CAFOD blog

Abiya is carefully rolling down her white knee-length school socks with concentration, so they are just the way she likes them.

She has already helped her mum to collect water for the house, before changing into her uniform of yellow t.shirt and brown dress – like a Brownie – to go to school.

In the huts around her, Kirombe camp is yawning awake and beginning to bustle with morning activity.

The red ball of sun and its heat are only just slowly rising above the hut roofs. The large round huts have thick mud walls with thatched roofs.

A young girl sits outside her hut and washes her legs in a bowl of soapy water. Ducks waddle round, and there is cooking smoke curling up through the air.

Abiya is ten years old, just a few years from the age her mother Evelyn was when abducted by rebel soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda.

A fragile peace process is now underway between the rebel group and the Ugandan Government, for a conflict that has raged on for over two decades, with the local Acholi people the major victims.

Abiya, getting ready to leave for school, now has a chance that her mum was so cruelly denied; to get an education, be a normal teenager, and dream of being President.

“My favourite lesson is science and English. I am number 7 in my class,” she says with some pride.

“When I am older, I would like to be president. If I was president, I would want to help people. I would help orphans and make sure they’re cared for.”

Abiya’s mother, Evelyn, was just 13 when she gave birth. She is now just 23, and has three children, all fathered by LRA soldiers. She has been free for just two years of her adult life.

Evelyn was pregnant with her third child when she finally got an opportunity to make the drastic bid to escape.

As she ran and hid, she feared desperately that she would lose her unborn child. But her youngest child survived, and Evelyn gratefully named her ‘Mercy’.

But Evelyn becomes quieter as she whispers, “But I did lose one of my children, the middle girl, while escaping.”

Devastated by her loss when she finally arrived at safety, Evelyn recognised a young boy as the child of her friend and asked if she could take care of him. She explains sadly, “I hoped it would help me forget about the child I lost.”

Evelyn is grateful for the help that Caritas Gulu has given her to continue her life, “In counselling, when I get bitter, when something goes wrong, they help me.”

But when I finish by asking if she has anything final she’d like to tell me, she is bold, “People must stop the business of going to war, because I have been a victim.

“I experienced very bad things. I feel so deep about it, there’s nothing I can do. But people need to talk peace.”

Father Felix Opio, head of Caritas Gulu, reflects on his commitment to the traumatised community,

“Caritas is a local agency, we will follow this to its end; we will follow these children and this community for their lives.

“This war took 20 years, and it will maybe take 50 years to get over it. With CAFOD’s help, we can continue.”

As I leave, Evelyn and Abiya follow us to the edge of the camp. I ask Evelyn what hopes she has for Abiya. The answer is simple: “That she’s happy.”

Posted by BridgetB

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