here is an averagely packed truck we saw in Lira. some trucks are packed almost to twice their own height, with people still sitting on top.
Picture here: the bus we caught to get to Gulu.
So at 7am we caught the bus in town. Huge old thing, chockers with people everywhere.
After 8hrs of a amazing bus ride experiences here are some to note:
-squashed together in boiling hot temperatures
-chickens tied by their feet lying on the floor
- people standing everywhere in the isles
-at every stop people would run up to the windows with chooks to sell you, water bottles, bbq’d maize on sticks, cooked chicken on a stick, hard boiled eggs.- all trying to sell them thru the windows so you just lean out when you make a purchase and pull it back to where you are sitting. (at so many of the stops I wondered whether they sold portable loos…I was busting for the loo for about 4 hours. Terrible on unsealed hugely bumpy roads.)
Picture: here is a lady selling bananas at the bus stop
Once there:
So once there we got driven around the corner by our designated driver for the week Jacob. We then chucked our stuff inside (Tandala, 3yr old Mark and myself were to share a huge double bed and David her father had a room to himself)
We met Dr Fred who had organized everything for us and Geoffrey (whom we all called Godfrey for the first few days because of the way they pronounce his name over here).
IDP camps:
So on the first day was a visit to the largest IDP(internally displaced peoples camp) in northern Uganda. So as a result of the conflict I mentioned above these people have had to leave their villages, their little farms and anything else that could possibly have supported them in the past for the safety of these camps. Here they live in mud huts, with barely food to keep them sustained. I saw so many children with huge stomachs from malnutrition.
I really loved the IDP camps. The people were very friendly and happy to see us. They didn’t mind having their photos taken and the children all run after me fighting to hold my hand. So everywhere I walked I had about 20 kids surrounding me. No body asked me for anything (which was great as in Mbale so many Ugandans ask me for money because I am white and they think all whites are super rich). One old lady however asked me to take her little baby back to America to give it a better life. That almost made me burst into tears there and then. We visited the hospitals at the camps. They were in terrible condition with heaps of people everywhere seeking treatment and not a doctor in site. Only nursing aids. We visited the school which was great to see. Each classroom is an average classroom size in Australia however they somehow manage to squish 300 students in each classroom.
We also visited a school for deaf children at the IDP camp which was probably the most inspiring thing. There were at least 4 teachers for around 30 children and they seemed so happy and well cared for.
The Child is innocent program/war child
Another day we visited some of the programs that have been set up to attempt to assist the people in these situations. The child is innocent was founded by our young guide Dr Fred and sponsors the children in these IDP camps so they can go to school and university. War Child trains psychologists that work to assist and counsel children and parents that have suffered major psychological problems as a result of abductions and the terrible torture they have suffered (ie they have their lips and ears cut off them and then they are forced to eat them or they are forced to bite off another persons leg or more commonly they are forced to smash peoples head in with blunt objects to teach them a “lesson”… terrible terrible things. ) They also look at supporting them in legal situations as well to help people work towards supporting themselves in the future.
Lacor hospital
Dr Fred himself was sponsored by some Catholic missionaries to study medicine and now works at Lacor hospital. Here there were lines and lines of people for any of the services. People, mainly women and children camp out on the footpath. I saw some terribly thin starving ladies and starving or sickly children not even being tended to by a doctor. Every night they have 2-3 children dying from malaria and malnutrition. Which is a huge number for one hospitals childrens ward. It is however an impressive hospital for the area and has been able to provide fantastic help to the people in northern Uganda.
Gusco
Is an organization that takes all the children that have been rescued or have escaped from the Lords Resistance Army. This organization was the best one we visited. It is run by around 40 staff total and it counsels the children returing from being child soldiers. It gives them medical treatment for their gun shot wounds, and all other terrible wounds they have been subjected to. For those children that have been in the army from a very early age often feel that they can no longer go back to school so they teach the girls tailoring and the boys things like woodwork and other trade work. They also give them a sowing machine or any tools required so that when they leave the rehabilitation center they can begin working and earning money straight away.
