Sunday in Gulu

It's 4:20 pm on Sunday here in Gulu. We're back at The Coffee Hut and there's a fan and AC, sort of. We just waved goodby to Eliza (I mistakenly thought his name was Elijah, "the prophet" according to Daisy)and Nancy as they return by bus to school. They have already missed a week of school in order to spend more time with us. I haven't said much about Nancy, who is twenty-six years old and in Senior 2 or 3 (high school). This is not unusual because so many of the children during the war had their lives disrupted. I have come to love Nancy and she certainly loves Annie. She came to have a lot of affection for me as well, her other "mego." I will post a picture of Nancy when I return but I wish I could capture her personality and especially her voice and sense of humor. She has a very easy, sultry voice and she had a way of saying things (kind of Mae West) that just cracked me up. A simple word like "fantastic" became a source of laughter ten times a day. Little jokes are shared all the time. Daisy and I had a running joke that I would be the American "munu" (white) mego who was bringing her Gulu daughter (Nancy) to the bus and I would be carrying her 70lb. trunk on my head the way the women carry water or fruit or whatever. Daisy thought that was hysterical and it became a running joke over the last 24 hours. But back to the bus. A very, very chaotic departure included men coming at us from all over thinking that we munus were getting on the bus. Annie and I walked away to reduce the confusion of Elizah and Nancy purchasing their tickets and getting on the bus. To Annie's surprise Nancy began to sob as she hugged Annie and me goodby. Of course, since I cry at the drop of a hat, I tried to steel myself and get back to some of the jokes that kept us laughing throughout the last five days. So there goes Elizah and Nancy and the house will be more empty now. I want to write a little about the trip I took yesterday with Santo (wego), Kenneth who is Santo's nephew, Elizah and two of the men who were part of a meeting we had yesterday to discuss a proposal they have for getting women in rural villages to be enrolled in a government project that involves the testing and treatment of HIV/AIDS for pregnant women and a continuation after birth. Now that is an entirely different topic that would take much, much more time than this blog. There's a lot that has emerged from this meeting. Well, I think the trip to Baker's Fort yesterday will have to wait until the next blog. Briefly, the Fort is the place where people were taken and put in a cramped open-air prison to be either killed by the Arab slave traders if they were too weak or taken eventually to the Middle East . It's about 17 miles from Gulu on a very bad road that was impassable during the Kony days. We stopped to visit the Chief of that area who lives at the entrance to the Fort. OK, we have to go now so this story will have to wait. This is an exhausting, amazing experience. I really miss the comforts of home but it's worth going without (for a short while!) in order to live so fully in a culture and among a people that has already been teaching me so much.