Lira is a town in northern Uganda that used to be under the control and tyranny of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). There has been peace for only a few short years, but for the most part, life here seems to be getting better, people are rebuilding, and the town is flourishing. In other towns and villages the people aren’t so fortunate.
As you turn onto the road that leads to the village of Barlonyo, you see a large sign that reads something like “Memorial of the Attack at Barlonyo” with an arrow pointing up the road. The village is a conglomeration of mud huts and brick buildings, and there are brick-making places all over as you drive through. It definitely looks like the people there are doing their best to rebuild from some calamity, and there are people outside in the fields and gardens just trying to grow enough food to survive. In the center of the village, surrounded by trees, you see a large stone monument with a plaque on it and a couple of concrete slabs that form an open circle around it. A mass grave holding the bodies and remains of over 120 people. The irony is that little children are playing there like it’s a park – it’s the nicest looking spot in the whole village.
Tuesday, February 9th, Priscilla and I went with Agnes, the director of the Victory Outreach Ministries Agricultural Project (VOMAP), and a couple others, to Barlonyo. On February 21, 2004, the LRA massacred over 350 men, women and children there. From what we were told, Barlonyo was a camp of a few thousand people who had already fled the LRA at some point, but they couldn’t escape. The LRA came in that evening as people were returning to their homes from the fields, and just started shooting it up and burning it down. The most often quoted number currently is about 350 murdered, but we also heard that the government won’t share the actual numbers and that it is likely that far more were killed there. Many of the bodies were burned and never recovered; and of those recovered most were unrecognizable. Some were taken and buried privately, but the mass grave claims to hold 121 bodies of the slain.
As you meet people and shake hands with them all you want do is sit down with them and hear their stories. Were they there when the massacre happened? How did they survive? How is God helping them to move on while never being able to forget the horrors of that night nearly 6 years ago? Can they ever forgive Joseph Kony and the LRA? Priscilla and I wanted so badly to just sit and talk with the people, but we were only able to meet a couple of them before we had to go back to Lira. We met the supervisor for the project: a widower with children who is also crippled. We also met a widow with 10 children from the ages of 6-25. The youngest was only a year old when their father was killed in the massacre, and this woman can’t be more than 40 years old. It is very common in the villages for girls to get married at 12 or 13 years old, so it is very possible that she is only in her late 30s.
VOMAP has a number of agricultural plots that help the disadvantaged in many areas around Lira. The beneficiaries get 2 acres of land and seed the first year they are in the program, and free plowing from the church. They then harvest and sell the seed and by the second or third year of the project are on their own. Last June was the beginning of the agricultural project in Barlonyo, and there are already 275 beneficiaries who are either widow(er)s, orphans, or otherwise disadvantaged.
In case you don’t know, the LRA is a rebel army run by a man named Joseph Kony. They have been run out of Uganda, but I believe they are now in the Congo and wreaking havoc there as well. The army consists mainly of child soldiers who have been abducted from their homes and forced to kill at gunpoint until they are desensitized to it. There are also many girls who are kidnapped and raped; one of whom is a 17-year old orphan that Priscilla met here in Lira a few days ago. She escaped from the clutches of the LRA by running away when they went out to fight somewhere. Many don’t escape, though, whether from fear of what will happen if they get caught, they feel they have nowhere to go, or they are killed before they get a chance to escape. These children are real, they are hurting, and they seemingly have no hope. PRAY FOR THEM!!!
For more information on the attack:
