Bishop of N. Uganda & Youth Development Center

On Thursday, Patricia had a very important meeting with the Anglican Bishop of Northern Uganda to discuss a partnership between the Diocese of Northern Uganda and the Diocese of East Tennessee to build up the Janani Luwm Institute for Development Studies. We are all excited to learn of the eagerness of both the Tennessee Bishop and the Uganda Bishop to carrying out this vision for an institution in Northern Uganda to carry out culturally contextualized research in the field of peace and development studies.

Also on Thursday, we visited the newly opened (November 2007) Northern Uganda Youth Development Center, a Commonwealth youth program. There, they have 6 objectives: skills transfer, entrepreneurial-spirit building, HIV/AIDS education, mainstreaming gender, environment protection education, and peace and conflict management training.

Naturally, I found the peace and conflict component most interesting. According to Project Director Joseph Okema, “Although there is peace now… there is a lot of internal struggle going on. Although it looks peaceful, there is an undercurrent.” One of his visions for this center is to build a kind of museum or memorial to memorialize the struggles of the last 21 years of war.

“We have a rich history. [I dream of] building a kind of museum or memorial so that 50 years from now the things that happened can be fresh. So those who have been abducted, let their story not be lost,” said Okema.

Joseph thinks that keeping their history in the form of a memorial would help by:
1. Offering historical information that would keep alive resilience
2. Letting people learn their history and culture
3. Bringing healing and reconciliation

Dr. Hackett had a very great suggestion that since this is a center for youth, why not initiate an oral history project where youth take the initiative to gather the memorabilia of the war and interview the elders, creating a record both of traditional culture and pop culture of the Acholi. I am going to suggest this to Chairman Mao once I begin my internship with him, and hopefully this can be a program for his office that I can help to facilitate.

Bishop Ochola, a remarkable storyteller and vault of the Acholi people’s culture, has also requested that we help him to document his stories. Dr. Hackett has left our audio recorder, so once he returns from Juba, we will be spending time with him in Kitgum, recording and transcribing his traditions and tales. We are all so honored to have such request made of us. We are hoping he will allow us to include some of these stories in our “Dreams and Nightmares” book.