My ass has a permanent imprint from the back of the NAADS boda I ride an hour each way into the field every day. Charles is supposed to pick me up every morning at 8:30, but he is always tragically late so I usually chill out in the courtyard of our tiny hotel in my pajamas as my classmates come back from their runs, rush to the showers, boil water for tea when the power is on. Patiko sub-county, where Charles is the lone government extension work to train farmer groups in planting and harvesting, is a straight shoot from Gulu down a sporadically-paved road that makes my right eye tear from the dust. Half of my body is more tanned than the other, from the angle of the sun when we ride home in the afternoon.

What usually happens is Charles expertly discerns a tiny dirt trail through the bush off the main road and swerves down it until we park under a mango tree where the women of whatever farmer group we are meeting with are shelling groundnuts or mashing cassava. Most of them have returned from IDP camps in the past six months, and are either in their original villages or “satellite camps,” the limbo situation the government pretends is not a real IDP camp while the people wait to return to their original land. They bring us stools, and Charles and I usually sit for another hour before the last of the group members trickle over. There is no urgent sense of time in Gulu.

Charles tells me I can start asking questions, and I awkwardly prepare my notebook and start out with my first question, as Charles translates into Acholi. I ask them about farming before, during, and after the war, and how they benefit from the trainings they are receiving. This is the first planting season for a lot of people in almost 15 years, and because the land became much more fertile while they were away in camps, they expect yields to almost double when they harvest. Agriculture has been decimated by the war in almost every way, but the one thing that has changed for the better is the market: demand for food is almost astronomical, especially from Sudan.

My first discussion with the farmers I was terrified.

Charles typically then takes the farmers to their plot of land, and shows them how to correctly measure the spacing between rows of government-provided maize seeds. They use a string of twine with pieces of plastic bag tied every thirty centimeters as a guideline. Women dig with their hoes, then other women follow down the line sprinkling maize kernels and kicking the dirt back over with their feet. I just watch. Once, a group of women kept looking at me, then cracking up, then looking at me, and cracking up again, and finally one of them came over and gestured if I would like to try planting maize myself. I felt stupid, especially since Charles had told them I was a “farmer, just like them” and I had no idea what I was doing. I hoped I sprinkled maize into holes in a way that wasn’t horribly offensive.

On the way back, I try to duck my entire right side beneath Charles’ shadow on the boda, but I always look even darker when I get home, from the dust as well as the sun. I am usually in a good mood, and wave to small children and women carrying basins full of mangoes on their heads. When I realize I’m also waving to goats munching grass on the side of the road, I tell myself to get a grip.

One day, Charles took a detour on the way home from Ajulu Camp. He dropped me off under a mango tree in front of a mud hut, and said, “This is my family. I will be right back.” He drove off, and I looked at the man lying on a straw mat at my feet and the woman grinding some sort of rock into powder by the hut. I tried to greet them in Acholi, but elicited no response, so I sat on a stool and contemplated my existence for about forty-five minutes until Charles came swooping back on his boda to get me.

Last week I asked Charles what county he thought I came from. He squinted, and looked at me. “China?” he asked. I replied that I didn’t have Asian eyes. He said, “yes, but that’s the only difference.”

I woke up this morning to Kaitlyn shouting in the courtyard. “What are you doing…I’ll move that…STOP!!!” I ran out to find all the guests and management of the hotel standing around the room of Christine, the grumpy old woman who lives across from us. Christine was holding a knife and shouting, gesticulating angrily from her crutches.

Kaitlyn had been sitting outside reading, and had said “good morning” to Christine as she'd come out of her room. Christine had responded by marching back into her room to get a knife, and chopping to shreds the scarf Kaitlyn had hung on the clothesline to dry. She was now shouting in Acholi at everyone who would listen, and many of the other tenants, to whom she had also been horrible, were standing there, smirking.

