As I stated, the day in Odek was a great success. Nearly 1,000 widows in one day gathering in one of the epicenters of the LRA insurgency, the actual birthplace of Joseph Kony. Deeply scarred by war and overlooked in the recovery efforts since, the widows of Acholi were skeptical that we had come to offer anything but words. It really didn’t matter if they had been told ahead of time that we were bringing seed for planting season.  There are a lot of empty promises spoken to these women.  So the photos I’ve included here can really give you an idea of the raw joy they expressed when TCON actually gave them seed to begin farming with this month.  But in the sea of smiles, there is often somebody whose issues run deeper than what seed can promise.

As we were preparing to return to Gulu, a 30-year old mother approached us to talk. In reality, she had the appearance of a child. She had become a widow in only the last two weeks. Her frail frame was partly the evidence of her battle with AIDS, but even that wasn’t the whole story. She brought over her two sons and shared with us that the oldest was suffering from the Nodding Disease that has recently spread in Acholi.  Nodding Disease is marked by uncontrollable seizure-like episodes that often take place when attempting to eat.  The condition is mostly seen in kids and often worsens over time, creating scenarios where kids are severely impaired mentally and physically, and unable to take food.  Thousands of cases have been reported in this region, and the Ugandan Health Ministry appears to be struggling to respond.  (For more on this issue, see two Ugandans: Photojournalist Edward Echwalu’s recent Blog Post, and Journalist Rosebell Kagumire’s blog reporting)

“What can we do to help?” asked Dave McPherson, TCON’s founder, who stood alongside the desperate mother. Knowing Dave for some time, I am always struck by his heart to find individuals among the masses who have a particularly special challenge or need for help. Dave’s sense of urgency to do all that we are capable of doing is an incredible asset to our work. But after some brief discussion about the necessity for medical expertise on a condition that seems to be baffling even medical officials, it quickly became clear to all of us what we could do for this mother’s inordinate circumstances: Nothing.

It might seem strange to highlight this story, but I’m realizing how important this moment was for me personally.  I want to be clear.  There certainly is still hope in the seed that this new widow received.  But given the fact that the only person physically capable of managing the farming is her second son, who is seven, it will be incredibly hard to succeed. (We did give her extra seed, and tried to network her to agricultural help in the area) I’m also not saying there isn’t hope for her because she has AIDS, or her son has Nodding Disease.  There are helpful medical responses available in both cases. But those weren’t resources TCON had that day. There are simply times when you must stand in the face of the complexity of human suffering, and not hold a solution.

Understanding the limits of aid & development work and even the limits of our own agency in bringing that help is critical in framing why we are involved in fighting poverty in the first place. In 1980, the archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero was assassinated largely for his outspoken messages on behalf of the impoverished people of his country. There is a prayer he wrote that closed with the following line: We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. Concerning The Children of the Nile, we are celebrating the tangible success of programs that develop and empower widowed women and their children across Northern Uganda. But we are also content to embrace the places where the change we hope for is simply beyond our means, and outside of what we will be able to provide.  In that context, powerlessness will always be our asset.

This place has been all over international headlines in the last week. Northern Uganda. Acholi Region. Gulu District. The reality of

the LRA insurgency led by Joseph Kony that contributed to traumatizing a generation of people here is again being debated thanks to Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video. Kony is long gone from this area, but he grew up just beyond the mango tree where we gathered under. Odek was, in fact, his hometown. It is coincidental that the first Acholi widows TCON will reach are here, but the symbolism is deep. This entire part of the country suffered enormous losses during the insurgency years, and they are longing for a new life under the restored security. At least 75% of the widows who arrived shared that their husbands were murdered by LRA raids.

Our day started in a different place. 60 kilometers west, Gulu has a facility that will house TCON’s 200 tons of maize and beans as the widows leadership prepare the different distribution points. 70 tons were already staged in the warehouse caked with the ever-present red dust of Uganda. As the 5kg bags began to be loaded on to the truck, one fell and a small handful of seeds spilled on the ground. In the grand scale of things, it seemed like losing a few seeds would be inconsequential. Caroline, the main leader for all of the Gulu widows, rushed over immediately to collect what had fallen and save it. No seed is wasted.

The widows in Odek are ready to cultivate the maize and beans with the same care. Widowed women in Uganda are a remarkable people. They each hold a story of loss and pain, but they stand collectively with enormous dignity and courage.

Two widows who approached us in Odek shared that they were actually the co-wives of Joseph Kony’s brother. They invited us to come see their homes, which were simple traditional mud huts. They really had no resources to speak of, but they were proud to show us a real home that was their own. They had only been able to return last year after spending eighteen years in IDP camps. As they recounted the story of their husband being murdered in a raid by the LRA (Kony’s rebels were merciless to even family), they also talked about the significance of the seed TCON brought. It was new life, and an opportunity to produce and sustain their families independently.

