So I don't know if anyone even reads this, but if you do thanks...and sorry I haven't written in so long. It has been a hectic few weeks. I guess I will start with D.C. About a week and a half ago me, Matt, Kaylie, and Allison went down to Washington D.C. for the Northern Uganda Lobby Day and Symposium. We left Sunday the 8th and came back to Houghton late Tuesday night the 10th. We stayed at Kaylie's house which is near Baltimore. It was about an hour and fifteen minutes into the city from here house. Both days we drove to the outskirts of the city and took the metro in from there.
The first day I experienced a little "culture shock" when we got to the metro station because we had no idea how to get tickets. Everything was through machines, and we were totally confused. I could tell that people were looking at us and knew that we were not from the area. I hate that feeling, the feeling of not belonging. What was worse was that we looked like tourists, I hate being a tourist. We got some help from a nice man however, and we were soon on our way. The first days events were held at the George Washington University campus.
The events was all lectures and speeches basically from people who are either from Uganda, or well educated on the subject. First we had a morning session with a panel of 5 different people. These people included a former sex slave to the LRA and the Chief of the Acholi tribe (the tribe most affected by the war). I thought is was "ok", not the best thing I have ever gone to. For the most part I felt like people there said the same things over and over. For me, and I bet most people, the things said were things we knew already. The later sessions in the day were better because they dealt more with what will happen after the war in terms of rebuilding and humanitarian aid. I did learn a bit from that and I enjoyed them. It was just too bad that we had to drive so much the day before and we got little sleep, so it was a little difficult to stay awake.
After all that we decided to skip one of the talks and explore D.C. a little, even though we had all been there before. We went to the mall and walked around for a little and then came back to the GW campus and went to a Chinese restaurant close to there. The day ended with the film "Uganda Rising". It was a film about the history of the war and its effect on the people of Northern Uganda. It was quite moving and much more graphic than I thought it would be. The film makers seemed to hold nothing back, which I thought was good and I respected a lot. After the movie was over we quickly headed back to Kaylie's house because we were all dead at that point, and we needed to be up at 5 the next morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment