gulu [i can't think of a more creative title, sorry]

hey all. so here i am, in gulu. it's similar and yet completely different from kampala. most noticeably, it's QUIET here. which is nice. it's a desert region, so it's very dry and there's not much greenery, unlike in and around kampala. the town is very small; only a few main roads and very few taxis, so you pretty much have to take boda bodas everywhere. SO FUN. and don't worry, we're only forbidden to take them in kampala. there are hardly any cars here and the streets are so empty that it's very unlikely that you could get into an accident. everything is very dusty and run-down and dilapidated. it feels post-conflict here. i'm also having a similar reaction that i had in rwanda...i keep looking around and imagining things everywhere. not a whole lot happened here in the town during the conflict; it mostly happened in the surrounding rural areas. but, as i'm sure many of you know, every night for the 20+ years that the LRA terrorized these people (the people who live in Gulu are Acholi), thousands and thousands of children would walk miles from the surrounding areas every night to sleep on the verandas of shops and such in Gulu town so as not to be abducted by the LRA in the middle of the night. i keep looking at the verandas and imagining hundreds of children sleeping on them.

things are going well, logistically speaking. i'm feeling totally better health-wise, i'm living in a decent hotel with 3 people i actually like, and i've gotten going on my research right away. but god, i never realized how EXHAUSTING research is. it makes me have SO MUCH respect for people who do this for a living, who spend years producing entire books and not just dinky 40-page reports. it's basically just a lot of going from place to place to place, talking to random people, getting doors slammed in your face, getting lost, feeling like an idiot. it turns out that (a) the woman who was supposed to be my KEY contact can't help me at all because her kid is sick and (b) the organization i was going to intern with is not really....what i expected....so it looks like i'm not going to be interning anywhere, but rather will be moving from org to org doing interviews. however, that organization, empowering hands, has agreed to take me into the field with them a few times and help me arrange some interviews, which should be intense. they're engaged in facilitating community dialogue and counselling to help formerly abducted people to reintegrate into their communities. it should be intense.

yesterday, the woman who agreed to be my advisor (thank GOD....most people don't even have advisors yet) suggested that i talk to a woman at UNFPA named mollie fair (how much more american can you get?). so i called her last night and OMG it was SO WONDERFUL dealing with an american on the phone again. she was SO EFFICIENT and so on her shit and i could understand every word she said and i could hear her writing our appointment in her planner and i KNOW she'll actually be there when i show up on friday morning. i really like uganda, but i don't know if i could handle their....inefficiency?....in the long-run. i've just been too socialized to be obsessed with time and promptness and reliability and efficiency.

what else? we've been going to this restaurant every night and the woman who cooks and runs it has started asking us when we finish eating what we want her to prepare for us for the next night. it's AWESOME. whenever you go to a restaurant here, it usually takes forever to get your food because they don't really have any preservation system, so they go out and buy the food and make it right after you order it. totez fresh, but totez TAKES FOREVER. but yeah. she's made us some yummy stuff and she's gonna make us some kind of curried chicken and rice thing tonight. YES.

okay gotta go. love ya'll!