BOSCO Uganda

Read BOSCO staff member David Aliker's story at here.















It was Friday morning; I sat restless in the staff room starring at the wall deep in thoughts and reflections about what life is all about. The bell goes but I could not hear even when other teachers are complaining of the time keeper hitting the bell so loud that makes a lot of noise.

A few minutes late a class prefect enters the staffroom standing next to me and calls out three times and am still lost in my imagination of life, suddenly a teacher calls out in a loud rude voice”Mr.Aliker, are you not going for your lesson?” its then that I realized that the prefect was calling me for my lesson, after yawning and feeling tired I got up and left for my lesson.

My topic was LIFE IN THE CHANGING SOCIETY, leaning by the window of my classroom I apologized to my students for having been late and they all laughed because it had turned into a habit for me to be late for my lessons and leave early.

Mid way through my lesson as I told my students about the hopeless situation of life in the camps in northern Uganda; where I come from compared to life in the city in central Uganda where there is relative peace, these only provoked arguments from my students about how peaceful Uganda is and how life is what you make it explained a student.

He went further and said “the people in northern Uganda are killing themselves like cockroaches and expect government to stop them!”

Then there was a mixture of frowning and laughter but because he was a good joker all the students ended up laughing, coincidentally he was my student and friend and my students knew I could withstand all forms of stigma.

Suddenly a tall dark gloomy faced student call Komakech (meaning am unlucky) stands up and leaves the class, I could see wrinkles of tears in his eyes so I didn’t stop him and I looked on as he left the class.Realising the problem, I stopped the discussion and began to dictate notes. I kept on hearing words soundly loud in my mind like “the truth is the first casualty of war”. Again I find my self leaving the class before time to attend to the one lost sheep as students kept on giggling and murmuring.From a distance he looked like he was praying, yet he also looked like one who was reflecting on an idea.

As I got closer he asked me to leave him alone and I didn’t hid to his idea. When I approached him and asked what the problem was he didn’t answer back, and then I switched to our local language and asked him what the problem was. He then retorted “Master, why are you pretending that you are with us in our suffering?”.” You are friends and an accomplish of those who castigate us, who call us names and those who hate us that’s why you never get offended of bad things said against us. “He retorted

I then told him I was sorry if I offended him in any way but insisted on asking what was wrong, after a minute he said he was praying to God to forgive those who forsake them. Again I asked “what is the problem?”“Don’t you know I am a former child soldier?” (this) was his response - “Teacher, look am not as handsome and acceptable as my fellow students because of the scars of the war which I can’t explain and don’t understand how I found myself in it .I wonder why there was no one to save me from this acts of violence, am not only physically ugly but mentally shattered because I hear their voices and see them in my dreams crying and asking for help from their persecutors. I am full of guilt, it pains me to see other children being loved and hugged yet I have never been hugged in life.”

I then asked him “do you believe in God?” He answered “some times I feel I have faith but at times I don’t see any sense in believing in God.” he answered” I wish I had died!”Before I could answer him, the bell went and he asked to leave promising me he would open up later.

The next day was one of my saddest moments as a teacher; he had escaped from school leaving behind a note for me that he had abandoned studies because he felt he could not make it. He left his properties behind and until today I have never seen him again.

There are lots of myths about his where about which tells us of his perspective of life.During my December holidays, I got an opportunity to do research in pader district. The research was a continuous one for three years assessing the poverty level of people in the satellite camps and ways of improving their livelihood and monitoring their progress.

The research required that we interview the poorest of the satellite camps.In one home we met a woman who looked old but could have been the fangs of poverty adjusting her age. A story is told of this very woman that she loved to pray and take care of her three grand children, yet records indicated she was not as old as she looked. That she loved to pray so much that one time she kept away from the church for one week and all realized her absence including the priest who asked for her in a sermon and no body could answer, only until the next prayer that the priest was told she refused to pray in church because she was too poor to hide her nudity in church so she preferred to remain home to look after her grandchildren,

later that day the offertory was dedicated to her to buy clothes.My two colleagues who didn’t know the local language introduced themselves and since I was the interpreter I introduced self last.