The ladies sang and celebrated as they carried their seed bags joyfully on their own heads. The first rains will begin in just weeks. By August we will begin to see the results. The push this year is to give as many widows in Acholi as possible the opportunity to farm and step up their own food security. TCON believes deeply that investing in women, and particularly widowed women, is the greatest use of our resources. These ladies have the will to farm and harvest for the children in their care. Ultimately this program is about giving them something small that can grow and do more. The end result is Ugandans who will sustain Ugandans. That is how we are cultivating hope.

I was one of the 20 million viewers of Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 film yesterday. If you follow my twitter or Facebook account you may have noticed that I was wrestling critically with certain aspects of the film as well as Invisible Children’s ideology. Aside from certain critiques or questions I have regarding our global responsibility and response to such atrocities and human rights violations as have been perpetuated by Joseph Kony and his rebel army (LRA), I am fascinated by Invisible Children’s ability to ignite a movement through social media. We live in a different era, an era where the capacity for exchanging information and opinions continues to increase day-by-day.

The rapid speed at which an idea can spread due to innovative uses and advancements in technology is remarkable and has been embraced as one of the great aspects of our time. However, as of lately, I have been pondering how the pace of this transfer of information might be influencing our style of relating and how we engage the world around us and beyond us. I wonder if the speed of information travel is contributing to a culture of reactionary impulsivity. There appears to be so little space between the introduction to a thought, an opinion, a fact, and our response, our critique, our action.

In the Kony 2012 film there is a segment that features Jason Russell’s (Invisible Children’s co-founder) first encounter with Jacob, a former LRA abducted child soldier. At a certain point Jacob begins to describe what he would say to his brother, who was brutally murdered by the LRA, if he had a chance to see him once again. Jacob begins to lose his composure and the sounds of a child who has seen and experienced something no child should ever experience are released from his young body and mouth. It is perhaps the most gut-wrenching and heart-breaking scene in the 29-minute film. His cries were almost physically painful to listen to, which is likely part of the reason why Jason response in this vulnerable and raw moment is to try to fix or quell the cries. He says what so many of us say to our own children when they experience any level of true pain, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” And shortly thereafter, he promises to try to find a way to stop Joseph Kony. To Jason’s credit, and the rest of the Invisible Children team, the genuineness of this desire to do something about the heartache they witnessed has been evident from the beginning of their efforts. But there is little space between Jacob’s outcry for the trauma and loss he had endured as a young Ugandan boy and the response from a 20-something white middle class American man.

As a therapist, a profession that requires me to enter into heartache with people, I am deeply aware of how difficult it is to sit with sorrow, to remain present to suffering that cannot be undone or taken away. To feel any level of powerlessness can be overwhelming. So often as human beings, we quickly try to leap over that feeling or existential crisis, to get to the other side of hope and human agency. But are we making that leap prematurely? Is there wisdom, perhaps, that we miss when we fail to suspend that all-too-human response? In the case of responding to the impact of war, trauma and suffering that has occurred in an entirely different cultural and historical context than our own, might it be wise to suspend our knee-jerk response to immediately swoop in and do something?

Back in January, I visited Gulu for the first time since my involvement with TCON began in 2006. The LRA actually left Uganda in 2006, so the Acholi region, where Gulu is located, is now recovering from over two decades of war. In the coming days TCON will be distributing our initial seed package to 30,000+ widows and single mothers impacted by this war. This seed package will serve to gain food security and to generate income to support herself and her children. In Uganda, the average woman has 6.8 children. My trip in January was for the purpose of planning and preparing for this massive distribution. Unexpectedly, I was afforded an opportunity to meet and interview four different young women who had all been abducted by the LRA when they were young girls. The trauma they experienced was unlike anything I had ever heard before. Though this encounter has grabbed ahold of my heart and mind in a life-altering way, I am not yet ready to share the details of my experience with these women. All I can say at this point is that I cannot walk away from their stories. As an organization we are attempting to suspend that common propensity to leap from our exposure to suffering, sorrow and great harm to the side of empowerment, action and hope. We are asking the question – How can we move into the heartache of these women to better understand how to walk along side them in their journey toward healing? It is a question that we hope propels us deeper into the complexities of the issues rather than away from the gut-wrenching and horrific nature of their trauma.

The idea is not to give in entirely to a sense of powerlessness and to throw our hands up in the air in defeat, but rather to sit in the complexity and brokenness long enough to gain further insight on how to respond. I am a white middle class American woman. That does not mean that I do not have anything to offer. But it does mean that I must let my Ugandan sisters (and brothers) inform my understanding of their stories. I am conversing and learning from the women and girls of Uganda about what they hope for and what they believe would be helpful. I am not their hero, nor am I their savior. But I am their sister, so I want to walk with them in this journey.

Despite the apparent quick and eager promise from Invisible Children’s co-founder to stop Joseph Kony and the LRA, I imagine that Invisible Children, as an organization, spent a substantial amount of time determining what course of action they believed was necessary. Whether I agree wholeheartedly with their mission or approach is not the point of this post. The blogosphere responses to this film have run the gamut, but it appears that the predominant response has been one of support. I hope that this response is not due to an unconscious drive to quell a sense of unease or discomfort with the exposure to this part of Uganda’s history. The reality is that these atrocities often take place throughout the developing world with little to no awareness by the US population. Perhaps the social media buzz regarding Invisible Children will compel more individuals and organizations to increase their knowledge of our global community and to ask the difficult questions that lie in that space between suffering and hope.

