first week rounding up

My first week in Gulu is rounding up quickly and a lot has happened, but this post would be impossibly long if I were to write them all, so I’ll give some highlights.

I’ve spent sometime outside of Gulu where most of the Guluian (sp? who freakin' knows) live in little huts and there is usually 5 to 6 of these huts in close proximity to each other. It is very common to see goats, chickens, ducks, and a horde of children running threw this little camps. These pictures don’t really do the “camps” justice to how small and cramped everything is. There is absolutely no privacy here, so you better get along with your neighbors, which everyone seems to. Another thing I’ve notice, random tangent, is that emotions of the people here. For example: people here are always either stoic, or happy, or in rare cases, very very mad at one another, I haven’t seen anything outside these three emotions for the weeks time that I’ve been here. There are no arguments that take place; people seem to know their place here within the community. Now that I’m writing it, I guess it is hard to explain with text, this is something that needs to be seen first hand. One might not find this weird but just think about it, driving in OC and getting pissed for someone running a red light, or back in highschool, people fighting over a spot in line, or over a girl/boy…that just doesn’t seem to happen here, all petty things are not worried about.

I’ve spent a great deal of time in the “bush”, term given by the Guluians that is in the jungle/forest, just observing how people live their day to day life. These walks are never taken alone, that is just plain stupid. I’ve taken a few of these walks with Adam and I love to walk behind him 10 feet or so and watch time interact with the people that are living there. It cracks me up to see this white boy talk Luo with the people. Here is a typical sky over the forest. Of course while walking we have about 15-30 kids always following us. I think their amazed at our color, who knows…here is actually a funny video of a small baby coming up to us, looking at me for a few seconds, thinking about me then start crying…quite funny.

Needless to say, Adam has quite a few friends here in Gulu. So when he was going to attend a meeting with a few of them one night he invited me to go along. We went to one of these huts that I described earlier and met up with two men. So we sit outside of his hut and get to talking, I find out that these guys were former commanders in the LRA. This is crazy because they held such high rank and made it out of the LRA alive. Side note on the LRA, it is the reason that the children do the night commutes to Gulu. All the killing that goes on up in Northern Uganda is done by the LRA. Do some reading up on the situation with Kony (Leader of the LRA). Anyway, one of the men was a bodyguard for Kony himself. This is crazy because anyone up that high usually never leaves the LRA, or if they try they most always end up dead. So here I was sitting with Adam and the two former LRA commanders and the wife of one of them outside their hut talking about old stories of when they were in the bush. I don’t really want to repeat them…just think about getting together with some Vietnam vets and having them talk about the war with you, but these guys were crazy guerrilla fighters.

Um…that is all for now I guess, kind of an abrupt ending, but I need to get off the net…ill try to think of some good stories that I can write for you…hard for me because im not the most eloquent writer. Here are some other other random shots...other than that

Cheers.

Scott