Formal and Nonformal Education of Formerly Abducted Persons in Northern Uganda

Senior Thesis in Development Studies | By Kaitlyn Scott | Brown University | April 2010

ABSTRACT: Education is one of the most important elements in a country’s development.  In a post-conflict region such as northern Uganda, education is especially important as a tool to help society to rebuild and individuals to recover from the effects of war.  Those individuals who were formerly abducted by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are one group that is most in need of these recovery benefits of education, yet they face some of the greatest barriers to accessing quality education.  This study seeks to examine these educational needs and challenges, and to assess the efforts being made to provide education, both through formal schools and through nonformal education programs.

In order to study these issues, research was conducted at various nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that provide nonformal education to formerly abducted persons (FAPs), as well as at numerous formal schools in Gulu.  Additionally, the researcher co-taught at the Laroo Boarding Primary School for War Affected Children, a primary school that focuses on meeting the needs of former abductees and other vulnerable children.  The main methods of collecting information were interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and surveys. 

The central argument of this paper is that in order to provide adequate education to former abductees, changes in educational programmes need to be made both on the level of individual projects and organisations, as well as on the level of large-scale educational structures.  On the individual scale, the provision of childcare, a broad range of vocational training options, and better monitoring and follow-up support are necessary to ensure that FAPs have access to and can fully benefit from education programmes.  On a broader level, there is an urgent need for the expansion and coordination of programmes, as well as greater consideration for their long-term sustainability.  Although much of the nonformal and even formal sectors of education in the north is conducted and supported by NGOs, ultimately the government must take over more responsibility in running alternative programmes and must provide more support to the education system in the north to help it recover from the destruction caused by the war.

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heading north

we set the alarms for 4:30 am.

after a hasty gathering-up of stuff, we headed out through the dark, deserted streets of gulu. it was a bit surreal--the streets are usually so hot and loud and crowded, but now it was a complete ghost town. the overnight bus from kampala stopped at the edge of town, and after a heated argument with the conductor, who was trying to overcharge us by a ridiculous amount, we climbed aboard, past sleeping passengers, over the boxes and bundles and even old truck tires that filled the aisle.

we were heading to sudan. my roommate wanted to do some research on the agricultural trade between gulu and southern sudan, and the rest of us just wanted to go for the adventure of it. you see, when you see a border, it is very difficult to resist the urge to cross it.

the only flaw in our plan was that we did not have our passports. they had been confiscated by our academic directors, to prevent us from doing just this sort of thing--gallivanting about in neighboring countries, possibly getting into trouble, that sort of thing. it's true, that most of the countries surrounding uganda are pretty politically unstable, if not engaged in outright civil wars. but still. as my classmate who was researching family planning said exasperatedly, "sure, it sounds great to just say 'don't do it.' but you know no one will listen. so it's better to give people what they need to do it safely rather than putting them in danger by denying the fact that they'll do it anyway."

and this is how we came to the northern border of uganda, with nothing more than our student IDs and a few peoples' xeroxes of their passports. we approached the border guards, simply hoping for the best. if we got turned away, we would just head down along the border a few kilometers, away from the station, and get a boda-boda to sneak us across. [fun fact: the word boda-boda comes from a slurring of "border, border," as these motorcycle taxis were originally used to transport people from one border town to another.] employing a boda was our plan, anyway, if we managed not to get ourselves detained.

the man behind the counter demanded: "customs forms"

we handed them over.

"passports?" he said.

"er, well... we don't exactly have them with us."

"you see, they are in kampala. our teachers have taken them."

"we've got these copies of them. some, anyway"

"and our student ids."

"and my driver's license." we spewed out in a flurry.

he was unimpressed. "impossible," he said. you can't cross the border without a passport."

"please?"

"no! wait over there. i'm going to go get my supervisor."

we stood nervously in the office of the border guard, awaiting our fate. a much taller man came up to us and said gruffly "who is the head of this group?" and for no particular reason, everyone pointed at me. "come with me," he said.

i'm going to be detained, i'm going to be detained, oh no, i'm in trouble, i thought.

so he took me off into another room and started questioning me about who we were and what we were doing and such. at one point i answered that we were studying through makarere university in kampala.
"makarere university? which department?"
"um... development studies."
"that was my college! i'm in their grad school now, majoring in development studies!" he gestured to an article that he'd been reading, hidden underneath the customs forms. it was labeled with the makarere university development studies stamp.
"oh, yes i love the school. great professors, um... beautiful campus" i stumbled.
"oh yes!" he agreed heartily. and we chatted about the school for a while.

