REAL LIFE
From Issue #16
From Violence To Peace In Uganda
No More Rocks and Mangoes
By Liane Beam Wansbrough
Photos by Michael Wansbrough
Obol Obongo used to be the best
fighter at school. With his slight build
and close-cropped hair, the fourteenyear
old could pass for twelve. He sits on
the front bench in his one-room school,
bare feet resting on the cement floor.
Posters taped to the wall behind him
show sketches of people killing, looting
and kidnapping.
Obol is familiar with violence. He lives
in Gulu, an area in northern Uganda that
has been at the centre of a war for the
past 18 years. Accustomed to conflict
since he was a child, he has learned to
resolve his problems using his fists,
sticks and stones. But over the last year,
Obol has been learning about peace —
and how to put the concept into practice
in his daily life — and he isn’t fighting so
much anymore.
The peace project that has provided a
new, non-violent framework for Obol and
his classmates was piloted in three
schools in Gulu last fall. The Injury
Control Centre of Uganda (ICCU)
developed the peace project because
their research showed violence as the
top cause of injury and death in Gulu.
“These kids speak violence,” says Milton
Mutto, the organization’s research
assistant. “We want them to know that
there are alternatives.”
The ICCU has found that the young
people are eager to learn about peace,
despite their difficult circumstances.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a
ragtag rebel group founded and led by Joseph Kony, has been trying to
overthrow the Ugandan government,
supposedly to replace it with a regime
based on the Ten Commandments.
However, the group has become
well-known for its acts of senseless
slaughter, rape and even cannibalism.
Young people between the ages of
eight and 16 are prime targets for the
LRA. They live under constant threat of
abduction by rebels that make routine
attacks in the villages at night. Schools
are targeted during the day. The LRA
established a routine of attacking
schools throughout the 1990s and this
continued through 2002. If captured, the
teens are forced to work for the army as
fighters and sex slaves. Conservative
estimates place the total number of
teenagers and children abducted by the
LRA (since the conflict began in 1986) at
more than 20,000.
To avoid being kidnapped, many sleep
away from their homes. They have
become “night commuters.” Every night
like clockwork, about 2,500 of them
stream onto the roads, making their way to the hospital or the centre of town,
where regular patrol by the government
army and police keep the area safe.
Many seek shelter under a shop veranda
in town. Those who can make it to the
hospital sleep in a partially constructed
ward or in the hospital courtyard where
leafy trees provide some shelter when it
rains. Others sleep in the bush.
“We did focus group discussions and
in-depth interviews of these kids and we
found every single one of them was
traumatized. That means seeing their
father murdered, seeing their brother
murdered, having their house burnt
down by rebels and of course sleeping in
the bush or the hospital to avoid being
abducted,” says Dr. Ron Lett, president
and international director of the
Canadian Network for International
Surgery, a group that works with the
ICCU in Uganda. “It’s not that the kids
don’t empathize or have sympathy.
It’s just that they don’t know about
alternatives,” he says.
When the organization first surveyed
the schools in 1998, they found
examples of the teenagers in Gulu
mimicking the actions of the rebels.
“The rebels commonly attack in the area
by using the roads as a place to stage an
ambush on a convoy of vehicles,” says
Dr. Lett. “We learned that the kids,
when they are angry at one of their
classmates, mimic these actions and
stage ambushes on each other along
the road.”
“These traumatized kids become adults
and they go into the future not being
aware that there are non-violent
alternatives to dealing with conflict,”
says Dr. Lett. He strongly believes the
cycle of violence will end by getting
through to the kids. That’s where the
peace project comes in. The course
teaches matters of conscience, empathy,
fairness and forgiveness through
drawing, skits and music. The youth
who have taken the course have even
developed a panel through which they
can resolve their problems together.
So far the project has shown promise.
Rose Korma-Kecch, a teacher at one of
the schools says that students from
other classes hang around the windows
hoping to overhear snatches of a
conversation or skit from the peace
curriculum.
The teachers also report seeing a
difference in behaviour in just one year.
“They can control themselves. Injuries
have been reduced during recess.”
Korma-Kecch says. She also reports
fewer incidents of students “stoning”
each other with rocks and mangoes.
“At lunch time now the students all line
up neatly instead of pushing and
struggling. I have even seen some of
the students that have taken the peace
course advising other classmates on
how to talk and solve their problems.
We have become a peaceful class,”
she says.