Here I met a 17 year old boy named Patrick. I shook his hand and greeted him in Acholi. I knew that as I was shaking his hand this boy had probably killed hundreds of innocent children and other civilians. We asked him how long he had been in the LRA and his response shocked me. For 10years he had been fighting for Josef Kony against his will. Imagine at 7 years of age he was abducted, forced to kill other children or family members in an attempt to desensitize him. He has known nothing but raping and murdering for the last 10 years of his life. A life or kill or be killed. He is only a boy.
Back at my hotel I made friends with the Ugandan girls that worked there. Only one of the girls was from a village area and so I asked her about her life. Ever since she was 4 years old, every night of her life she has slept out in the bush. This was a tactic her parents had formulated in an attempt to save her, her two brothers, twin sisters and her cousins. Every night at 5pm they would walk into the thick bush to a new spot and sleep the night there never sleeping in the same place and never telling their parents where they were sleeping. On two occasions she narrowly missed being caught by the LRA. One time she was walking to her new sleeping spot and a man came running saying…run run the LRA are coming. So she ran and was safe. Other boys and girls from her village were not so lucky. Another time when the LRA was desperate for girls (as they make them become wives of top soldiers) she had hid and the soldiers had been told that in her hut were many girls. They came to her hut and bashed her grandma and dad (by this stage her mum had died in childbirth). But as her relatives did not know where they were they couldn’t get them. Since then her twin sisters were killed when someone tried to poisin her father at a dinner and the meal was accidentally given to the twin girls instead of the father. These stories are so so common in the north. Things here are terrible and the people suffer so much.
Dinner & food poisoning
I went out for dinner on the 2nd last night and got food poisoning so I was sick all day sat. but managed to go to a music concert put on by groups of people living in the IDP camps. They sang about human rights but it was all in Acholi so I didn’t understand it. However it was so great to see African people perform they are such great singers and dancers.
Aboke Girls
If you would like to read more about the situation in Northern Uganda there is a great book called the Aboke Girls by Els De Temmerman. It recounts an amazing story or 139 girls being abducted from a Catholic girls school.
PLEASE PRAY
Please pray for the situation in the North. Please pray that the peace talks will put an end to the child abductions and that these children can be returned to their homes. Pray that they can still be loved when they return, that it was not their choice that to join the Army and that they did not wish to become murderers.
Please pray that from knowing the suffering that these children face that you will no longer take the many blessings you have for granted. That you can remember that God has blessed you for his purpose and that you can use your blessings to help others. More important however is just to remember to pray for the hearts of these children that will be so confused by Kony working under the name of God and yet so blatantly living an evil evil existence. Please Pray that Josef Kony may come to know God as his Father and Jesus his Saviour and that he can know that if he is willing to ask for Gods forgiveness God will forgive him for these terrible inhumane things he has done for the past 20years.
GULU:
Ok here is my update from Gulu in Northern Uganda. It will be quite long so I have put subheadings for easy reading. Remember I always update my prayer points (which can be found on the bottom right hand side of this page so you can always check them if you cant be bothered to read the whole thing.
Ok :
Why:
Ok so I went out for dinner the other night I met a girl named Tandala who is in the process of adopting a little boy from Uganda. Her and her father (who is an MP from Canada) decided to go to Gulu to see some of the organizations that the Canadian government has been supporting. In the north there are hundreds of thousands of people that have been displaced because of a rebel group named the Lords Resistance Army. Their leader Josef Kony has been working under the name of God, being led by the spirit of Lakwena (a female rebel leader that claimed to be a reincarnation of the Holy Spirit.) and has for the past 20years been abducting thousands of children, forcing them to kill family members and brutally kill other children and to fight in the hope of taking over the government from the current leader Museveni. They have also in the process killed thousands of civilians.
At the moment I’m not sure if you are aware but the government has been holding Peace talks in Juba Sudan in an attempt to end the violence so for the past 6months it has been relatively safe for people to move from the south up to Gulu in the north.
So Tandala asked me if I would like to join them and I accepted.
Ok here is my update from Gulu in Northern Uganda. It will be quite long so I have put subheadings for easy reading. Remember I always update my prayer points (which can be found on the bottom right hand side of this page so you can always check them if you cant be bothered to read the whole thing.
