Copyright Gus Zuehlke Gus's story (thus far) of the launch of BOSCO-Uganda.

3. Foreword
One of the most important areas of development at Notre Dame
in recent years has been its increased activity in the area of social
justice. During my time as president, I felt strongly that the
traditional vision of Notre Dame producing students who were
devoted to “God, Country, and Notre Dame,” needed enrichment
Our graduates had the reputation of being outstanding citizens and
skilled lay leaders in their parishes and local communities.
However, something seemed to be lacking with regard to the
social gospel, which was becoming increasingly an area of
ecclesial concern in the late fifties and the early sixties. Therefore,
in line with the vision of the Church expressed at Vatican II, in
particular in the great conciliar document, Gaudium et Spes, I
began to encourage students, and all the members of the Notre
Dame Family, to look for new ways to spread the Gospel through
social justice projects of various kinds.
In the past fifty years, one can see great progress at Notre
Dame in this field of endeavor. One of the more recent initiatives
in social justice work has been Notre Dame’s “Uganda Initiative,”
spearheaded by Fr. John Jenkins, CSC and overseen by Fr. Bob
Dowd, CSC. This initiative was officially announced in the fall of
2006, and it is evolving into a substantial project. Our Holy Cross
priests, brothers, and sisters have been doing missionary work in
Uganda for over fifty years, and Notre Dame’s new effort can be a
fine complement to this missionary work.
Gus Zuehlke, class of 1980, has been what you might call a
“quasi ex officio” participant in our Uganda Initiative for several
years. In cooperation with a number of Ugandan bishops and
priests, several of whom are ND graduates, Gus began to help out
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4. with the refugee situation in Northern Uganda in 2003. In this part
of Uganda, which is not far from Darfur, there has been a rebellion
going on for the past twenty years. Gus undertook his ministry
under the guidance of Fr. Paul Doyle, CSC and Fr. John Dunne,
CSC. He began by giving a retreat to the Ugandan Parliament
which inspired a number of Members of Parliament to give more
help to the suffering people in the North. The book you are about
to read tells the rest of his story.
I recommend this book as a fine example of what one can do in
the area of social justice in Africa if one is willing to take some
prudent risks and follow the Holy Spirit where the Spirit leads. We
at Notre Dame have recently inaugurated our “Spirit” campaign for
development. The goal of the campaign is in part to foster the kind
of projects that Gus has undertaken. I wholeheartedly endorse his
efforts in Uganda and pray that God continues to bless these
efforts.
Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC
December 19, 2007
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103. Afterword
By Kevin Bailey
Over two years ago I made my first trip to Uganda, for a two-
week research investigation. While on my flight, I was waiting
in line for the restroom when a man in front of me asked me
where I was from—he must have noticed that I was wearing a
Notre Dame shirt. I told him that I was a student at Notre Dame.
He then introduced himself as Gus Zuehlke, a 1980 Notre Dame
graduate doing work in Uganda.
In those next few minutes, Gus explained to me that he was
starting a project in northern Uganda. Initially, his idea was to
use a technology that we take for granted in the U.S. as a method
for saving lives in the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps
of northern Uganda. These poorly protected camps had often
been raided in the past by LRA rebels, leading to the abduction
of children to use as child soldiers in their war against the
Ugandan government. Gus’s idea was to use wireless Internet,
solar-powered computers and VOIP telephony technology to
connect the isolated camps, which were often without electricity
or effective modes of communication. At the end of our
conversation outside the airplane restroom, Gus and I promised
to meet again back in South Bend to discuss shared experiences
in Uganda.
A few months later, I was returning to Uganda to teach at
a Holy Cross secondary school near Jinja, in the south of the
country. Before I left, Gus told me that he would put me in contact
with leaders from the Archdiocese of Gulu so that I could spend
a few days experiencing their hospitality. At the time, I didn’t
think I would have time to get up to the north because I was only
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104. spending nine weeks in the country, and eight of them would
be spent teaching. However, I became convinced that there was
another side of Uganda—a forgotten side—that was not apparent
to me while I was in the south.
It wasn’t until my second month of teaching that the conflict
in the north would really enter my consciousness. Next to the
school where I was teaching there was a convent of nuns, and we
would occasionally go over to eat lunch with them. After lunch
on this particular day, we had an extra hour or so, and the sisters
asked us if we wanted to see a new DVD documentary that
they had just received. It was called “Uganda Rising.” It was a
chilling and poignant description of the events that had occurred
just 200 miles north of us over the past 20 years. Watching this
documentary deeply affected me; the documentary showed how
specific policies from both within and outside of Uganda had
prolonged the duration of the conflict and were still delaying
the process of seeking a peaceful solution. It showed pictures
of disturbing human atrocities (a photo of a brain hacked out
of someone’s head was shown), killings, and of many acts of
absolute human terror. To say the least, I was touched, terrified,
moved, speechless and upset, all at the same time.
