It is time!”
I Startled out of his thoughts, Jimmy looked up at his grandmother standing on the edge of the field, waving.
“It is time!” she yelled again, not sure she’d been heard or seen.
Jimmy waved back to acknowledge her. He looked up at the sun. He could tell from its position in the sky, starting to sink toward the trees, that she was right. It was time to go. Jimmy’s brothers, Christopher, Julius and Douglas, working away in the field beside him, had heard her as well. They nodded their heads in agreement. Jimmy swung the hoe over his shoulder. For Douglas, only six and small for his age, the hoe was as big as he was, and it weighed heavily on his shoulders. Maybe Jimmy could have helped but he knew his littlest brother had to learn to bear his share of the load. There was no choice.
As they walked through the field, Jimmy thought about their crop. The field was planted in root vegetables, mainly cassava, with only the tops showing through the soil so far, but it looked like there was going to be a good harvest. He prayed for a good harvest. Without that there’d be more times when hunger would be with them.
Today the four brothers had finished weeding four rows. He knew that Christopher, the oldest at fourteen, had hoped for more, but there wasn’t time. There was never enough time.
By the time they reached their home—two small huts, with the charred remains of a third beside them—their grandmother was waiting. One hut belonged to the boys. The second hut was their grand-mother’s. The third used to be their uncle’s home.
Grandmother had packed them a small cloth bag. Inside was a little bit of food. Not much, but enough to give them something to eat on the road, and, if they rationed it out, perhaps a bite for the morning before they set out again. Christopher would carry the food and decide when they would eat. Jimmy didn’t know when he would choose to let them eat something, but he did know it would be done fairly, each receiving his share. Maybe there wasn’t enough, but whatever they did have was shared equally. That had always been the way in his family.
Jimmy poses next to the prints of his mother’s hands on the wall of the room where he now sleeps.
Jimmy also wanted to take one more thing with him. He ran into the hut and found it right where he’d set it down—on the little wooden stool that his father had made. It was a book with dog-eared corners, the cover partially ripped and the pages soiled from so many students having used it over the years. But it was important that he bring it along. There was a test tomorrow, and he’d already missed a day of school this week to sell vegetables by the roadside. He knew that he needed to study. Hopefully there would still be enough light to see the book when they arrived.
It would be so much easier if they could just stay on their land. There would be more time to work in the fields. Time to study. Time to sleep. But not tonight. In fact, not any night for as long as Jimmy could remember. It seemed like forever since he’d been able to sleep in his own house.
There was a time, more than a year ago, when each evening his grandmother and older brother would make a decision—was it safe to stay or did they have to go? While they were at school or working in the fields, Grandmother would listen to the radio, or talk to neighbors or relatives, people who lived in the village, and find out if there had been any attacks in the area. Some nights there was no word; nothing had happened. Then they might risk staying. But it was always a risk. There were no guarantees. Jimmy knew that better than almost anybody.
It had been quiet that night when the Lord’s Resistance Army had come to his village. The rebel soldiers ordered everybody out of the huts and made them all kneel on the hard-packed earth of the yard and—he didn’t want to think about it anymore. There wasn’t even time for memories or grief. There was just time to walk. It was almost comforting to realize that there was no decision to make. Now, every night was too dangerous to stay.
Grandmother gave each boy a hug. As Jimmy wrapped his arms around her, he felt nothing but bones. She wasn’t well and she didn’t eat enough to get better. Whatever scraps of food that were left were meant for her grandsons. Each evening, as he said his good-byes to her, he wondered if he would see her when he returned in the morning. He wished that she could come with them, but he knew she was too old and too sick to make the trip.
Besides, the soldiers left old women alone. She wasn’t strong enough to work or young enough to bear children. She wasn’t somebody they could make into a soldier, or somebody that they had to fear. She was just an old woman, a grandmother, and she was of no use to them. Not even worth the price of a bullet. But he still worried. There was no cost in the blow of a machete.
Some of these people—and Jimmy hardly even saw them as people— didn’t need a reason to kill. Maybe they were high on drugs or simply lusted for blood and didn’t need a reason. He could only hope that they didn’t want to even waste the energy necessary to strike her down. They left old women alone...they left old women alone...that’s what he’d heard. That was the thought that kept his hopes alive. They didn’t bother with old women.
