Nile Special

Gulu, Uganda. The other day. 3:30 in the morning:

"Peace Return Northern Uganda," a song by the famous Acholi musician Lucky Bosmic Otim, fires out of the P.A. at Havana Pub. Some expatriate friends, Hannah and I are all dancing in the far corner of the dimly lit, modestly-sized, ever-bumping club. I am dancing with myself, convulsing along with the irresistible hooks of Bosmic's entreaty.

I interviewed Bosmic last week, as we sat in front of the church where he sang as a boy, looking out onto the field of his alma mater, Gulu High School, as his two-year-old Jeremiah sat in his lap. He is lean and intense, and his facial features are smooth. He was wearing a grey camo jacket and green, designer camo pants. He did not talk about music or dancing. He started singing the songs he sings, he told me, because he got sick of songs about love. He talked to me about the war. After twenty-two years of war, he said, "We have no legs."

Some reggae comes on and I am disappointed that Bosmic has left Havana. But I've been drinking Nile Special tonight and I want to dance. I groove to the swaying beat. Sam, a computer-science student at Gulu University, a gaunt man with pronounced jowls and a big smile, leans into me. We enjoy dancing, we agree. He asks me where I've been in Uganda so far. "I've been in Kampala. Jinja. Gulu," I say.

In Gulu, many times people have told me grim and deeply personal things without provocation, without my asking, without any reason at all, it seems. Sam's eyes bulge and his expression turns grave. He tells me that Northern Uganda is not the only place that has been affected by the war. He is from Eastern Uganda, east of Jinja, the source of the Nile. Over the blaring of Gulu's ubiquitous dance music, he says that LRA rebels killed both of his parents.

I want to talk to him more, but not here. We grab two plastic chairs from the outside patio area and sit down. Niles are gone, so I buy us both Bell beers. We yell into each other's faces over the music. Madonna is playing when he says that he once prayed to God. "God," he said, "please, save my soul."

He was living in a hut by himself when the rebels came to his village at four o'clock in the morning. They killed his parents in the hut ahead of him. They passed his. Then they burst into the hut of his uncles and cousins. They killed his uncles, he yells at me, and abducted his cousins.

Sam's brother sold cows so that he could attend university. Now, Sam is thankful. Sam puts his trust in God.

I am swaying. I am about to burst. I am drunk and I am in a state of overwhelmed horror. It dawns on me that this moment is special. Something has crystallized. A gravity has hit me. The NGO people have jobs, and the work their jobs. The journalists collect facts, anecdotes and quotes, and write articles. The people who have been hit by this war have lost everything - everything. So many of them still get by, and do what they need to do, regardless. And in the off hours, just like the NGO people and the journalists, they smile, drink and dance.

That's why Sam came to Havana, after all: To wash his body and brain with beer. To let all of his scars seep from him in the ritual of dancing. To forget that his memory contains the sight of killing, a life of struggle, and every other thing that people like me would never understand.

For the moment, I don't desire a place where people get drunk and have insignificant conversations about movies, but I still need to escape. I go to the bathroom. I return to the dance hall and talk with Hannah and Gary, a new friend and a former Marine. Gary tells me that he traveled through "ambush alley" in An Nasiriyah during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It's a historic battle. He says that he'll be happy to talk about it if I get him extremely drunk some time. I give him a hug.

The newspaper once reported that 95% of the people in Gulu drink alcohol. That's probably not true - the women, after all, take care of everything in Northern Uganda, which I will be sure to discuss in depth later - but Gulu is indeed full of bars and clubs. And at night on a Friday, it's not odd to see two men dancing to a radio in the street.

In Gulu, even dancing and drinking is a war story. The fun is too much to bear.

Correction: This entry originally titled Bosmic's song "Peace Return." The title, as it is printed on the cassette I bought in the market, is actually "Peace Return Northern Uganda."

10 mins 20 secs left

That's how much time I have to tell you what's been going on in Gulu and elsewhere since the previous dispatch.

Gulu is boring. There are lots of banks, plenty of general stores and market stands and dozens of bars and clubs. At night the town is dark and all there is to do is drink. Needless to say, we've been drinking and watching soccer a lot lately. There are countless expats here and they are good people to pass the time with.