Ok :
Why:
Ok so I went out for dinner the other night I met a girl named Tandala who is in the process of adopting a little boy from Uganda. Her and her father (who is an MP from Canada) decided to go to Gulu to see some of the organizations that the Canadian government has been supporting. In the north there are hundreds of thousands of people that have been displaced because of a rebel group named the Lords Resistance Army. Their leader Josef Kony has been working under the name of God, being led by the spirit of Lakwena (a female rebel leader that claimed to be a reincarnation of the Holy Spirit.) and has for the past 20years been abducting thousands of children, forcing them to kill family members and brutally kill other children and to fight in the hope of taking over the government from the current leader Museveni. They have also in the process killed thousands of civilians.
At the moment I’m not sure if you are aware but the government has been holding Peace talks in Juba Sudan in an attempt to end the violence so for the past 6months it has been relatively safe for people to move from the south up to Gulu in the north.
So Tandala asked me if I would like to join them and I accepted.
Picture here: the bus we caught to get to Gulu.So at 7am we caught the bus in town. Huge old thing, chockers with people everywhere.
After 8hrs of a amazing bus ride experiences here are some to note:
-squashed together in boiling hot temperatures
-chickens tied by their feet lying on the floor
- people standing everywhere in the isles
-at every stop people would run up to the windows with chooks to sell you, water bottles, bbq’d maize on sticks, cooked chicken on a stick, hard boiled eggs.- all trying to sell them thru the windows so you just lean out when you make a purchase and pull it back to where you are sitting. (at so many of the stops I wondered whether they sold portable loos…I was busting for the loo for about 4 hours. Terrible on unsealed hugely bumpy roads.)
Picture: here is a lady selling bananas at the bus stopOnce there:
So once there we got driven around the corner by our designated driver for the week Jacob. We then chucked our stuff inside (Tandala, 3yr old Mark and myself were to share a huge double bed and David her father had a room to himself)
We met Dr Fred who had organized everything for us and Geoffrey (whom we all called Godfrey for the first few days because of the way they pronounce his name over here).
IDP camps:
So on the first day was a visit to the largest IDP(internally displaced peoples camp) in northern Uganda. So as a result of the conflict I mentioned above these people have had to leave their villages, their little farms and anything else that could possibly have supported them in the past for the safety of these camps. Here they live in mud huts, with barely food to keep them sustained. I saw so many children with huge stomachs from malnutrition.
I really loved the IDP camps. The people were very friendly and happy to see us. They didn’t mind having their photos taken and the children all run after me fighting to hold my hand. So everywhere I walked I had about 20 kids surrounding me. No body asked me for anything (which was great as in Mbale so many Ugandans ask me for money because I am white and they think all whites are super rich). One old lady however asked me to take her little baby back to America to give it a better life. That almost made me burst into tears there and then. We visited the hospitals at the camps. They were in terrible condition with heaps of people everywhere seeking treatment and not a doctor in site. Only nursing aids. We visited the school which was great to see. Each classroom is an average classroom size in Australia however they somehow manage to squish 300 students in each classroom.
We also visited a school for deaf children at the IDP camp which was probably the most inspiring thing. There were at least 4 teachers for around 30 children and they seemed so happy and well cared for.
The Child is innocent program/war child
Another day we visited some of the programs that have been set up to attempt to assist the people in these situations. The child is innocent was founded by our young guide Dr Fred and sponsors the children in these IDP camps so they can go to school and university. War Child trains psychologists that work to assist and counsel children and parents that have suffered major psychological problems as a result of abductions and the terrible torture they have suffered (ie they have their lips and ears cut off them and then they are forced to eat them or they are forced to bite off another persons leg or more commonly they are forced to smash peoples head in with blunt objects to teach them a “lesson”… terrible terrible things. ) They also look at supporting them in legal situations as well to help people work towards supporting themselves in the future.
Lacor hospital
Dr Fred himself was sponsored by some Catholic missionaries to study medicine and now works at Lacor hospital. Here there were lines and lines of people for any of the services. People, mainly women and children camp out on the footpath. I saw some terribly thin starving ladies and starving or sickly children not even being tended to by a doctor. Every night they have 2-3 children dying from malaria and malnutrition. Which is a huge number for one hospitals childrens ward. It is however an impressive hospital for the area and has been able to provide fantastic help to the people in northern Uganda.
Gusco
Is an organization that takes all the children that have been rescued or have escaped from the Lords Resistance Army. This organization was the best one we visited. It is run by around 40 staff total and it counsels the children returing from being child soldiers. It gives them medical treatment for their gun shot wounds, and all other terrible wounds they have been subjected to. For those children that have been in the army from a very early age often feel that they can no longer go back to school so they teach the girls tailoring and the boys things like woodwork and other trade work. They also give them a sowing machine or any tools required so that when they leave the rehabilitation center they can begin working and earning money straight away.
Here I met a 17 year old boy named Patrick. I shook his hand and greeted him in Acholi. I knew that as I was shaking his hand this boy had probably killed hundreds of innocent children and other civilians. We asked him how long he had been in the LRA and his response shocked me. For 10years he had been fighting for Josef Kony against his will. Imagine at 7 years of age he was abducted, forced to kill other children or family members in an attempt to desensitize him. He has known nothing but raping and murdering for the last 10 years of his life. A life or kill or be killed. He is only a boy.
Back at my hotel I made friends with the Ugandan girls that worked there. Only one of the girls was from a village area and so I asked her about her life. Ever since she was 4 years old, every night of her life she has slept out in the bush. This was a tactic her parents had formulated in an attempt to save her, her two brothers, twin sisters and her cousins. Every night at 5pm they would walk into the thick bush to a new spot and sleep the night there never sleeping in the same place and never telling their parents where they were sleeping. On two occasions she narrowly missed being caught by the LRA. One time she was walking to her new sleeping spot and a man came running saying…run run the LRA are coming. So she ran and was safe. Other boys and girls from her village were not so lucky. Another time when the LRA was desperate for girls (as they make them become wives of top soldiers) she had hid and the soldiers had been told that in her hut were many girls. They came to her hut and bashed her grandma and dad (by this stage her mum had died in childbirth). But as her relatives did not know where they were they couldn’t get them. Since then her twin sisters were killed when someone tried to poisin her father at a dinner and the meal was accidentally given to the twin girls instead of the father. These stories are so so common in the north. Things here are terrible and the people suffer so much.
Dinner & food poisoning
I went out for dinner on the 2nd last night and got food poisoning so I was sick all day sat. but managed to go to a music concert put on by groups of people living in the IDP camps. They sang about human rights but it was all in Acholi so I didn’t understand it. However it was so great to see African people perform they are such great singers and dancers.
Aboke Girls
If you would like to read more about the situation in Northern Uganda there is a great book called the Aboke Girls by Els De Temmerman. It recounts an amazing story or 139 girls being abducted from a Catholic girls school.
PLEASE PRAY
Please pray for the situation in the North. Please pray that the peace talks will put an end to the child abductions and that these children can be returned to their homes. Pray that they can still be loved when they return, that it was not their choice that to join the Army and that they did not wish to become murderers.
Please pray that from knowing the suffering that these children face that you will no longer take the many blessings you have for granted. That you can remember that God has blessed you for his purpose and that you can use your blessings to help others. More important however is just to remember to pray for the hearts of these children that will be so confused by Kony working under the name of God and yet so blatantly living an evil evil existence. Please Pray that Josef Kony may come to know God as his Father and Jesus his Saviour and that he can know that if he is willing to ask for Gods forgiveness God will forgive him for these terrible inhumane things he has done for the past 20years.
3 comments:
I imagine if you actually tried to write down every story worth hearing in those camps, both of the people living there and people working among them, it would be overwhelming. Its great you could have such a moving experience.
Wow Maz, sounds like you are having some intense experiences. Thanks for sharing them with us. Often while we know that such things happen, it takes someone to relate them personally to make it more real. Am praying for you and the situation.
Have a blessed Christmas,
Love Jess
xox
Dear Maz,
I've just discovered your blog - it's fantastic! Thanks for the photos and the amazing descriptions, especially of the IDP. It's very humbling, and something that reminds me that there's a bigger and more needier world out there. Hope you're doing well and being encouraged by God and your brothers and sisters.
Have a joyful Christmas and a great New Year!
love,
Bei-En
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