We’re living in a place my heart has been passionate about for years. From home I heard story after story of devastation in Northern Uganda and the terror spread by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). I shed tears at the thought of the children forced to kill under the orders of Joseph Kony. I fought alongside Invisible Children as the youth of our nation stepped up and asked our government to take action. Now, the World Race has brought me to the village of Rackoko, Uganda. Suddenly the stories I hear about the war have my friend’s faces attached to them.
We’ve heard firsthand accounts of children being abducted, families slaughtered, and bullets flying all around as people tried to escape the LRA, and every person we’ve spoken to has lost immidiate family in the war. A neighbor told me the story of when their vehicle was caught in an ambush, people around her were killed, and she rescued a baby that had been abandoned in their car. With bullets following her for miles, she crawled on her stomach through the mud, with the little baby on her back.
Every week we drive past the Barlonyo Attack Memorial site, where in 2004, a LRA commander told his soldiers to kill every living thing. So, the soldiers shot at anything that moved, clubbed people to death, hacked at people with machetes, burnt down huts with families still inside, and ripped fetuses out of the mother’s wombs. So many stories we’ve heard of the war have been around the lunch table, and despite the willingness of a few to share, it is anything but easy conversation.
During the war, an IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) camp was set up in Rackoko. The government forced families to leave their homes for protection against the rebels. There were over 10,000 people in the camp in Rackoko, living in miserable conditions. Huts were packed as close together as possible, there was little food provided, but any who left the camp to gather food or firewood risked death. Worst of all, women and children living in the camp were often raped by the very soldiers assigned to protect them.
After 20 years of war in Northern Uganda, the people here are finally experiencing peace. The barracks have been torn down, thousands of huts have been destroyed, and many have begun the process of moving back to their homes. Widows and orphans are among some who have stayed because they have no where else to go. Some stay because they are scared of what they’ll find after so many years away, and many have chosen to stay because Rackoko has become their home.
While Northern Uganda is currently experiencing peace, that does NOT mean the LRA has been defeated. They have been driven out of Uganda and are currently believed to be in the Congo where they are still committing horrible atrocities. Click here to read an article about the struggles the Congolese are facing due to LRA violence as well as fear of their own armies. Click HERE to read an article from early August describing the 53% increase of attacks in the DRC so far this year and the fear the people are facing
