Tuesday, quick update

Greetings from Uganda. The students will undoubtedly have more to post, but I wanted to let folks know that the last two days have been spent in two remote villages about one and a half hours from Gulu town center. There we have been surveying residents, many who had been displaced because of the long years of fighting, to get a sense of the current condition and need for transportation. In each village we processed around 100 applications from people who wanted to benefit from the Bicycles Against Poverty program. We hope to provide bikes at half the actual cost to around 50% of the applicants. Each person who receives a bike will pay back about $2 to $3 a month to enable us to buy more bikes. This is where the real work of the group began and while it has been challenging at times, I think the volunteers are in good spirits and feeling excited about the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of these families. Many of the villagers are farmers and must trek along very rutted dusty roads in the bush to get to markets, their own gardens, or to hospitals and social services.

I'll let others write more about that, but I wanted to share with you an encounter I had this morning before leaving Gulu town. I was followed into a stationery store by a young man named Justin who asked to speak to me. After he helped me buy some pens and clip boards and find a place to have an official BAP stamp made, he handed me a piece of paper. On it was neatly written his situation. After asking God to bless me, he asked for help. Justin had arrived in Gulu the night before from one of the Internally Displaced Persons camps with his sister who was very ill. She is 19 and suffering from HIV/AIDS. While his grandmother was to come to Gulu today to pay for the hospital stay, Justin had no money. He and his sister had not eaten. The hospitals provide what treatment they can, but it is up to the patient's family to provide food here. He asked if I would buy some beans at the local market for him and his sister in exchange for his help. He was very sincere and clearly worried about his sister who had been coughing up blood. During our walking, he explained that he had been captured by the rebel army and was living in the bush as a child soldier when he escaped about 5 years ago. The commander of his unit came looking for him in his village and when he was not found, his parents and brothers were killed to send a message to Justin. His sister and grandmother are his only remaining relatives. I was really moved by this individual's story and left him with 10,000 Ugandan shillings. It's less than $5 for us but clearly a big sum for him. What really breaks my heart is that I know his story, but it is just one of many such tragic tales. There are thousands of other stories like it here in northern Uganda. It will take a long, long time for the legacy of a useless war to be removed from the shoulders of people here who carry these experiences each day.

I am so proud of our students who have undertaken this work. Other people have questioned why they would spend money and sacrifice their summer time to come to a place that seems forsaken by so many. But like me, they can not help but be moved by the suffereing and the resiliency of Ugandans. We hope our work will make some some difference in the lives of a few people like Justin.

Janice Butler