finally, he said. "well, as you are just students and won't be there for too long, i guuueees we can let you cross the border without passports. i'll write you a note of special permission from this border station, and hopefully when you get to the sudanese border station they'll let you across." and thus i emerged from the office, completely amazed at what had happened, holding a signed letter that would be our ticket to sudan.

after crossing the eerie no-man's-land between, we arrived at the sudanese border post. a tense conversation ensued but we were finally allowed across.

whoo! we were in sudan! although, it looked remarkably similar to northern uganda. but it was more the principle of the thing. and the people looked different, taller, slimmer, with darker completions. a sign near the crossing read "welcome to sudan! do not leave the road--beware of landmines." rebel soldiers with their armbands reading "SPLA" (sudan people's liberation army) milled about.

we walked along the road for a while, still not quite believing it "we're in sudan! we're in sudan!" well, southern sudan to be exact. it has previously rebelled against the sudanese government, and currently is semi-autonomous, basically with its own government and military (which, by the way, aided the ugandan military in fighting the LRA, who were in turn funded by the north sudanese government)--not that northern sudan likes this situation too much. in 2010 there will be a referendum to see whether the south will succeed, though whether the northern government will allow this is questionable.

i talked with a boda-boda driver about it there--"do you think that southern sudan will succeed?"

he answered, "all of us here in southern sudan pray that that is what will happen." he launched into a long explanation of the cultural and historical differences between the north and the south, the opression the people of the south have suffered at the hands of the north.

"do you think the northern government will allow you to succeed?"

it was kind of hard to hear his response, because we were riding a motorcycle, but he didn't seem too optomistic. there is talk of the possibility of a renewed civil war in the south. the south hasn't even been especially peaceful even since the civil war ended (though a lot of that is the result of LRA attacks there). and considering the sudanese government's response to darfuri rebels, i don't think things look too optimistic either.

anyway, we went on to the market of nimule. predictably, it looked rather like the market in gulu--women sitting on the ground beside piles of onions and grain and tomatoes stacked in pyramids, little wooded stalls with colorful fabric and pots and hair and clothing hanging on the walls. we passed a ramshackle bar, roofed with a blue tarp reading "UNHCR" (United Nations High Commission on Refugees) and a stall selling blue tins of food labeled "WFP (World Food Programme). Not for resale." ah, the irony. i guess you've gotta do what you've gotta do to get by in a postconflict zone. still, further evidence that international aid never quite goes as planned.

as we walked, i broke my sandals. again. i went through four pairs of sandals this semester. i swear that i am not usually this clumsy, but on this trip, falling into ditches and breaking my shoes (sometimes, though not always, at the same time) have become my trademark. luckily, there was a market nearby, full of cheap clothing. i selected some brown flip flops, and began bargaining with the salesman. i was worried i would have to do a complicated conversion between sudanese pounds, ugandan shillings and us $, but they took ugandan shillings. predictably, actually. i got him down to 5,000 UGX ($2.50).

there was a woman bent over the shoes, arranging them, who came and stuck out her hand to me as soon as i established the price. assuming she was his assistant, i handed her the money. she turned instantly and walked away--or rather, stumbled, to be more accurate--she was clutching a half-empty bottle of waragi, the local liquor, and made a wobbily beeline for the UNHCR-tarped bar. lovely. i'd just contributed to a common and severe problem in postconflict areas with high levels of displacement: alcoholism. however, i soon noted another problem: she had told everyone in the bar that a stupid muzungu girl was handing out lots of money (note that what i'd just accidentally given her was more than my day's rent), and the drunken hordes would soon be upon me. i paid anothe 5,000UGX for some shoes, put them on, and ran.

the rest of the day was far less exciting. we shopped around a bit, bought some traditional waist beads, took some pictures, and headed back. it took us about 6 hours to go the 60-ish km back to gulu--the bus broke down multiple times, we baked in the sun as people tried to fix it, more people were stuffed into the already overcrowded van, people attempted to tie huge sheets of metal to the roof, which kept falling off, and about half an hour outside of gulu, the bus just stopped, proclaiming it would take us no further. we finally found a taxi and made it back to our bar.

the moral of the story is: whoo! we went to sudan!

our humble abode

i live in a bar.