After watching it I was emotionally exhausted and had
no words to match my racing mind. Watching that DVD was
a surreal experience—one in which you realize only silence
remains. There was so much evil seen, so much gratuitous
suffering, that all that remains is the silence of God. At the time,
I could think of nothing else to do except to pray in the sisters’
chapel, so I did just that. I asked God for peace, for love, for the
softening of hardened hearts. And I thanked him for the gift of
hope in northern Uganda.
It was at this point that I started to contemplate going to the
north to learn about the conflict first-hand—to see if I could
discover the forgotten side of the Ugandan story. I thought to
myself: How can I continue to neglect this conflict and the Acholi
people who had been left behind?
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105. I did eventually make it up to northern Uganda at the end
of my time in southern Uganda. I had the chance to be hosted
by key leaders in the Archdiocese of Gulu and to visit the
displacement camps, seeing with my own eyes what had been
shown so poignantly by the “Uganda Rising” documentary and
what had been spoken about so passionately by Gus and others
during their work in Gulu.
As my senior year at Notre Dame began, I remained abreast
of news coming out of northern Uganda and kept in touch with
Gus, learning more about how communication could lend itself to
peacebuilding and development in the region. Sometime during
Christmas break I decided that I needed to return to Uganda after
graduation. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to do this, since
I learned that there was no room for any more volunteers at the
Holy Cross secondary school where I had taught the previous
summer. Northern Uganda was on my mind, yet I didn’t
know how I would be able to contribute. I talked to Gus about
possibly returning to northern Uganda to work with BOSCO
and the Archdiocese of Gulu. He agreed that there was plenty of
work to be done and that I would be able to make a substantial
contribution. So we outlined a basic proposal about what I might
work on over the course of the year in northern Uganda. It all
sounded good and exciting until I realized that BOSCO had
never had a full-time volunteer from the U.S. before. It is an
organization run full-time by committed board members who do
a fantastic job of contributing to the growth of the project from
within their other professional commitments as lay catechists, IT
specialists and physics teachers, among others.
In short, I came to the realization that to make this possible
I would need to raise all the money I needed to support myself
for the year. So I sat down, did some research, and figured out
that, with the cost of airfare, health insurance, room and board,
transportation, etc., I would need to raise almost $30,000 dollars
to support my work with BOSCO. It seemed like an impossible
task at the time, and I was not convinced that I wanted to go
forward with it. After all, I was busy trying to keep up with my
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106. classes and enjoy the last couple of months of my senior year,
while also applying to other jobs as a safety net in case returning
to northern Uganda would not be an option.
Gradually, however, the donations started rolling in from
family, friends and supporters at Notre Dame. By March, I had
raised half of the money necessary to support myself for my
work with BOSCO. And within a few weeks after that I was able
to finish my fundraising efforts. It seemed that, as I followed my
heart and sought something that I find great value in, the whole
world conspired to help me achieve it.
My role today with BOSCO as a full-time board member
in Gulu has taken on something of a combination between a
manager, administrator, consultant, trainer and friend. I visit the
IDP camps frequently to assess how the BOSCO systems are
being used and to try and facilitate greater and more effective use
of the technology so that leaders in the camps can communicate
with each other and with the archdiocese. This has helped the
Acholi people to become self-advocates for peace, by relieving
at least some of the isolation they currently experience with
the lack of communication resources in the camps and with the
outside world.
This work is really all about two Notre Dame graduates
following their hearts in the work of peacebuilding. Both Gus
and I were theology majors—one from the class of ‘80 and the
other from the class of ‘08. It is through our commitment to this
work that we seek to live fully and learn from those we encounter
along the way.
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107. Afterword
By Aliker David Martin
It was Friday morning. I sat restless with the teacher staff
in a Kampala schoolroom, staring at the wall, deep in thought
about what life is all about. The bell rang but I couldn’t hear
it. Suddenly, a few minutes later, a teacher called out in a loud
rude voice, “Mr. Aliker, are you not going for your lesson?” I
realized that the prefect was calling me to teach my lesson, so,
after yawning and feeling tired, I got up and left for my lesson.
My topic was “Life in a Changing Society.”
Midway through my lesson, I told my students about the
hopeless situation of life in the displacement camps in northern
Uganda. I told them about life in the cities in central Uganda,
where there is relative peace, compared to the life I had left
behind in the north. This only provoked arguments from my
students about how peaceful Uganda is and how “life is what you
make of it,” as one student persisted in saying. He went further
and said, “The people in northern Uganda are killing themselves
like cockroaches and expect the government to stop them!”
