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.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to travel to the seat of the District Government and participate in a meeting with several key Ugandan local and national government officials. I traveled with several representatives of the GDPU and also the Country Program Coordinator for Survivor Corps Uganda, John Francis Onyango. We sat with the District Speaker, the Chairmen of the District Social Services and the District Public Works committees, a Member of the National Parliament, and several other representatives.

The goal of the meeting was to express how important it is to consider persons living with disabilities when creating and finalizing a government budget. In Uganda about 12% of the population is living with a disability. Surprisingly, this is lower than both the United States (19%) and Europe as a whole (15%). There are more than 600 million people worldwide living with disabilities, and that number is expected to increase dramatically over the coming decades. Expanding by as much as 39% in the developed world and 46% in the developing world.* Because there is such a strong link between poverty and disability, any country which wants to effectively manage development and reduce poverty must address the needs of persons living with disabilities also.

The meeting was a large one, with about 20 representatives present, and there were several different viewpoints. Some were enthusiastic and in complete accord, some were apologetic and explained that there simply wasn’t enough funding to change anything. Some were evasive and tried to deflect this issue off to other NGOs. It was interesting to watch the process, because these people are the ones who ultimately hold the power to effect real change and real progress in Uganda as it rehabilitates itself after the war. Admittedly, funds are limited. However the Member of the National Parliament, Betty Aol, make the best point of the day when she said “It’s not about the resources, it’s about how you use the resources.” This is a wonderful mentality, and one that will go a long way in Africa. There will never be enough money to do everything that you want, whether you live in Africa or America or Australia.

The meeting was fairly successful, and the District Public Works committee made a commitment to ensure that all new construction projects will have provisions for accessibility for PWDs. This is important, but must also be combined with the rehabilitation and readjustment of existing buildings to meet the needs of PWDs also. The GDPU will be following up and encouraging the government to take larger steps towards providing for all of its citizens. After such a brutal war, with so many lives and livelihoods lost, Uganda is in a unique position to rehabilitate not only its infrastructure, but also its people. Let’s hope that those with influence realize that you can’t do one without the other.

*Making Development Inclusive: Project Cycle Management Guidelines for European Community 2008

On Saturday, June 20th, I went out to the village of Palenga to meet one of the beneficiaries of the GDPU’s many projects. We left Gulu, and after driving through thick bush for about 30 minutes, emerged into a whole new world. Palenga is close to Gulu in proximity, but incredibly distant in terms of development. There are Mud huts spread few and far between, connected only by maize fields and criss-crossing footpaths that lay mostly hidden by the dominating plant life.
We finally came to the home of Onen Francis, a client of the GDPU and a survivor of an LRA raid. During this raid in 1988, Onen was only a boy, maybe 8 years old. When he and his family heard the rebels coming, they dropped everything and ran into the bush. Onen got out of sight quickly, but then fell awkwardly and broke his back, suffering a serious spinal cord injury. Later that day, his family found him and carried home, but not to the hospital; it was too far away to carry him, and too expensive to arrange for transport. Instead, he stayed at home, healing naturally. And slowly, and excruciatingly painfully.

20 years later, Onen Francis is still showcasing the amazing strength he had so many years ago. He has several physical challenges, but even in the face of these difficulties, he is still someone his family can rally around. He is quick to smile, and he never complains about his situation. Him and his family have worked hard to move out of the Internally Displaced Persons camp in Northern Uganda and are working to rebuild their home in their ancestral village; the same one that was destroyed so long ago by the LRA.

The GDPU is working hard to help people living with disabilities, whether the injuries are a result of the war in Northern Uganda or not. Onen Francis is a great example of someone who has benefited from the actions of the GDPU, but the crucial factor is Onen’s own personal strength. He spent more than 20 years fighting and surviving on his own before the GDPU’s assistance, refusing to lose hope or to let his family do the same. It is people like Onen Francis that are the inspiration to the many people and organizations working to put Northern Uganda back on the path to peace and stability.

This is Justin Odoch. He was 9 years old when he was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and taught to kill. 24 years old now, Justin spent 3 years fighting in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. He first was a prisoner of war, and then became a soldier for the rebel movement led by Joseph Kony He knows that he has killed at least four of his own countrymen in battle.

When he came to check the bodies of the soldiers he had killed he found the men were from the Acholi tribe, just like him. “It makes me feel very guilty,” he said “that I have killed my own people from my own village. “

Justin told me that there are hundreds of people like him who have been forced into the LRA, some of them as young as seven years old. Kony cuts an imposing figure, says Justin, he has taken about 35 wives and people do his bidding because they know that the penalty for disobedience is death. “He has a demon that tells him what to do,” explains Justin, “and if you disobey, the demon will tell Kony and he will kill you.”

Justin decided to take his chances and began to try to subvert his leaders. When told to execute prisoners of war, Justin would try to help them escape instead. He told me, “I can judge for myself that this guy has done nothing. So why kill him?”

After three years in the bush, Justin escaped from camp in the middle of the night. Troops followed him for more than 20 miles through the bush, but he reached home safely. He turned himself into the government as an ex-combatant and was granted amnesty. The LRA would not be so lenient.

After Justin returned home, the LRA sent fighters to his village to look for him. They found his home, but not him. The fighters locked his mother, father, younger brother and three sisters inside the house and burned it to the ground. All six were killed.

Justin is left with one sister, who is suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis, and an elderly grandmother. Incredibly, he maintains that his life is better now than when he was fighting in the bush. “I’ve been receiving counseling,” he tells me, “and I’m asking people to forgive me” because while I was fighting, “I was doing it blindly.” He’s also been going to church and he has found that “when you trust in God your life will be changed. Nothing is impossible with God.”

Justin is busy now caring for his sister, trying to finish high school, and atoning for the 3 years he spent tearing apart his own country. It’s a very complicated situation. Justin has killed people, but he has also saved people. He has destroyed lives, but he is now trying to rebuild his own family after tragedy. I asked him what he wanted to say to the people of Uganda and he started speaking immediately, as if this was a question he had asked himself several times. He looked up and said softlly “I was forced to be taken into the bush and I was forced to kill. If I killed your brother, or your parent, or your relative, I now surrender. Can you forgive me?”

That’s how it starts. To recover from a war in which people are fighting with and killing their own relatives and countrymen, it starts with reconciliation and forgiveness. It’s certainly not easy, but maybe it’s not such a complicated situation after all.

On Friday, June 12,  the International Republican Institute sponsored an advocacy event at the Gulu Disabled Persons Union in support of the Persons with Disabilities Act signed into law in Uganda in 2006. The Act provides for Persons with Disabilities the Right to Quality Education, the Right to Health, and the Rights of Accessibility and certain Employment Protections.

Speakers at the event included several local district councilors, two Members of Parliament (One representing Disability Rights in Northern Uganda and one in Eastern Uganda), and the Minister for Disabilities from the Federal Ministry of Labor, Gender, and Social Development.

The event was well attended by representatives from Gulu, Amuru, and Pader districts, and the tone was hopeful and also supportive of the rights that have been gained in Uganda by Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) only recently.

The conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army that has lasted for more than 20 years, coupled with substandard health care throughout some parts of the country, has created an area in which the rights of PWDs are incredibly prescient. According to the Minister, there are more than 3 million Ugandans living with disabilities; out of a country with a population of 25 million, that is about 12% of the total population.

The event on Friday demonstrated the strides that Uganda is taking to provide for all of its citizens. The next step would be for a similar event to be held in the nation’s capital, Kampala, in the south of the country; a region which has not seen the amount of violence that Northern Uganda has been subjected to.

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.

                I have just come from an impressive display of sportsmanship: The First Annual Nile Beer “Sink the Black” National Pool Championship, Gulu District Competition.  In brief, it was a two-day, 32-man single elimination billiards tournament held at the Buganda Pub in Gulu, Uganda. 

                I rolled up to Buganda tonight, Saturday, around 6 and was pleasantly surprised to see that we were down to the “Elite Eight” and that things were progressing quickly.  The matches were best of 3 and there were 2 tables going at once.  Some of the local pool celebrities were out; including Steven “The Machete” Atete, Robert “Smokin’” Bongomin, Deo “The Terminator” Moi, and, of course, Emma “The Cheetah” Ocitti.*

                I very quickly noticed that these guys were not playing under the same rules that I am used to from the US.  Apparently Ugandans, and maybe Africans in general because I have seen this in other countries, have come up with some handy new rules that make the game a little easier.  They include:

1.        If your opponent scratches, you get ball-in-hand (you can place the ball wherever you please) and 2 extra shots!  Just in case you miss your first freebie, you can tap it in with your second.

2.       If you scratch on the eight-ball, no problem!  Ball-in-hand and two extra shots for your opponent, but you won’t automatically lose.

3.       The most entertaining variant:  You don’t have to declare which pocket you intend to sink the eight-ball into.  It just has to go in somewhere.  Anywhere.  This rule encourages players at the end of the game, if they don’t have a viable shot, to just wind up and knock the bejesus out of the ball and hope it goes in somewhere.  Very entertaining, and lots of cue balls ended up flying off of the table.

As we got to the final match, pitting Emma “The Cheetah” Ocitti against Robert “Smokin’” Bongomin, I was feeling pretty good about getting home soon, throwing down a couple of mangoes, and then calling it a day.  Luckily, “The Cheetah” came storming out of the gates and won two of the first three games quickly.  As I clapped a couple of times and turned to leave, I saw the referee (who was wearing a lifeguard shirt that added a nice touch of melodrama to the event) rack the balls again.  I asked around and found out that the final was a BEST OF 9 SERIES.  Nine, like 9.  Like three times longer than all of the other matches. 

Anyways, the game continued and the DJ kept playing that Justin Timberlake song “What Goes Around, Comes Around,” which I thought was appropriate because I had been standing there for 3 hours watching people walk around a table and poke it with sticks.  Also, he kept playing this weird tugboat horn/air-raid siren sound that I think was the “Party Alarm” so everyone would know that Buganda Pub was crackin’ and everyone was invited, especially your mom. 

Finally, though, “Smokin’” pulled his head out and won a couple, but “The Cheetah” went for the jugular and finished him off in seven games.  Congrats, all hail Emma “The Cheetah” Ocitti: The Best Damn Pool Man in All the Land.

*I don’t know if these guys actually use those nicknames because I made them up.  But they should

Okay, I am in Gulu. This is where I will be for the next 10 weeks. That is something. I have moved into my “apartment.” That is also something. It is important to focus on the small victories of the day when you are in a small African town, because they sometimes don’t come very easily. I am in the internet cafe in Gulu, and I have 9 minutes and 56 seconds left on the world wide web. 55,54,53…
Things in Gulu are good. I got here via New York via Dubai via Ethiopia via Kampala. It is hot and dusty, but the people are bright and colorful and don’t look at me like I am too strange, but I can tell they are just being polite.

I spent the morning with the founder and director of Caritas Counseling Center, Sister Margaret Aceng and she spent over an hour telling me why she feels called to help the people that have been traumatized by the war in Northern Uganda between the government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Caritas provides support and counseling for ex-rebels, former child soldiers, parents of abducted children and also to women who were abducted and pressed into sexual servitude by the LRA.

The organziation was founded in 2004 and in a few weeks they will be holding a graduation for 126 newly trained peer counselors.
6 minutes and 11 seconds…

Okay, I am on the way to meet with the chairman of the Gulu Disabled Person’s Union, another local NGO that I will be working with in Uganda and we are going to try and put together a work plan for the next few weeks. since I need to leave about 5 minutes for the internet connection to upload this, I’ll have to end here. Thanks for your support, and I’ll write again soon!