As everyone cleared the courtyard and we remained with Kaitlyn and her scarf, Christine came back out and glared. “You are white, and you can do anything to us,” she said. Apparently she is unhappy with our research, and thinks we are abusing her rights and researching her. That would violate about twenty IRB protocols, and all of us have made sure we are completely ethical when we talk to people in the field—they don’t have to participate and give consent for their responses to be used in our final papers. I keep telling myself we’re not doing anything wrong, it was an unprovoked episode from a madwoman, but it’s still unnerving that she said that.

Yesterday I went somewhere a little unconventional. Sudan has become inseparable from my research – I’ve yet to have an interview or focus group where it wasn’t mentioned. Sudanese traders come to Gulu at night, loaded with so much money that they don’t even bother to bargain, and buy entire acres of crops still growing in fields. Because farmers can get such high prices from a guaranteed buyer, they send off all their harvest in one transaction, leaving local markets bare and making food prices here even higher. I decided I couldn’t complete my research without talking to the traders.

The academic directors had taken our passports from us before we left for practicum, because they didn’t want us trying to go to Kenya for the day. (This left us traveling on our own around Uganda for a month and a half, with no proper documentation or proof of visa, and only our word that we were Americans, but that didn’t seem to bother them. We are on the only study abroad program in Africa that has forbidden weekend travel to other countries, but I digress.) Anyway, the conflict between North and South Sudan ended at about the same time as the LRA conflict here, and trade has been extensive. I asked several people I interviewed about going to Sudan and what the risks were before I left, and was assured that there was no danger. I had heard of Nimule, a market town just across the border where it was possible to visit for a few hours without getting a visa.

Six of us decided to go, and woke up at quarter to five on Saturday morning to catch the bus to Juba as it rolled into town. The bus was practically a skeleton, and the humungous spare tire was rolling freely down the aisle, knocking my arm every time the driver hit the brakes. Once we got to Atiak, the customs point for Uganda, the border guard took one look at our driver’s licenses (mine was expired) and student ID cards and said, “no way.” We stood outside, conferencing for a minute, when the guard came back out to fetch us. He told us he would expect us back at the border in three hours, and wrote us what was essentially a permission slip to show the Sudanese border agents on the other side.

Once getting over the whole thrill of being in Sudan, the whole thing was pretty normal. It looked similar to the Ugandan side, except flatter and drier, with higher hills looming in the background. The people were shyer, and only the children came up to us, following us and laughing. We walked down the Juba road for about a half-hour before we came to Nimule, an outpost with boda men and trucks parked around a tree, and a small market with stalls on the other side. I found the pavilion in the center where women sat on blankets selling piles of cabbage, onions, and tomatoes, and started working my way around, talking to them. They all spoke English. Most of them had come back from refugee camps in Uganda within the past few years, and either traveled to the Gulu markets themselves or bought Ugandan produce from the traders that parked under the tree. But most of the sellers seem to think that within a year Sudan will start producing again and stop buying so much produce from Uganda. To thank them for talking to me, I purchased a backpack-full of onions, which will last us for many nights of guacamole to come.

The little hiccup of the trip didn’t start until we were in the taxi on the way back. By the time were got to Gulu, we had been in the car for three hours longer than necessary and the taxi had changed all four of its tires. Back home, we are now all afraid to hang our clothes on the line, but management has threatened to kick Christine out if she tries anything again. Later, as she walked past us on her way back from the bathroom, she started babbling in incoherent noises that sounded like a mix between the girl from “The Exorcist” and a turkey. She then threw her head back and laughed, as if to say, “research this.”

My research here is going well. I don't think I've ever felt this relaxingly productive in my college career. I have very low-key, manageable days, talking to farmer groups and UN organizations. It’s hard to sleep in past seven because my classmates are obsessed with jogging, and I usually have a couple of hours in the morning before I go into the field. Living here is like living in weird NGO world. The seven of us in Gulu each have six weeks to complete our individual research projects, and we all live together and come home at night to make dinner (read: guacamole) together and talk about our various interviews of the day. Whenever anyone hits a road block, they just get out the NGO guide and start calling numbers. I’ve gotten used to spotting the same logoed Land Cruisers passing me on the road as I walk to appointments. When I think about it, I don’t know of any other circumstance under which I can imagine the past six weeks taking place. Everyone in town has come to know us in our regular spots, the tailor, the café with the most reliable outlets, the pineapple seller, the Human Rights Focus resource center where we use the internet, the Indian grocery store where we buy yogurt. In the evenings my classmates and I run into each other buying chapati and avocadoes in the market.

