Today we spent time in Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement, which at one point was the largest refugee camp in the world. As of 2018, it became the second largest behind the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh.

There are over 250,000 people living in Bidi Bidi who have fled the ongoing civil war in South Sudan. That is half the population of the entire state of Wyoming, where I grew up.

Bidi Bidi is in the northernmost part of Uganda, where the climate is hot and dry; it was over 95 degrees while we were there. Before the arrival of the refugees, there was just open land and a few small villages.

Our guide for our visit was Pastor John Obonyo. Pastor John is an amazing man who has given his life to serving the people in the refugee camp. In addition to his pastoral work, he has run over 40 tapping trainings, in which he has trained more than 6000 people in TTT, so far.

Who embraces tapping
One of the most fascinating details I learned from Pastor John was how excited the local Christian pastors of various different denominations were about learning to tap and sharing it with their congregations.

The reason they were so excited about tapping has to do with something that is both spiritual and cultural. In the part of the world where Pastor John is working, there is a deep-seated fear of demonic possession. AND people fear that contact with someone possessed can pass on the evil to others. This means that people who are believed to be possessed are ostracized from society.

Pastor John shared that in many cases, people were actually struggling with PTSD or other symptoms of severe stress or trauma. When family members come to him with a possessed loved one, he first taps with them. If the tapping works, no further intervention is usually needed. If it doesn’t, he then reaches for his spiritual tools to provide help.

I find it so fascinating how much context impacts the way in which something like tapping is embraced. In the United States, in broad, general terms, one of the places that tapping is least accepted is in Christian communities because of the perception that energy work could be spiritually dangerous. And at the exact same time, the pastors of North Uganda see tapping as a vital tool to help them best serve their spiritual communities.

Presentations and reports
Once again, the local community shared with us personal stories of the power of tapping in their lives. I can’t even imagine the struggles of the lives of the refugees, and I continue to be astounded not just by the magnitude of the suffering, but also the overcoming of that suffering.

They also shared songs and dances they had created about tapping.

Accepting and giving dignity
One of the conversations we had with the leaders of the community was about the outside aid refugees received from the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, and other NGOs. As time has passed, the amount of support has diminished. Everyone in the camps receives rations of corn, beans, and oil every month, but the size of those rations has decreased.

At the end of the presentation, Pastor John and the other community leaders insisted that we join them for lunch. It is a precarious position to hear people talking about their struggle to feed themselves and their families, which is then followed by an insistence that we join them to share a meal from their very limited rations.

In these situations the best thing to do is to say “yes” with a smile. By accepting their gift of lunch, we hoped that we also extended the dignity of allowing them to take care of us. It was a simple and tasty meal of rice, potatoes, chicken, and stewed greens.

We found it humbling to be served in such a way.

Odds and Ends

My buddy
This sweet smile belongs to Emanuel, who clung to my side while we were waiting for lunch.

3 minutes, not 15 minutes
Our local organizers expressed the regret that we could only be with them for three hours of presentations and sharing, because of the five hours of travel ahead of us after our visit.

They wanted us to hear all the stories of transformation. They wanted us to know about all the healing. They wanted us to appreciate how far they had come.

In an effort to keep everyone on track, there was a lot of reminding speakers how much time they had. At one point, the MC said “And we are now going to hear testimonies that are only 15 minutes long each.”

Before the testimony could begin, our friend Placide, who has led many of the trainings in the region, grabbed the microphone and said, “The testimonies won’t be 15 minutes, but can be 3 minutes instead. All you need to do is share what you were struggling with and how you are doing now!”

As someone who has spent more than three decades attending retreats where people share their personal stories of healing and overcoming, I appreciated the firm hand they had on the wheel, as it is easy for short stories to turn into not-so-short stories.

Making ends meet
One of the things Pastor John does to support his family is raise ducks, which he then sells. He has a solar-powered incubator in his office for the eggs,which is a simple, but ingenious, set-up. A small shed, a solar panel, and a little time was all Pastor John needed to support his family and his work. When asked why ducks instead of chickens, he told us that ducks are preferable because they are more resilient to disease than chickens.

Tear Tally
By this point in the trip, any time I think about the people, the work, the struggle, the overcoming, my travel companions, or a cold bottle of water, I am brought to tears. We have moved beyond adding tears to the tally…the #teartally = all the time!

Apologies for the delay in providing updates, which is down to a couple of reasons.

First, we have spent a lot of time traveling in the last four days; we have done over 20 hours by road and taken a flight from Rwanda to Uganda.

Second, we haven’t worked directly with any communities for the last few days as we spent a full day touring around the Murchison Falls National Park.

