Uganda, and the LRA.
Well right now in ELT we are learning about the Lord’s Resistance Army or the LRA. It is a rebel group that has been fighting against the Uganda government for a few decades now. The story behind this is really sad. What the LRA does is they basically kidnap children from there homes in villages and force them to do usually become either a bodyguard, a soldier, or the women are usually made into sex slaves. These children are forced to walk from there homes in the villages for miles at night, to get to the city where they can sleep in bus stations, under benches, and in the park because it is safer to sleep there. Then the kids who aren’t lucky and are kidnapped by the LRA are forced to do the most horrible things. Every morning the kids in he LRA wake up to go to fight or to kill other people. They are also told repeatedly that if anyone tries to escape you must beat them to death, and if you don’t you will be killed. Also if anyone tries to escape you will be killed no matter what. When we were learning about this yesterday I was running so many thoughts through my mind. I was trying to relate with the stories we were hearing but I couldn’t. There was no way i was going to be able t relate to anybody who has killed another person out of force and has been kidnapped and turned into a child soldier because…. I wasn’t. Its hard to sit there and listen to these stories and think about all the times I tell people I am so poor. To these people I would be a very wealthy man. If we all sat and took the time to think about the fact that none of us will ever have to go through this. We should all be more appreciative are stuff and think about how much more appreciative we would be if we lived in these conditions in Uganda. My message is just to think.
February 21st, 2007 at 9:41 am
I’m so glad that you have the courage to talk about such world problems as forced prostitution, child warfare, and slavery. I wonder, though, is your message just to think, or is it to do something about this problem? Do you think that the only thing that we can do as Americans is to be thankful for all of the things that we have? I really like the way that you told the LRA’s story and then brought it back to your own personal story. I think that perhaps getting into your head a little more, and showing exactly what you were feeling as you were “sitting in class” would lend a lot of inspiration to any solutions you propose. Does it make you sad, or enraged? How can you write this piece in such a way that it not only calls attention to the problem, but makes people want to act to stop it? Once again, thanks for writing this post.
February 27th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
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