Picture this—you just celebrated your ninth birthday, and after the long day of festivities you are simply exhausted and decide to go to bed.  As you slowly start to drift off into your dreams, suddenly you feel a hand gripped over your mouth and you are stolen away from the comfort of your bed.  The man violently seizes your arms and quickly drags you out of your home.  The worst part of it all is you know exactly where you are going—and it isn’t a better place.

Here in the United States, the chances of this happening are fairly slim, yet in northern Uganda if you are a child, you can almost guarantee you are not safe at night.  I’m sure very few of you reading this don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, but don’t worry, I hope to change that. 

There is currently a war taking place in northern Uganda between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government.  1986 witnessed the beginning of a spiritual movement in the country, which aimed to infuse the government with ‘God's intended government’.  What started as a ‘spiritual movement’ soon turned into a full scale war.  The founder of the LRA, Alice Lakwena, believed that the government should be chosen by God and it needed to be immediately overthrown.  Although her vision was not one of true brutality, Joseph Kony’s was.  Joseph Kony, claiming to be Lakwena’s cousin, soon took over the LRA and made it take a turn for the worse. 

Kony did not believe that anyone or anything should be spared in his pursuit of overthrowing the government.  His ‘brilliant’ idea was to build his army with children.  His belief was that children are the most easily influenced; they are moldable and easy to brainwash.  Kony began to kidnap children in their sleep and force them into the army.  The LRA teaches these innocent children to kill, no matter what, whether it is by shooting or stabbing.   Teaching them to fight and kill on command proved to be an easy task because the children feared for their own lives so greatly.  

The BBC has recently done research into child soldiers in Africa; in it, one girl abducted by the LRA shares one of her worst experiences with the army.  She recounts what happens if a child attempts to escape--“One boy tried to escape, but he was caught.  They made him eat a mouthful of red pepper, and five people were beating him.  His hands were tied, and then they made us, the other new captives, kill him with a stick.  I felt sick.  I knew this boy from before.  We were from the same village.  I refused to kill him, and they told me they would shoot me.  They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it.  The boy was asking me, “Why are you doing this?” I said I had no choice.  After we killed him, they made us smear blood on our arms.  I felt dizzy.  They said we had to do this so we would not fear death, and so we would not try to escape.”  This recount shows the real Ugandan war better than any history I could give. 

Here in the United States, the chances of this happening are fairly slim, yet in northern Uganda if you are a child, you can almost guarantee you are not safe at night.  I’m sure very few of you reading this don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, but don’t worry, I hope to change that.

Also, by investigating the war in Uganda, Dateline NBC produced a report that recently won an Emmy for 'Best Report in a News Magazine.' The article’s aim is to capture the lives of children affected by the war using the children’s own personal stories.  In an interview with a boy named Patrick, the reporter, Morrison, is getting his facts straight from the boy’s heart-wrenching story— “It was, he said, the very first night of his abduction.  Patrick, his parents and his siblings, were forced at gunpoint into the bush near a river. And then he watched as the rebels killed his father. He watched as they slashed away at his mother with their knives. And then, as she lay grievously wounded, a rebel commander turned and spoke to the children.” Patrick then reluctantly shares the rest of the story with the reporter, revealing that he was forced to kill his own mother, or the rest of their family would be murdered.  Words cannot accurately describe how someone could feel when reading this.  Both of these children’s stories sum up the true brutality of the war.

One of the problems with this is—why does nearly no one seem to be knowledgeable about the crisis?  How can an entire country be at war, and we as Americans have no clue?  Unbelievable, isn’t it?  I challenge you (most likely one of the ignorant ones) to do the following: first, tell a friend about it, letting other people know is the first step, aka, awareness.  Second, be ambitious—turn on the national news and try to learn something new; personally, I’m tired of other countries thinking we are ignorant.

Obviously, not everyone in the world is uninformed; the big wigs are definitely paying attention to the issue.  In response to the war in northern Uganda, a senior United Nations official, Jan Egeland, makes a very bold statement about the crisis in Uganda—“The humanitarian situation in northern Uganda is worse than in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world.”  Revealing her thoughts on the war in Uganda, you can effectively question—what qualifies a war as being a ‘worse’ humanitarian situation? Children being victimized can play a large role on calling the war in Uganda the worst humanitarian conflict occurring in the world today, don’t you think?  The children are innocent.

Like I said earlier—what can we do about it?  It seems so far away, which makes it seem hard for a student at Ohio State to really make a difference in Africa.  However, try not to think this way.  There are plenty of small steps that we can take to making a difference overseas.  Like I said, awareness is the first;   you should know what you can do to help. The group, Invisible Children, has been working toward ending the war through fundraisers, protests, and direct involvement with the government.  They also directly work with people that live in Uganda to truly work toward what they think will help.  The website Invisible Children also has a full page on all the ways you can actively participate and help.

So before you go to bed at night, think about how different your life would be if you lived in Uganda.  Maybe this thought will motivate us all to help.

The Ohio State University

Autumn 2009