He had to hope that’s how she was seen: a worthless old woman. But to Jimmy and his brothers, she was all they had. If something happened to her, who would cook their meals for them? Who would help work the fields or bring water? Who would Christopher talk to when he needed to make decisions? Jimmy knew his brother was smart and he trusted him, but still, he was yet to turn fourteen. He still needed the advice of his grandmother.
“We have to go,” Christopher said softly.
Without another word they started off. It was a long walk, but the first steps were always the same and provided them with a vivid reminder of why it was they needed to walk. There were three mounds behind the huts, just off the path they took. Jimmy cast only a sideways glance as they passed—maybe it wasn’t respectful—but he just didn’t want to look, couldn’t dwell on what had happened and how much he missed them. Too many memories.
Jimmy envied his littlest brother. He was only two at the time and was too young to remember it. All he knew were the stories that he’d been told. Jimmy would never forget, never get those images out of his mind.
As the boys walked they were joined by other children leaving their families behind. There was already a trickle of other kids on the dirt track. As they passed each new home, each cluster of houses, each village, they were joined by more and more children. Some of these children were relatives and some were friends. None were strangers. Walking together each night and back again in the morning left little time for the fields or for schoolwork, but lots of time for talking. It was almost ironic that during these long walks, with nothing else that could be done, the children were free to be children. They sang songs, or played games, talked and laughed as they walked. They tried to make the best of it. But what choice did they have? To stay in their homes in the isolated villages and countryside was to risk being killed or kidnapped. So each night they walked, leaving their homes behind, heading for the safety of the town of Gulu, where they could be supervised by relief agency staff and guarded by government soldiers.
The children moved to the side of the road as two vehicles rumbled up behind them. One was a van driven by one of the relief agencies, and the second was a big army truck. As the second truck passed, he saw the soldiers, rifles in hand, sitting in the back. Even they didn’t want to be in the country or on the roads when darkness fell. And, if it was even too dangerous for them, how much more dangerous was it for the children being left behind on the road as dusk rapidly approached?
Jimmy looked behind him. As far as he could see there were children walking. Looking forward the line stretched out of sight as well. Next he looked on both sides of the road. Huts dotted the hills; small stalls— roadside stores—were frequent. Everything seemed as it should be. They were safe. At least for now. At least until darkness fell. He found himself quickening his pace.
In some ways Jimmy and his brothers were lucky. For them the walk was only six or seven kilometers. They could make the trip in less than two hours. He knew of other children who were traveling twice as far.
Then there were those who were too far away to make the walk. Rather than seeking a blanket in the town, they simply left their homes, left their villages and headed into the forest. Some would dig shallow depressions in the ground, lie down and push dirt back over themselves like a blanket to provide protection from the elements, animals and any prying eyes. Others hid in thickets, while some built crude shelters in the branches of trees. Jimmy couldn’t imagine having to live like that, sleep like that every night, but for them, as with his family, what was the choice?
Everybody in the whole Gulu district knew what might happen to those who stayed behind. Jimmy had met people who had been attacked, hands or feet hacked off by blows from a machete or their lips and ears sliced off with a razor. He’d never forget the first time he’d seen somebody who had suffered that fate. Then there were those who were taken. Young girls were kidnapped to be sex slaves and young boys were taken at gunpoint to become child soldiers, leaving behind murdered parents and looted and burned villages.
As darkness started to settle in, Jimmy felt that sense of uneasiness that he always felt at night. Still, he was reassured by what he could see ahead—the glow of lights in the sky marking the town of Gulu. And, on the road all around him were more and more children. Each little trickle, each stream, coming from all directions, had become a human river, and they were moving along in the current.
The houses and stores became more frequent as they approached the town. And those buildings became more solid, made of brick and stone and blocks, some two- or even three-stories tall. Lights glowed from upper-story windows or storefronts. Around them, standing at watch, clustered together in little groups, sitting in trucks or vehicles, were soldiers and police. Strange: they fled men with guns to come here to be protected by other men with guns.
Some of those stores remained open just for the night commuters, those who had a few shillings to purchase food. Here, every night was crowded like a market day. The streets were filled with thousands of people, mostly children, although they weren’t here to buy or sell, but simply to find a place to lie down for the night, to sleep.
Most of the children had a place that they sought out, that they were familiar with. For Jimmy and his brothers it was a hostel called Noah’s Ark. It was run by UNICEF—United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The staff who ran the shelter were friendly and treated the children well. Each night the boys registered, were given a blanket to use and went to find a piece of ground where they could spend the night. In the space around them were other children. Jimmy didn’t know how many, but most nights there were between three and four thousand children. And that was just a percentage of the night commuters. Throughout the town there were half a dozen places, run by other aid agencies, church groups and the government. And even with all of those places, there were still those who simply slept on the streets. At least they were safe. And what choice did they have?
Jimmy took his blanket, laid it down on the ground and wrapped himself in it to ward away the night chill. Douglas placed his blanket down next to Jimmy, followed by Julius and Christopher on the far side so the two oldest sheltered the two youngest.
Population: 27,600,000
Location: Latitude: 3° 13’ 60 N, Longitude: 31° 52’ 0 E, east Africa
Area: 236,040 square kilometers
Climate: tropical, equatorial climate
Languages: English (Official language) 74% Swahili (Official language) * over 30 languages used in Uganda (predominantly Bantu and Nilotic languages)
Ethnicity: Buganda 16%
Iteso 8%
Basoga 8%
Banyankore 8%
Banyaruanda 6%
Bakiga 7%
Lango 6%
Bagisu 5%
Acholi 4.5%
Other 31.5%
* over 30 ethnic groups in Uganda
Religion: Christian 85%
Muslim 12%
Other 3%
Life Expectancy: 52 years
Infant Mortality Rate: 66 deaths per 1,000 live births
Per Capita Income: $1,100
Literacy rate:66.8% (male: 76.8%, female: 57.7%)
Children at Pagak Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp.
All around them the other children were settling in for the night. Some of the younger children had already gone to sleep; others sitting on their blankets and talking; while some were off to the side, talking or playing simple games. Jimmy didn’t have time for games. He needed to study. He took the book and angled it so that he could catch a little bit of light from the bulb that hung overhead in the corner. It was dim and far away, but there was enough light for at least a few minutes to study before it was turned off for the night.
Christopher opened the little sack that their grandmother had prepared for them. He took out the two pieces of bread that it held, divided them in two and shared them between the four boys. This would have to hold them, through the night and the walk back to their home. Their grandmother would be waiting with a little more breakfast for them, some cassava, maybe some more millet. The boys would do a few chores, and then they would walk to school. After school they would go home, help to gather water, work the fields and get ready, once again, to walk to Gulu. Night after night, day after day, that was the life Jimmy knew. Each day going to school, or working the fields, doing chores, selling vegetables at the side of the road. Each evening walking to Gulu. Each night sleeping at Noah’s Ark. And each morning walking back home. It had been going on for years. It was the only life the younger children even knew. But Jimmy remembered a different time, a time before they had to seek shelter in the town every night, before the deaths. Sometimes he just wished he could forget that night when everything changed. It had now been four years, but in some ways it seemed like it had just happened.
It was a quiet night. They’d gone to sleep, the four boys, Christopher 10, Jimmy 8, Julius 6 and Douglas just 2. They nestled together in one room, on the right side of the hut, with their parents in another room to the left. It was a comfortable home, cream-colored clay walls, a tin roof and door and a dirt floor. Across the way their uncle, their father’s younger brother, slept in his hut, and in the third, their grandmother.
Jimmy was awakened by screaming and yelling. There was pounding on the door, and then the door was kicked open. They were hauled out, half sleeping, half in shock, crying, powerless beneath powerful flashlights, and forced to drop to their knees in the dirt, their hands on the back of their heads. His parents and uncle were knocked to the ground, their hands tied behind their backs. And all the time the men screamed out threats, saying they would kill them all if anybody resisted
The men—no they weren’t all men, some were barely boys—stood over them, waving guns, yelling, screaming. Some were dressed in uniforms, others in nothing more than pants and heavy jackets. All wore gumboots. On the ground, not daring to look up, partially blinded by the lights shining in their faces, all Jimmy could see were the boots.