On hearing my name she looked on motionless and chuckled then asked her grand children to leave and go to play. She then started narrating how her only son and daughter in law died in the war and left her with those grand children, and how she had hoped he would take care of her in old age.

Now she could not dig but collect fire wood for survival and that her son was also called ALIKER.It really touched me so much that I offered her the only money I was paid for the survey, my colleagues were also moved and offered her 20000 or 10 US $ each making 60000or 30 US $ .

In disbelieve she could not remember when she last held such money, she asked me to offer my hands for blessings from our ancestors and spat on it asking them to give me back in plenty and so did my colleagues, after hesitating because they were from different cultures and didn’t have faith.

That evening I went to our place of abode hungry and kept awake in the night reflecting on my latest experiences tears kept rolling from my eyes yet I felt great fulfillment in serving those in need and all I received was gratitude.

Here, I had come face to face with the effects of the 20 year old war on my people. Then I remembered my student and how he felt that day during my lesson. I then realized that in life there is pain that words may not describe but experience can make you appreciate their affection.

As I reflected on my students pain sleep caught up and I woke up with one resolution. QUIT TEACHING AND COME HOME TO SERVE MY PEOPLE

Opportunity strikes for those who are awake. I resigned from my teaching job on 3rd January 2007; I left the city very skeptical if what I was doing was the best. I imagined the nice people in the city, the quality social life in the city, opportunities but in all this I had faith in my conscience.

April 23rd 2007 I got an opportunity to serve Invisible Children as a volunteer; this was one of my greatest moments, joining a reputable organization with an educational background.

The motivation was so much that in four months I had got two promotions, from Education assistant to Education officer. Just as all seem to be fun with a pending visit to my childhood dream, visiting America my conscience called “what is your sense of purpose?

I adapted really well to my new found values that seemed exciting with great people and great works, most interesting was that all this was being done by young people. I then realized fulfillment is one virtue you can’t lie about and it can never be compromised with life’s favours.

My interest was with the people communicating with the suffering people and getting feedback, directly associating my self with them and here I was in a an enclosed office where you sign a form to see me doing desk work, you comfortably communicate in the white man’s language with all your guest or forever facing a computer for the rest of the day.

Yet every time I had opportunity to move out I paid a visit to my mentor Fr.Joseph to listen to his opinion about the suffering of the people and the role of a few educated locals like us especially young cadres with strong Christian upbringings on how to bring social change in our society and he always moved me.

He spoke passionately about a BOSCO project I took long to conceptualise;and why it was important to give our people an opportunity to generate information from their experiences and share them with the world, the importance of communication in the post war erra.

We often agreed and even hoped one day we could do something about it.Finally one day, under the mango tree Fr.Joseph requested me that as a product of the church it was imperative that I gave back to the church through service to BOSCO.

He had told me of my father’s role in the church and knowing him for more than a decade I had never turned him done nor doubted him yet faced with the challenges of a new organization compared to an established reputable organization made it a difficult decision.

Reluctantly I accepted without giving it serious thought. Again he placed the request to me to get on board, my worry was my small family and how it could affect us but eventually I told him” am not certain of the future, but since I have never doubted you in the last one decade, I will take it up without any more thoughts but with faith in his credibility” He only retorted “come and be lead by an old man for you to make the difference.”

Many times we are called to realize our dreams but we abscond because of fear of the unknown. We walk the path of realizing our dreams innocently and ignorantly but if there is any thing that will never break our hearts, it’s our conscience.

In BOSCO, I met a silently humorous team of work mates so respectful in thought and ways, so dependable in private and public, a true manifestation of my teachers common saying “simplicity signifies the magnanimity of the soul,” great personalities yet so simple in their ways, with a cutting edge sense of freedom and responsibility, a team of wise men never acknowledged by the community yet consulted often by the publics most intelligent brains and above all the team is a family making our fraternity a great home to live in.

This is the home of my fulfillment where virtues and values in all you do is a priority, where am directly in touch with my people both in prayer and at work, where satisfaction is not only got from earthly pleasures but ideals one stands counted for.

