My flight from Istanbul to Johannesburg started having some technical problems.
After a few intense turbulences, the captain announced that we had to make an emergency stop, and the closest airport was somewhere in Uganda. So there we stopped, finding ourselves accidentally in Central Africa.
We landed in Entebbe. I was unaware, until that day, of the armed conflict in the region. The conflict is specifically in the north of Uganda and still alive in 2012 like it was in 1996. Still alive, but forgotten.
After reading Els De Temmerman's book Aboke Girls, regarding the famous abduction of 139 girls by the Lord's Resistance Army in the middle of the 90's, I understood that Ugandan ways to get to the political power, had been for years, violent.
Should we blame colonization, perhaps? Uganda was for years occupied by the Brittish Empire. During World War II, The north of Uganda was fighting along with the UK, meanwhile, the southern part of the country was getting education.
The independence came with the auto-proclamation of Obote as the president, but he was taken down by his own army commander, Idi Amin.
Amin's dictatorship was brutal and oppressive, eliminating all opponents in terrifying ways, using tools like hammers or machetes. When Amin's dictatorship was defeated, Obote took the power back, but the violence wasn't over. He was there, taking revenge and chasing after those who followed Amin. Okello came to rule after Obote, being not less oppresive, and was later taken down by Museveni, the current president, who has been in the power since 1986.
While all of the previously mentioned spiral of violence was going on, an insurgent group was being born: The LRA. Their purpose was (and still is) to rule the country by the 10 Christian Commandments. Joseph Kony, the LRA leader (who most of you have probably heard of thanks to a viral campaign) added an 11th commandment: "Thou shall not ride a bicycle".
They abduct children. They take boys and kill their parents in order to have them serving all of their life in the bushes, because that way they would have nobody to return to. They even tell some of them to kill their own family members. They abduct girls to make them their slaves. The girls get raped and if they make a little mistake on their daily duties, they get terrible punishments, such as a militant jumping on their chest with military boots.
It took us 2 hours in the bus to get from the airport to the hotel. 5 people, including me, wanted to go out to "Sightsee the place". The cabin crew told us not to, because they could not guarantee our safety and they would not be responsible if anything happened to us, warning that we were in malaria area. We still went out. So we were walking in a place we couldn't even pronounce, waving to the people as beauty kings and queens and smiling at them.
We stopped in a little store for drinks, where I saw a teenager boy with a scar that crossed his cheek and forehead. I began to talk to him. While being impressed with his flawless english, I asked him about his scars, and he explained this was done by the "bad boys". The guerrilla abducted him and his older brother years ago, and made them decide who was going to be free and who was going to "serve". His older brother said he would serve as he was the oldest and most prepared. They accepted, but in order for him to be free, he had to be brutally beated with a chain by his own brother. That was the reason of the scar.
I had heard before about routines of guerrillas, especially after interviewing Seargent Mayor Luis Alberto Erazo from the Colombian National Police, who was kipnapped for over 11 years by the FARC. But the Ugandan guerrilla was a totally different level of madness: kids being murdered, raped, brutally beated and forced to kill their own family.
The government of Uganda has claimed that the LRA group is financed by the muslims of North Sudan in order to sabotage Museveni's government, all apparently for expansionist causes.
On the way back to the airport, I spent 2 hours talking to 16 year old Shafir. He works with his older brother driving a bus. He asked me where I was from and when I said Venezuela, he looked clearly confused to me. I had plenty of time to explain to him where it was. "I want to go to America. America is the land of opportunity" He said with even an american accent. I think he learned that phrase with some radio commercial. I just smiled. I told him I was not from the U.S of A. I took some more time to explain to him. - "I still want to go. I want to go anywhere, I just don't want to be here". And that is how I left a country brokenhearted, and interested on African matters.
After a few intense turbulences, the captain announced that we had to make an emergency stop, and the closest airport was somewhere in Uganda. So there we stopped, finding ourselves accidentally in Central Africa.
We landed in Entebbe. I was unaware, until that day, of the armed conflict in the region. The conflict is specifically in the north of Uganda and still alive in 2012 like it was in 1996. Still alive, but forgotten.
After reading Els De Temmerman's book Aboke Girls, regarding the famous abduction of 139 girls by the Lord's Resistance Army in the middle of the 90's, I understood that Ugandan ways to get to the political power, had been for years, violent.
Should we blame colonization, perhaps? Uganda was for years occupied by the Brittish Empire. During World War II, The north of Uganda was fighting along with the UK, meanwhile, the southern part of the country was getting education.
The independence came with the auto-proclamation of Obote as the president, but he was taken down by his own army commander, Idi Amin.
Amin's dictatorship was brutal and oppressive, eliminating all opponents in terrifying ways, using tools like hammers or machetes. When Amin's dictatorship was defeated, Obote took the power back, but the violence wasn't over. He was there, taking revenge and chasing after those who followed Amin. Okello came to rule after Obote, being not less oppresive, and was later taken down by Museveni, the current president, who has been in the power since 1986.
While all of the previously mentioned spiral of violence was going on, an insurgent group was being born: The LRA. Their purpose was (and still is) to rule the country by the 10 Christian Commandments. Joseph Kony, the LRA leader (who most of you have probably heard of thanks to a viral campaign) added an 11th commandment: "Thou shall not ride a bicycle".
They abduct children. They take boys and kill their parents in order to have them serving all of their life in the bushes, because that way they would have nobody to return to. They even tell some of them to kill their own family members. They abduct girls to make them their slaves. The girls get raped and if they make a little mistake on their daily duties, they get terrible punishments, such as a militant jumping on their chest with military boots.
It took us 2 hours in the bus to get from the airport to the hotel. 5 people, including me, wanted to go out to "Sightsee the place". The cabin crew told us not to, because they could not guarantee our safety and they would not be responsible if anything happened to us, warning that we were in malaria area. We still went out. So we were walking in a place we couldn't even pronounce, waving to the people as beauty kings and queens and smiling at them.
We stopped in a little store for drinks, where I saw a teenager boy with a scar that crossed his cheek and forehead. I began to talk to him. While being impressed with his flawless english, I asked him about his scars, and he explained this was done by the "bad boys". The guerrilla abducted him and his older brother years ago, and made them decide who was going to be free and who was going to "serve". His older brother said he would serve as he was the oldest and most prepared. They accepted, but in order for him to be free, he had to be brutally beated with a chain by his own brother. That was the reason of the scar.
I had heard before about routines of guerrillas, especially after interviewing Seargent Mayor Luis Alberto Erazo from the Colombian National Police, who was kipnapped for over 11 years by the FARC. But the Ugandan guerrilla was a totally different level of madness: kids being murdered, raped, brutally beated and forced to kill their own family.
The government of Uganda has claimed that the LRA group is financed by the muslims of North Sudan in order to sabotage Museveni's government, all apparently for expansionist causes.
On the way back to the airport, I spent 2 hours talking to 16 year old Shafir. He works with his older brother driving a bus. He asked me where I was from and when I said Venezuela, he looked clearly confused to me. I had plenty of time to explain to him where it was. "I want to go to America. America is the land of opportunity" He said with even an american accent. I think he learned that phrase with some radio commercial. I just smiled. I told him I was not from the U.S of A. I took some more time to explain to him. - "I still want to go. I want to go anywhere, I just don't want to be here". And that is how I left a country brokenhearted, and interested on African matters.
