Gulu....Who Knew?

My friend Katherine has just alerted me to something I hadn’t really noticed about this blog. I’m posting all these missives from Northern Uganda, but reading them, you can’t tell why the heck I came here.

This is why Katherine is one of my dearest friends. She always has my back. She’s a “heart friend,” one of those people whose personal energy just jumpstarts your senses every time you’re near her. I met her at a boot-scootin’ cowboy bar in Kalispell, Montana, in 1992, if memory serves. I was there with a group of women journalists who belong to a group called Journalism and Women Symposium or “JAWS."

That acronym is a perfect fit. Katherine literally embodied the driving force of JAWS. When we met, she was a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, so right away, you knew girlfriend was not afraid to break you off a piece of her mind. While I watched her out on the dance floor, yeee-hawing through a chorus of “Achy Breaky Heart,” I knew I could roll with a chick like her.

We’ve been rolling ever since, though not as often as I’d like. Somehow, life and career drama always manage to consume most of your time and energy, and you look up one day and you haven’t seen or spoken to that heart friend in months…even years. But as sure as my name is Rachel, I know that the next time I see Katherine, we’ll just pick up where we left off.

I also know that within an hour or so, she’ll have me sobbing like a baby. I can go years without crying for any reason, but when Katherine and I get to gabbing, let the good red wine and the tears flow! We seem to always peel away the layers and get right to the heart of our lives. She’s my “Sister of the Prairie.” We’re both from Illinois….Cairo for me and Moline for her… and we’ve both spent the last few decades deprogramming ourselves from the ritual brain washing of a shame-based culture (a.k.a “Midwestern values.”)

Anyway, Katherine’s critique was right on time, so I’m using this post to explain how in the world I wound up in Gulu, Uganda. The quick and dirty answer is that I’m here working with an organization called “Internews.” The group’s mission is to provide training in critical issues for journalists around the world. I’ve led 4 previous short-term journalism workshops for Internews in Ethiopia and Nigeria, for print and radio reporters who cover HIV/AIDS. This time, I’m training radio journalists who are covering the recent peace talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel armies who’ve been killing and terrorizing the people for the past 20 years.

More about war and peace later. (Although I’m sure many of you out there think I’m out of my freakin’ mind for coming to a war zone for ANY reason.)

The longer answer involves making a difference. I’m 45, and by the time I’m 50, I’ll have lived more than half of my life. Personally, I plan to be the baddest, hottest 50 year old woman who ever walked the face of the earth, but even so, I'll be 50. By that point, you get to wondering what you’ve accomplished in life, and whether you’ve contributed anything of real value to the world. My work with Internews has helped tremendously…I get more fulfillment from this kind of work than any other aspect of my career.

But check this out….I have a pathological need to help. I’m a nurturer at heart. Sure, if you don’t know me, I can seem reserved and aloof. That’s because I’m intensely shy, and have waged my own war to hide that fact all my life. But once you get to know me, you realize that I’m a born cheerleader, a rally-er, purveyor of pep talks, the kind of woman who gets giddy when I can cook for a lot of people and watch them enjoy the food.

I’m a nourisher, I guess. So it makes sense that I’ve landed in a poverty stricken war zone. I mean, where else are you gonna be needed this much? And I believe the fact that I am a black woman in charge has to be a powerful influence in this town. A woman’s status in Africa is most often deplorable, e.g. less access to education, most likely to die in childbirth, vulnerable to HIV because the culture demands that a woman defer to her husband sexually, no matter who he’s been sleeping around with.

These kinds of challenges are as clear as a relief map on the faces of girls and women in Gulu . When I see them, I think that could have been me. (Not that I’m grateful for slavery or anything, but I might just as easily have been born in Africa.) So when I'm given the chance to help a female journalist in Africa strengthen her ability to use her skills to empower other women, I’m gonna take it every time.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure If Internews ever opens a Baghdad office, the sentiments expressed in this column are rendered null and void.)