My response to this PBS Wide Angle special (link here) on Uganda for the MAICCD program…

My first reaction when it comes to understanding Uganda is to take a step back. I have no frame of reference for relating to the people there. They have seen things and have been forced to live through situations that I can barely even fathom. In February of 2008 I had the opportunity to travel to Uganda and spend two weeks at an orphanage there. One of the things that has stuck with me since then is what one of the house moms told me. As we talked over a simple lunch of beans and posho she spoke quietly about how lucky I am to be an American. How I will get to go back to my home in a few days and they will still be in Uganda. Perhaps wisely I kept my mouth shut rather than try to rationalize some response about their lives being simpler and commenting on the joy they exhibit. As much as my group helped while we were there and as much as we loved playing and hanging out with the kids, there always will be a separation between the utopia we live in and the reality they live in.

As Betty Bigombe said in The Lords Children video the rehabilitation numbers are shockingly low for children who have been pressed into service with the LRA. Beah (2007), a former child soldier in the army of Sierra Leone, writes of a fight between rivals in a rehabilitation camp, “Perhaps the naive foreigners thought that removing us from the war would remove our hatred for the RUF [a rebel group in Sierra Leone]. It hadn’t crossed their minds that a change of environment wouldn’t immediately make us normal boys; we ewre dangerous, and brainwashed to kill.” Even those who respond well to counseling are faced with numerous challenges before they can reintegrate into society. You see some of the social stigma attached to this children by adults who believe the Devil has come into them. The Acholi cleansing rituals may indeed make a difference but if parents or extended family are unable to even attempt the ritual it makes little difference. On top of that, these children are returning to a society that has been devastated by 26 years of continual conflict and ravaged by AIDS and other diseases. According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) as of January 2009 there are still 853,000 people living in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Furthermore, as hinted at in the film, like many African countries Uganda as a nation is an artificial creation of the European powers who ruled Africa during the colonial period. Tribal identity factors heavily in national politics. Although English is the official language of Uganda, there is a myriad of local tribal languages learned by children as their first language. This all to say that while the tide in the country may be turning toward reconciliation and rehabilitation, there are significant elements living in the southern half of the country and in the government for whom the north is of little concern. Sadly, Uganda’s child soldiers face a long hard road to recovery.

UNHCR page on Uganda: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=49e483c06#

Wikipedia page on Ugandan Demographics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda#Demographics

Beah, Ishmael. (2007). A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (pp 135). New York, New York: Sarah Crichton Books.

It’s late and of course I should be in bed, but instead I’m up watching video’s on TED.com. Tonight it was this talk from Deborah Scranton, a documentary filmmaker, speaking about her documentary The War Tapes. Scranton had the opportunity to embed with a National Guard unit in Iraq. But rather than go herself as an outsider, she equipped the soldiers with cameras and all the other gear they would need to film their experiences themselves. She wanted to capture life there truly from their perspective.

The stories she ends up with in her film are about the horrors of war and what war does to human beings. Not just the physical violence, but the emotional and spiritual stress it puts people through. The face to face confrontation of life in America versus life in a war zone. The realization of what people are capable of doing to each other and the aftermath. Scranton is clearly shaken as she relates the stories told in the film and the experiences she has had talking with veterans upon showing the film around the country.

One of the myriad of questions I will sometimes ask myself late at night is if I really am ready for the future I say I want. If I really, truly want to document what life is like for half the people on the planet who live in war zones or deal with starvation or disease or extreme poverty. Am I ready to interview people whose lives have been torn apart by people fighting in the name of religion or ethnicity or for reasons no one even remembers. I had a preview of that in Uganda when a single mother was telling me how lucky I am to be born in America. She’s right, and I had no answer for her. As much as I want to bring those stories back to the US to open the eyes of people here to the realities of the world, chances are I will never be able to make things better for anyone I meet. There will never be a word I can say or a touch I can give that will cure what ails them. And somehow I will have to come to grips with that. Somehow I will have to figure out how I can come back to the US, to my comfy bed, my xbox and my big screen tv. It’s a dangerous question and I don’t know the answer yet. I don’t know that there is an answer.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m not a big fan of blogging about you’re life when you can’t think of anything else to write on. But what is a blog other than an exercise in self-aggrandizement? That said, here’s some idea’s I’ve been kicking around for the last week or so. . .