It’s going to be hard to go back to the real world after this utopian Research World. What do we do? Nothing, really. When people ask us how our work can help people in Gulu, we feebly respond, “uhh, well, I hope that by just talking to organizations and getting the information out there…uhh…we’ll raise awareness of the problems.” We talk to NGO staff with ambiguous titles such as “liaison for peace-building affairs” and “livelihoods project coordinator.” If I hadn’t already exhausted myself trying to figure out how everything really works, my bullshit meter would be on constant alert. But, for all the tricky conundrums of development, the one thing that can assuage my growing personal sense of uselessness is, at least they’re all Ugandan.

The office of the Norwegian Refugee Council has not one Norwegian in sight. The Gulu branch of the World Food Programme is completely Ugandan-run. Action Against Hunger, Catholic Relief Services, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization: all Ugandans. I was supposed to meet with someone from USAID named Hayden Aaronson, a suspiciously muzungu name, but he called in sick and I met with his Ugandan coworker instead. I don’t know why I had this image of white people running through the hallways of their organizations in developing countries, but thus far I have been underwhelmed by the muzungu presence here. It’s not exactly neocolonialism, though some of the donor conditions (ahem, USAID) may point in the other direction. Maybe things used to be different, but it’s pretty hard to make the case in Gulu that white people run the show.

I don’t know what this means for me, a white girl who wants to come to “help out” while simultaneously avoiding all the negative associations between her race and international aid.

The only thing I can take away from this is that white people shouldn’t look at development as anything more than an ordinary job. If I happen to be academically interested in agriculture in Africa, why shouldn’t I be able to have a career reflecting that? But I think I know just enough at this point to assume that’s ultimately benefiting me more than any African. That’s how most careers work, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it certainly doesn’t justify a holier-than-thou notion that what you’re doing is an unselfish act of charity.

I’m just happy to be here.

There was no one to take my business at the electronics shop on Saturday morning. I needed a new plug adapter for my computer, and one of the customers, a middle-aged man trying to buy a lantern, chatted with me while we waited. His name was Kennedy. He told me he hoped I would come back to Gulu and work in development, and I asked what he thought of white people engaged in aid in Africa, and he said that any development worker who is white automatically has more connections. I hear that a lot, especially when I interview farmers, and it’s so strange because people here interact with far more donors and projects than I ever do. I’m just a college student from upstate New York still trying to graduate from university, but their image of me, simply because I’m white, is that I dine with the rich bankrollers of London and Washington DC.

When it became clear we would not be waited on anytime soon in that electronics shop, Kennedy offered to take me to another place in town to buy an adapter. Never one to prolong happenstance encounters with strangers, I protested, but since it is Ugandan culture to physically take a person somewhere instead of just giving directions, I relented. On the walk to town came that inevitable, dreaded question: “do you pray?”

I decided to do something I’d never fathomed before in Uganda, and come out and admit I wasn’t Christian. “I respect many things about it, but I’m just not a spiritual person,” I replied. “Okay,” he said. The next twenty minutes were then filled by his harangues about Jesus and how people living outside the Lord are living in the dark and I must go to church and pray or else my life would never see joy and it’s not to late for me to be saved and I must choose the path of righteousness because Jesus loves me. I walked along and took it, trying to focus my mind on the plug adapter that would soon be mine. When we finally parted ways, he asked for my number, which I knew he would since everybody asks for your number, and I was so mentally exhausted that I just gave it, making a note to myself about screening my calls.

