Recovering from the Lord's Resistance Army

This blog was written for class--as you may be able to tell from the lack of explatives. 

In the late 1980s, Joseph Kony formed the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. Operating as a cult-like rebel group, the LRA rapes, tortures, and murders both soldiers and civilians. Kony built his army by kidnapping children and forcing them to kill their family and friends, in order to eliminate their incentive to run away. To date, the LRA has murdered over 2,400 civilians, abducted 3,000 adults and children, and displaced more than 400,000 Africans from their homes.

After Kony fled Uganda in the mid-2000s, most media attention concerning the LRA shifted to other parts of Africa. The country has been largely forgotten in recent years--although it continues to suffer the aftermath of the rebel group’s atrocities. 

This raises questions regarding how a country can possibly expect to recover from such terrible violence. What happens after the UN peacekeepers stop providing food and shelter? How should we care for child soldiers and victims of rape after they are recovered from the rebels? And how can this recovery possibly take place amidst such extreme levels of poverty?

One response is the creation of rehabilitation centers and schools to serve the LRA’s victims. Our class had the unique opportunity to visit and tour one such school, located in the small town of Lira.

The students here look like regular teenagers--they smile, laugh, and flirt with each other. They live on campus, attend classes from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and receive therapy sessions. An outsider would have no idea that many of these children once committed unspeakable acts of violence. The school offers many children the most stability they have ever had--and likely will ever have--in their lives.

 

The small village of Barlonyo, about an hour north of Lira, is home to a large Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp. These camps are filled with Ugandans who fled their homes during the height of Kony's reign of terror. LRA soldiers infiltrated the camp in 2004, killing over 200 refugees and creating hundreds of orphans.

Our class set up a makeshift health clinic in order to provide basic medical care and clothes to residents. Saying that these people have nothing is an understatement. Many were wearing little more than rags, and the toothbrushes we handed out during the clinic were treated as precious gems. They seemed to be pleased by our presence--the opportunities for work and entertainment in the camp are minimal.

Recovery in northern Uganda is slowly taking place. Residents no longer live in fear that Kony will return to abduct their children and kill their loved ones. Five years ago, this threat was a very real possibility. The towns affected by the LRA are slowly rebuilding and returning to life. Although these communities have a long road to recovery ahead of them, the process has begun.

African adventures: an intro

"The first rule in Uganda is that there are no rules."

My new friend, Charles, stated this bluntly as we sped down a two-lane dirt road toward the country's capital city of Kampala.

He was referring to the terrible traffic that cripples this city of over 11 million residents. Cars compete with giant buses, pedestrians balancing baskets of fruit on their heads, and the occasional long-horned cow for precious driving space. Motor bike taxis (called boda-bodas) with beautiful African women perched delicately on the back seat weave dangerously in and out of the street. There are no lane markers, stop lights, or sidewalks. There is only chaos.

Loud, dirty, glorious chaos.

The lack of rules and order in Uganda extends far beyond transportation. The government is terribly corrupt, and bribing must be done in order to accomplish almost anything. The amount of car exhaust and smoke hanging in the air would give an EPA employee a panic attack. The concept of time is also skewed--African time runs anywhere from one to three hours behind schedule. And the rest of the city is an abstract painting of red dirt, bits of trash, pounding music, and a constant sea of people.

This scene would no doubt be terrifying for some to witness. But the rawness of life here exhilarates me in a way that nothing ever has, or probably ever will.

My first 10 days in this very new and mysterious continent have been a whirlwind of sights, sounds, and smells. Sharing in this experience are eight other students from the University of Colorado, plus professors and staff members from the Global Livingston Institute (GLI). Our three week class is entitled "International Development in East Africa," and encompasses many facets of this highly complicated and volatile issue.

GLI's motto is "listen, think, act." A basic premise of the class is that too many solutions have been implemented in the developing world by those who acted before truly understanding the needs and capacity of the community. Of course, there are a plethora of factors as to why international aid has caused little growth in developing countries, including political instability, corruption, exploitation, colonialism, slavery, war, disease, a lack of infrastructure, holy shit I could go on but I won't. In a nut shell, we are here to identify problems, analyze the solutions being implemented, and form our own conclusions.

My time is too short--and the internet access far too slow--to detail everything I have experienced in the past two weeks. The short version is this: I have witnessed the most extreme poverty of my life in the slums of Kampala. I worked with refugees who fled from the Lord's Resistance Army in Lira--including the former child bride of Joseph Kony. I witnessed a massive dance party at a prison in Jinja. And I have been thinking deeply about my immense privilege as an American, and wrestling with white guilt, on the daily.

Hopefully I will have more time to write about my experiences in the coming days. Until then...

Spray-painted sign on a girl's school in rural Uganda

I found a baby goat! It does not look pleased..

This guy pulled the sunglasses off of my face and started modeling. Taken in the Katanga slum during a mini-health clinic we put together. 

Katanga slum, Kampala, Uganda

Street kids in Kampala

The peanut struggle is real, y'all. 

Street market... somewhere

A white rhino grazing on some delicious grass

This is the road... yeah. 

Best bad translation to date

South America Wrap-Up

"Get ready South America. I'm coming for you." I vividly remember writing this statement after purchasing my plane ticket to Peru last April.

Fast forward to early August. I was suffering through an absolutely insane 30 hour bus ride- one in which I went through all stages of fully accepting my impending death- when I realized that those words had equated to a challenge. I had accidentally provoked an entire continent, and she was showing me who was boss. 

South America 1, Keri 0. 

The last week of my journey was a mixed bag. On one hand, I had some excellent adventures. On the bus to Sucre, I met a man named Johnny. He was a PhD dropout from New Orleans, a recovering drug addict, and had spent the past year backpacking solo through Central America with a machete strapped to his back. He was adventurous, brilliant, and absolutely out of his fucking mind. We spent every day in Sucre together-- wandering through the markets, chewing copious amounts of coca leaves, and playing video games in rundown arcades with local teenagers. Life was good. 

On the other hand, my body was shutting down on me. I had developed another sinus infection, and my cough was getting worse each day. I wasn't sleeping at night, and the lack of rest made me anxious and depressed. After a few days, I knew I had to scrap my plans to visit the Bolivian salt flats--a cold, windy, and ruggedly beautiful place--in order to go home and recover. 

Although leaving a week early made me feel a bit defeated, it did not detract from the overall amazing experience I had in Peru and Bolivia. I gained a wealth of knowledge about myself and the world, which I will not attempt to spell out in detail here. This journey was the impetus for making several major changes in my life and way of thinking, and for that I will be forever grateful. 

So, after a full year, South America has been officially wrapped up. And just in time for my next adventure in Africa. Stay tuned...

The above picture, which I have entitled "The Pam and Caroline Fry Reunion Special," was taken on the sly by a random photographer in a diner outside of Atlanta.