the vilest offender...

Two days ago we learned that the peace talks have flopped and that fighting has resumed. It is so disheartening that the Acholi people have yearned and ached for peace for 20 years and once again, peace has been averted. The main reason for this is that the Acholi want the International Criminal Court (ICC) to drop charges against Kony, but the ICC has refused. The western definition of peace and justice is violently clashing with that of the Acholi.

A desire for peace and pardon took on new meaning for me on Sunday, when, along with 300 Acholi, I sang the hymn "To God be the glory." The line "the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives" was all at once illustrated to me more clearly and more puzzlingly.

Images of people I know visit me; a woman whose face has been severely disfigured at the hands of the LRA, a young former abductee who remembers how to smile only when he dances, a woman who during 8 years of LRA captivity gave birth to 3 babies. I cannot think of a more vile offender than Kony and yet, the Acholi deeply desire to see him pardoned. They believe that his death cannot restore the 20 years of suffering he has forced on them.

I have much to learn about theology and the Acholi people are continually teaching me.

Haley

Gulu Hospital

I am now entering my second week in working at Gulu Hospital. I am unsure how to begin to describe what my experience has been. So I will first describe its location and setting. Gulu hospital is about two miles from the HEALS office/our home and sits on a hill over looking the market. I have been walking the distance, but lately I have been able to borrow a bicycle. Very few families can afford a bicycle so I am very honored and grateful for its use. The road to the hospital is made of dark red dirt and full of pedestrians on their way to market, bodas (motorbike taxis) and bicycle taxis. The hospital is a fenced compound made up of dozens of small buildings that function as different wards (pediatrics, medicine, TB, orthopedics, surgery, maternity, etc). The set up is very different from the hospitals in the US where the hospital is one large professional building. Gulu hospital feels more like a clinic and business is conducted at an extremely slow rate and in an almost casual manner. Within the hospital compound families are everywhere sitting in the grass on mats, feeding their children, taking care of their sick family members, and waiting for medical assistance.
The hospital staff have been very warm in welcoming me. They currently have me working in the pediatric ward where we mainly treat children that are brought in from the internally displaced person (IDP) camps. Today we admited and treated many neonates and young infants with extreme malnutrition and dehydration. The families in the IDP camps are mainly farmers that have been forced off their land and into the camps because of the war. In the camp farming is not possible and families who have subsisted completely off their own work are forced to live off of small handouts from the World Food Program (WFP). The mothers (and the entire family) become malnourished and their breast feeding babies become very malnourished and dehydrated. These circumstances lower their immune systems and make them very susceptible to infectious diseases. To make matters worse diseases spread very quickly in these camps, as thousands live in extremely close quarters. We admit these children to the unit, start an IV for rehydration and give them antibiotics if available. The child recoops for a couple days and then the family is sent back to the camp--where food supplies and clean water are very scarce.
It has been very frustrating for me to see the cycles of illness that these children and families are forced to go through. The hospital lacks so many resources that in the united states medical workers (and patients!) take for granted--such as soap for hand-washing, gloves, clean beds, and proper plumbing. Depsite my personal frustration I am incredibly blessed in working with the Acholis. The doctors and nurses are very committed to their work and full of passion for the people. I pray for their passion and discipline in continuing this work. I am incredibly blessed and feel incredible peace in where God has placed me here in gulu.

Thank you for your love and prayers.
Autumn

in gulu...

We made it to Gulu! Thank you everyone for praying for our safety. That definitely helped to alleviate my anxiety. Once we were on the road, I found out that the road is much safer now that the peace talks are happening. For living in a war zone, the town of Gulu is surprisingly peaceful. Everyday the top stories in the Ugandan papers are all about the progression of the peace talks. It makes me wonder how much, if any of this makes it to the US press...

We are living in the HEALS office in Gulu. Our house is the center of much activity everyday! During the day, 39 people (most of them child mothers who lived in the bush in LRA captivity for many years) make bracelets. The bracelets are then sold on the Invisible Children website and the money is used to pay children's school fees here in Gulu. Yesterday the women taught Autumn, Abby and I how to make the bracelets. It's so fun to get to see this entire process taking place in my backyard! In the afternoons, the children come to our frontyard to play football, take photography and English classes and to do traditional dance and drumming. It is really incredible. They are amazing dancers and are attempting to teach us how to dance too. They laugh at us a lot! :)

Tonight Abby and I begin our first group counseling time with 8 girls. Tomorrow we will be leading a group of 8 boys. Out of that group of kids, Abby and I will begin meeting 1:1 with kids eventually.

I am so glad to be here and am so thankful for our group! The Acholis that we live and work with are wonderful and Abby, Casey, Autumn and I are enjoying each other a lot. We have fun group dynamics with 2 sets of siblings. The stories we hear and evidence of trauma we see is really hard, but we also laugh a lot and just enjoy being together.

More to come soon hopefully...
Haley