Amazing Place, Amazing People, Amazing Projects (part 3)

Lamwo Rock Foundation for Children and Youth

I know this is the first time I am writing about the projects we were involved with in the North but I wanted to start with the last experience first as it is freshest in my mind. Part 2 and 1 will come later. 

I first met Grace in the summer of 2012 when I travelled with Niteo for the last time and we had a resource centre to dismantle.  Grace was the counsellor at the Catholic Vocational School and she translated our very first reproductive health workshop. It was a great experience and she was a fantastic interpreter: full of life and very open with the women. We will never forget her full arm illustration of what to do if you had a condom left in you… it looked like she was helping a cow deliver a breach-birth calf. Anyway, she is dynamo.

When we returned to Gulu this summer, we met up with Grace again but this time she was “working,” a.k.a volunteering, at the HIV hospital as a counsellor. She was being trained to be able to do all the other jobs there too. She was 6 months pregnant and spoke about how she would take 2 weeks off at the birth of her child and then return to work. She didn’t want to lose this job. She already has 3 boys under the age of 8 and her husband is a project manager in South Sudan so he isn’t home a lot.

When we met with her in July, she told us about a project that she, her husband and a few other board members were working to develop in a district named Lamwo. Head to Kitgum, 100km away, then continue along until you are only 20km away from Sudan and stop. That’s where they are located. She desperately wanted us to go and see the place, even for a day, but the drive would be about 4 hours each way and we just didn’t have the time to go.

The objective of Lamwo Rock Foundation for Children and Youth is to help the vulnerable members of the community continue to rebuild after the war. She spoke passionately about a piece of land that had been donated by the community and the bricks they were starting to make to build a vocational school there. The organization was sponsoring a few students as well in primary and secondary school. They also wanted to educate about HIV/AIDS. A huge mandate for a little group of people but I have seen what passionate people can accomplish here and I had no doubt that if Grace wanted it to happen, it would.

One of our objectives when Bree and I decided to head to the North for a week was to get out to Lamwo to see what this project was all about. I contacted Grace and told her we could overnight to see the projects but that we also wanted to do some reproductive health presentations if possible. She contacted me back straight away and said that she would put together a program including two presentations on reproductive health.  We were very excited. We specify that we only want 50 women per presentation but we prepare for more. We know there are always as many as the room can hold. We anticipated 150 women total and travelled with three duffle bags full specifically for this project.

Grace met us at our hotel in Gulu on the 11^th just after 8 am with a baby on her hip and a babysitter in tow. She had a daughter in October and named her Tarana which means My Light. Bree instantly fell in love and took the baby in her arms. I told Grace to check Bree’s bags when we left to make sure that there was no baby accidentally packed in with her clothes.

The drive to Kitgum is paved for about the first 2km and then the road deteriorates continuously over the next two hours. We came to a paved section that led to a new bridge over the river Kua and I almost dared to hope that the pavement would continue but 500m further along, we were back on the dirt track. It took 2 hours to cover the 100km but the part from Kitgum to Lamwo district was actually decent. Dirt but graded and “smooth” so we made the last 40km in about 45 minutes.

Our first stop was at the Lamwo Rock office where we were greeted by other board members, including Simon, a local teacher. I was surprised to see him wearing a t-shirt with our logo on it as we don’t even have t-shirts with our logo! The organization had had t-shirts printed with both logos on it for us to wear at the presentations. I was really touched that they had taken this step to unite us as we presented ourselves to the girls. On the back, the t-shirt says “Know your reproductive health. Know your HIV status to stay healthy.” Awesome message!

  

There was some handshaking necessary with the local officials to make our visit “official” as it were. Any guest in the area is expected to check-in so that the officials are in the loop and also so that if there is a problem, they know we are there. “I can’t help you with security if I don’t know you’re here.” said Molly, the representative of the president in Lamwo district. Fair enough.

We then continued to Lokung, the community where we would stay overnight, to pick up food for the 60 girls attending the first workshop as well as the serving girls and a few other board members. Lokung is a strip with small shops (including a computer lab and a photo studio) and market stalls and 3 hotels: The Bit by Bit, the Half London, and the Lokung Lodge. We stayed at the Lokung Lodge but we didn’t check in there until after the presentation.

We drove to the primary school, stopping along the way to see the piece of land that had been donated by the community to Lamwo Rock to build their vocational school. It’s 100m deep by 200m wide. The community is very interested and already very invested in this project. The land will be cleared when there are enough bricks to lay the foundations of the school.

  

As with all presentations, we started with 20 women and ended with many more than that. We had close to 60 women by the end of the presentation and once again, Grace was awesome. She would often add and embellish what we were saying because the translations were frequently much longer than our one sentence but the women asked questions and paid attention to what was being said. There was also a teacher from the school there listening to our presentation and she would interject with little comments that seemed to show some doubt about what we were saying but as we continued the presentation, we would cover what she was commenting on and she would relax. When we said that safe sex using a condom was a way to avoid HIV, she muttered, “not always” but then we went on to talk about how important it was to use a condom correctly so that it wouldn’t burst or else it wasn’t safe sex, she nodded her head in agreement.  The next day, she was more vocal but kept telling the women to pay attention to what we were saying instead of making comments to us about what we were saying. One woman asked about condoms breaking and I told her about needing to make sure about putting it on correctly. The head teacher started to say something but I continued to talk about the importance of checking the expiry date and not leaving it in the sun and she again relaxed and nodded her head. I think she was satisfied with the munu (mzungu in the North are munu.) We presented to 160 women total. We had a few extra kits with us as a just in case just in case!

At both presentations, the women asked us to train them to make the kits. We really need to find PUL here or we need to find people willing to pay to purchase it in Canada and then have it sent to Uganda. (BTW, I can get it from China but that is in a very large quantity and I am not sure it is what we want. It’s a big risk to take!)

Our evening was spent chatting with Grace and Simon about Lamwo Rock and about the community of Lokung and Lamwo. Grace told us that no-one had come into the community to offer any aid during or after the war and that Lamwo Rock was the first group willing to invest in the community and the youth. That’s why the community donated the land for the centre. Grace also told us that we were the first munu to come and do anything with the community. Others had come and gone but no-one had stopped to interact with or train the locals. We spoke about the children she is sponsoring and the challenges she has faced. She normally travels twice month to check on the students and to make sure their fees are all paid but when she was at the end of her pregnancy, she had to rely on sending money for school fees. One boy took the money and dropped out of school. She feels very sorry about that but acknowledges that it is a reality in Uganda.

The following day, after another successful presentation, Grace and Marc, the headmaster of the school, took us to see the bricks that Marc is making to build the vocational school. He has 5 piles of bricks so far. Maybe now that he is on school break, he may have time to make more. Does that just not blow your mind?

 Travelling to Lokung was awful but the time we spent there with the locals was amazing. We walked along the street (the one street) in the morning as we were waiting for Grace to get ready and the locals said hello and waved and made us feel welcome within their community. The children chased us squealing “munu! munu!” and their mothers laughed. The village was quiet and beautifully situated. It showed no visible signs of the war there only 5 years ago. 

 

Grace and the Lamwo Rock Foundation for Children and Youth team are wonderful people who are very passionate about their work. They did everything in their power to make sure we were well cared for. I think Grace was worried because we weren’t eating much but it was so hot, neither of us was hungry. We really didn’t lack for anything.

In all the time we were there, no-one from the organization asked us for money. I even had to ask how much we needed to pay for the rooms (6,000 each = $2.50CDN) and I had to remind Grace that I had to pay before we left. The fact that no-one asked for money is incredible. Everyone here asks for money so the fact that they didn’t really impressed us.

I know that Grace will make this project fly no matter what. I think that, despite the unbelievably painful drive, it will be a project I will enjoy visiting and seeing develop. It is at its very starting point now. It will be awesome to see it grow to its full potential.