Announcing the arrival of Innocent Kelly!

Well, I am already back from Gulu. Our work didn't exactly go as planned, but when does it ever? Our week visit turned into an over-nighter, due primarily to the bothersome holiday for the National Resistance Movement (basically a day to celebrate the military and propagate the current government). Although we had scheduled several meetings, nobody showed up, nor did they decide to let us know that they would be absent (we came up solely to meet with Gulu University to finalize my research proposal). However I did have the pleasure of traveling in a fancy Toyota SUV and staying in the "best" hotel in Gulu, meaning I had some semblance of an air conditioner and a television with one channel (though we had to watch whatever was showing in the bar, so every time you got into a news broadcast, somebody would switch it to a Nigerian soap opera or to football/soccer).

This little trip did afford me the opportunity to meet baby Kelly - probably the happiest moment of my Ugandan existence. Now I wish that I could say that this child was given my name based on my merits, but I think it was due solely to the power of coercion. Harriet, my former colleague, was hugely pregnant while I was with ACORD and I would always dote on her, obnoxiously calling her unborn child Kelly. Somehow it stuck and others began to refer to the ball in her belly as Kelly too. I had no idea how much the name had stuck until we were en route to Gulu and Lina told me. I didn't believe her but sure enough we ran into Harriet and little baby Kelly at dinner. What a little Acholi angel. And the best part is that her second name is Innocent. If she is Kelly the Innocent, does that make me the Guilty? The other benefit to having an Acholi child named Kelly is that perhaps people will soon be able to pronounce it and I will no longer have to answer to Kerry or Karry (again, no offence Kerri).