Fort Patiko

I spent most of the day on Thursday working on my binder that we are giving our teachers. It is basically all of the lessons that we have done with them and any additional lesson plans that we think will be beneficial to them in the future. I am not going to be going to school tomorrow because I am going with Lisa Swetman to Atanga to run the round table and to pick up the boys. With only one week left, there is so much that I still feel like I need to do for the research project and the binder need to be turned in, however, I always work best under pressure so I am sure I will get it all done next week.

We got the news today that tonight would be the last night of Bambu ever. The owner left and after trivia night tonight the place will close for a week or so and reopen under new management and a new name.

We walked in to Bambu and the new owner made an announcement that whoever wins the nights trivia game will win the last 4 Bambu T-Shirts ever made. I have been dying to get one of these T-Shirts, and was determined to win this time. Round 1 was filled with questions that I was 100% sure of the answer. I was extremely confident that this would be the week we would win. Round 2 continued to give us questions that we knew most of the answers. Half way through the game and we were feeling good.

The last two rounds were pretty terrible. I don’t know where they come up with some of these ridiculous questions, but most of our answers were complete guesses. Needless to say we lost, and all hopes of me ever getting a Bambu T-shirt were washed away forever. Or so I thought.

Michelle could apparently see the defeated look on my face so she worked a little bit of her magic and approached one of the members of the winning team. She bought the T-shirt off of one of the guys. It was probably the nicest thing anyone could have ever done. I now have a Bambu T-shirt; I don’t care that I did not win it because it is so cool. I will think of Michelle when I wear it every day of my life.

I got up early Friday morning and Lisa Swetman and I went to the IC office to pick up the van to take us to Atanga. We managed to get the big IC van and we were off to the Atanga round table and pick up the Atanga boys. We were both starving when the van pulled away and fortunately the driver stopped to get petro and I ran to Country bakery to get some chicken samosas. I was literally running through Gulu in white flip flops (it was all I could find early in the morning) and looking completely disheveled. As if we don’t stand out in Gulu enough, I managed to make even more people stop and stare at me. I did not care though because the chicken samosas were so delicious that it was worth all the blank stares I was getting.
I finally got back to the van and we housed the samosas in a matter of minutes. We were ready for the hour and a half bumpy ride on the long dirt road. Our mutatu driver was a really good driver; so good that he was able to get to about 110km/hour, which is very fast and extremely terrifying when you are sitting in the front seat. There seems to be no system of driving here; no lines in the road, no signs, no street lights, but they just know what to do. It really is amazing, and even though I was a little scared of driving head on with another mutatu at mock speed; I felt confident that he knew what he was doing and that we would be safe.
Other than the bumpy, scary ride, Lisa and I had a great drive up to Atanga and a good talk. I look forward to purchasing her music on itunes when I get back to the States, and cant wait to set up a Teacher Exchange reunion to visit her in New Orleans, well Baton Rouge.

We pulled in to Atanga after only 50 minutes. This ride usually takes 90 minutes. That should tell you how fast he was going. When we arrived we immediately saw Bill, followed by Big John. Kevin was in class so I gave Bill my video camera to film him for a little while. As I was standing outside of Kevin’s class I saw a bunch of kids walk by leading a goat. The day before the students almost started a mini riot because they were promised a goat by the headmaster for a competition they won. The headmaster kept promising them the goat, and the goat never came. Today they finally got their goat and everyone was happy. I knew what they were going to do with this poor goat, so it was difficult to watch it frolic along without a care in the world. They led the goat to the nearest tree, tied a rope around its arms and legs, and hung it up. Not long after did they kill it (I am trying to give as little detail as possible) and skin it. It was pretty disgusting, but very interesting to watch. The boys were so welcoming to Lisa and myself and they all came up to us and wanted to shake our hand. They loved the video camera and all kept walking in front of the camera as I was trying to film the butchering.

After taking all I could stomach of the butchering we went inside and started the round table. It was a very quick round table because all we had to discuss was the observations (which have already been set up), goals for the final week, and the Fort Patiko trip on Saturday. It is just Bill, Kevin and Big John in Atanga so the round table went very smooth and their teachers are all very nice men. As we were leaving their school we drove past the poor goat again (no longer even recognizable) and the students were taking out the stomach of the goat. It was a little too much for me to stomach, and I was happy to not be there when they roasted the goat because I did not want to be forced to eat anything.

We stopped by the boys “hotel” on the way back to Gulu. It is not terrible, but it is a very different experience from where we are living at Katharina’s. They do not have much, no electricity, no shower, no tv, basically no fun at all. They have chicken and other little animals basically living with them and I have to admit that I am very happy to be staying at Katharina’s after seeing where they are staying. We are not living the life of luxury by any stretch of the imagination, but compared to them we kind of are.

Anyway, on the way home Lisa and I caught the boys up on what has been happening in Gulu all week. They are usually starving for gossip by the time they get back from a week in isolation. The ride went by very fast and before we knew it we were back at Katarina’s and saying our goodbyes to Lisa. She came with group one and stayed for an additional week because she was not quite ready to go home. I tried my hardest to get her to stay another week with us, but was not successful. It was great to get to know her and hopefully we can visit her soon in Louisiana or maybe even see her perform in St. Louis at a benefit concert Big John is talking about organizing.
After an afternoon of typing up lessons and doing a bit of research we met most of group 3 at Da Pub for a while. It was nothing terribly exciting, just a typical Friday night at Da Pub. We all had to get up early the next morning for Fort Patiko.

Fort Patiko
We met our teachers at 11:00 Saturday morning at the IC house. We all were on our way to Fort Patiko, the headquarters for the Arab slave trade of Africans. Sir Samuel Baker (who my school is named after) is the man who is accredited to ended slave trade in Uganda, and he made it into a fort, where he lived with his family.
This weekend excursion was different for us because this time our teachers and their families were invited. Tonny and Lawrence both came and they had never been to Fort Patiko so they were very excited to see it. The mutatu ride was very sketchy as there were 20 of us in the van; some were kids, but it was very jammed packed. Michael and I were the only munu’s in the van so most of the conversations that were had were in Lwo.

The ride took about an hour and I was really itching to get out when we finally got there. It was really a beautiful site and we spent the first hour or so climbing the rocks and trying to one up each other about how high we could climb on each rock. We then had an amazing BBQ. Each school was responsible for bringing a different type of food and us at SSB needed to bring fruit, the easiest thing to bring. There was enough pineapple for 100 people so we did our job.

After lunch Big John took a few of us on a tour of the Fort and it was pretty amazing. We saw machete marks in the rocks from where the slaves who were not able to work were beheaded. It was really incredible to be standing in the exact spot where all of this took place not too long ago. We also saw the cliff where people were thrown off if they were resisting the beheading. Most of our teaching partners have ancestors that were taken here, so it was very emotional for a lot of them.

After the tour we were off to hike to the top of the mountain. It might be the most fun I have had in Uganda. It was not easy and a few of us did not make it to the top (I did of course.) There were a few moments that were pretty frightening but the view from the top of the mountain was priceless. It was great to spend the day with our teachers and their families. We saw a different side of them and they saw a different side of us, which was great.

That is all I am going to write about now. I need to continue working on the research and my binder. Hope all is well at home. I’ll see you all next week.
-Ryan

P.S. The internet is very slow today so I will try to put up some pictures tomorrow.