Don't Worry Hippo I Too Have Been Hungry Hungry

Before I begin this blog entry I want to start off by saying that I am safe in Gulu and that IC is doing everything they can to insure our safety both here and when we begin our travels home. I want to talk about a couple things first and then I will address the bombings and everything that has been going on. Feel free to skip down to that section.

Conference

Every year Invisible Children holds a conference in which all of the teachers, both American and Ugandan, gather for workshops, discussions and other random activities. The theme this year was centered around a new curriculum designed by Invisible Children called Knowledge of Behavior and Self (KOBS). The curriculum is designed to “improve the emotional, social and behavioral development of secondary school students.” Each classroom is filled with students who have been effected by the war in varying ways, some were pushed from there homes, others have mothers who were raped and have no given birth to ‘rebel babies’, some are now orphans, and still others were abducted. At the conference we discussed the many long-term effects of children who have witnessed war: constant alertness, guilt about surviving, social withdrawal and haunting memories just to name a few. The trouble comes when these signs are seen in classrooms and inhibit student learning. KOBS is designed to give a space for students to come to terms with their emotions and also the emotions of their peers.

The conference discussed the seven different themes which KOBS addresses; Self esteem and friendship building, thinking feeling and behavior, conflict avoidance and conflict resolution, motivation and goal setting, understanding ourselves and others, dealing with bullying and, dealing with stress and worries. This curriculum has been five years in the making and just came into being this January and students seem to be very engaged by the lessons. The main thing about the KOBS lessons is that they seek to give students the tools to better interact with their peers and understand their emotions as well as their own. So when it comes to asking questions in a KOBS lesson, there are no wrong answers, making students less fearful to raise their hand and speak up (in normal classes no one answers questions for fear of being wrong). The conference was dry at times but informative about a brand new curriculum that Invisible Children has helped to implement. It went all day friday and then until noon on saturday and once we finished we booked it back to the house to leave for our safari trip.

Safari

The drive to Murchison falls (where the safari was) took about 3-4 hours on one of the worst roads. At first it was comical how our beat up passenger van flung us from one side to another while going into potholes the size of houses but after awhile some people weren’t feeling it and had there windows open ready to hurl. I myself had a great ride, chomping down on Ugandan cheese balls (bad chetoes) which probably didn’t help the nausea of the people around me. Finally we got to our campsite and checked out our sweet two person tents complete with some pretty luxurious beds (by luxurious I mean cots, which are really a step up from what we’ve been sleeping on). We headed over to the bar and restaurant, grabbed a beer and enjoyed the scenery. Not long after sitting down a family of warthogs walked through the bar like it was no big deal. Prompting a series of jokes starting with “Only in Uganda...”

The next day we woke up at 5:00am, stars still out, to get an early start at our safari. After catching the sunrise on the Nile river we headed out in hope to see some lions, apparently the only time we would have seen them would have been in the morning... we saw no lions. We got back in the beat-up passenger van to trek around the massive reserve but this time we got to ride on top of the roof (pretty sweet except when you’re drive is going 40km/h around turns). Animals we saw: giraffes, elephants, heartebeasts (kind of looks like a horse with horns) kobs (not knowledge of behavior and self, looks like a deer...with horns) water buffaloes, warthogs and dik diks (minature deer). About two hours in we switched spots and opted to hang out the windows while others got the chance to sit on the roof, which made for some good pics and also a lovely burnt auburn tan...aka dirt.

After stopping for coffee and lunch we had the river portion of our safari. Animals we saw: hippos (prompting someone to say to the hippos “don’t worry hippo I too have been hungry hungry before), crocodiles, baboons, monkeys and a random assortment of birds (including a bald eagle). We moved up towards Murchinson Falls, took a few pics and headed back but right as we turned around we saw a massive heard of elephants along the water. There was a canopy on top of the boat which we could get on top of if we wanted so I raced up there to get some shots of the families of elephants. After that I wasn’t planning it but took a nap for the rest of the boat right (probably about an hour in the african sun, yum). After that we headed back to Gulu hoping we could catch the world cup final.

Bombings

We were running on fumes by the time we got back home, getting up at 5:00am and a full day of safari can take it out of you, go figure. We watched the game a hotel nearby knowing that if the power went out they would have a generator. After the ridiculous number of yellow cards and struggling to keep my eyes open, I was riled up when that Netherlands player cleated a guy in the heart basically. We ended up watching all of regulation time and walked home. I pretty much passed out without knowing who had won or what had happened in Kampala.

The next morning I woke up and began the day like every other Monday (I don’t teach on Mondays so I wasn’t running around like many of the other teachers) and had some breakfast. Mandy got up a few minutes later and told me that someone had called Julie (another teacher) and said that there was a terrorist attack in Kampala but no one really knew anything. I called up Courtney back in the states and she gave me a briefing on what had happened. News moves pretty slow in Uganda so the North did not seem to panicked. At about 9:00am many of the teachers ha left for school when our three directors came back to the house and said they had news for us. The five teachers who were still there all gathered in the living room as they briefed us on what had happened as well as telling us the someone from Invisible Children had died in the attacks (see www.invisiblechildren.com for more info). This is the first casualty that IC has ever had. They did not know much about our own situation and what would happen but assured us they would do everything they could to make sure we were safe here in Gulu as well as when we leave. We ended the meeting with a prayer followed by an erie silence as each of us was trying to piece everything together.

I walked into town to grab a paper and check the internet. The front pages of the papers showed the gory images of bodies lying still in blood stained white chairs. The images worsened as we read more. After posting the brief message via facebook we tired to find every article we could online to figure out what was going on. Check out http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/africa/index.html for more details. Later in the evening we had a meeting with the entire group to discuss everything. The two biggest changes to our daily lives are that: 1) we have to be in the IC compound by dark and 2) we can’t advertise ourselves in town and thus need to keep a low profile (part of the reason why I’m not elaborating much on certain subjects). We ended the meeting with just simply sharing our thoughts on everything. In what would be the last comment of the evening I said something along the lines of “When I was reading up on Nate (the IC member who died) I found an article that mentioned that this was the first time he had been to Uganda and just how excited he was to be here. Apparently his facebook status was ‘thank you to everyone for making my dreams of coming to Uganda true’ and later he said ‘I’m living out the best days of my life.’ And knowing that he can’t live out what he had been looking forward to for years, its a reminder of how privileged we are to be here doing what we are doing in our classrooms. From what I gather we can’t do much other than what we are doing right now. So lets just keep giving it all we’ve got, maybe not necessarily for Nate but just as a reminder of how lucky we are to be living out whatever dreams we have.”