not in the bar, exactly, but it's in a room behind a bar. a little sketchy, yes, but the rent is $2/night, so i'm not complaining. there are about eight rooms all surrounding a central courtyard. traditionally, ugandan families would live in clusters of huts, all inhabited by extended family members. this has shifted to family compounds, and in cities where people move away from their families, compounds of unrelated people. but i like the whole communal aspect of this living arrangement.

our place is simple, but it gets the job done. there is sometimes electricity and often water from the communal tap in the courtyard. it is quite noisy--the music videos (all five of them, played on repeat) start blasting from the bar at 7:00am and don't go off until 2:00am (unless we're lucky and there's a power outage). but the larger noise issue comes from the giant pentecostal church next door. there are services every day, which start around noon and don't end until sundown. unfortunately, they have a generator, and the most powerful amplifiers i have ever encountered. every day there is a period of "being possessed by the spirit" which sounds rather like an exorcism. for quite some time, people scream at the top of their lungs, shout in tongues, moan, cry, bang on things, etc.

but in the end, it's all part of the experience. i'm glad we're not isolating ourselves in some pseudo western lifestyle, conforming to the stereotype of the privileged muzungu expatriate. i'm glad we've had the opportunity to spend practicum living like normal ugandans.



however, we've been having some trouble with one of our neighbors, an elderly lady named christine. she is a grumpy sort, who sits outside and glowers at us for hours a day and never responds when we greet her, and likes to complain loudly to the barman about how much she hates living around muzungu researchers. she once saw one of my classmates doing sit-ups in the courtyard to train for soccer season, and chucked a chair at her.

one morning, i was sitting outside reading an article about the financing of congolese rebel groups through mineral extraction, when christine came outside. i said good morning to her, and predictably she glared at me and said nothing in response.

instead, however, she returned to her room, and came out again holding a dagger. this was no pocket or kitchen knife--it was a legit dagger, with a carved wooden handle and wicked black blade. she went over to the clothesline, and proceeded to start knifing my clothes. she had slashed my favorite headscarf to shreds before my indignant shouts brought the barman to my aid and we were able to drag her away from the laundry.

the landlord came to give her a talking-to, and she responded by raising her crutch high over her head and swinging it at the landlord's face. she went off on a rant about how she doesn't like white students. then she stood in the middle of the courtyard alternately cackling and clucking like a turkey. finally she went back into her room and peered out the window, glaring at us.

strange days indeed.

mbale

the journey to mbale was quite an experience. buses in uganda are interesting places, and trips on them are far from comfortable but full of surprises. the conductors pack in as many people as possible, with little regard for the number of seats available. despite the fact that the trip is many hours long, people cram into the aisles and stand, teetering back and forth into the rows of seated passengers at every swerve. you make some new friends as strangers squish you two-to-a-seat, and you jostle and jerk and wind up nearly in each other's laps.

air conditioning does not exist in this country, and i doubt if you could find it without great difficulty in all of east africa. so in the unbearable heat, everyone sweats like mad, and the bus stinks like no other. sometimes the windows can be pried open, letting in a slightly-less-hot jet of air, and bringing with it a mist of red dust. by an hour into the trip, it has coated everything. you run your fingers down your arm and it leaves a trail; you lick your lips and taste a gritty, salty film. the roads are more potholes and ditches than roads, and paving is a strange and unusual luxury, so, particularly in the back, you go flying off your seat some six inches every few minutes. however, i discovered, if you can anticipate the bump and take a little leap just before it hits, you can catch yourself don’t crash down quite so hard on the landing.

at the stops, street vendors swarm the bus, and passengers lean out the windows to examine their wares: roasted cassava, chapattis, fried dough, big and little bananas, boiled brown eggs, sesame balls, sizzling skewers of mysterious meat, homemade passion fruit juice in sketchy used bottles. in addition to food, they sell all manner of random things—sponges, “miracle” creams, false hair, strange pills, toys, bibles, fabric. people toss out a few hundred shillings and the vendors catch the coins and pass up the goods through the windows. they send children up onto the bus—the smaller they are, the easier it is for them to weave in and out of the standing passengers with their little baskets of goods.

