Tales from former LRA child soldiers

In 2001, Josephine Acen, then 17, got her first born. She went visiting her mother in Pakor Village, Agago District, when the baby was two days old. Unknown to her, she had set off on a journey she would never forget.

“While at my mother’s place, strangers came murmuring at night and knocked hard on the door,” she says, adding: “When my mother opened, they heard a baby crying and asked about its gender and name. They told her they were taking the baby and its mother away.”

Her mother wept uncontrollably and, on her knees, pleaded with the rebels not to take away her daughter. Her mother’s efforts were only partially successful. The rebels left the baby behind but they made off with Acen.

As the rebels walked away with Acen and other captives to an unknown destination, in the process encountering and fighting off government soldiers, they kept picking up more abductees along the way.
“We walked for many days and fed on sodas and biscuits that the rebels looted from shops. We went to southern Sudan in a place called Atut and stayed there up to 2008,” Acen narrates.

At Atut, the rebels were constantly attacked by Ugandan forces, but they always fought back. “At some point, my hearing system was affected by gunshots exchanged between Uganda People’s Defence Forces [UPDF] and the rebels but it stabilised after a while,” she says.

Under captivity, it was the toughest time of her life as there were not only basics such as soap to use, but Acen says, she also had to make do with only one cloth for a whole year.

There was also no time to take care of oneself. “I was raped and sexually harassed and was at the same time forced to cook food for the rebels. I lost hope of returning home and left everything in the hands of God,” Acen recalls, as she leans her left hand against the bench while closing her eyes.
When UPDF attacked their temporary camp at a place she does not recall sometime in August in 2008, the opportunity for Acen and a colleague to escape into the bushes as the rebels fought back, presented itself.

“We never knew where we were going but I remember we walked for three days, eating wild fruits until we entered Uganda through Kitgum District,” Acen says.

There, she says, they were received by UPDF and taken to a rehabilitation centre in Kalongo Area Development Programme in Agago District that was managed by World Vision Uganda at the time.

At the rehabilitation centre, she says, she spent one day and later proceeded to her mother’s place in Pakor village.
“I felt happy when I got home because I reunited with my husband and family and it made me forget all about the suffering I went through,” Acen says.

She was home at last, but the experiences of the war soon took a toll on her.

“I was traumatised and wasn’t comfortable at home. I was in deep thoughts imagining the rebels would come back for me. I wasn’t happy with myself for some time.”

The following day after she had returned home, she says, her mother took her back to Kalongo World Vision Uganda camp, where she received interpersonal therapy to help her get over the life she experienced while in captivity.
Acen, like any other mother in a rural area, carries out farming.

“I dig in a group of 14 women and we use an ox-plough that was given to us by World Vision Uganda to ease our work. After harvesting, we share the garden produce to take care of our families and sell off the surplus,” she shares.

They took over my body

Just like Acen, 31-year-old Agnes Acan also faced the wrath of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. As she painfully narrates circumstances under which she was captured, at some point she closes her eyes to recall exactly what befell her.
“In 2002, my grandmother, younger sister and I were sleeping.

At approximately 11pm, I heard footsteps of people outside the house where we were sleeping. When they knocked at our door, I opened and saw people holding guns. When they told me to get out of the house, I knew they were rebels. They didn’t take my sister because she was young and my grandmother was old,” Acan recalls.

After she had been captured, she, walking on foot, recalls being taken to Kitgum Matidi via Gulu and Pader districts, from where she met other freshly abducted people. Acan, in the process, estimates to have covered more than 100 kilometres from Agago District. They walked through bushes to avoid UPDF soldiers, but also because the rebels never had trucks.

In captivity, it was the toughest time of her life because anytime was war time. “I was always on standby to run with the rebels wherever they went. When the rebels got hungry and had no food to cook, they forced us to raid people’s homes to search for food and water. It became a responsibility of cooking for them,” she says.

