9/19 - Sunday

We went to church with Moses and his family this morning, a small Baptist church. The service was in English interpreted in Ateso (the local language of the Teso people). They sang some songs we were familiar with and others were new, all with an African flavor.

Val started an NGO here called CLIDE Community Livestock Integrated Development. Moses has been her right hand man all along and she recently turned leadership of the organization over to Moses. There are a total of 12 employees, 6 reside in Soroti and 6 in Karamoja, about 4 hours north of here. Val leads the group in Karamoja and Moses leads the group in Soroti.

In the afternoon we traveled about an hour to the small village where Moses grew up and where his parents still live. Family is very important in Africa, divorce is rare and families are large. Moses was very excited for us to meet his parents. They are subsistence farmers and also support a number of extended family members as is common here. Moses comes from a small family of 3 children. He is the only male and as such will be responsible to care for his parents when they are too old to care for themselves. On the drive I asked Moses about his people, the Teso.

The Teso and Karamojong descended from common ancestors who migrated to Uganda from North Africa. The Teso have been peaceful but the Karamojong have a long history of being warriors. In the early 1980s the Karamojong invaded this area and stole all (yes, every one) of the cattle from the Teso and murdered many people in the process. Moses lost several family members and told us he had to hide in the bush many nights when he was a child if the raiders came. The Teso had the largest population of cattle in Uganda at that time. The Ugandan army did not help the Teso so there followed a period of conflict between the Teso and the army.

When Moses first went to work with Val and the Karamojong, his parents objected and did not trust them. Since then Moses has brought Karamojong to Soroti to visit and brought a large contingent to his wedding in 2004. The people here are beginning to trust the Karamojong and now see that they are not all bad people. In this decade the Ugandan army has recruited Teso men to help guard the border between Teso and Karamoja where the raiders pass. This has helped ease tensions but there is still a lot of distrust.