Northern Uganda: My first impressions

Cord has officially opened its office in northern Uganda.  Country Director Dennis Bailey, fresh from South Africa, is in post and building fast on relationships with our partners, IYEP and the Kitwobee Women Beekeepers’ Association.  Here he describes his initial impressions of life in a country still reeling from Africa’s longest civil war.

Having lived in Africa for the last 25 years, the putrid humidity of the tropical region was easier to manage than the noise, especially as the bedlam is ironically loudest in the Pearl Afriq (sic) Hotel, where I have been holed-up for the last month, when you most need to sleep.

The ability of Africa to rise from its ashes and celebrate - loudly - beggars belief.

The Acholi of northern Uganda has little to celebrate, for they have largely been abandoned to a still too uncertain future.  Still no peace agreement has been signed with the LRA and Uganda’s porous borders continue to leak the fleeing, desperately seeking refuge.

The hopelessness of the belligerently beleaguered and the perpetually besieged is most evident in the eyes of the war-forlorn women.  But you strike a woman and you strike a rock, and it is women who are leading the return from the over crowded and inhumane conditions of IDP camps, where many had lived for up to 20 years.

It is mostly women who are risking the gradual return to their rural, deserted and fertile homesteads in search of a future for their children.

I have looked into the eyes of Gulu’s streetwise children too. Former abductees, child mothers and the progeny of their despoilment come to IYEP - (Information for Youth Empowerment Programme), one of Cord’s first partners in Uganda - seeking counsel and guidance from former abductees.

It’s hard to describe the hollow faces of these young `formerly-abducted’ returnees.  Red-veined eyes scream inexpressible grief, for sadly Acholi men don’t weep, however tortured their torment or deep their wounds.  I met two at IYEP the other day fresh out of whatever debriefing the Ugandan authorities put the voluntarily demobbed, rescued or captured LRA through.

Both men were in their early teens when first abducted, ferociously drilled and hysterically cajoled into inflicting unconscionable violence and unrelenting violation upon their very own people.

A people amongst whom they now - in their mid-twenties - seek to resettle.  Too scared to trust, too gutted - perhaps - for eye contact.  Certainly too scarred to integrate easily with the communities from which they were so brutally abducted; terrified of being caught again in the cycle of violence that has raped their future.

A conflict so complex, that even the wisest in Gulu shake their head.

Amongst the wise is the Acholi Religious Leaders Group - Muslim & Christian - who, two Saturday’s ago, walked in silent procession, arm in arm, side by side, through Gulu’s  streets, in an attempt to call public attention here and abroad to the plight of northern Ugandans, whose struggle for peace and reconciliation continues, largely unnoticed.

The odd American evangelist draws a much bigger crowd, distributing much bigger promises, with much louder fanfare, at which people grab, feasting on hope while it abounds.

And that’s one of the biggest ironies of this situation - for there is plenty of potential in the lush fertile bush of the Northern reaches.  northern Ugandan was once as much a bread basket to East Africa as Zimbabwe once was to Southern Africa, and it could be again, but for political will.

Perhaps the biggest inspiration this week was meeting 52 year old Vinancio Opiro, who has lived with his wife Victoria and their family in an IDP camp for the last 20 years; too afraid to return to his lands until now.  ‘You returned, even before the peace agreement is signed? ‘I asked.  `The government is promising’ [things will be okay],’ he replied.

In Northern Uganda, amongst civil society at least, the recipe for change is already being concocted; question is, much as in Zimbabwe, do those who wield power have a stomach for it."