The men—the boys—walked down the line, screaming, yelling, threatening to harm or kill as they passed. Jimmy knew these weren’t just idle threats. And now he was on the ground, kneeling at the feet of the people who committed these atrocities, and all he could see were their boots.
Under the glare of the bright lights, surrounded by darkness, his parents bound, screams and threats raining down on them, Jimmy knew that these could be the last moments of his life, or at the very least, the life he knew.
Suddenly his parents and uncle were grabbed and hauled to their feet, dragged away. The last words his father screamed were “please, I beg you, don’t hurt our children!” and then they disappeared into the night, swallowed by the darkness.
Jimmy taking a break in the tree that provides shade for the family home.
Almost before the words had faded, the boys were grabbed and hauled to their feet. They were dragged back to their hut and thrown through the door, landing in a heap on top of each other on the dirt floor. The door was slammed shut, and all four huddled together as the men screamed outside. They heard objects being thrown against the door to barricade them in. Were they being left...or were they trapped inside, barricaded, unable to leave before the hut was set on fire?
Christopher tried to quiet the tears of Julius and Douglas. Jimmy listened at the door, straining to hear anything...but there was nothing. Silently they stayed in the hut, still afraid to cry out, afraid to even try to break through the door and escape. What if the men were still close by? What if they heard and came back to get them...to kill them?
Jimmy wasn’t sure how long they stayed in the hut. He wasn’t sure if he had drifted off to sleep, but he did know what happened next. Finally Christopher felt that enough time had passed that it was safe for them to try to get out. They pounded at the door, they called out and they were heard—by their grandmother. She was old and hard of hearing and had slept in her hut, unaware of what had happened. She pulled away the barricade and opened the door, and the four boys almost toppled her over as they rushed out.
The soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army were gone. And with them were Jimmy’s parents and uncle, leaving the old woman and the four children behind—the children who were too young to become soldiers. At least too young that night.
When morning finally broke, their grandmother went in search of her two sons and her daughter-in-law. Where had they been taken? Where were they? She started to ask questions and to search, but she didn’t have to look long or far. They were discovered in a field less than a kilometer away. The bodies of the three were found beaten, hands still bound behind their backs, with a bullet in their skulls. They’d been dragged away simply to be killed.
The neighbors helped bring back the bodies, helped dig the graves and helped put the bodies to rest. And they were there, in those mounds just off the path, within sight of the homes where they had lived their lives.
Since then it was just the four boys and their grandmother. Their parents were dead, but the people who killed them were still around, still killing and kidnapping. It wasn’t safe for the boys to remain in their home at night, but they still needed to return each day to work the fields to grow food to live, to go to school and to have any hope for a better future. So each night and each morning, they walked to and from Gulu, seeking shelter and safety. Constantly in motion, never having time to rest or stop. But what choice did they have?
Jimmy is now seventeen years old and still lives in the three-room family home near Gulu, with his three brothers and his ailing grandmother. His impeccable English has been featured in a segment of the documentary film Uganda Rising. He now ventures into town daily to attend computer classes, and he hopes to return to school full-time early next year.
The Republic of Uganda is located in eastern Africa. It is a landlocked country that sits directly on the equator and is bordered on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the north by Sudan, on the east by Kenya, on the south by Tanzania and on the southwest by Rwanda. While not a coastal country, Uganda is surrounded by an abundance of water, including Lake Victoria to the south, Lake Albert to the west and is cut down the middle by the Nile River.
Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, once praised Uganda’s beauty by saying, “For magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life—bird, insect, reptile, beast—for vast scale— Uganda is truly the pearl of Africa.”
Uganda’s history began about two thousand years ago when it was first populated by the ironworking Bantu-speaking people of central and western Africa. They were joined from the north by the Nilotic people, including the Luo, whose lifestyle centered around cattle-herding and farming in the northern and eastern parts of what is now Uganda.
