Kitgum and Lamwo

We traveled around Kitgum and Lamwo districts (north of Gulu) for 3 days this week doing the same bike distribution and monitoring as last week with HURIFO. Ray joined us for the trip. Here are some of many shots taken from our moving vehicle. The area north of Gulu is a much more mountainous landscape. The first photo is a of a police officer guarding prisoners in yellow as they dig in the field.

One of many electricity poles lining this road waiting to connect the next trading center to electricity.

python

We came across this (dead) python on the road in Lamwo district. It was about to eat a chicken so these men killed it and were on their way to dispose of it...

girl's afternoon

Niki, Christina, and I spent the afternoon shopping in the local awina- used clothes market. We sifted through skirts and managed to find some keepers!

sugarcane

home of the hawks

I am having a great time so far here in Uganda with Karin.  I spent my first week reading for classes, visiting UNICEF, UNOCHA, and over 8 NGOs, and helping to coach the Gulu Hawks: the basketball team here.

The Hawks are a professional team, playing in the national basketball league.  We practice outside on a poorly paved court, without nets, and with a crooked rim.  I am told there is only one indoor court in all of Uganda.  We practice three days a week, and then the players play pickup at least two other days.  But they don’t make any money on the team, so everyone has another job, or is studying at the University.

Practice has already been canceled once so far because of the rain, but the team has learned a new offense and is off in Kampala this last weekend for two games.  I can’t wait to hear how it went.  Of course, I have been playing a bit too, which is helping me get into shape!

Ray

a soccer ball made of plastic bags

Now that is ingenuity.

Pader and Agago Districts

I spent Monday through Wednesday driving around Pader and Agago districts for work with Human Rights Focus (HURIFO). We were delivering bikes to about 15 of HURIFO's 604 human rights volunteers. They use the bikes as transport as they carry out monitoring and reporting on human rights violations. 

We also conducted interviews with district officials and people still living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The camps are officially closed, but many remain for various reasons. Some of these reasons include: a lack of water in their home village, a lack of money, materials, and/or labor to construct new huts in their home village, conflicts over land ownership, lack of access to schools and health care in the their home villages, and some of the elderly, widows, and disabled do not have family members to help them financially or physically with the return process.

We woke up the first morning to this view.

People form a line of jerrycans early in the morning to collect water from the tank. This line was just across from where we ate breakfast (I had a rolex (rolled eggs)- chapati and an omelet rolled together).

We spent three days (between 10 and 12 hours) in the pick-up driving hundreds of kilometers on bumpy, dusty roads. We crisscrossed two districts to the north east of Gulu, traveling to the corners of each district.

Storm clouds seem to gather every afternoon.

A lightning storm passed through Pader. I was leaning up against a truck, trying to steady my camera enough to capture the random flashes of lightning. A boda passed through this photo.