And so it goes

The past few days have been pretty good, though fairly uneventful. One thing about research is that it takes a lot of patience, which has never been one of my strong suites. The girls and their children are really amazing. For what they've been through, they seem pretty happy and stable.

I've heard some really horrible stories about things the girls were forced to do by the LRA. There's a girl who at like 12 years old was trained as a bomb expert, and another girl who stopped counting after she killed 100 people. I could keep going, but I'm short on time.

I'm leaving in a few minutes to go spend 2 nights at the compound about 20 minutes outside gulu. I'm having trouble bonding with the girls because none of them speak english so hopefully this will help. I had some bonding time earlier today with the director of the program, and she's really cool. She's American and came 3 years ago to set up the program from scratch. Now they have been invited to set up similar programs is Pakistan and Sudan. She's hanging an extra hammock up in her tent for me so in the next few days hopefully we'll get to talk more. She's usually really busy-- like today she went to go visit a girl's family who said as soon as she gets home they're going to marry her off. To get there from our center you have to take a bodaboda for a while until you get to a river, wade across the river, catch another bodaboda to the next river, wade across the river, and then walk for about an hour-- but anyways, she still manages to really get to know all of the girls and their children.

Side note: just got in the organization van to go out to the center and there is a woman in the back with me who I didn't recognize. I introduced myself and asked how she was and she said not well and that she was in town getting medicine. I said I was sorry and asked if it was malaria (people get it here like the flu). She said no and then pulled back her head scarf and I realized that she only had one eye and the whole area where her other eye should be is covered in some sort of rashy infection thing. What is with healthcare in this country!!! Not even a little bit close to acceptable.

Anyways, about to lose cell service for 2 days so I guess that's what I'm going to leave you with. Sorry to be such a downer... Despite all of the new, horrible things I'm learning about, I'm actually really enjoying myself...
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