[30/6/08 I absentmindedly failed to include an important component of the Gulu town late-night lifestyle: dancing. The other night I met Stella, a student at Makerere University, and we danced late into the night. All of the negative energy and stress boiling inside of me seeped out out of me, like rum escaping the skin of an alcoholic. Acholi music at breakneck speed is ideal, but I also loved the dancehall cover of "Fast Car." You win 500 shillings if you can guess why.]

I'm getting used to taking bucket showers.

The other day a team from a local NGO called Caritas took us out to the Olwal IDP camp in Amuru district. The Olwal camp is composed of mud-brick huts with doors bearing the USAID logo. We interviewed about a dozen people who lived in the camp. Their faces and bodies are worn, their skin thick, their features pronounced. An 11-year old boy, his eyes soft and his expression vulnerable, sat with his arms limply hanging between his legs. None of them smiled.

Only when I asked about Joseph Kony did a few of them chuckle, because it is so difficult and disturbing to talk about Joseph Kony that asking about him is almost ridiculous.

There are so many reasons that the residents of Olwal will not or cannot return home - conflicts over land ownership, lack of money and food, lack of infrastructure in their old villages, the carnage that these places have seen, the fear of Joseph Kony and the LRA's return.

Problems of alcohol abuse and domestic violence also haunt the camp. "The ladies have become now the breadwinners," explained Aciro Agnes, a counselor for the Psychosocial Support Progrm of Caritas. "The men have become helpless."

[A man with a thick film of sweat on his face, wearing a sportcoat over his bare chest, walked up to me and gestured at his hungry stomach. The driver of the Caritas truck sauntered over, eating from a bag of tiny sesame seeds, nearly smirking. I assumed that he would pour the man some seeds, but he just kept on eating. You see, the driver explained, this man spent the whole morning drinking alcohol - and now he is hungry. Two Caritas counsellors walked over. This happens all the time, they told me, gesturing at the man. Speaking in Luo, the three of them told the hungry man off. He ambled away.]

All of this is very difficult and complicated to explain. I'm not taking anything for granted anymore. Hannah and I have got some articles in the works, though, so keep your eyes peeled.

Our Silence in the North

Gulu, Uganda. Yesterday:

Gulu is a chill town. The streets are a dusty red-orange, the surrounding bush thick and green. It's sleepy here and easy smiles are everywhere. By all accounts the Acholis love the huge population of ex-pats, who work for NGOs from across the globe. As a matter of fact, things are so very chill here that, if it wasn't for the white Land Cruisers everywhere, bearing labels like "UN" and "Save the Children," you would swear that a war never happened.

It's a whisper sometimes: a man might have a damaged eyeball; soldiers in camo fatigues wait in line at the bank; hordes of songs in Luo speak of peace and reconciliation, but I don't speak Luo. Then there are the screams. On our first night here, the night-time security guard at the Respond ReNUH guest-house mentioned to me that he had spent six years in the bush. He showed me his elbow, frozen in place. "It has no power," he said. He pointed to the scar from a bullet hole in his left shoulder. He showed me the one in his leg. He lifted up his shirt and gestured at the one in his back. Then, he pointed to a few more.

A tank rolled by the house this morning, but, for some reason, I managed to sleep through it. A roommate told me that, should the savage Lord's Resistance Army return to Gulu, then it will be this road which it will pass down.

I'm sitting in a small computer shop, picking out Acholi hits for a mix CD. Local Acholi music - and there is a lot of it - is mostly made on the computer, and it all has a message. For these reasons, I love Acholi music. Best of all, it bears a striking resemblance to the reggaeton that is ubiquitous in Brooklyn. Ken, who is making the mix for me with some of his friends, loves dancehall and reggaeton. "Puerto Ricoooo!" he says. He puts on "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee and the three of us all burst into laughter, then bob our heads.

Hannah has been sitting outside at the curb, chatting. I check on her. She is now sitting in a plastic chair on the corner. She is alone, watching the passerby go about their business.

