Mother and Daughter

"My own daughter came back with two children from that abuse inflicted on her by the rebels. She was 14 when she was taken and she came back after eight years. I am sure in your country, a child goes missing (pause), let’s say a parent goes to pick a child from school and he is not there. Five minutes is enough for that parent to panic. But eight years I have been waiting, knowing very well what the rebels do, their brutality... Every day we were wondering, “Has the child died today? Has she been injured? Is she bleeding to death? Has she been abandoned in the bush alone? Has she been killed and her body is rotting somewhere?"

"For the past eight years I have been in the bush. I was totally cut off from the world. It’s like being put in a tomb, you are still breathing, but you are in there. In the bush it was always horrible. I didn’t understand at first what they were talking about, you know, someone very old, in his late 50s. You cannot imagine. I thought maybe he was out of his head, not joking, because I have never seen any of them joking. But after that, they just have to tie you up and somebody rapes you, just like that. I was always, always afraid they might ask me to kill somebody, I was always, always afraid to do that. One day some girl tried to escape, and they asked us, all 30 of us girls to come. We went there not knowing what was going to happen. They gave us all big sticks and they ordered us to beat her to death. We could not imagine doing this and we refused, we refused... we refused, but, we were beaten so badly, to the extent that we all had to beat her to death and so we did... There was no day when you would get up and smile to see the sun rise, because everyday you would think, maybe today, maybe today will be the end of me."

Young woman abducted at 14 years of age and given as a forced wife to an LRA commander. She is the daughter of the woman quoted above.

Life can be so sobering. Last May I went to Gulu, Northern Uganda and met brave, beautiful young women who had been forced to marry LRA members; others to march around in the bush and fight. They're not just statistics. They're real people - mothers and daughters... waiting to be reunited.