The first external influence in the region came from Arab traders moving inland from the Indian Ocean in the 1830s. They came in search of slaves and ivory. They were closely followed in the 1860s by the British who were exploring the source of the Nile River.
In the late 1880s the United Kingdom put the area under the charter of the British East Africa Company, which became part of the colonial “scramble for Africa” in which European nations staked their claims on African resources and its people, for their own gain. The region was initially a collection of kingdoms led by chiefs and clan leaders. These groups were changed forever by this influence from outside, but the different groups still are at the core of who Ugandans are today.
In 1894, Uganda was ruled as a protectorate, and the Bantu-speaking people of the south were placed in civil service positions, while the Luo of the north, mainly the Lango and the Acholi, were forced into labor camps and the military. This divided the nation in two classes, increasing the tension between the groups. This divide would be most evident after independence and is, to a great degree, responsible for the seemingly endless military coups and rebel uprisings that have plagued the nation.
The first of those military coups came from the notorious Idi Amin. In 1962, less than nine years after independence, Amin ousted Uganda’s first president, Milton Obote. Amin was responsible for the death of as many as 300,000 Ugandans, while also expelling the Indian community, who controlled a major stake in the country’s economy. Originally seen locally and internationally as a welcomed change, Amin’s rule of bloodshed and shortsightedness sent the country into a downward spiral. Inflation climbed to 1000% and unpaid soldiers rebelled. Amin finally sealed his own fate by choosing to go to war with Tanzania.
The Tanzanians took control of Uganda and turned on the local population, who they claimed to be helping, while Amin fled to Libya. Obote’s reinstallation as president in 1980 was short-lived, as was Tito Okello’s military coup. In 1986 Yoweri Museveni took power when his National Resistance Army (NRA) claimed the capital.
Museveni quickly introduced economic reforms that provided some sustained growth in Uganda and he was lauded as a “new breed of African leader,” by then United States president, Bill Clinton. What continued to be ignored was Uganda’s north-south divide, which proved to be the birthplace of the worst of rebel uprisings.
The ongoing civil strife in northern Uganda is a conflict that continues to be misunderstood. The war is essentially two conflicts in one: first, the fighting of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which is waging war against the Ugandan government and terrorizing the civilian population in the north, and second, the real grievances of Ugandans in the north against the existing government.
The war arose out of the embedded policy of the British during colonial rule in which tribal groups were divided. This ‘divide and rule’ policy was continued by post-colonial Ugandan politics. When the current president, Yoweri Museveni, and his National Resistance Movement took power by coup in 1986, they worsened the north-south divide by alienating northerners, creating grounds for rebellion.
A view south into Gulu, northern Uganda’s largest town.
Since 1986, the insurgency within northern Uganda has undergone four stages, beginning with a more popular rebellion of former army officials and evolving into the current pseudo-spiritual warlordism of the LRA. To date, the LRA consists mainly of abducted children brainwashed, brutalized and forced to kill viciously as child soldiers. Alienated from the Acholi, the LRA wages terror on the civilian population as a means to maintain attention and challenge the government.
After attempted peace talks facilitated by Betty Bigombe collapsed in 1994, the conflict changed into a proxy war that cannot be understood separate from the geopolitics of the entire Great Lakes Region of Africa.
In 1994, the country of Sudan began to provide military assistance and support to the LRA, while the Ugandan government provided military assistance to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a rebel group in southern Sudan. The West, particularly the United States, saw this as the battlefront of the war against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa and provided significant amounts of aid to the SPLA through Uganda. New elements of a war economy and arms trafficking made finding peace more difficult.
Following September 11, 2001, the United States increased its strategic alliance with President Museveni and his NRM regime in Uganda. The U.S. quickly declared the LRA a terrorist group and increased military aid to the Ugandan government. This relationship only further solidified the insistence of Museveni on a military approach to end the war. Unfortunately, the “military solution” has worsened northern grievances and proven ineffective over the years. It is strongly believed that rather than continued war, that the keys to peace are to negotiate and build mutual trust.