One thing here that has left my classmates and I utterly bewildered is the tendency of Ugandans to whom we give our telephone numbers to call us over and over without relent. My rural homestay father in Busia, who I knew for a total of four days, still calls me repeatedly at odd hours of the day; I have long since stopped answering. Our first week in Gulu when we were sharing a bed, Katie would jump awake at four in the morning as the housekeeper from her Kampala homestay unapologetically rang. “Hello again, Harriet. Yes. I am fine,” Katie would say in her sleep, accustomed to this ritual. People we met on taxis the first few days of the semester would unaccountably call a few months later, and you can forget about any guy you give your number to in a bar. So I was not surprised when Kennedy called me thirteen times in a row. I wish I were exaggerating but I’m not. One, two, three, thirteen. I turned my phone on silent and sat there, watching the screen light up and fade away.

Why?

Sometimes when people realize we’re not proper Christians, the politeness and chatter at the beginning slowly turns into resentment. This happens with tailors, hotel management, the old lady named Christine who lives across from us. The first few days she was so friendly, telling me about how she just moved back here from Masindi and remembering my name. Then one day Leslie hangs her gym shorts on the public line and all of a sudden Christine starts refusing to acknowledge us when we say good morning, rudely brushing us off when we try to carry her things. I’m tired of trying to force the American out of me. Sometimes we wear gym shorts and don’t go to church and have homosexual friends and eat guacamole. It’s so much more fun that way.

I’m also tired of being hit up for money, which happens at every moment of the day, either in passing (people shouting, “Muzungu! Give me some money!”) or through a long, drawn out story that ends, as a grand finale, with a request for money. Maybe it’s horrible, but I think I’ve become immune to every rehearsed, pitiful plea. I’ve moved past the stage of white guilt to the stage where I just feel used and annoyed.

I just witnessed a boda parade outside. I’m not sure what the cause was, a Manchester United victory or just boredom, but about fifty bodas crammed together snaked up and down the five-street grid that spans Gulu’s downtown, the drivers yelling and honking, a half -exasperated, half-laughing policeman failing to hold them back at the front. Bodas are probably my favorite thing about Uganda, and in Gulu they’re in no short supply. This town is smaller than my college campus, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t walk more than a few meters before I’m hit by the urge to hail a boda. I wish there were some sort of market for bodas at Tufts—it’s late at night, you’re alone, you have to walk back from Davis…

This probably means my next boyfriend will have a motorcycle.

unlike Kampala, where the power sometimes goes out, in Gulu, the power sometimes come on. We've had huge chunks of days with naught but a flickering of the lights every now and then, and when the electricity does come on, the water tends to go off. It's like camping. I've gotten used to making guacamole on the floor in the candlelight with Leslie and Ben. We've all become accustomed to picking up the sound of a generator from a mile away, knowing all too well that it means our hotel will have no power. There are very few places in town that have generators--the Indian grocery store, and that delightful little pentecostal church on the other side of my wall. I don't know which is worse, the clanking roar of the generator or the shrieking congregants cursing their souls to be rid of evil spirits. Oh wait, I do know.

religion has always perplexed me without necessarily terrifying me, but the screaming coming from that church every afternoon makes me want to dig my fingernails into my skin until there is blood. The songs are okay, even nice sometimes, but when it gets to the Jesus-wailing I just want to book it back to Brighton. Little children cry, men scream, and women shriek verses and prayers that could be heard on Zanzibar. And then there's an electronic keyboard that tries to accompany the whole thing. Ugh, that might actually be the worst part...

in other news, my malaria is gone, though it took a while for me to be able to move my shoulder again. It healed just in time for a drunk man to grab me by the arm yesterday as I was trying to enter a building and hold it in grip worthy of Arnold Schwarzeneggar. The whole management staff had to run out and pry him off me.

there's not a lot of food in Gulu, as evidenced by the one skimpy market in the middle of town. If there are no sweet potatoes at the market, there are no sweet potatoes in Gulu, and therefore any restaurant, when you order them, will simply say, 'they are not there.' Menus are useless; when entering any dining establishment it is custom to preface by asking, 'is there food?' Which may frequently be met with, 'it is not there.' Currently, pineapples are not there, much to my chagrin. Whenever pineapples are in season, mangoes are not, and vice versa. I never thought I could become sick of mangoes, but there you have it. Most nights I just end up making guacamole for dinner, as the market's three most dependable produce items happen to be the ingredients for a certain Mexican dish beloved by all muzungus. I'm taking a leaf out of my mother's book (well, except I'm not trying to substitute plain yogurt for avocados).