We have just arrived in Mayo, in the north of Uganda near the border with South Sudan, where we will see tapping in action tomorrow in the refugee camps.

So, today’s update is going to be all odds and ends.

My breaking point
I reached my breaking point on Saturday.

I was tired and overwhelmed. I didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to have another conversation about failed governments, uncaring people, complex trauma, or even the amazing way in which people have managed to overcome suffering in the face of enormous difficulties.

On one level I can be gracious with myself in knowing that this is emotionally and physically hard. I am ten time zones off my normal schedule, we are constantly on the move, I haven’t been making the best eating choices, and there is new stimulus and information to digest around every corner.

At the same time, I was reminded of a comment I heard someone make around racism in the United States.

Person A said, “It is just so exhausting to have to think and talk about racism all the time.” To which Person B replied, “Now imagine how exhausting it is to live with it every moment of every day.”

It is emotionally exhausting to think about everything that is going on in the communities we are serving AND that is nothing in comparison to the daily reality of their lives.

My physical and emotional frailty (because I am human and not made of steel) is a reminder that not only do I need to keep working to make change, I also need to be someone who is sharing these stories with others, so that they too can contribute to making positive change in the world.

Fortunately, after a night's rest, a hot shower (our first of the trip), and a few restorative hours of downtime in the car listening to podcasts, I'm back in fine fettle.

Messing with podcast producers
One thing podcast creators often obsess about is their download stats. I have always been fascinated by where in the world people are listening to my podcast. When we have access to wifi, I have been downloading my normal collections of podcasts about sports and culture. It tickles me to imagine podcast producers poring over their stats from last week and seeing their first-ever downloads from Rwanda and Uganda!

Lions and tigers and bears oh my
Really it was lions and hippos and giraffes and elephants and warthogs and water buffalo and antelope oh my. We were lucky enough to spend a full day touring Murchison Falls National Part.

On arrival we were warned to stay out of the pool after dark and to stick to well-lit paths to avoid running into a hippo. It was amazing to think it was more dangerous to walk home from dinner in the park than it was to work in a prison.

Henry, a park ranger, was hired to spend the day with us and to share all sorts of fascinating facts about the park and the animals.

To see the animals coming out to drink at dawn, we left our accommodation at 6 AM and didn’t get back until early evening.

Families of elephants and giraffes were everywhere, which were so magical and majestic. We also spent about 45 minutes watching a pride of five lions as they enjoyed the spoils of their morning hunt. There were two adults, two juveniles, and one younger juvenile, who went from eating to wrestling with his siblings.

There were more species of antelope than I can remember, ranging in size from something like an elk, to fully grown at just twenty inches tall. The little ones were ridiculously cute, but we decided that US customs would not appreciate us bringing home a mini antelope, and I am guessing they wouldn't love a New York winter either.

Birds were a whole other fabulous category of delight, from small ones of the brightest electric blue you can imagine, to pairs of giant hornbills that looked like dodos.

In the afternoon we took a river cruise up the White Nile to Murchison Falls. On the way we passed pods of hippos and elephants drinking from the riverbank as we floated up to the foot of the falls.

I think this would be a good time to mention once again that nothing on this trip was paid for by the money we raised during the 24 Hours of Tapping. All our expenses are being covered by us, so rest assured that your money did not fund us seeing elephants and giraffes in Africa.

Here are a few photos and videos from the day.

At breakfast this morning my sister and I were reflecting on the trip. She said, “I’m glad we got to spend time in the park, but I am not going to remember the animals. I am going to remember the people from our trip.”

It really was a lovely break and set us up for the next segment of our trip.

Driving to Moyo
As we were leaving our national park lodge, the person helping Laney with bags asked where we were heading next. When she told him that we were on our way to Moyo he was completely confused as he could not imagine a Mzungu (term for foreigner or white foreigner) going there. That's because the only non-refugees and non-Ugandans in that part of the country are international aid workers.

Our journey to Moyo took a full day. We crossed the White Nile in a ferry, but it was mainly by car and included more than three hours on rough dirt roads where we made slow progress.

As we were bouncing up and down, avoiding rocks and potholes, our driver Pascal turned to me and said with the warmest smile “That is a Ugandan back massage”.

We are staying at a small boarding house run by the Catholic church, which is funded by a parish in Spain. When the aid effort started for the refugees in this part of the country, there were no hotels or rooms available to rent so it has served a great need.

It is clean, quiet, and calm.

I am off to rest as we have a full day ahead tomorrow with over 400 people showing up for a tapping training.