I’m going to Uganda! I depart August 3 to spend two weeks in the internal displacement camps of the Apac province in Northern Uganda. Although the violence caused by the LRA in the area has greatly subsided over the past three years, the threat of renewed violence and kidnapping still keeps most residents of these provinces in such camps. However, the greatest threat to these people today are the lasting effects of war and displacement: poverty, malnutrition, orphaned children, teenagers with memories of being forced to commit acts of violence, young mothers who were victims of rape, an AIDS rate close to 50%, and a cramped climate that encourages the spread of disease.
In less than a week I’ll be bouncing over the back roads of Uganda, heading toward the displacement camps of the Oyam district (formerly Apac) in the country’s north. I’m going with 7 other friends from the Arlington campus of Frontline and meeting with an organization called Global Refuge International. Over the course of 14 days, we’ll be working through GRI to visit 9 displacement camps in Oyam, providing medicine, education, care, and encouragement. The official language of Uganda is English, but the most widely spoken language is Ganda. In the relief camps of the north, we will meet very few people that speak either language.
Nearly all of the residents of these camps are from the Lango and Acholi ethnic groups. Combined, these two groups make up less than 10% of the population of Uganda. The Acholi and Lango dialects share 90% of their vocabulary in common, so they are mutually intelligible, but there is still a distrustful divide between the two groups. Global Refuge has been in these camps for some years now and most of the leadership and day-to-day service has been handed over to natives of northern Uganda who are familiar with the customs and know the people intimately. Pastor Walter is a native of the region who works in the 9 camps, knows virtually every family, and is tirelessly discipling the displaced people of Northern Uganda.
Due to international pressure and aid, the Lord’s Resistance Army has been pushed back into Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo over the past three years. They still make frequent trips across the border to carry out terrorist missions and to kidnap child soldiers. The LRA has never been very popular, but is even less so today, and the only way they can get soldiers is to kidnap and brainwash them. Ugandan soldiers patrol the border regions to prevent major attacks, however there are reports of these soldiers allowing some attacks against civilians or even carrying them out. The catch is that when there is no longer a rebel threat, the international military aid Uganda has been receiving will dry up. So the military is pressed to look successful, but not too successful.
Today, the Acholi and Lango people are threatened more by the results of this 20 year battle than they are by immediate violence. For nearly a generation, these people have been forced from their homes, villages, and livelihood. Access to water is limited. Poverty and hunger are ongoing themes. Countless orphans have been created by war. Children have disappeared by the thousands. Some eventually escaped the slavery of the LRA, but returned to their people broken and traumatized by the violence they had seen or committed. Many have even been forced to kill members of their own family. Systematic rape created countless teen mothers and spread HIV to the victims and their children. Having already received a foothold, HIV spreads rapidly in a promiscuous society where the family has broken down and many of the refugees