the strangest thing sold, in my opinion, is live chickens. they bind the feet of the chickens with cord, and take a fistful of feet in each hand as they approach the bus and swing their clucking wares at the windows to display them. people pass out some ten thousand shillings and grab the chickens, pulling them through window and shoving them under the seats for storage. i think i have finally found out why transporting live chickens is so common, despite the obvious inconveniences: pretty much no one has a refrigerator here, and even if they did, the rarity of a day without a power outage makes the storage of spoilable food a challenge. so it’s most efficient to keep the bird alive as long as possible—it stays fresher that way. (we walked into a restaurant once and asked “is there food?” as you must do here, because the answer is usually “no.” the waitress replied, “yes, and we’re making some,” as another person came in and passed a flapping chicken over the counter)

it seems remarkable to me that we were able to nearly cross the whole country in a day. on a good road, the trip would have taken some 4 hours. however, with the old bus and the stops and delays, and most especially the bad roads, our total trip time clocked in at 12 hours. i wonder what effect better infrastructure would have on uganda’s development—i think that it’s one of the cheapest, easiest, and most effective ways to improve the situation here. with good roads, i think regional disparities would reduce substantially: economic gradients would start to dissolve as goods from all over the country would become available in all markets. (though this would be bad news for the people who make money off buying goods from rural farmers at low prices and taking them into the city, where they can’t grow food, and jacking up the price) there are huge cultural and linguistic differences between people of different regions of the country (at nearly every stop on the bus ride, we heard people speaking a different language outside the windows.) some of the strong differences and cultural rifts have led to resentment over the years. but i think that with the simple improvement of infrastructure, communication would vastly increase, people would be able to travel more, interact with people of different cultures and regions, and this might promote more understanding and cooperation.

also, some people in rural areas and regions far from the outer regions feel politically marginalized. the perception of political marginalization was one of the main reasons for the war in the north, and although this was obviously not caused solely because of lack of physical access to the central government, i think that didn’t help the situation any. but if there were more communication, and more access for the rural people and those in marginal regions to the seat of government, if central government officials could more frequently and easily travel to different regions, the people might feel that the government wasn’t so removed from their lives and their problems. This might improve their situations, as the government might be better able to address these problems, and further would resolve some of the political issues facing the country.

anyway, finally about an hour from our destination, the bus simply stopped and made us get out. despite our protests that we had paid for tickets for the entire journey, they said they would go no further. so, grumbling, we had to get a taxi to take us the rest of the way.
it was lovely to see the others for easter. several of our classmates were researching in that eastern region, and others had come from other parts of the country to convene in mbale for a bit of a reunion. eastern uganda is absolutely gorgeous, full of lush mountains and waterfalls. we went hiking and swimming in mountain pools and spent a good bit of time just admiring the breathtaking views.



but the highlight of the visit was our trip to visit abayudaya, a little jewish community where one of our classmates was researching. such a community seems extremely unlikely in a country as fervently christian as uganda. nevertheless, there it is. we went there for passover services. despite the fact that many of us were not jewish, for some reason it seemed like a good thing to do. it was tricky to get there from town, however. we spent a good while trying to bargain down the boda-bodas and taxi cars. but they all wanted to charge us far more than our meager research stipends could manage. finally, we saw a cattle car—and looked at each other.

“will you take us to abayudaya?” we asked the driver.
“yes”
“for 2,000 shillings each?”
“yes”



and it was done. we clambered onto the back of the cattle car and held tight to the side rails as the truck jostled off and out of town. we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, the stares we got, a bunch of muzungus in the bed of a giant truck, at how we stumbled at every turn, at the wind that threatened to make my skirt fly up, at the general strangeness of it all.

the service was nice. but i must admit, it seemed so bizarre to be there, in a little synagogue tucked away in the mountains near the kenyan border, listening to a group of ugandans switching from their native tongue to read out hebrew prayers and sing “baruch atoh adonai.” i sang along, nostalgic for home and hillel. a little ugandan girl with cute braids and a sweet smile came up shake each of our hands and squeaked “shabbat shalom!”

"With the bittersweet taste of goodbye... I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be."

