Notes from Uganda

Back in Gulu, the largest town in Northern Uganda and epicentre of the conflict, I conducted several interviews. One of them with the man responsible for running the Child Protection Unit, a unit attached to the Ugandan army and in charge of receiving ‘returnees’, i.e. men, women and children who had fought for the LRA, lived in the bush for years or had even been born there.

The CPU is located in a derelict villa on the outskirts of Gulu. Someone told me it used to be the Idi Amin’s summer villa that he used when he travelled to Gulu, but I was never able to verify this information. My interview, on a heavy rain day, proved to me how difficult it can be to conduct fieldwork in remote areas, where English is not the main language, where questions must be phrased at their simplest and when safety, especially for a woman, must be at the forefront of our thoughts.