I know her expression. Every day, the two of us share long bouts of silence. Usually one of us kills it when we look at the other, smile and tell some joke. That or start the first volley of an intense conversation. The silences are getting longer and harder to break. At this moment, Hannah's silence is not composed of boredom or sickness. It is enigmatic and pitch black. I ask her what's wrong and she tells me that things are unbearably sad. She begins to cry.

Within the past half hour, the gravity hit her, in whatever way. Now I am standing here. And I wonder, how do you medicate the impact of an immense sadness? In this circumstance, I can put on a smile and say that things have been OK in Northern Uganda for the past two years, they are OK now, they will probably be OK. I can speak of the positive energy here. Or the two of us can extricate ourselves from the situation and talk, the best option. I say nothing but I stand there, in case I am needed.

I return to get my mix CDs and then return to the corner, where I sit down next to Hannah and an older man. He talks about the instability, uncertainty and fear that permeates Northern Uganda. The thousands of internally displaced peoples around the region were kicked out of their villages and moved into makeshift cities, commonly referred to as "IDP camps," over a decade ago. The people want to go back home, he tells us, and many have already. The NGOs are working hard, but Uganda's government is leaving it to the NGOs, the complications are vast and too many people have no means.

Then there is the fear. The peace talks have fallen apart. The government is calling for a military campaign to get rid of the LRA, now holed up in the Central African Republic and the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Everyone fears the return of the perplexing and maniacal Joseph Kony and his band of child soldiers.

Rumors abound these days. On Monday, the New Vision carried the Page One headline, "SPLA TO ATTACK KONY HIDEOUT." There was a report that the Sudanese People's Liberation Army got in a skirmish with a band of LRA some 40 kilometers from the Sudan-Uganda border. The day after we arrived in Gulu, the logistics manager of the American Refugee Committee told us that one LRA was killed, another injured, and another captured, or something like that, in Okidi. But who knows who is who, he added, since the LRA and the UPDF basically wear the same uniforms? At Da Pub, over Nile Special beers, a man who works at a military hospital said that the 1,000 or so remnants of the LRA break into tiny cells, that they can easily slip past a battalion, and that they are basically invisible. Earlier today, a Gulu local named Anthony, twenty years old, told me that Joseph Kony knows all. He can read your thoughts and anticipate your movements.

Hannah and I go back to the guest house. We take a seat on the porch and I say that we can talk, if she wants. She is about to say something, it seems, when a roommate comes by to chat. Neither of us pay much attention to what she says. She walks off to get her phone. Hannah goes to lie down. Sitting at the porch, I feel the same urge. I then wonder what makes me so exhausted. Yesterday I blamed the sun. Before that I blamed my growing insomnia. But I can no longer explain this exhaustion.

I am alone now with my thoughts, so I get my notebook and write.

First Impressions of Kampala

We land in Entebbe airport and hire a car service to bring us to the International Youth Hostel, right next door to the American Embassy in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.

The driver silently mans the wheel while I make conversation with our guide and Hannah gazes out the rolled-down window of our silver minivan. There are wide swaths of green in this hilly landscape. Amidst the lush there are some paved roads, but many are composed of a distinct, dusty, red-orange soil - vibrant even from the plane. Along the roadsides, between conversation, I watch as we make our way past the mish-mash of lean-tos, shacks, and single-story concrete buildings with storefronts selling phone service, Coca Cola, many plastered with Visa card ads. Men and women are going about their business and, as we pass by, children stare at us. We wave and they smile in delight. Here's an interaction that, we can tell already, will prove common in our two months traversing East Africa.

Just before hitting Entebbe, we pass a white mansion at the top of a hill: the palace of President Yoweri Museveni. He is a popular president, our guide says. His claim to fame, she continues, is the creation of a free public education system - which the economist Joseph Stiglitz lauds in Globalization and its Discontents. The system is not perfect, I've read, but at least Uganda's more impovershed folks are able to get some education.

"I'm pretty sure that Museveni has been President longer than I've been alive," I say.

"How old are you?" our guide, riding shotgun, asks.

"Twenty-two."

"Yeah," she says, nodding, then shrugging.