I feel so privileged amongst my peers to be engaged by my church at this hour in my life. Not forgetting the honor to serve an organization committed to a new concept in our generation of providing communication and information technology to foster social and economic development and peace building in rural communities using a collaborative web based approach.

I thank all those who have made it possible for me to be part of the BOSCO fraternity, I promise to give it unwinding service to the best of my ability and at all times, I further ask God to bless my action in serving humanity through BOSCO.

One of the challenges of trying to launch an innovative non-profit organization in a former war zone is that on any given day, you can run into serious and unexpected problems that can impede your progress.
One story from a couple of months ago best illustrates these surprises and challenges:

One morning, I received a call on my cell phone in Uganda: it was one of our regular users of the BOSCO network, named Jokondino, in Pagak IDP camp, a fairly large and congested camp of over 15,000 people. As an aside, Jokondino is a primary school teacher and has been using our network to find educational information on the web to enhance his knowledge of the school subjects he teaches—many teachers in northern Uganda do not receive adequate training and almost none of the primary school teachers have received a university education. Jokondino also journals about his experiences in Pagak as a primary school teacher on our BOSCO collaborative wikispace workpage (See http://bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com/Jokondino%27s+Journal).

Anyway, back to my story: Jokondino called me and told me that the network was down, he was not able to access the Internet or the central server we use to remotely store user files. At this particular time, our technical assistant was on vacation in Austria so I was left—without many technical skills—to try and figure out what was going wrong with our long range wireless computer network between all of the IDP camps. That morning I received a dozen or more calls from users in other IDP camps wondering why their access to the outside world had been cut off.

Our network uses a 100 foot TV tower to broadcast the long range WiFi signal out to all of the camps using directional antennas. The government of Uganda’s Ministry of Communication had given us written approval to broadcast from this location free of charge. After doing some preliminary testing of the network to find the problem, we were able to determine that the camps were not receiving their signals from the TV tower our equipment sits on.
I asked Fr Joseph Okumu, the Director of BOSCO-Uganda in Gulu, what we should do and he instructed me to drive out to the TV tower to see what I could find.

When I arrived at the tower—with its rusty chain link fence around it—I found a couple of security guards watching over the property, armed with AK 47 guns. In the corner of the property, lying on the ground was a large wooden box with yards of cable coming out of it—The box was labeled with the logo of the Ugandan government telecom company.

I was a bit confused, confronted with a “coup” of sorts of our TV tower. And I was certain that we never previously had used armed guards to protect our equipment. I ended up approaching the two guards and made casual conversation with them. Eventually, I inquired about what was going on and who had moved into the tower property. They informed me that it was the government telecom company. They had purchased the land and wanted to erect a cell phone antenna on top of the tower we were using to transmit our long range WiFi.

I then asked them if I could take a look around the property and they agreed to let me. I looked up at the tower through the glaring sunlight and counted the BOSCO antennas, still mounted 100 feet up—they were all accounted for. Then as my eyes followed the long, thick black cords coming down the tower from the antennas, I noticed that there was an abrupt cut in the wire, which left the wires hanging precariously five feet off the ground with nothing attached to them.
Someone had cut the wires which were attached to a couple of pieces of equipment on the ground, including a solar panel and batteries which powered the antennas on top of the tower, enabling them to transmit the Internet WiFi signal to the IDP camps. It was clear then that someone had stolen the equipment on the ground—equipment totaling almost 2,500 dollars.
Later on, we would come to find out that the government telecom company had purchased the land that the tower sat on. They wanted us to remove our equipment from the tower—it’s still not clear who actually stole the equipment we had on the ground. We did climb the tower to remove our antennas and spent the next weeks trying to figure out a way to redeploy our system on a new tower—either renting space on another tower or building our own.

Since that time we have been in discussions with the government telecom company and have come close to resolving future disputes regarding the renting of tower space for our equipment. The difficult part about this incident, from the perspective of our organization, was that we had a legal right and permission to be there and no recourse or funds to contest such a large government entity in a court of law.

