An amazing experience

For a month in December 2006 I worked with Northwest Medical Teams, a humanitarian organization that provides healthcare to the people of Northern Uganda. We worked in the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps which contain more than 1.6 million people. These people moved to the camps years ago to escape the random attacks on their villages by the Lord’s Resistance Army. 

As you can read on the history page the Lord’s Resistance Army primarily attacked civilians in the strange belief that it would help northern Uganda secede from the south. The strategy failed and over the past 20 years the rebels caused unimaginable suffering. The rebels would invade a village and, after killing the adults, would kidnap the children and young men. The children were forced to become rebel soldiers and attack their own people. Some of the children were made to become servants or sex-slaves. The kidnappings caused the children in many villages to become night commuters. They would walk into the camps every night for protection then walk back to their families during the day.

Recently a truce was brokered by Sudan - one of many truces over the past 20 years. This one is still holding although few are moving from the camps until they are sure the atrocities will not resume. In late December, Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, met with his mother who he calls “my second God.” She advised him to stop the war and negotiate a peace with Museveni. He spoke to the president on the phone and the Lira newspaper reported that he said that he would agree to be tried by Ugandan Courts. Volunteering to be tried in Uganda is a ploy to avoid being tried by the International Criminal Court. These recent developments look promising.

Since the start of the ceasefire the area is safer, both for the people and for me. The camps have slowly begun to empty. We no longer needed an armed guard when we visited the IDP camps. But the people are still wary. There have been ceasefires before, people have returned to their villages then, when Kony or the Government pulled out of the talks, the random killings restarted and many died.

To keep you up to date I wrote a daily blog about my experiences. Each day I focussed on a different aspect of life as I experienced it. I have also organized these pieces on the Uganda page, it may be easier to find what you are interested in on this page. The people, and especially the children, are very photogenic. I snapped lots of pictures and have included the best in the photo gallery.

The internet connection in Northern Uganda was unreliable. When I was able to get connected it was very very slow. I got to know the people in the Providence Internet Cafe, a tiny dusty room with a few old computers along an alley from the main street in Lira. Uploading a page of my blog often took more than an hour - progress was measured in a few bytes each second whereas in Canada we are used to kilobytes or megabytes. In the Acholi tradition, I learnt patience and sometimes serenity.

I have turned my blog into a little book which I self-published on lulu.com. You can buy the book for $18 or download a pdf of the book for free.  The book is printed on demand, that is the printing company will print one copy when you order it from the website. There is no mark-up, the cost is exactly what it costs to print it. 

If you have questions or comments please send me an e-mail.