In the summer of 2006, the newly formed semi-autonomous Government of South Sudan agreed to host and mediate peace talks between the warring parties. The involvement of such a strategic mediator, coupled with new openness by the parties to negotiations led many to call this the “best opportunity in over a decade for peace in northern Uganda.” In August, the parties agreed to a Cessation of Hostilities—to stop fighting—that led to relative calm in northern Uganda. However, the talks have since stumbled due to the rigid involvement of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a weak Monitoring Team and divisions within the LRA networks.
The war in northern Uganda has raged now for 21 years, making it Africa’s longest-running conflict, and has been described by one UN official as “the world’s worst neglected humanitarian crisis.” The war has led to the displacement of 1.7 million people—over 80% of the region— who now live in camps in squalid conditions. At its worst, 1,000 people were dying each week as a result of the poor conditions in these camps. The war is also known for the brutal abduction and use of child soldiers. The LRA has filled its ranks by abducting over 50,000 children.
As this neglect continues, the people of northern Uganda remain condemned to lives of despair and displacement.
For over 250,000 children all over the world, army barracks are home and military commanders are family. These are no ordinary children. They are child soldiers.
There is still no universally accepted definition for what a child soldier is, but international human rights organizations, including UNICEF, agree that a child soldier is a boy or girl under the age of eighteen who willingly joins or is forced to become a member of a government army or rebel-armed military. These child soldiers are commanded to perform a variety of duties, including armed combat, laying mines and explosives, scouting, cooking and labor, and are often victims of sexual slavery and exploitation.
Today, children are directly participating in conflicts in over 20 countries worldwide, with more than 100,000 children on the front-lines in Africa; most prominently in Sudan and Uganda, where it is estimated that the Lord’s Resistance Army has abducted 50,000 children and forced them into conflict.
While thousands of children are indeed abducted or recruited by force, many more join voluntarily. However, they often enlist as a means of survival: joining because of extreme poverty, lack of education or family support, along with the promise of a steady income, status and power, which most often never comes. The military is seen as their only opportunity to get ahead during a time of unbelievable desperation. The majority of child soldiers are between the ages of 14 to 18, but there are children as young as 9 years of age who have been forced into conflict.
For those not familiar with the child soldier phenomenon, it’s difficult to understand the value of an army of young children. When we hear the word “soldier” we automatically think big, strong, adult men. However, with lightweight, easy-to-use firearms readily available—big and strong are no longer necessary. Even a young child can carry, and use, a gun.
Along with being able to handle guns and ammunition, children are also seen as both physically and emotionally vulnerable. They can be easily intimidated. In the case of abduction, it’s commonplace for one of the abducted children in a group to be killed. This example sends a message to all of the others that if you try to escape or if you do not obey your commanders, you too will be killed. This is the “initiation.” In fact, children are even sometimes forced to commit atrocities in their home villages, against friends and family, putting them in an even more desperate situation because they can never return home.
Child soldiers are often considered “cheaper” to keep. They eat less, they are more resilient and need less medical care (or at the very least are provided less care) and are much more predictable in their actions.
There is much global talk of nuclear conflict and “weapons of mass destruction.” Lt. General (Ret.) Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN forces in Rwanda in 1994 and now a Canadian senator, uses that same language when talking about the use of child soldiers. “Children have become the new weapons system,” he explains. “They’re not high-tech, but they are weapons of mass destruction. How do you fight a war against children?”
Fires are a constant threat to families in the internal displacement camps. The tarped huts are evidence of recent fires in the region.
That question alone, is a moral dilemma that may never have any answers.
Human rights organizations worldwide are working with the United Nations and individual countries to end the use of child soldiers. Much work is also being done to support child soldiers after the end of their time in conflict. Regardless of the length of time as active participants in war, the trauma is life-altering. The current stream of support is through Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) programs that are focused on providing psycho-social support, along with education, training and skills for these children so they can make an attempt at life back home in their communities.
While these DDR programs do exist, there are too few of them worldwide. And when they do exist, they lack the resources necessary to provide for the needs of these now incredibly vulnerable returnees. More often than not, these children are left on their own to cope with a childhood lost and a level of trauma few can even begin to comprehend. These soldiers are above all else, simply children, who continue to suffer from the effects of the wars they have been forced to fight.
