i can't believe i've only been here for a little over a week. i feel like it's been at least a few months. i'm finally starting to feel settled, acclimated, at home here. i don't get too lost wandering the dirt roads of the village and navigating the bus routes anymore, and i haven't been run over by a boda-boda nor eaten by a giant stork yet, so things are looking up.

luganda is starting to make a little bit of sense now. we've moved on from learning random phrases to some grammar structures, which blessedly bear a strong resemblance to spanish--the words themselves are quite different, but the structure of verb conjugations is similar, with first second and third persons, singular and plural, except luganda uses prefixes rather than suffixes to denote the subject. the other day on a bus, the fellow i was sitting next to said something in luganda to his friend, to the effect of "here comes a white girl, she can't understand luganda." and i replied in luganda "good afternoon, sir, how are you today?" the whole bus roared with laughter.

on an entirely unrelated note: i see more guns in one day here than i have in my entire life in the U.S. i suppose it comes from being a country whose history has been pockmarked with coups and rebellions nearly since its inception. but outside every bank, most electronics stores, and even many houses there are uniformed guards holding rifles. i even passed by an elementary school the other day that had an armed guard posted at the gate! i also passed by a UPDF (national army) roadblock checkpoint, and cringed internally, remembering what i'd read about their human rights abuses. i see truckloads of armed men driving past every so often--police, i think, or private security guards. and it's not so uncommon to see someone walking down the street with a huge gun strapped to their back. i think it's interesting that even women are employed in some gun-bearing professions--i have seen quite a few women wearing uniforms of ankle-length khaki dresses with the black strap of a gun slung across their chests.

we had a very interesting lecture yesterday about the war in northern uganda. the speaker basically said that there was no way there could be a peaceful resolution to the conflict as kony has no incentives to come out of the bush and surrender or sign a peace agreement. he said that the solution must be to kill kony or to hope that there will be a rebellion from within the LRA forces that would oust him from power, at which point the rebellion would disintegrate. however, the speaker was very critical of the current military operation, and said that the only way one could be successful is with a beat attack--killing kony with a quick strike right from the start, and not through a prolonged campaign. but this can only be achieved with better intelligence. i'm not sure i totally agree with him, but he made some very interesting points, and it was pretty incredible to talk to someone who actually has personal experience negotiating with the LRA.

i've submitted my first proposal on a possible research topic for my thesis: i want to look at educational resources for former child soldiers and internally displaced children in northern Uganda. i'm starting to look at possible ngos where i might be able to intern and conduct research. it's all very exciting, and starting to come together, though i am a bit sketchy on the specifics of how i will actually go about this project. ah well, i have a few weeks to plan...