A former LRA abductee rehabilitating victims

Douglas Olum

What you need to know:

He is one of few former abductees who overcame the stigma and other challenges caused by the abduction and ill treatment while in the hands of the LRA rebels

GULU. On December 31, 1998, Douglas Olum’s mother cried uncontrollably, without stopping. Not sure of what to do, Olum’s actions varied from crying, to trying to get her to pull herself together, and to just looking on and doing nothing.
Olum was just 11 years old then, going on to 12. As his mother cried, he wondered how hard she had cried when he had been abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels eight months earlier.
On the night of his abduction, Olum said, it started out as a “normal” day. However, that was “normal” in Acholi sub-region and different parts of northern Uganda then, was actually not a normal situation. The LRA rebels were killing, looting and abducting children.
Despite the uncertainties, Olum took to his straw bed in the family’s hut in Ongako Sub-County, Gulu District, hoping to wake up normally the following day. This was not to be. He does not recall much of what happened leading to his abduction. At 11 years of age, most boys will sleep like a log. So he did not hear the rebels breaking into the hut.

All he remembers is that he was rudely woken up by an unusually bright beam of torch light directed straight at his eyes as a man shouted orders in Acholi. He had no doubt what was going on the moment he sprung to attention. He, going by experiences of other people, had heard of, knew it was game over and that he would easily die if he did not comply.
The rest of the night and the following morning was spent walking, together with the other abducted persons, all the way to Adjumani District, where the rebels had established a camp.
In captivity, and now as a rebel fighter, Olum took to life relatively easily, and was assigned to be on the lookout and inform his seniors in case the government forces tried to attack the camp.

In the role, Olum says, he had a semblance of freedom to wander about, which was accorded to him perhaps because he was deemed too young to try to escape and return to Gulu from relatively far-away Adjumani.
But escaping is exactly what Olum was thinking about, and his chance would come shortly after Christmas Day in 1998.
Olum says: “I was in charge of monitoring the situation as my seniors slept. But on that very night, I requested them that I needed to take a bath and they accepted. By the time I returned from taking a bath, there was no one and it is at that point that I started getting my way out.”

The journey back home was long and tedious, Olum says, and this was further complicated by the knowledge that he risked getting killed if he was caught by his captors. However, he trekked on for two days until he reached the Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camp in present day Amuru District.
“I met UPDF soldiers at Atiak IDP camp and I narrated my story to them,” he says. “Later on, they took me to 4th Division barracks in Gulu Town where all returnees from captivity would be taken first.”

A week later, Olum, now 29 and a father of two, was taken to Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO), a non-governmental organisation where LRA returnees underwent rehabilitation before they were re-integrated into the communities.
After a month of receiving psycho-social support at the centre, he says, his mental health was deemed to have stabilised and the trauma he had gone through had been managed.
He was then ready to return home and reunite with his family, to which his mother reacted by crying.

Returning home afforded Olum the opportunity to further his education, which had been interrupted by the abduction. He completed his primary education at Christ the King Demonstration School in 2001. He later pursued a Bachelor’s in Mass Communication at Uganda Christian University, Mukono, which he completed in 2012.
Olum now runs a community-based organisation – Association for Ex-LRA Abductee Survivors (ALRAS) – which he says aims to improve the economic welfare of war returnees through income generating projects.

He is one of few former abductees who overcame the stigma and other challenges caused by the abduction and ill treatment while in the hands of the LRA rebels. Unicef, the United Nations agency in charge of child protection, estimated that about 12,000 children were abducted by LRA rebels during the two-decade war, with boys being turned into fighters while girls became sex slaves.
Olum wishes the government would do more to support the victims of the war, pointing out economic empowerment and offering psycho-social support as key needs.

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