After a 24 hr bus ride, we’re finally in moshi, Tanzania. Before we leave Uganda forever, I’d like to mention the child soldiers and the LRA. I didn’t really know about them till I came here, and I still don’t know that much about them, so maybe your best shot is just to wiki it.
In any case, the LRA is absolutely insane. Like literally. They started out as an attempt at a political coup, but now they’ve degenerated into a violent cult. Journalists have traveled with them for days, but no one can figure out their purpose anymore. They kidnap children from the northern villages of Uganda and brainwash them into child soldiers. Then they go through more villages, kidnapping children, killing people, cutting off lips to show they were there. these kids are as young as 4, and to brainwash them, the LRA uses a mix of scare tactics and bullying (eg killing the kid’s entire family in front of him). Then the children are sent out to mow down others. By the time they are 10, they have no regard for human life. Some kids escape. Micah (the married one) says that when you go to northern Uganda, the kids all have a hardened look about them. Unlike the jinja ones, they never beg. To avoid the night raids thru the villages, some children walk 10 miles into town to sleep in doorways; then they walk back in the mornings. The guy who runs the LRA has been at large for at least 10 yrs, but the Ugandan government has done mostly nothing to track him. Now he’s on the run, but mostly b/c of international pressure. He’s one of the UN’s top 10 war criminals, and he’s one of the few who’s killed UN peacekeepers. Every time I talk to someone about the LRA, the big question in my mind is always why. Wtf is it all for? Ppl (especially the ones who’ve been here a while) all seem pretty disillusioned. They seem to think the cycles of genocide in Africa will never end, as if these ppl are programmed to murder each other. Micah brings up Somalia as an example. He said there were a couple of months of random peace. the british were still there, the Americans were still there, the warlords, the rebels, everyone, but no one was fighting. Then, one of the rebel groups got bored, split into opposing camps, and killed each other off. b/c of boredom (but I’m taking micah at his word on that).
I’m not sure I buy that. Africans will always kill Africans? Really? If that’s true, then we’re in trouble with obama as our president. Plus, tanzania seems to have broken out of it. In Tanzania, ppl identify as Tanzanian first, and their tribe second. It’s like saying I’m American before saying I’m Georgian. It seems to have taken them 1 good president to create that attitude (altho he was the president that liberated them from british rule, so needless to say he was quite influential). I think the problem lies in family planning (or lack thereof). Ppl in the poorer areas of Kenya don’t use any contraceptives, so they just keep popping out babies (no wonder the life expectancy of women is low)—rereading that sentence, this is a huge generalization (again) based on a few first hand experiences (that is to say, I could be very wrong), so take with salt, eh?
Anyways, ppl keep having babies, but they don’t seem to do much in the way of raising them. I mean, they feed them and clothe them and sometimes send them to school, but they don’t pass down values (unless that’s done in school?). the kids run pretty wild, doing whatever they like. Most of the time, a barely older child is in charge of a younger child, and the parents work (or not, depending on the parent), so parent-child interaction is pretty low. If the parent finds out that the child has done something wrong, the child will be beaten, but punishment is reactive and only comes if the child is caught. It doesn’t seem like children get taught a rule unless they accidentally break it. And then, isn’t the lesson just not to get caught? I guess I think that if ppl had 3 kids instead of 10 and bothered to spend time with them, the children would grow up with enough…something (brains? humanity?) so that a demagogue can’t manipulate them into killing other ppl. Sure some dictators are crazy motherfuckers, but how the heck do they get their support base in the first place?
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2 comments:
You have some wonderful Insights into the world of East Africa, but like many westerners who come to visit here you have some misconceptions regarding places such as Uganda.
Uganda's Northern Region is recovering from 20 some years of insurgency by Joseph Kony and the LRA.
You blog says nothing that there is peace in Uganda today, that there is no war.
Presently and for over two years there has been no LRA activity in Uganda. Joseph Kony has shifted his operations to South Sudan, now in the Democratic Republic of Congo and just recently some elements have moved into the Central African Republic.
You write as if the LRA activities are ongoing in Northern Uganda, nothing about the slow rebuilding process taking place, about schools reopening, clinics an people moving back to their villages, that there is peace in Northern Uganda...you keep the Western images of Uganda in flames alive...
Presently Kony is being pursued by three armies in the DRC, his power has been greatly diminished and some commmanders have been captured. Some women have been set free some child soldiers been caught and being processed...
They Why's of Kony-look at history, it is always about power and control...
thanks jon for this clarification. you're right, the bits of uganda that we saw were absolutely wonderful. i especially enjoyed the attitudes of the people, which is why it's so hard to believe that something like the LRA could've happened in the first place.
since we only have 2 months to spend in east africa, and only 10 days of that in jinja, i'm sure the impressions that i've formed will be incomplete and somewhat shallow. still, gotta do the best i can eh? :-)
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