Gulu: Challenging the Past

Well, I’m most of the way through my first week (of two) in the northern area of Uganda, known as Gulu. John Fulks is doing some bible teaching in Arua (to the west of here), and his family, Sadie and I are staying with a missionary family, getting to visit and encourage their ministry. I’m only doing half-days or so of school with the boys and Lynnsi, but we’re all enjoying the change of pace, and a chance to fellowship (I with Lisa Coggin, and the boys with her adopted sons, Jonathan and Elisha). It’s incredibly hot here, but it cooled down nicely last night (yeah, I actually could actually get under my sheet). Now it’s back up to ‘very hot’, and the generator is off during the afternoon, so there is no cooling hope of fans until this evening. Still, the land is beautiful, and the fellowship is very good, and I’m learning so much about all that God is doing here, as well as all of the challenges that His workers face here.
Northern Uganda has an entirely different feel from the lake-side area I’ve experienced so far. It’s not that there’s a huge geographical difference (although it is a bit more flat and dry with less trees), but the cultural attitude has been radically effected here by poverty, displacement and the trauma of war and rebel attacks. On our 7-hour drive up, we drove through two IDP (internally displaced people) camps, where the huts’ roofs were touching each other, and numbering in the hundreds (maybe thousands). There has been hopelessness here, and the immediate community-relationships have been the only source of support (cutting yourself off from the community is seen as a potentially lethal action. Although living conditions are so hard for many people here, fear is still stronger than want. Change means risk, and risk has, for so many years, meant life or death (as well as isolation from the cultural norm or community). Fear is holding back the entire region from reaching out for the healing cure of change, in this time of post-survival-mode.
Lisa Coggin, the missionary and director of a fee-less school here for the village children, has shared her burden for the education of these little ones with Sadie and I. Because of the recent wars, almost a generation of the people here are uneducated and illiterate, and Lisa has a great desire to raise up this future generation in the strength of a new system of education that promotes critical thinking and reasoning as opposed to unstructured fact and rote memorization. This huge change in education has met with the very heart of the oppressive fear of change and community-separation that Gulu struggles with, yet so desperately needs! She has set before herself the daunting task of re-writing an American curriculum into Ugandan cultural contexts, and then integrating it into her school, despite the many misunderstandings (starting with the very teachers, who have only known the system of rote memorization). Please be praying for her, as she continues through the many discouragements, to do what God has put on her heart.