Then there was a mixture of frowning and laughter, but
because he was a good joker all the students ended up laughing.
Suddenly a tall dark gloomy-faced student called Komakech
(his name means “he who is unlucky”) stood up and left the class.
I could see wrinkles of tears in his eyes, so I didn’t stop him. I
simply looked on as he left the class. Realizing the problem, I
stopped the discussion and began to dictate the planned lesson.
I kept on hearing the words clearly in my mind: “The truth
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108. is the first casualty of war.” From a distance the student who left
the class looked like he was praying, yet he also looked like one
who was reflecting on an idea.
As I got closer he asked me to leave him alone, so I did as I
was told. When I approached him and asked what the problem
was, he didn’t answer back, and then I switched to our local
language dialect and asked him what the problem was. He then
retorted, “Master, why are you pretending that you are with us in
our suffering? You are friends and an accomplice of those who
castigate us, who call us names and those who hate us. That’s
why you never get offended by the bad things said against us.”
I then told him I was sorry if I offended him in any way, but
insisted on asking what was wrong. After a minute, he said he
was praying to God to forgive those who had forsaken his people
in the north.
Again I asked, “What is the problem?” He said, “Don’t you
know I am a former child soldier? Teacher, look! I am not as
handsome and acceptable as my fellow students because of
the scars of the war which I can’t explain. I wonder why there
was no one to save me from these acts of violence. I am not
only physically ugly but mentally shattered because I hear their
voices and see them in my dreams crying and asking for help
from their persecutors. I am full of guilt, it pains me to see other
children being loved and hugged, yet I have never been hugged
in my life.”
I then asked him, “Do you believe in God?” He answered,
“Sometimes I feel I have faith but at times I don’t see any sense
in believing in God. I wish I had died!” Before I could answer
him, the bell rang and he asked to leave, promising me he would
open up later.
The next day was one of my saddest moments as a teacher;
the disconsolate student had left school, leaving behind a note
for me saying that he had abandoned studies because he felt he
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109. could not make it. He left his property behind and no one has
seen or heard from him since.
During my December school holiday, I got an opportunity to
go back near home and do research in Pader district in the north.
We were assessing the poverty level of people in the satellite
displacement camps. The research required that we interview the
poorest of the poor in these camps.
In one home, my colleagues and I met a woman who looked
old; however, it may have just been the fangs of poverty adjusting
her age. A story is told of this very woman. She loved to pray and
take care of her three grandchildren. In fact, she was a regular
at church, but she had kept away from the church for one week.
All realized her absence, including the priest, who asked for
her in a sermon, only to realize nobody could answer as to her
whereabouts. The next day in church the priest was told that the
woman refused to pray in church because she was too poor to hide
her nudity in church, so she preferred to remain home to look
after her grandchildren. Later that day the offertory collection
was dedicated to her so that she could buy clothes.
My two colleagues, who didn’t know the local language in
the north, introduced themselves to the old woman. On hearing
my name, she looked on motionless and chuckled, then asked her
grandchildren to leave and go to play. She then started narrating
a story, saying that her only son and daughter-in-law died in the
war and left her with the grandchildren, and how she had hoped
the son would have been able to take care of her in her old age.
Now she could not garden but instead could only collect firewood
for survival.
It really touched me so much that I offered her the only money
I was paid for the research; my colleagues were also moved and
offered her 20,000 Uganda shillings, or $10 U.S. dollars each. In
disbelief, she could not remember when she last held so much
money. She asked me to offer my hands for blessings from our
ancestors and spat on it, asking them to give me plenty in return. My
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110. colleagues hesitated because they were from different cultures and
didn’t have faith. That evening I went to our place of abode hungry
and kept awake in the night reflecting on my latest experiences.
Tears kept rolling from my eyes, yet I felt great fulfillment in
serving those in need and all I received was gratitude.
It was here, near my original home in the north, where I had
come face to face with the effects of the 20-year-old war on my
people. Then I remembered my student and how he felt that day
during my lesson. I then realized that in life there is pain that
words may not be able to describe.
As I reflected on my student’s pain, sleep caught up to me
and I woke up with one resolution—QUIT TEACHING AND
COME HOME TO SERVE MY PEOPLE.
Opportunity always strikes for those who are awake. I
resigned from my teaching job on the third of January, 2007.1
left the city very skeptical about if what I was doing was best. I
imagined the nice people in the city, the quality social life in the
city, and unforeseen opportunities. Yet, despite all of this I had
faith in my conscience.