She says after cooking for the rebels, their commanders would rape women. “When someone tried to resist, it was like you were asking them to kill you. I had no choice apart from giving in to their sexual advances,” Acan, facing the ground as she picks her nails, recalls.

One day, while the rebels walked with the captives in Pader at a place called Corner Kilak, they landed in a UPDF soldier’s ambush. As the two groups shot at each other, in the company of other two women, Acan escaped into a nearby lady’s home who offered them refuge and hid them until bullet fires ceased and rebels ran away.

The journey to liberation
“When UPDF overpowered the rebels, I surrendered to them because I wanted protection. But even when I escaped from the rebel’s hands, I was not happy because I wasn’t sure I was safe,” she explains.

She was relieved to be taken to Kalongo where World Vision Uganda was running a rehabilitation centre. After receiving interpersonal therapy and counselling, Acan had to return home.

“My family and the community received me well but some people abused and insulted me. They looked at me as a mentally ill person but when World Vision Uganda started counselling groups within our village, I got people to identify with and talk to. I interacted with them.

At the moment, I feel free and no longer get bothered with what people say,” Acan says.

After she fitted back into the community, Acan now grows crops, including beans and sunflower in a women’s farmer group where they consume some of the garden produce and sell the surplus to provide for their families.
She is married with three children.

We were forced to loot

In Tyer Sub-county, Pader District, is where Alphonse Ogalle Olum and his family live. In 1998, he was digging in his gardens in the morning hours when the rebels struck.
“They tied my arms from the back and I didn’t put up any resistance. I knew that if I refused, I would die,” Olum recalls. He was 20 years old then.

Together with other captives in a small group, Olum later joined a bigger group of rebels as they walked from Lango and Pader, carrying heavy luggage on their heads.
From Pader, they proceeded to Gulu and later crossed to South Sudan through Kitgum.

“I was tortured and forced to carry heavy luggage, equivalent to the weight of three basins of dry beans. I carried chicken that the rebels got from attacking people’s homes and if I dropped anything, I would be beaten like a prisoner,” Olum retorts.

When they arrived in South Sudan, they had no specific place of settlement. He says: “We would stay in one place for two days and then move elsewhere with the rebels.”

A time came when the rebels forced Olum to learn how to use a gun because every time they were attacked by enemy forces, they would lose a number of their colleagues, yet they wanted to remain stronger.

One day as the rebels were attacked by UPDF forces at a place called Cwero, Olum got a chance to escape, thereby ending his four years in captivity.
“As I wandered through the bushes, I met a Good Samaritan who took me to his home and later to Gulu Support Children’s Organisation (GUSCO),” Olum recalls.

After two weeks at GUSCO, the organisation then transferred him to Children of War (COW) in Gulu. At COW, the temptation for Ogalle to run home was not avoidable. What stood in his way was the fact that movements within COW premises were limited, or else, someone risked being recaptured.

With support from World Vision Uganda, where he was transferred for interpersonal therapy, Olum was given a mattress and Shs200,000 after receiving psychosocial support and counselling on how to live again in his community. Upon his return home in Pader, Olum recalls, “I didn’t want to interact with people because I still had nightmares from rebel life. “Whenever I sat down to chat with someone, I would walk away from them because memories of being tortured still tormented me,” Olum explains.

In 2014, World Vision Uganda, under the Pader-Agago cluster, trained community facilitators and they were mandated to identify people from different communities with depression, especially those that had just returned from rebel abduction.

After identifying these categories of people, they were grouped to, among other things, share problems and how to go about them. “I was placed in a group of 10 formerly abducted men and in this group, we exchange ideas on how to take care of our families and forget all the suffering that we went through,” Olum explains.

Now that he stays home after life normalised, Olum says his aim is now to take his six children through school. “I’m a subsistence farmer and I grow crops like sunflower, sweet potatoes and maize. After harvesting, I sell part of the produce to earn money to take care of my family,” he says.
“I hope to start up more income generating activities to take care of my family,” Olumsays, and his hope is largely powered by the ox-plough he received.