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.”