” explains Justin, “and if you disobey, the demon will tell Kony and he will kill you.”

Justin decided to take his chances and began to try to subvert his leaders. When told to execute prisoners of war, Justin would try to help them escape instead. He told me, “I can judge for myself that this guy has done nothing. So why kill him?”

After three years in the bush, Justin escaped from camp in the middle of the night. Troops followed him for more than 20 miles through the bush, but he reached home safely. He turned himself into the government as an ex-combatant and was granted amnesty. The LRA would not be so lenient.

After Justin returned home, the LRA sent fighters to his village to look for him. They found his home, but not him. The fighters locked his mother, father, younger brother and three sisters inside the house and burned it to the ground. All six were killed.

Justin is left with one sister, who is suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis, and an elderly grandmother. Incredibly, he maintains that his life is better now than when he was fighting in the bush. “I’ve been receiving counseling,” he tells me, “and I’m asking people to forgive me” because while I was fighting, “I was doing it blindly.” He’s also been going to church and he has found that “when you trust in God your life will be changed. Nothing is impossible with God.”

Justin is busy now caring for his sister, trying to finish high school, and atoning for the 3 years he spent tearing apart his own country. It’s a very complicated situation. Justin has killed people, but he has also saved people. He has destroyed lives, but he is now trying to rebuild his own family after tragedy. I asked him what he wanted to say to the people of Uganda and he started speaking immediately, as if this was a question he had asked himself several times. He looked up and said softlly “I was forced to be taken into the bush and I was forced to kill. If I killed your brother, or your parent, or your relative, I now surrender. Can you forgive me?”

That’s how it starts. To recover from a war in which people are fighting with and killing their own relatives and countrymen, it starts with reconciliation and forgiveness. It’s certainly not easy, but maybe it’s not such a complicated situation after all.

On Friday, June 12,  the International Republican Institute sponsored an advocacy event at the Gulu Disabled Persons Union in support of the Persons with Disabilities Act signed into law in Uganda in 2006. The Act provides for Persons with Disabilities the Right to Quality Education, the Right to Health, and the Rights of Accessibility and certain Employment Protections.

Speakers at the event included several local district councilors, two Members of Parliament (One representing Disability Rights in Northern Uganda and one in Eastern Uganda), and the Minister for Disabilities from the Federal Ministry of Labor, Gender, and Social Development.

The event was well attended by representatives from Gulu, Amuru, and Pader districts, and the tone was hopeful and also supportive of the rights that have been gained in Uganda by Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) only recently.

The conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army that has lasted for more than 20 years, coupled with substandard health care throughout some parts of the country, has created an area in which the rights of PWDs are incredibly prescient. According to the Minister, there are more than 3 million Ugandans living with disabilities; out of a country with a population of 25 million, that is about 12% of the total population.

The event on Friday demonstrated the strides that Uganda is taking to provide for all of its citizens. The next step would be for a similar event to be held in the nation’s capital, Kampala, in the south of the country; a region which has not seen the amount of violence that Northern Uganda has been subjected to.

                I have just come from an impressive display of sportsmanship: The First Annual Nile Beer “Sink the Black” National Pool Championship, Gulu District Competition.  In brief, it was a two-day, 32-man single elimination billiards tournament held at the Buganda Pub in Gulu, Uganda. 

                I rolled up to Buganda tonight, Saturday, around 6 and was pleasantly surprised to see that we were down to the “Elite Eight” and that things were progressing quickly.  The matches were best of 3 and there were 2 tables going at once.  Some of the local pool celebrities were out; including Steven “The Machete” Atete, Robert “Smokin’” Bongomin, Deo “The Terminator” Moi, and, of course, Emma “The Cheetah” Ocitti.*

                I very quickly noticed that these guys were not playing under the same rules that I am used to from the US.  Apparently Ugandans, and maybe Africans in general because I have seen this in other countries, have come up with some handy new rules that make the game a little easier.  They include:

1.        If your opponent scratches, you get ball-in-hand (you can place the ball wherever you please) and 2 extra shots!  Just in case you miss your first freebie, you can tap it in with your second.

2.       If you scratch on the eight-ball, no problem!  Ball-in-hand and two extra shots for your opponent, but you won’t automatically lose.

3.       The most entertaining variant:  You don’t have to declare which pocket you intend to sink the eight-ball into.  It just has to go in somewhere.  Anywhere.  This rule encourages players at the end of the game, if they don’t have a viable shot, to just wind up and knock the bejesus out of the ball and hope it goes in somewhere.  Very entertaining, and lots of cue balls ended up flying off of the table.

As we got to the final match, pitting Emma “The Cheetah” Ocitti against Robert “Smokin’” Bongomin, I was feeling pretty good about getting home soon, throwing down a couple of mangoes, and then calling it a day.  Luckily, “The Cheetah” came storming out of the gates and won two of the first three games quickly.  As I clapped a couple of times and turned to leave, I saw the referee (who was wearing a lifeguard shirt that added a nice touch of melodrama to the event) rack the balls again.  I asked around and found out that the final was a BEST OF 9 SERIES.  Nine, like 9.  Like three times longer than all of the other matches. 

Anyways, the game continued and the DJ kept playing that Justin Timberlake song “What Goes Around, Comes Around,” which I thought was appropriate because I had been standing there for 3 hours watching people walk around a table and poke it with sticks.  Also, he kept playing this weird tugboat horn/air-raid siren sound that I think was the “Party Alarm” so everyone would know that Buganda Pub was crackin’ and everyone was invited, especially your mom. 

Finally, though, “Smokin’” pulled his head out and won a couple, but “The Cheetah” went for the jugular and finished him off in seven games.  Congrats, all hail Emma “The Cheetah” Ocitti: The Best Damn Pool Man in All the Land.

*I don’t know if these guys actually use those nicknames because I made them up.  But they should

Okay, I am in Gulu. This is where I will be for the next 10 weeks. That is something. I have moved into my “apartment.” That is also something. It is important to focus on the small victories of the day when you are in a small African town, because they sometimes don’t come very easily. I am in the internet cafe in Gulu, and I have 9 minutes and 56 seconds left on the world wide web. 55,54,53…
Things in Gulu are good. I got here via New York via Dubai via Ethiopia via Kampala. It is hot and dusty, but the people are bright and colorful and don’t look at me like I am too strange, but I can tell they are just being polite.

I spent the morning with the founder and director of Caritas Counseling Center, Sister Margaret Aceng and she spent over an hour telling me why she feels called to help the people that have been traumatized by the war in Northern Uganda between the government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Caritas provides support and counseling for ex-rebels, former child soldiers, parents of abducted children and also to women who were abducted and pressed into sexual servitude by the LRA.

The organziation was founded in 2004 and in a few weeks they will be holding a graduation for 126 newly trained peer counselors.
6 minutes and 11 seconds…

Okay, I am on the way to meet with the chairman of the Gulu Disabled Person’s Union, another local NGO that I will be working with in Uganda and we are going to try and put together a work plan for the next few weeks. since I need to leave about 5 minutes for the internet connection to upload this, I’ll have to end here. Thanks for your support, and I’ll write again soon!