I decided today that I’m going to use my 20% membership discount at REI to buy a bicycle. I’m leaning more toward the “commuter bike” category since I don’t need all the bells and whistles of a mountain bike but I need something a little more rugged than a road bike in case I happen to move off the pavement. I can get a lot of use out of it during the summer as my means of transportation back and forth from the office. I could even take rides down into Santa Cruz if I find a route on the way back that doesn’t kill me.

Summer is going to be really fun at Vintage. I have a couple meetings in the coming months to go over what it’s going to look like for the photo team but there should at least be a photo show and maybe some other opportunities also. We have a photo walk coming up at the end of this month that will be down at the Wharf. There will be one more before the start of summer and it will be photos from that shoot we will use for the show.

On a related note, it was fun to get back from Uganda and look through my photos. I feel like I really did take a step forward in the overall quality of my photography while I was there. I have a couple of series I’m very happy with.

I’m a little frustrated my old laptop hasn’t sold yet. I don’t feel like I’m asking more than it’s worth but I’m obviously asking more than the market will pay for it. I need to sell my old zune and the dock too. Hopefully I can clean out some of that stuff and get a little extra cash.

Anyway, I think that’s about it for tonight. Nothing too profound or shocking (or shockingly profound, harharhar ).

All my Uganda pics are finally up and on flickr.  I just finished going through tagging and adding descriptions to them.  All total there ended up being like 316 photos.  It takes a while to upload that many to flickr even on my fast cable connection.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy them!

I’ve felt a little weird since coming back but I’m not sure it is really reverse culture shock.  It is almost the lack of it that has me feeling strange.  In some ways, I feel like I should feel different now that I’m back in the US after going to Otino Waa and the fact that I don’t feel terribly different feels weird.  I think part of what makes trips like this one a little different for me is the fact that I’m not really shocked to encounter suffering.  Between my general world view and my knowledge of current events, I realize that most of the rest of the world leads a truly horrible existence between wars, famine, and disease.   Now, Otino Waa struck me as exciting because of the fact that most of those things exist outside of the school.  The kids are all well fed, well educated, and sleep in relatively nice accommodations.  Still, the way that everyone was telling me about how different I would be after coming back I think has thrown me a little.

Even while we were in Africa I was telling someone that it is kind of funny that I ended up on the trip considering I don’t really have any interest or sense of calling when it comes to global missions.  I just like to travel and take pictures.  I should point out that I’m grateful for the chance I had to go and I believe we did a really great thing while we were there (building the house).  Yet, I also feel oddly “normal.”  I’m not really any more or less passionate about missions than I was before we left.

Anyway, I guess all of that is to say that I’m still mulling over how I feel about the trip and what God was trying to teach me now that I’m back stateside.  I haven’t had much time to do any thinking though as I’ve been terribly busy with work since getting back.  Hopefully after this next week things will calm back down just a little and I can take stock of life.  Getting together to share photos this Friday will be good too.  Well, I think that is it for now.  I hope you enjoy the photos.  Later!

I’ve got the first 50 pics up on flickr.  I have 311 total to upload which is about 10% of the 3000 or so that I took.  That puts me right about where I thought I would be.  I still have a few to go through so the 311 number may grow a little but it will be right around there.  I’ve got a few pics to edit in Gimp before they are completely finished and I’m running everything through neat image (which only handles batches of 50 photos at a time) so it might be Tuesday or Wednesday before I’ve got them all up there but they’ll be there for sure by mid-week.  Hope you enjoy!