Gulu Day One

So just a disclaimer, there is some rough stuff in this one because interviews started today. 
We drove into Gulu yesterday, it is a small town in northern Uganda.  It is where alot of the rebel violence occured and where many of the IDP camps were located.  This is also the town that the commuter children fled to every night at the height of LRA violence. So there is a really weird feel to this town.  Everyone is nice, but people seem haunted. Which is more than understandable ; the things this town and its people have gone through are unimaginable.  There was a bit of political violence here last week and so the whole town is on edge.  The government turns the power off at night so the town is pitch black, trying to divert people from staying out late.  So the town seems very eerie at night, very deserted.  The town itself is  very normal but the vibe is much different.

We started our interviews today and went to a village where a huge IDP camp used to be.  I ended up conducting 5 interviews today, our team did a total of 22.  We have 3 university students with us and had 3 tanslators.  We split up into 3 different groups and all went our own way in the village. I interviewed one man and three women.  Two of the women were former rebels.  The first woman was abducted from her village when she was 15 and was part of the LRA for 6 months.  She was incharge of watching the kids on the compound, and was also forced to be a 'wife' of a commander.  She was pregnant within the first month.  She ended up escaping with 6 other children when their compound got raided by the ugandan military. 

The other woman I interviewed was abducted on her way home from school when she was 11. She was in the middle of her 5th grade year at school and was never able to finish.  One of our questions in the interview is if religion played a large role in their life while they were part of the LRA.  This woman told me that they were banned from praying until they earned it and were inducted into the LRA.  This included being tortured and sexually abused by the other soldiers.  She endured that for a year.  She was then trained to become a soldier, at age 12, and was used for village raids.  She said, "I killed people, many people, babies too".  After a year of being a soldier she was in a fire fight with the Ugandan Military and things went south very quickly.  She got shot in the ankle ( she was not sure if it was by a member of the LRA or the Ugandan Military).  When the fire fight was over her commander told her that she was dead weight and buried her alive.  She waited until she felt out of breath and clawed her way out of the shallow grave.  They had buried her in a bannana grove so she slept there for 2 nights, scared that the LRA was in the general vicinity still.  When she finally left she went to a neighboring village and told an old woman that she was lost from and IDP camp becuase if she had said she was a former rebel  the community would have killed her.  They took her to the hospital to tend to the gunshot wound that she still has scars from on her ankle (it went clean through) and then returned her to her family.  Most former soldiers go to a rehabilitation center to cope with what happened to them, her family would not allow her to.  They would not recognize that she was ever even a part of the LRA. 

Dr.Riley interviewd a little boy that was born into the LRA and did not escape until he was 15, he is 19 now.  Another woman escaped in 2011 with all three of her children ( all born while she was a wife to a commander).  These stories are absolutely incredible and heart breaking.  I am in a really weird emotional place of complete awe at these people and a sense of horror.  Which is completely selfish of me, it is unfair for me to take these peoples stories and make them emotionally taxing for myself.  Everyone told me their story so hap hazardly, like it was completely normal for them to encounter such terrible things.

So that was day one of interviews! Tomorrow should be interesting!  The picture is of the kids that were following me around at the village today.