I realized last night when I
was talking to my previous employer that I did not update you on what happened
with Otim. The answer to that is…nothing. I did not find him. I have no idea where he is. Like I said in my previous blog about
him, he was living in an Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp when I met him
and when I went back to Gulu, Uganda this summer, his entire camp was torn
down. Now where there once were huts,
kids running everywhere, woman building fires and families enjoying time
together, there is now a field of grass.
IDP camp-Gulu, January 2009
Where the IDP camp used to be-Gulu, June 2010
It was surreal to be there
again. It is surreal to know that
I was so close to Otim and couldn’t find him. There is this anger in me that says that it’s not okay. It’s not okay that there is a boy
living in Uganda who I love and will never see. It is not okay that his parents were murdered by the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA). It is not okay
that the northern part of Uganda went through 20 years of war. None of this is okay and there’s
nothing I can say that will make it okay.
The only thing I can say is
that I was blessed to meet him in the first place! I was blessed to go back to the same exact spot to try to
find him again. I am blessed to be
apart of a ministry that continues to send groups to the same contacts. No matter how I look at it, I am
blessed. What about Otim? What
about the other Otim’s in the world?
