8:30 AM at my Internship

Our trip is winding down, and even though I am excited to come back, I am beginning to realize how much I will miss the town of Gulu. I will particularly miss the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI), where I did my internship. ARLPI is an interfaith organization based in the Acholi Sub-region of Northern Uganda that is made up of people from the Muslim, Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Seventh-Day Adventist traditions, as well as the National Fellowship of Church of Born-again churches. Founded during the middle of the recently-ended civil war in Northern Uganda in 1997, ARLPI has aimed from its inception to promote peace and development through communal dialogue.

In my two short weeks there I was able to experience a lot, but I think that what I will miss most about ARLPI are the morning devotions. Every morning during my internship, I would get up at 7:00, shower, have breakfast, and then walk four blocks to the ARLPI office, generally arriving there around 8. After dropping my stuff at Cooper's office (he's the other American intern, there 'til December, and I had a spare desk in his office while I was at ARLPI), I would wander into the boardroom and sit down to wait for the devotions to start.

I think morning devotions are technically supposed to begin at 8:00, but in practice they never start until 8:30, because most people don't arrive at the boardroom until then. First there is singing ("Good morning Jesus, good morning Lord..."). Then the preacher of the day reads a passage from scripture and gives an interpretation. After the floor opens to anyone else who would like to add their interpretatuon, someone gives a closing prayer, announcement are made, and the workday starts.

What impressed me most about morning devotions was their participatory nature. Everyone at ARLPI gets the chance to lead devotions: the program coordinator, project leaders, office assistants, interns. And everyone gets the chance to comment on what the preacher of the day says. But perhaps most impressively, both Christians and Muslims get the opportunity to preach. To be sure, there are many more Christians than Muslims at ARLPI, and when one of the Muslims lead devotions, the Qur'an is not used. But coming from a state in the U.S. where the building of a mosque can insight hostility, it was a striking experience for me to hear one of the Christian members of ARLPI wish the Muslim community at ARLPI well at the beginning of Ramadan. The Christians at ARLPI would be praying for the Muslims during the season of fasting, he added.

To me, these morning devotions encapsulate ARLPI's philosophy: just as everyone gets the chance to speak at devotions, so does ARLPI encourage peaceful dialogues in which all parties get the chance to speak.

Morning devotions will be one of the many things that I will miss about being in Gulu and Northern Uganda. I am sad to be leaving.