Marred by War, Redeemed by Love

Maybe if they had not returned home that night, their life story would have been written differently. Maybe if they had not returned home, 32-year-old James Okot would not be blind. And maybe, just maybe, his only brother would still be alive.

A rainy night ensured that all these maybes remained just that – maybes. That night the two young boys who had been hiding from the marauding Lord’s Resistance Army rebels decided to seek shelter at their home in Aluyi village, Gulu district.

“Every night, for about a month, we had been taking refuge in the bushes because we had been told that the rebels were in our village. We dared not sleep at home because we were scared of being abducted,” James recalls.

“For a long time I have replayed that night in my mind and wished we had stayed out in the rain. I have wished that we hadn’t come back home, I have wished so many things, because that night I killed my brother, my only brother,” adds James, his words heavy with sadness.

As he talks, James constantly wrings his hands, which are clutching a blue handkerchief. Every so often, he uses this handkerchief to wipe his right eye, which is just a small bloodshot hole. The other eye cannot also see. James is blind and his bloodshot eye occasionally produces fluid which he wipes away with the handkerchief. James’ blindness was caused by a bullet that hit him on his left cheekbone, penetrating through to the right eye.

“I was abducted on April 15, 1992. The rebels knocked at the door of the hut in which my brother and I were sleeping and we opened for them. They then took us to our father’s hut and told him that they wanted to take me as their guide. Saying I was too young, my father volunteered to guide them. That’s when they said they were ‘going to show him’. They handed me an axe and ordered me to kill my brother,” recalls James. “After that, they tied up my father, left him and took me with them.”

Seated on a wooden chair in his compound, James can only hear the happy sounds of his five children playing around him, oblivious of the torment their father is going through. James stays with Janet Awori, 27, and together they are the parents of Dennis Otim, 15, Sally Akera, 12, Francis Lubangakene, eight, Opiru Ivan Lalobo, three years old and one-year-old Constance Lagumu. James and Janet are not married officially, and having a Church wedding is Janet’s biggest dream.  

Theirs is a fairly large compound, with four huts encircling it. A group of about ten chicks follows their mother around, while a bunch of puppies stretch out on the ground under one of the huts. Behind one of the huts is a cow that moos constantly. James says his family has lived in this area since 1962.

James’ two older sons play football with a ball made locally of polyethene and rubber tyres. James got blind while with the LRA, so he has never seen his four younger children. The first was born while in the bush, so even though he saw him as a baby, he is now all big and grown up. The only way he identifies his children is by feeling the size of their palms and feeling for their height. His third son, eight-year-old Francis Lubangakene, works as his trusted guide.

The children have no idea of the things that distress their father, since they were young and some not even yet born at the time the LRA carried out heavy fighting and massive atrocities on the people of Gulu. There is only one person who can understand James’ pain – his wife Janet.

James and Janet were both abducted by the LRA as children. Most child soldiers went through the same ordeal – beatings, forceful killings, hunger and being shot at. Janet therefore knows very well what James is talking about.

“Before I was abducted, life was good. We had cows, goats and chicken, and I was in school. My suffering began the day I was abducted,” says James. “We walked long distances carrying heavy loads. The rebels forced us to kill our colleagues just because they had no more strength to move. As we went from village to village, we would beat and torture the people we came across. The youth would be abducted and forced to join us,” James adds.

In the bush, the Uganda army – the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) – used to stage ambushes for the rebels. It was in one such ambush that James first felt the sting of a bullet.

“The UPDF followed us day and night. One day they came to rescue children who had been abducted. That’s when I first got hit by a bullet, on the buttocks. In the bush there was no medicine for wounds. They would just be washed with warm water and left to heal gradually,” says James.

The LRA rebels used a lot of propaganda to convince the abducted youth that their guerilla war against the Uganda government was justified.

“When we reached Sudan, which was the LRA’s base at the time, they began brainwashing us, justifying their fighting. They told us our duty was to return to Uganda and fight the government. Even if you did not believe them, you had to do what they said because you had no choice,” says James, revealing the helplessness child soldiers feel.

“After that they gave us guns and taught us how to shoot. They taught us how to dodge bullets, how to attack barracks, in general how to be a guerilla,” James says.

Having gone to school and thus able to speak some English and Kiswahili, James was soon promoted to ‘signaler’ in the rebels’ communications unit.  His work was breaking codes.

Because he was a hardworking man, James was rewarded with a wife, a 12-year-old girl called Janet whom he had never met before.

