Don't Fight, Make Peace

I generally try to keep things fairly light here, because I think there is enough sensationalizing of the violence in Central Africa these days, but it has gotten to the point where I need to comment. In the last couple of weeks I have met a woman who got shot in the hand, was refused medical care, and subsequently had her arm amputated a month later because a severe infection had reached almost to her shoulder. Then, I met a guy who was tortured in his own home because he didn’t have enough food to give the rebels when they came and demanded everything he had. They beat him until he fell, and then they jumped up and down on him, trying to crush him to death. Then I met a boy who was kidnapped when he was 9 years old, taken into the bush and given an gun. He killed four people, then escaped, then had six of his family members murdered as a reprisal for his escape. Then I met a woman who was abducted by the LRA, shot in the groin, blasted with shrapnel, and left for dead. She got home just in time to witness the LRA murdering her husband in the garden. Then I met a woman whose father was hacked to death with machetes. Then I met a guy who was kidnapped by the LRA when he was 12 and was forced to walk through the jungles of Northern Uganda for three years carrying supplies for the rebels. He estimates he walked more than a thousand miles in that time. Then I met a man who had five siblings kidnapped by the rebels, and two of his brothers are still missing. Then I met a man who…

You can fill in the blank. And whatever you come up with, I bet I can just ask whoever is closest to me now to tell me a story about the mid 1990s and they will make your story sound like Disneyland. This is not that surprising to me, honestly. Not because I am immune to the suffering, but because I was prepared to hear these things. The thing that has really thrown me, that has really confused me, the thing that I can’t tell if it really scares me or that it really makes me sad is that I have not seen one tear being shed. I have never seen a Ugandan person cry when telling these stories. People who have lost mothers and fathers, people who have lost wives and husbands, people who have lost sons and daughters will not cry when they remember them. Why? I have asked myself that the whole time I have been here and I don’t have an answer.

Maybe it’s because it seems like wasted energy. After all, tears don’t get you out of an IDP camp. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem so tragic when it has happened to everyone around you. Maybe it’s because it all seems so surreal that they physically can’t cry. I don’t know. The disconnect between what I am being told in words and what I observe in body language is truly disconcerting. It makes it hard for me to find an appropriate response. If someone has a blank stare, what good is it for you to lose your composure?

I think, though, that I am getting some insight into this phenomena. What I am starting to realize is that Ugandans know that outside of their country, even outside of their region, the war is long gone. In fact, it may have never existed. How many people in the US know that Uganda was fighting a civil war for 20 years? When you have that kind of self-perception, you are not going to spend much time in pity for yourself, it doesn’t seem worth it. After all, if no one is crying for you, you’re certainly not going to waste your time crying for yourself.

Graduates at CCC's Reception

Sister Margaret father was murdered by the Lord’s Resistance Army in 1998. They found him on the way home from work, robbed him, and hacked him to death with machetes. Sister Margaret was studying psychology in Kenya at the time and couldn’t have known that the theories on coping and trauma she was reading about would suddenly become so relevant in her own life. Soon after her father’s death, she began to notice how many people in Uganda had similar horrific things happen to them and their families, and she saw that people were suffering. People in Uganda had no one to talk to, no one to help them understand the pain they were feeling. So Sister Margaret, partly to help heal herself, and partly to help heal her country, began to formulate the idea of creating a counseling center in Northern Uganda to help people traumatized by the war.

Surprisingly, it would be the first of its kind.

On Friday June 26, 2009, Caritas Counseling Center held its first ever graduation ceremony for the 126 peer counselors that have been trained since 2006. These are teachers, nurses, social workers, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters that have lived through war, but refuse to let it control their world. To them, the war is ending, and the healing is beginning. The Archbishop of Gulu was in attendance on Friday and he reminded everyone that “the physical wounds of the war have healed, but the trauma is still there.”
The graduates of CCC have undergone an eight-week training course, held in the evenings and on weekends so they can continue to work full-time, and have earned a certificate in Guidance and Counseling.

These graduates are taking the world around them, one that has been unfair and violent, and they are facing it down. They are healing themselves, and the process is directly linked to giving back and healing others. A lot of psychological pain has been caused by the LRA, and Sister Margaret Aceng once told me that “the war of the gun is over, but the war of the mind will take a long time to end.”

Fortunately, if there are more survivors like Sister Margaret and her graduates, it may be over sooner than she thinks.

I woke up yesterday feeling pretty good because I had an interview scheduled with Sister Margaret Aceng, the Director and Founder of Caritas Counseling Center. She’s an interesting woman and I was sure that she was going to blow my mind with her incredible life story. 

