Lobby Days.

I’ve signed myself up again for the Northern Uganda Lobby Days.

When I first signed up I doubted my decision for a minute since I’ll have to find money to fly to D.C. about 5 days after I get home.

But after this week, I feel quite confident in my decision.

I’ve had a lot of moments lately that make me feel like I’m in a movie. I wish I could capture the moments with such picturesque scenes and fitting commentary to bring it all home to you and replay it. You might want to come to Lobby Days with me too.

Dennis is the nephew of our first landlord. He was kind of the groundskeeper/estate manager/put-up-with-the-American-girls man on hand. He was the one on the compound every morning when we used to wake up and ask him when the electricity would get hooked up, when our kitchen shelf would be finished, and so on. He was a soft spoken guy who was careful not to make promises when situations were not in his power to control. We would sometimes sit with him as he asked us questions about what life was like in the U.S. He would often offer to take us home to his mother’s house for lunch. We missed him when we moved houses but heard that he went back to school and wasn’t around much anymore. We hadn’t seen him since the beginning of March.

I was desperate for a translator the other day with the kids and started going through my phonebook to see who I could call to help me. I ran across Dennis’ name and found out he was on a three day break from school—and would be happy to help me out. We had a wonderful time working together and teaching the kids new games like Red Rover and charades. Dennis even helped me build a few shelves.

For those three days, we would walk down the road at sunset after leaving the kids as he pushed his bike until I found a boda. This was one of our first conversations:

“Sometimes I wonder if people outside of our country even know about Uganda.”

He went on to tell a story about a friend who had visited Australia and told someone about his home country. The person had never heard of Uganda before and went home to look it up online.

I told Dennis about how many people had become aware of Uganda, and particularly the North, because of the war that lasted for so long.

We talked together about the good and bad points to this. It’s wonderful to get international attention as long as it is successful in bringing an end to a war. But, people may not realize what a beautiful place Gulu is when they have only seen images of war. Ugandans who live in Kampala are even shocked to hear that we live in Gulu some times because they’ve never been here and have only heard of Kony.

The next day as we were walking back, Dennis started talking about how two years ago, we wouldn’t have been working at this center with the kids. It was too far out of town and considered rebel territory.

This is so hard for me to imagine. Especially as we passed groups of kids playing under a mango tree or saw an old woman digging in her garden at sunset. I’ve read so much and studied so much about this war and now that I’m here, I sometimes forget that these are the people I’ve been reading about through the years.

When we draw pictures with the kids, you can tell how old they are by what kind of pictures they draw. When we draw what we like and what we hate, it’s the older kids that all write images of war and write those words—“I hate war”. They remember very clearly what war is like and want never to return to such a time.

“I was one of those kids, ya know. One of those that walked to town because of fear of the rebels. I walked 32 kilometers.”

Dennis eventually moved to town with his mother but commuted for a long time because his father refused to leave their village. I tried to imagine Dennis, a small soft-spoken 10 year old, walking 32 kilometers into town.

We talked more in depth of the terrible things the rebels did. Then we talked about the fact that Gulu has found a sense of peace but that the same rebels are continuing the same horrific things on similar villages in neighboring countries. I just read a disturbing article in the paper about a 16 year old kid in Sudan who was telling what he used to have to do to the victims he was forced to kill when he was in the LRA. It is simply beyond comprehension.

It seemed as if the movie continued. Eric, my new favorite boda driver (and probably the best in all of Gulu) came and picked me up. As we were riding through town at my favorite time (sunset), he also started talking to me about how different things were now compared to what they used to be. He talked about how kids who were growing up now in Gulu were real kids—enjoying their life and not living in fear. As he talked, we passed a group of kids playing some game together and laughing hysterically. Another one of those movie moments.

What struck me the most from all of these conversations was not just how much better things are in Gulu right now than they used to be, but the fact that these same stories of war continue with the same rebels in this region. When I visit my representatives in D.C. in June, I’ll be asking them to do all in their power to support an end to the terror campaign of the Lord’s Resistance Army. It’s time for it to end. It’s time for children to grow up in peace, for businesses to expand, and for farmers to return to their land.

If you’re interested, you can come too. Here’s the link:

http://www.howitends.tv/