I am completely surrounded by people. I like people, but it is increasingly difficult to get anything done when your house is full of conversations all day long. I have not written a blog in days owing to the fact that the internet in our house has not been working and we have been in lectures from morning until evening. The lectures have been fantastic. The best of the year. Our lecturers have come from very diverse and interesting backgrounds. The director of the East African Standby Force, the coordinator of the Multi-Country Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration program, the head of the World Food Programme for Uganda and other interesting Ugandans with varied perspectives on development and conflict.
One of the most interesting lecturers is our instructor, Phil Lancaster, who currently resides in Victoria. He has been in some of the most interesting war zones and situations on the continent. One of the gems of the week was the statement that “the DDR challenge is one of massive unemployment”. When rebels give up their arms and prepare to go back to their communities we must look at their return primarily as a problem of unemployment and respond accordingly. Otherwise it is very easy for men and boys to return to arms.
We have also been busy preparing ourselves for our field visit this week. Most teams left this morning due to the distances to be traveled, but our team is not going far. We will be traveling to the District of Kayunga, which is primarily an agricultural district that has been neglected by international assistance (or so we think). We will leave tomorrow afternoon and will spend Monday making courtesy calls to local officials and making contacts in the main city. The rest of the week we will be traveling in pairs, one Mak U student and one Canadian, interviewing people in order to accomplish the task before us.
The aim of the Kayunga District field visit is to assess international cooperation in development and peacebuilding programs/projects and how they align with national development objectives and the Millennium Development Goals in order to identify gaps in assistance.
This will be accomplished by reviewing the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of international programs under the themes of social services, livelihood development, land issues and peacebuilding.
I have been blessed with wonderful teammates, both Canadian and Ugandan, and as I am looking at livelihoods and land conflict I should get my agricultural fix. The area is known for vanilla and passion fruit among other crops and fish, so I have my little seed bags ready for collection.
I have learned a lot this past week, both about development and conflict, as well as about myself. I am still not sure how well suited I am to life in a large city, in as much as I do not naturally enjoy its conveniences. I have been eating my meals at the local open-air market, buying chapatti, avocado and tomato. The last two evenings I went out with classmates and ate at expat restaurants. Though the food was delicious, probably the best Indian food I have ever dined on, I could just as easily eat out once a year as once a month or week as the case may be. My three lovely room mates and I made our way home while the rest of the gang went to visit Kampala’s night club scene.
All but three people from our group are heading out to field sites other than Kampala so in order to keep our suite at the University and have a place to store our belongings, rather than dragging them around the country with us, our place has become storage central. Everyone has agreed to pay a share of the room fee to balance out the costs, so it works out well for everyone. Now that everyone has come and gone I am looking forward to a day of quiet, just me and the room full of mosquitoes at present. I will eventually wander out to find an internet cafe and a bite to eat. Today is my mental day which means no taxis, no people, no fancy dining and no one to look after but myself. Rediscovering the introvert within me has made me realize how much I need this every once in a while.