I got to Caritas and asked Sister Margaret her how she was, she said “I request that we do not do this interview now. I am tired.”

Fair enough. There’s nothing worse than talking to someone who doesn’t feel like talking so I agreed to reschedule. We changed it to the next day and I left.
I ended up having to come back later to Caritas later that day to help them apply for a grant to fund a peer support training. I was waiting for a driver to take me back to work at another organization when Sister Margaret came out.

The driver got back at the same time that Sister Margaret was leaving, but Sister Margaret’s car wouldn’t start. The Caritas driver, Martin, was the one who “knew how to fix cars” and immediately took it upon himself to get it running. 

First though, for some reason that wasn’t clear to me, we physically pushed Sister Margaret’s car all over the parking area. There were five of us: myself, Simon, Martin, some dude, and some other dude. We pushed the car up a hill, and Martin tried to start it while it was rolling backwards down the hill. Forwards up the hill, backwards down. Forwards up the hill, backwards down the hill. Why was I the only one who wasn’t surprised when it still wouldn’t start after rolling backwards down a hill 4 times? 

Martin was now certain that the battery was the problem. What followed was the most incredible “car fixing” that I have ever seen. Martin got the car running with a piece of sandpaper, a machete, a wrench, a steak knife, and a piece of wire he literally found on the ground. He used the sandpaper to clean off the battery connection areas, but it wasn’t enough. He picked up about 3 feet of electrical wire off of the ground and used the machete to chop it in half. He got a steak knife out of the kitchen to strip the wire. He went over to his truck and used a wrench to remove his own battery. He walked it over, and connected the wire from one battery to the next and, with his BARE HANDS, held the connection in place while trying to jump Sister Margaret’s car. 

Now, this is where I started backing away. I didn’t want to see anyone electrocuted and I also didn’t want to get myself blown up either. 

Martin was fearless. That connection didn’t work so he took out Sister Margaret’s battery and connected his truck battery directly to the Toyota Corona system. His battery was too big to fit in the battery compartment, so some other dude held it in place with his bare hands while Martin held the wire connections in place. I though for sure that the current was going to go through the battery, into Martin, into some other dude, and explode and kill all of the other bystanders and I would be left to explain why I had 5 dead Ugandans lying at my feet.

The car started. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently, Martin can indeed “fix cars.” Incidentally, he also has nothing to fear from the forces of electricity. Amazing. 
Basically, I spent yesterday getting canceled on by Sister Margaret, running across town to help her organization apply for a grant anyways, pushing her car around the parking lot, and then risking my life to get it fixed. Oh, and before she left she canceled the interview for tomorrow, too. She’s lucky she’s a nun.

5/27/2009

I’m leaving for Uganda on Saturday and I haven’t really gotten a chance to think about what that means.  I’ve been so busy getting the logistical details together that I haven’t even looked at the big picture and realized that I’m going back to Africa in a couple of days.

Now that I’m in Washington, DC for training with the other Advocacy Project Fellows it’s all starting to feel real.  I feel anxious to go, nervous about how things are going to work out, and sad about leaving home again before I even got a chance to enjoy being there.  Mostly though, I feel incredibly grateful to even have the opportunity to travel and to work in a part of the world that so many people never have the privilege of experiencing.  Overwhelmingly, as difficult as some things are right now, I feel that I am doing what I should be doing, what I am meant to be doing, and that gives me a great deal of peace.

Just so that everyone starts off on the same page, I want to give a quick overview of what my goals and projects are going to be this summer.  I have been selected to spend the summer in Uganda as a Peace Fellow for the Advocacy Project, a Washington, DC based organization that specializes in advocacy for Human Rights, Gender Equality, and Conflict Resolution.  I will also be partnering with Survivor Corps, another DC area organization that works primarily in post-conflict zones addressing the needs of those who have been physically injured and otherwise traumatized by violent conflicts and its aftermath.  Finally, in Uganda I’ll be working with several Ugandan organizations that also advocate for those who have been affected by violent conflict.

Uganda has experienced more than 20 years of civil war, but as the conflict lessens in intensity the Ugandan government and innumerable NGOs and other development organizations are rushing in to the country to try and rehabilitate the country’s civil society and to put into place institutions that will prevent the conflict from picking up momentum again.  As a student of International Affairs focusing on Security Studies and Diplomacy, I am interested in being a part of the process of state-building and helping a badly damaged country get back on its feet and act as a model for other African countries that have gone through similar destructive processes.  As a human being though, I am thankful for the opportunity to see a new part of the world, help the people that live there, and act as an ambassador to bring your world and theirs a little closer together.  Thank you for your prayers and good vibes; I’ll write again soon.  See you in Uganda!

A child soldier in Uganda