I've connected up with NAADS, the National Agriculture Advisory Services, and have spent the past couple of days with a farmer training worker named Charles who takes me to see his farmer groups in IDP camps. The irony that I've made it my life goal to study agriculture while barely setting foot on my farm at home never dawned on me quite so bluntly as when I first stepped onto the field where the farmers were planting maize. I wanted to collapse from thirst and from the sun, and I wasn't even holding a hoe. But it was really nice to be able to go out and see the farmers plant. They asked me if I knew any donors, and I sheepishly told them I was just a student, but they talked to me a lot about my research and told me about what it was like to try to farm during the war. Right now there is very high demand in Sudan for northern Uganda's crops, and the farmers seemed encouraged. I feel as though I am studying the right thing.

it may startle some to learn that Uganda is a Christian country. So Christian, in fact, that the only place in town apart from the Indian grocery store that has a generator is the great big pentecostal church with which I share a wall. I am asked on a regular basis if I pray, if I have been saved, if I hate the homosexuals. So at the times when there's just a little too much Jesus (aka Holy Week), we get the urge to take the first bus out of town.

Mbale is where the Abayudaya are, the largest Jewish community in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, the student body of SIT is pretty much a mirror image of what I'm used to at home (vegetarian, gay, Jewish, or some combination of the above), but I was just desiring a little more Judaism in my life. A couple of classmates are doing research in Mbale, which is right under Mount Elgon on the border of Kenya, and we Gulu-dwellers stormed down for a Passover visit.

(the bus ride down was, quite literally, the Road to Hell. The bus driver had many different horns at his disposal to compose a sort of trumpet fanfare as he barreled down the road, which was not a road so much as a dirt trail through the bush. Jamie and I made sad faces to each other the whole way there.)

on a side note, one of the most enjoyable parts of the weekend was when Kaitlyn and I happened across a Chinese grocery store. We stayed for almost a half-hour at the cash register, conversing with the shopkeepers in putonghua. I think the owners (from Shanghai) were a little extra-jolly at the prospects of meeting people in Africa who actually spoke Chinese, but it was an endearing exchange nonetheless. Beijing opera played on the tv in the background. As we left the grocery store, it was dark, and street children swarwed around us, grabbing us and shoving us and asking for money, and we were so flustered that we couldn't find our hotel, which was just one street over. I actually shouted, 'I miss China!!!'

I do though, and I think about China all the time. I don't feel the same connection as I do here, but there are things about it that I always miss. Especially in light of how I am treated as a white woman in Africa. We went on a hike up Mount Elgon on saturday, and dunked our heads under the waterfall, but I feel a little maxed-out on scenery after last semester. I know it's terrible, but I just can't find Africa nearly as beautiful as I should after seeing Tibetan prayer flags in the Himalayas. I keep thinking about going back to Yunnan and Tibet, if for nothing but an extraordinary hiking trip.

transport to the Abayudaya for shabbat was a bit of a pickle. We were running late, and there were no taxis and bodas were too expensive for the long distance, so finally someone went up to a lorry parked on the side of the road and said, 'how much?' The drivers agreed to take us for only 1500 shillings each, and we all piled into the back of the lorry, which was just a glorified pickup truck with bars overhead. I was just desperate to see the Jews.

later that night I was having some trouble with my eye, so I spent about a half-hour on the phone with my mom freaking out about losing my vision. She told me to go to the clinic to get checked for pink eye, which was a good idea considering the next morning my eye was even puffier. I also noticed some aches in my joints, no moreso than my left shoulder which felt like it had had about a million meningitis vaccines. I hobbled over to a clinic which was mercifully open on Easter Sunday, and found out that I had not only pink eye, but malaria. What a joyous gift. Fortunately because of the malarone I've been taking it's only a mild case with a slight fever. I could most aptly describe malaria as hallucinating a broken arm. Just a few more days, and I'll be good as new.

(the drive back to Gulu from Mbala was also, quite literally, the Road to Hell. With a side of malaria.)

my taxi ran over a baby goat. It frolicked the wrong way into the road and gave a dying bleat as it clunked under the wheels. Everyone in the taxi started laughing. I felt like crying.

living in Gulu is like living in weird NGO world. There's the city proper, a dusty grid swarming with bodas and airtime vendors, and then there's the NGO village up the hill, with offices of ever major NGO and UN committee in the world. It's surprisingly easy to do research here. You just make a phone call, set up an appointment, show up, ask your questions, and repeat. No one denies you, everybody wants to help. I'm having the problem that my project is almost too easy; I'm going to have to focus to make sure I don't get carried away on every little issue.

we're finally moving into a house today, after a week in real estate hell a.k.a. flooded hotel rooms (it's the rainy season). It's been hard looking for places that will rent only for one month, and have a security wall, and have electricity/a water source all at the same time, but I'm looking forward to having a permanent place to live. The other day the managers of our hotel actually called Katie, Ben, and I into a meeting; they were, of course, trying to tell us the room cost more than it did. We were not fooled. I'm a little sick of basically walking around with a $ sign on my forehead.

yesterday I went down to Lira, a couple of hours south of Gulu, to talk to the World Food Programme office there. I met with one guy, Michael Besigye, for our appointment, and when I went outside the sky was a terrifying thing to behold. The clouds were low and dark and maliciously contorting. Mr. Besigye yelled at me to get on his motorcycle so I wouldn't have to call a boda to the bus park, so I awkwardly hopped on until the rain and wind started coming down like a hurricane. Ten feet out of the compound we made a U-turn back. Luckily, just then the World Food Program Land Cruiser came barreling down the road, and the driver said he was picking some stuff up to take to the Gulu office, so Mr. Besigye arranged to me to catch a ride. Now, I may deride NGOs for thinking that no operation is complete without a shiny white Land Cruiser, but the prospect of riding in a vehicle with those baby blue UN letters on the side thrilled my inner IR nerd. I was sitting in the backseat, gloating at not having to pay the 10,000 shillings back to Gulu, when into the front seat comes Gilbert Buzu, the head of the Gulu Sub-Office. Twenty minutes of small talk later, he knows my name and life story and has invited me to 'pop in' to his office anytime to see about observing some projects in the field.

this is so much fun.

I've been in Gulu for the past few days, having taken the 8:00 am post office bus from Kampala on tuesday. Right before we left, a post office employee came on the bus and I thought she was going to make announcements about Gulu, but she just asked if anyone on the bus could lead us in prayer for a safe journey. I closed my eyes and missed New England.

I continue to be astounded by East Africa. Gulu is tucked into the corner of Ugana between Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, and has been host to the longest civil conflict in Africa, the Lord's Resistance Army rebellion. It's one of the poorest parts of Uganda, agriculturally backwards, and with most of its residents still in IDP camps. I was expecting to arrive in a war-torn, crumbling outpost with dust instead of roads and no sign of a market economy. Oh, how the media can leave us so misinformed. You would never know Gulu had been in a civil war. The roads are paved and in better shape than many of Kampala's. The only soldiers are bank security guards. The town is bright, orderly, and charming. There are guest houses everywhere and shops where you can buy five different varieties of imported cereal. The atmosphere is very laid back, and happy hour seems to be a staple of the work week.

I like Kampala, but I love Gulu. Everything is within walking distance, and in the worst cases you can just take a boda. English is still pretty prevalent, and everyone is even more friendly than in other parts of the country. There are seven of my classmates here, currently staying in hostels while we look for an apartment. Katie, Ben, and I, more cost-conscious than the rest, share a bed in a squashed room barely big enough to hold our duffle bags. When not going to interviews or exploring, we have come close to polishing off the entire fourth season of "Friends." Considering our ambitions for the next six weeks, everyone is pretty calm, and I feel significantly less stressed than I thought I would. Every day we can just get out of bed and walk to our organizations, since Gulu has a branch of just about all of them, and be back in time for lunch.

maybe I'll write again in a week when I figure out the catch.