Lately, I've been reading The Daily Monitor online, Uganda's most prominent opposition newspaper. In its op-ed pages, The Monitor never fails to offer explosive critiques of the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement - a title modified from its original name, the National Resistance Army.

"People are tired," our guide says, matter of factly. "They want a change."

As we reach the towns outside Kampala, we pass a military police barracks. Nothing special, just a cluster of dormitories surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, with a gate at the entrance manned by guards. These are the forces called in to put down demonstrations, she says, led by the opposition parties, the most major movement being the Forum for Democratic Change.

You can see the MPs coming from blocks away, because they were unmistakable red head-gear and they wield long batons. Once they reach the crowds, as you can expect, the MPs start swinging indiscriminately. "They don't care who you are," our guide says. Then you're thrown into paddy wagons and dragged off to jail. FDC and other parties have demonstrated in Kampala a lot lately, she continues, and this is usually how things turn out for them.

We are getting closer to the International Youth Hostel. In the city center, we pass a length of wall neatly covered with pro-democracy slogans. "We Are All Ugandans," one says. "Voting Should Not Divide Us."

The van kicks up some serious red-orange dust as we pass down a road that leads us ever closer to the American Embassy and our hostel. "Somewhere, Out There," plays on the radio. We are surrounded by heavy duty trucks of all shapes and sizes - which brings to mind the Amadou and Mariam song "Camions Sauvages" - rickety bodaboda taxi motor-bikes, white matatu vans lined by blue stripes, their conductors hanging out the windows and calling out their destinations, all weaving through traffic in a mad dash towards wherever. Let's just say that the traffic in Kampala is reminiscent of the old cliche "every man for himself."

On the roadside, a man nurses a stove of meat kebabs. Women sit and hawk baked ears of corn. A team of young men lift up a shack and move it closer to the street corner.

Finally, we pass the American Embassy, which looks heavily defended. A man is sitting in the grass along the road, eating porridge and chatting with a woman in a long headscarf. We ask him where we might find the International Youth Hostel. He sort of shakes his head, then walks off and returns with a companion, who instructs us to head up the hill to our left. Further up the hill, we encounter some guys who, asked about the location of our hostel, appear rather perplexed. Maybe it's up there...? But then again, that way, it's just some modest houses. Then, one of them remembers - that hostel, the one we could've booked rooms for online during our hellish 25-hour stay in the Dubai International Airport, closed three years ago. It's just a bunch of new houses now.

Graciously, the driver and our guide bring us to another suburb, up another hill, and into another hostel - this one a bit more famous, listed in the Lonely Planet East Africa guide. Hannah and I check in, set up our little tent and - as we had done during our 12-hour flight to Dubai, and at the airport, and then on our connecting flight, first to Addis Ababa then finally to Entebbe - we pine for sleep.

With all these awkward sleeping arrangements to depend on, sleep has been hard to come by. Something tells me that it will be for the rest of our trip, as well...

Photo: the dogs of Red Chili Hideaway, by Hannah Rappleye

To East Africa We Go!

Hannah Rappleye and I have been showered with love for the past few days, bidding farewell to all of our friends and family. Now, this morning, we're finally off to East Africa. The first stop is Dubai for a day. Then we'll be in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. We'll be checking out Gulu and other parts of Northern Uganda. We're staying with a friend of Rob Buchanan's near Nairobi, Kenya's capital. And of course, we're going to be in Kigali and Gitarama in Rwanda.

We're setting up a blog - haven't gotten around to naming it yet - so I'll post a link once that's up and running. Keep abreast of the latest updates. For words of support, advice, donations, etc., e-mail me at peter.holslin@gmail.com, and Hannah at hannah.rappleye@gmail.com.

We'll miss you all. It's our first time in Africa, but not our last, so wish us two a safe trip, wonderful experiences, and good luck!

A Zombie Film, With Me

Check out this "documentary," which some good friends recently made. I play the inventor of Formula Z-12, which mollifies zombies to make them domesticated. It's playing in the Brooklyn College Film Festival at BAM at around 1:00 pm on Tuesday, May 27th.

Oh, and I contributed an entry to GMP's blog, The Galiwag, about Storm Queen.

I'm done!