“Women were used as rewards because they would supposedly make one forget one’s suffering in the bush. But I was not happy to get a wife. I was young and scared of women. What was I going to do with her? I was 17, she was 12. We were both virgins,” James says.

For Janet, she was hurt at being given away as an object. “I was indifferent to him – I just had no feelings whether good or bad,” she says. Eventually the two realised they had no choice but to live together and soon had a son.

Mending broken lives – the Uganda Children of War Rehabilitation Programme, Gulu

 James did not plan to escape from the bush and return home. After nine years with the rebels, he had established his own life there. More important than that, though, is the fact that he was terrified of going home.

“I didn’t think of escaping because the rebels used to tell us that if we came home they would go to our villages and kill our families and neighbours. I was not looking forward to returning home, too, because I still carried the guilt of taking my brother’s life,” he explains.

However, fate had other plans. On May 12, 2001, a date he vividly remembers, he led a group of people to raid food for sick rebels and they fell into a UPDF ambush.

“I’ll never forget that day because that’s when I lost my sight. I was shot at thrice – one bullet went into my hand and the others into my shoulder and eye. After that I could not see and kept running wildly until I reached a civilian’s home. Everyone feared to help me but I kept crying out that I was harmless, that I needed help,” James narrates.

A woman eventually realised that James could not see and had him taken to the army barracks. He wasn’t yet safe, though, and was to feel the wrath felt by the people of Gulu over the anguish that the LRA had caused them.

“Once civilians heard that there was a rebel at the barracks, they came to kill me. Remember we had just raided a village for food, and during that raid we had killed people. Their anger was great, and if it had not been for one commander who protected me they would have killed me,” James recalls.

The army took him to hospital for treatment and afterwards handed him to the World Vision-run Uganda Children of War Rehabilitation Programme (UCWRP) in Gulu. James spent three years at this centre. During this time he received counseling, treatment for his bullet wounds and spiritual nourishment.

“When I came to the centre I was in a lot of pain from my wounds. When this pain reduced, I began to feel the emotional pain of losing my sight. I couldn’t imagine how I would make it in this world when blind. I wanted to commit suicide,” James explains.

James’ pain was magnified by what had happened at home while he was away. He learnt that his mother had passed away of AIDS and his father was seriously sick, too. Furthermore, he had left his wife and child with the rebels and had no idea how they were faring. Janet had been pregnant with their second child and it was all James could do to stay sane.

“I was deeply tormented. My pain was too much and it is what led me to give my life to Jesus Christ. With the help of my counselor, I realised that no one in this world could deliver me from my trauma or help me where I needed help. It was only God who could do that, so I gave my life to Christ,” he says.

Janet, too, did not plan to escape from the LRA rebels; they just brought her back home themselves. After James failed to return (from the mission of raiding food for the sick rebels), Janet was left alone with her children. By this time her first son was six years old and she had also given birth to another baby boy. In 2001, the UPDF went to fight the LRA rebels in Sudan, so in 2002 they (rebels) decided to return to Uganda. The UPDF kept following and shooting at them. During that time, Janet was shot in the hand.

“The journey was long and we had to move with our children. I would make the older one walk while I carried the baby, but it was difficult. Eventually, the rebels realised that the children were slowing down the group. They counted out 19 mothers who had more than one child and left us at a village, requesting the residents to hand us over to the army. The children's legs were swollen and they could no longer walk,” Janet explains. 

The local leader of the village handed the women and children to the UPDF. The UPDF later got information that the rebels had used the mothers and their children as bait - that they were going to come back for them and attack the army, too, but the local leader stood his ground and protected them. He later organised 19 bicycles to carry the mothers and children to the barracks in Gulu town, from where they were distributed among the various centres handling war returnees. Fortunately, Janet was taken to the Children of War centre. By this time James had left the centre and was staying in Gulu town, where he was attending Gulu School for the Blind, supported by World Vision.

“Whenever there were returnees we would go to the centre and check whether there was anyone we knew," James says. “I was anxious about Janet and the children, and each time I would go and check whether they had returned. Every time I came back disappointed. This time, though, I was told she had returned. The biggest question on my mind was, ‘Would she take me back, now that I was blind?’”   

According to Christine Oroma, Psychosocial Facilitator at UCWRP, during counselling the returnees are told about God and assured that it is by His grace and mercy that they survived life with the rebels.

“They have morning and evening prayers and they also take part in our devotions. We feel it is important to tell them about God because it makes it easier for them to believe that it is because of Him that they are alive and back in their community. We also tell them that it is by this same grace that the rest of us were not abducted or killed by the rebels. This in turn eases their healing process,” she says.

