On the road to Padibe.

Phew! Arrived at Entebbe airport early Friday morning and had a nice long drive (6 hours on some of the worst roads I’ve seen in the world…although Cambodia in 2002 comes pretty close!) up to Gulu. We stayed in Gulu for the weekend, buying some basic supplies and making plans for July in Padibe IDP Camp. We head over there tomorrow through Kitgum! Padibe is less than 1 hour south of the Sudanese border. (Check it out on Google Earth- Padibe, Kitgum, Uganda).

 

Here are some decisions we have made about our time in Padibe:

FOOD + DRINK: We will eat 2 meals a day, will a total intake of 1200 calories. This is the amount defined by the World Food Programme (WFP) of a person’s minimum caloric intake.  It breaks down to 1.5 cups of rice + 1.5 cups of beans for 2 meals a day. Plus, a banana or sweet potato when they can be secured!

-We will fetch our own water and boil it sufficiently to sterilize it for our sensitive western systems.

SUPPLIES: We will bring 3 changes of clothes, soap (yup, the local blue kind!), ground mats to sleep on, pots, jerry cans, matches, bowls, basins for washing, a big spoon and a knife. Our luxuries include sunscreen, insect repellant, malaria pills, mosquito nets, toothpaste and toothbrushes and some toilet paper (just enough to ease into whatever the system is there…we’ll keep you posted!)

TECHNOLOGY: We will keep our equipment at the Church on the outskirts of camp where we can hopefully charge (they have a generator at night) and keep our blogs rolling. There is no electricity in the camp, and certainly no internet, so we will load our blog entries onto a USB key and get someone to run it into Kitgum (around 1 hour away) and upload our entries from an internet place there.

I think that’s all the set-up for now…it seems like things are organized, of course, as soon as we arrive, I’m sure that things will change. It seems like it is really difficult to prepare for a situation like this…but, geez, it’s not like we are being forced into the camp by the government’s armed forces, or fled to the camp after our family was murdered. And, it’s not like we will be spending years of our life there either. It is one month and a choice for us, and we have a heck of a lot more resources than anyone else living there.

We are both really excited to finally be on our way-it’s been a long time coming… So little news of what is going on in the camps reach us (and we make a point of staying informed!). So ready or not, here we go…

Speak to you all soon,

Lara

Andrea in transit…first blog entry.

Good morning!…or should I say good afternoon? We have arrived in London and while sleeping on an airport bench into the early afternoon, I’m still on Canadian time and it’s early. So I’ll keep this short and for those of you that know me, that’s a challenge. However, I have realized already and this may be hard for some of you to believe, Lara is chattier than me:).

Let me start out by also introducing myself; my name is Andrea McKinlay and for the next month Lara and I will be venturing into Padibe IDP Camp together.

In 2005, I first heard about the situation in northern Uganda. However, the conflict had been taking place for almost 20 years at this time. I was curious then, as i am now, as to why I had not heard anything before? It seemed shocking that no one in my circle of friends had been informed. We watched the news and yet, not once did I recall hearing anything about northern Uganda. GuluWalk changed that.

It was at this time that I not only found out about the many ‘night commuters’ (children walking to urban areas to escape abduction), but I also found out about the numerous atrocities that were taking place throughout Acholiland and within the IDP camps. And as I dug deeper, I found out that this was not only taking place in northern Uganda, it was taking place worldwide. I was shocked again.

Over the next 3 years, I have continued to be shocked by the stories of IDPs. During on of my initial visits to an IDP camp in northern Uganda, I witnessed a fire break out. In seconds, there were many homes up in flames and the screams of people rang throughout the camp. At that moment I realized that the situation was worse than I could ever imagine.

While sitting outside Terminal 21 at Heathrow airport, the anticipation of entering the camp is buidling up. It seems like just a short time ago I was walking in Toronto, and now I am awaiting my flight to Entebbe. Before leaving home, my friends had so many question and I tried to answer them as best I could. But to be honest, I think I have more questions at this point. I will just have to wait and see what’s ahead.

I look forward to sharing our stories with you but most of all I look forward to sharing the stories of the many people in Padibe IDP Camp.

~Andrea

Lara’s 1st pre-departure entry

Hi- first of all, thanks for reading this blog.

O.k., an introduction to me: When I was in grade 3, we went on a school field trip to the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. To set the scene, I went to a Jewish day school. We were sitting in the stadium with our teacher, in awe of the large space that seats approximately 60 000 people. My teacher went on to say the following: fill and empty this stadium 100 times and then you will get an accurate picture of how many Jews perished in World War Two’s holocaust.

Needless to say, the trip to the swimming facilities and trampoline afterwards had lost some of its sense of play!

My maternal grandmother’s family were murdered in that holocaust, and I could never understand why people did not stop the slaughter, how they could not know…

Although I have lost a lot of my naivete over the years, I do feel nonetheless responsible to tell stories that people would otherwise ignore or simply be ignorant of. And I will use any medium available (photo, video, lectures, blogs etc…) to tell those stories. Change can only come with information that promotes awareness and dialogue.

I went to northern Uganda for the first time in 2004 and have since visited 3 more times. This trip will be my 5th. A lot has changed since 2004: a tentative cease-fire and peace talks, some resettlement of internally displaced people, almost no “night commuters”, less death…But still no peace, and no homes for the 1 million people still living in internal displacement camps (see “About” page). Why keep returning? Because there are women, men and children in northern Uganda that number 17 times the seats in the Olympic Stadium who are internally displaced, are very alive and need their stories to be heard.

And more globally, there are people that number 434 times the capacity of the Olympic Stadium who are internally displaced within their own countries as a result of conflict. (See “About” page, for what is an IDP?)

Despite my many trips to the north, I have never stayed in an IDP camp for an entire month. I have never lived the story in order to understand it and communicate it better. I figure it is the best way to get their stories out to you. If you feel like you would like to do something, please tell people about what you learn and visit the “Get Involved” page.

Am I scared? Well, there is always an element of the unknown…but look…straight up- I am only there for a month. I have the great fortune of coming in to “experience” IDP life and then leave back to my nice 1 bedroom apartment in Toronto. Any fear dissipates into the guilt and irony of benefiting from a system that places me in grad school in Canada, and the people I meet in an IDP camp amidst 22 years of war.

o.k., sorry I’m pretty heavy- but, in addition to all this, I am super excited to visit the friends I’ve made there and to see my friend Beatrice who just had a baby! (I’ll tell you more about her later when we meet again). I am also really looking forward to just spending time and seeing what is going on.

So, speak to you soon,

Lara

July 2008 is IDP awareness month!

Check back soon- Andrea and Lara will be blogging live from Padibe IDP Camp, Northern Uganda.