Che Guevara,
The Motorcycle Diaries

i feel like i am... in another world.

i can't believe that this is my life now. i am in school, actually--this is my semester, strange as it seems. classes ended two weeks ago, and i am now in the northern town of gulu conducting research. it is a small, quaint town, and i like it very much, though it is very... rustic, i suppose you might say. six other students and i are now staying in a small hostel, surrounded by round, thatched-roof mud huts. the bleating of goats and shouting of vendors from the marketplace nearby form a constant chorus to our lives here. the buildings are all little and low, and you can walk anywhere in town. it is a calm, quiet little place, quite welcome after two months in the craziness that is kampala, and has the feel of a southern small town in the US. you can scarcely tell that it was until quite recently the heart of a civil war zone.

the research is practically falling into my lap. i have heard gulu called "ngo city," and the name is quite apt. on the 2 km. walk to my main organization, GUSCO (gulu support the children organization), i pass a good two dozen ngos that are all doing similar work, all happy to provide me with interviews and site visits and documents to help with my thesis. the topic, by the way, is "formal and non-formal approaches to the education of formerly abducted persons in northern uganda" (a bit of a mouthful, but i'm basically studying education-focused ngos for former child soldiers and the ways they transition into formal government schooling).

i picked a focus on education partly because i felt that it was one of the least touchy subtopics in the general field of uganda's "post"conflict development. not like researching human rights abuses in the war, psychosocial issues and trauma, SGBV in the war, etc. i really wanted to avoid coming here and asking people "what happened to you in the war?" (as many people do). rather, i wanted to ask "how are you working to rebuild your lives and move forward?"

despite trying to pick a less-touchy topic, this is one of the hardest things i have ever done. i come home from my research and cry--at what i have seen and heard. these children have suffered so much, have been forced to endure such unimaginable things. GUSCO's vocational training school teaches mainly escaped child soldiers and escaped child mothers--girls who were abducted by the LRA, raped for years, and impregnated by rebel leaders. the girls come every morning to their tailoring classes, carrying the children of their captors strapped to their backs in cloth slings. most of the girls are not yet seventeen. some students have watched their families murdered, some have been forced to kill innocent civilians or even their own relatives, some have spent ten years or more in rebel captivity, some still do not know where their kidnapped brothers and sisters are, or even if they are still alive.

teaching children who are former child soldiers is rather like... teaching children who are not former child soldiers. i am working now as a teacher's assistant in a 5th grade english class at the laroo school for war-affected children. and i was rather surprised to realize that it’s pretty much the same as teaching the kids in guadalajara and bangalore—they have the same questions in class, act pretty much the same, have trouble with the same things and laugh at the same things. i must admit that at first i was quite nervous about it. i was walking on eggshells, thinking “with all these kids have been through, i don’t know how i’m ever going to be able to teach them. i mean, they might have watched their parents being murdered—i damn well better not risk making them feel bad about something as petty as grammar by saying they’ve spelled the plural form of ‘leaf’ wrong.” on my first day, i know i oughtn’t have, but i kept thinking “has he killed anyone? has she been raped? how did he get those deep scars on his face and how did she lose her leg?”

but now as i walk along the paths of the boarding school, my mind is full of other thoughts. “[] really seems to be struggling with that grammar point—i wonder how i can explain it to her differently. maybe if i use more examples? maybe she can come in at lunch tomorrow and we can do some more exercises. but [] is very quick at this—he’ll get bored if we keep going at this pace. maybe i can find another exercise for him to do while we review yesterday’s lesson.”

because in the end, they are just kids. yes, kids who have been through a lot of trauma, but kids nonetheless. and i think what they want most is not to be singled out, pitied or reminded of their past. they just want to go forward, and be treated like the normal children that they are.

if i rode boda-bodas

of course i have never taken a boda-boda. [motorcycle taxi] that would be against the program rules and dangerous. but, if i had taken a boda-boda, i might say that it is one of my favorite ways to travel. it is terrifying at first, and you cling white-knuckled to the seat (or the driver), and shout “mpola, mpola ssebo!” [slow down, sir!] at every turn. but if you just get over your fear and go with it, it is amazing.

the bumps that knock you up off the seat become a chance to fly for an instant. it feels delightfully reckless to clamber onto the back of the motorbike and listen to the engines rev, to feel the jolt of the first dips and sharp turns to weave around the potholes and ditches in the path. by evening, the air has finally lost the sweltering heat of the day and feels cool and dewy whooshing past, whipping at my face and hair. i love to tip my head back and look up at the stars as we zip along, marveling at how clear they are. and when we pass the banana field near st. peter’s church, i turn my head to take in the most incredible view: the whole city is stretched out before me, with the great hills of kampala rising and falling like waves that fade into the night sky. the bahá'í temple on the hill glows softly and all along the hills is a blanket of scattered lights that twinkle like stars. and i think to myself, i can’t believe how lucky i am to be here, riding along and seeing what i’m seeing, because this is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

that is, if i had ever taken a boda-boda, of course.