Because he could not see, James was not able to read the Bible, but his colleagues would read for him, and the words gave him strength.   

At the UCWRP, James’ wounds were also treated. He had seven bullets in various parts of his body, all of which were removed. Janet had been shot three times, and her bullets were also removed. Both of them, however, still have splinters in their bodies which hurt so much when it is cold.   

The centre also played the role of reassuring the returnees that they were safe and would not come to any harm. The staff advised the returned children on how to behave in society so that the civilians would not think the returned children were still a threat to them.

“While at the centre, we would sometimes get a chance to go to the town. However, people would constantly point accusingly at us. A group of us planned to escape and return to the bush, but the staff assured us that we were safe,” Janet says.

The rescued children/escapees do not stay at the centre forever, so after three years, it was time for James to go out on his own. The centre helped to track down his family, and convinced them to visit him. James also visited his family and interacted with them. Eventually, he was permanently reunited with them. The same happened for Janet.

As a way of assisting James and Janet to restart their lives in normalcy, World Vision gave them resettlement packages that they partly used to buy an ox plough. This has been helping them to cultivate food, some of which the family consumes while they sell the surplus to raise school fees. The family has also been hiring out the ox plough to their neighbours to supplement their income.

Love conquers all

Janet’s love has helped to uphold James. As the old saying goes, love conquers everything. Most returnees who were couples in the war break up on returning home. Due to the desire to forget the past and start on a clean slate, they abandon their partners and couple up with people who were not in the war. Indeed James says he was apprehensive of Janet’s reception and wondered how he would get a wife if she rejected him.

“I was very excited to see James because I had been told that he had been killed. Even if he could not see, I wasn’t going to abandon him because I had known him while he still had his sight, he was the father of my children and had been a good husband to me. I also thought that if it had been me who had become blind, I would have desired for him to take me back, so I decided to stand by him,” Janet says. On the contrary, she also says that the fact that they had both been in the war and encountered similar suffering helped to bring them closer.

Although one could say that James and Janet were forced into marriage, today they do not feel as if that was the case.

“Our love for each other grew. We feel as if we met and fell in love, dated and got married on mutual agreement. We have agreed to stay together for the rest of our lives,” James says. 

James’ life is hinged on faith. He cannot work and naturally worries about his children, what they will eat and if they will go to school. His greatest concern is not having a sustainable source of income, because the food that Janet grows is not enough to sustain the family and also be sold for some income. But at the bottom of his heart he knows that it all starts and ends with God.

“My work is to pray. I am head of intercessors at my Church, Voice of Salvation, Lalogi. I pray for all my needs and know that they will be met. If God could bring my wife and I back from that war, and also enable her to stay with me even if I was blind, I have hope that all will be well,” he says.

It is this same faith that caused Janet to give her life to Christ, too. James’ favourite verses are Psalms 91, Proverbs 3:5 and Matthew 7:7-10. With him blind and Janet illiterate, he only gets to hear from the Bible when he goes to Church. But he has memorised these favourite portions of the Bible, and daily leans on them. He particularly quotes the portion in Matthew which says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

James’ dream is to have a permanent house for his family. He is worried that the huts in which they stay are not safe enough, and, unknown to him, God has already answered this prayer because World Vision has earmarked him as one of the formerly abducted children that the organization will build house s for this year. James says that the fact that World Vision staff and donors still visit him yet he is out of the Children of War centre shows him that they care and so he should not give up.

The couple’s biggest hope is that their children may go to school, get jobs and look after them. Ask, and you will receive, the Lord says, and this James knows only too well.  

The Lord’s Resistance Army rebellion

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group led by Joseph Kony, originated in Northern Uganda as a movement to fight for the interests of the Acholi people. Kony rapidly lost support, and for almost 20 years led a terrifying regime targeting attacks on innocent civilians, kidnapping children and forcing them to fight in his rebel forces. Children were affected the most acutely by this conflict, with thousands abducted, used as child soldiers and sex slaves, beaten and forced to torture and kill friends, family and innocent people.

The Uganda Children of War Rehabilitation Programme (UCWRP)

The UCWRP was established in 1995 with the main aim of undoing the trauma inflicted on children involved in the LRA rebellion. During the intensity of the rebellion, the centre provided health care and psychosocial counselling to children who had experienced rape and torture or been forced to kill members of their family or community. During the rehabilitation process, centre staff would trace the children’s families through community networks in preparation for returning them to their families. Over 14,000 children have gone through the centre, which has played a pivotal role in the healing process of the children in Northern Uganda and remains open to receive the small number of returnees.