On April 23,2007,1 got an opportunity to serve an NGO in
the north called Invisible Children as a volunteer; this was one
of my greatest moments, joining a reputable organization with
an educational background. The motivation was so much that in
four months I received two promotions: from education assistant
to education officer.
I then received an offer through Invisible Children to visit
America. My conscience called out, “What is your sense of
purpose?” I adapted really well to my new-found values. I went
to visit America but then realized fulfillment is one virtue you
can’t lie about and it can never be compromised with life’s favors,
even visits to America.
My real interest was in communicating with the suffering
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111. people of the north, directly associating myself with them. In
my work with Invisible Children, I was in an enclosed office
where one signs forms just to see me doing desk work. Here, you
comfortably communicate in the King’s English, forever facing
a computer for the rest of the day.
Yet every time I had opportunity to get out of the office
in Gulu, I paid a visit to my mentor, Fr.Joseph Okumu, at the
Catechist Training Center. I would listen to his opinion about the
suffering of the people in the north and the role of a few educated
locals like us, especially young cadres with strong Christian
upbringing, on how to bring social change in our society. Fr. Joe
always moved me with this kind of talk.
He would speak passionately about the BOSCO project
during these times. He would tell me why it was important to
give our people an opportunity to generate information from their
experiences and share this with the world; and the importance of
communication in the postwar era.
We often agreed and even hoped one day we could do
something about it. Finally, one day, under the mango tree
outside the Catechists Training Center, Fr. Joseph told me that
as a product of the Church it was imperative that I gave back to
the Church through service to BOSCO. He had told me of my
own father’s role in the Church. I had known Fr. Joe for more
than a decade and had never doubted him. Yet I was faced with
the challenges of possibly joining BOSCO, a new organization,
compared to the comfortable job I had established with Invisible
Children, a reputable organization in the area. This made it a
difficult decision.
Reluctantly I accepted Fr. Joe’s offer. My worry was my small
family and how the change could affect us, but eventually I told
him, “I am not certain of the future, but since I have never doubted
you in the last decade, I will take it up without any more thought
but with faith in your credibility.” He only retorted, “Come and be
led by an old man, for you are going to make a difference.”
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112. Many times we are called to realize our dreams but we abscond
because of fear of the unknown. If there is anything that will never
break our hearts, it’s our conscience. In BOSCO, I met a silently
humorous team of workmates so respectful in thought and ways,
so dependable in private and public, a true manifestation of my
teachers’ common saying: “Simplicity signifies the magnanimity
of the soul.” They are great personalities yet so simple in their
ways, with a cutting-edge sense of freedom and responsibility.
This is the home of my fulfillment, where virtues and values
in all you do are a priority, where I am directly in touch with my
people both in prayer and at work, where satisfaction is not only
gotten from earthly pleasures but from ideals one stands for.
I feel so privileged amongst my peers to be engaged by
my Church at this hour in my life. It is an honor to serve an
organization committed to a new concept in our generation of
providing communication and information technology to foster
social and economic development and peacebuilding in rural
communities. I thank all those who have made it possible for me
to be part of the BOSCO family. I promise to give it unwinding
service to the best of my ability and at all times. I further ask
God to bless my action in serving humanity through BOSCO.
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113. Since my last trip to Uganda, I have been working on the
next stage of the installation of computers for BOSCO
(Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach.) My
biggest task now is to raise funds for the continuing deployment
and maintenance of the system. Anyone wanting to help in any
way with BOSCO can visit us at www.bosco-uganda.or g.
Tax-deductible donations can be sent to:
BOSCO-Uganda Relief Fund
St Bavo Church
502 West 7th Street
Mishawaka, IN 46544
For additional copies of this book, send $5.00 for each
book, plus 10% for shipping costs to:
Light to the Nations Press
22342 Brick Road
South Bend, IN 46628
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114. Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my wife, Karen Zuehlke, my parents,
Gus and Helen Zuehlke, Paul De Celles, Dr. Tom Loughran,
Kirby Falkenberg, Joe and Monica Higginbotham, Holly and
Dave Brandewie, Kevin Bailey, Dr. George Anastaplo, Father John
Dunne, CSC, Father Paul Doyle, CSC, Dr. Todd Whitmore, Fr.
Richard Warner, CSC, Bob and Margie Kloska, Fr. Ted Hesburgh,
CSC, Fr. Bob Dowd, CSC, Dr. Carolyn Woo, Sue Alwine, Joel and
Jodi Pairitz, Brian and Barb Finkelstein, Chris and Julie Watkins,
Melissa Paulsen, Jessica McManus Warnell, Fr. Bill Miscamble,
CSC, and Dr. Joe Bagiackas for their help and advice.
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