Last week, we had just finished discussions with the government telecom company about the legal arrangements for renting space on the tower they had taken over for us. We went into the discussions with a clear understanding of a potential partnership: We would be providing Uganda’s poorest and most rural areas with Internet access (people who would be unable to afford a regular Internet subscription) and the government telecom company would benefit from this because we were training their customers of tomorrow. Our preliminary rental discussions had us renting tower space for about $40 a month—a reasonable rate we presumed.

Well, after going to Kampala to finalize the legal documents, we discovered that the government telecom company had inserted a price in the contract calling for rental space on the tower to be charged at $700 per month—per piece of equipment. We have 6 small antennas to mount on that tower so the total price would have come to $4200 per month! Keep in mind, building our own tower would cost between $12,000-$15,000. Of course, we didn’t sign this contract and came away a bit disappointed.

The work carries on, however, as we try to find a creative solution to this problem. We have permission to use a Catholic radio station tower in Gulu Town as a short-term solution and then are experimenting with new technology that may allow us to skip large towers all together. We hope that as we learn and overcome these challenges that we will be able to accomplish our mission of reaching all of the most rural and war-affected areas of northern Uganda.

It’s been a long while since I have updated my blog here. A lot has been happening with BOSCO since I last posted about our human rights monitoring initiative that we are doing.

In fact, you may not have known this, but between the last time I posted and now, I spent about 7 weeks in South Bend, IN working with the BOSCO board of directors and folks at the University of Notre Dame on our initiatives.

I arrived back in Gulu, Uganda last week to continue my “on the ground” efforts, working with people in the IDP camps here to find useful ways to connect them to the outside world with our solar-powered Internet PCs.

Maybe I’ll just start by giving you all an update of where the project is at now and then where I hope it will be going:

Right before I left Gulu for the US at the end of October, we had just found funding to support local capacity building. We realized that if this ICT project was going to be sustainable in the long run, we were going to have to have local, Ugandan, staff available and trained to carry out a lot of the technical computer networking tasks, especially as we expand to new sites in northern Uganda.

We were able to hire two new Ugandan staff, one as a “Technical Assistant” and the other as a “Project Coordinator.” This brings our team total in Gulu, including myself, to 6 people. We now have four Ugandan staff—our Executive Director, Fr Joseph Okumu, (seen here talking about the project) is a local Diocesan priest who is very politically and socially connected in this area and brings a ton of development expertise.

The next piece of big news is that we were able to secure an agreement with a group of local partners to expand our network to 12 new sites east of Gulu into Kitgum and Pader Districts (map of northern Uganda here). We will provide connectivity to a local NGO looking to setup ICT resource centers for youth who were formerly abducted by the LRA and have returned home. Also, we are connecting the local government offices and a couple of vocational training schools to our network. It is hard to imagine that until now, even the local government offices in district headquarters (a district here is like a state in the U.S.) still do not have access to Internet or the infrastructure for reliable service in the year 2009. We are hoping to setup an e-governance concept whereby people in rural outposts will be able to communicate and collaborate with their elected officials at the district headquarters.

We hope to begin deploying at these new sites in the next couple of months. We also will have the help of a Notre Dame engineering student this summer who is being sponsored by Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns in a summer service/internship capacity.

As for what is next on the horizon: Much of what I have begun here on the ground in Gulu and at Notre Dame will require my continued involvement into next year. Last December, when I began raising funds to support my involvement, I originally had committed to one year of service with BOSCO. As I grew comfortable with my role it has taken on something like a full-time management role. I am very invested in the future of the organization and I was lucky enough to have great support and prior experience in Uganda which made for a smooth transition into my work in Gulu.

As a final note, I came across a reflection I was reading on how we can always strive to be more compassionate with those we interact with and those we are serving. This reflection basically says: compassion is not a gesture of sympathy for those who are less fortunate or who grow up in places of violence or destruction; compassion is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a gesture of pity either; compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and investing a part of your life with them; it is about learning from them and listening to their stories while reaching out to offer your own story, giving a helping hand where possible. I think that is what I’m striving to do and I hope that is what the BOSCO project is ultimately about.

-Kevin