Areas in Uganda Impacted by LRA

At the height of the conflict, the UN estimates that the war displaced nearly 1.8 million people. Most of them lived in IDP (Internally Displaced Person) Camps for years at a time, struggling for life on every level. A milestone of sorts was reached last month as the UN officially ended its assistance to Northern Uganda. The fact is that people have largely returned to their former homes in Gulu and across the Acholi region (the UN says 98% have returned home, and nearly 250 IDP camps are now closed). But while many emergency aid & relief organizations pack their bags to leave this area, the question remains: What happens next for these people?

I journeyed to Gulu for a second time this January as a part of TCON’s new efforts to offer support in this region. While Gulu is still crowded with a variety of NGO’s and relief organizations, there is a surprising lack of programs directed towards the most vulnerable population.  This includes the elderly, women with AIDS, widows, and those who were brutally abducted by the LRA but managed to return from the bush. Many of the towns and villages in Acholi were left like ghost towns for over a decade. Now, with entire populations returning home to essentially nothing, everybody is struggling to establish a way of survival. The net result is poverty for most, and unthinkable poverty for those marginalized groups at the edges of a new civilian life.

Caroline- Gulu Widows Leader

This was never more clear as in a meeting we had outside the home of Caroline in Gulu town. Caroline is the leader of a widows group here that TCON is beginning to work with. To properly plan our work here, we wanted to profile some of the women Caroline reaches on a daily basis. So as the sun went down in Gulu, we talked with Lilly and Filda, two women whose stories shook me to the core. There were devastating details: being abducted by the LRA as children, having entire families murdered, being violated sexually and bearing the children of the rebel commanders. But the hardest part was seeing their present state, years after these events took place.  Lilly commented at one point that she believes it would be better to be back in the bush with the LRA- at least she would know what to expect. Such unfortunate thinking speaks to both the level of PTSD these women have and the unthinkable challenges associated with reintegrating into society as women who were also abducted. And most people living in Gulu want nothing to do with these women.

Meeting with Lilly and Filda

What happens next for women like this?

My colleague Shauna Gauthier (TCON Program Director) was also in Gulu, and her professional training in psychotherapy gave her a more grounded perspective on Lilly and Filda then I could ever have. (which I hope she’ll elaborate on more in a future blog post!) Shauna commented on the level of shame that these women have about their stories. The challenge when you’re sitting face to face is to not look away; not to give them the impression that you are somehow ashamed of their story. They’ve experienced so much stigma in their return to society that they expect that kind of reaction from everybody they encounter. Instead, you want to reinforce the message of their courage and humanity. I did my best.

Shauna’s recommended response points to TCON’s broader approach: We refuse to look away. In truth, as physical security is more and more the norm in Gulu, the battle for the victims of war in terms of reintegration and healing is just beginning. We are planning to be involved. Next month, TCON is initiating a first phase of support for around 30,000 Acholi widows through seed gifts for agricultural development. Establishing a base level of food security and relationship with these ladies opens the door for more focused programs moving forward. We are sincerely excited for some of the plans we have that will specifically target women like Lilly and Filda in the area of psycho-social support and trauma processing. We hope you’ll continue to follow our progress as we fight poverty and cultivate hope!

On our most recent trip, Craig and I were provided plenty of drive-time where we could investigate further how Joseph came to be who he is today – one of TCON’s greatest assets. I learned of his childhood and how he was mistreated and neglected. I discovered that at the age of fourteen, Joseph was undeniably impacted by the civil war that lasted over two decades in his country, as he was separated from his family and forced to take care of himself while he was still just a boy. I realized that Joseph’s work ethic was born long before he became TCON’s Country Director. But perhaps most poignantly, I was touched deeply by the evidence of this man’s dedication to women and children facing immense hardship within his own community.Much of my counseling perspective is formed by my belief that our own personal narratives shape who we become in this world. So I was compelled to analyze how Joseph was able to develop into a man highly attentive to the needs of others in a culture where the survival instinct of taking sole care of oneself (and perhaps his immediate family) is normative. I asked him pointedly, “Joseph, why do you help so many people?” and his response was basically that if other people had not helped him along the way then he wouldn’t be who he is today. It was a simple, and perhaps clichéd response. Yet, the simplicity and familiarity of the response does not diminish its value. Kindness and care have the power to breed even more kindness and care.

Joseph embodies TCON’s ideals as well as TCON’s mission. He has eyes for the future generation and it is because of this that he has taken in numerous orphans and supported them in a variety of ways. But Joseph also remains committed to assisting widowed women and single mothers because he knows that they perhaps face the greatest of challenges in a patriarchal society. By assisting these women, he is also assisting their children – the hope of Uganda.

In that way, Joseph is one example of who we strive to be as an organization. He embodies our hope, as individuals and as an organization. May our attentiveness to the needs of the women and children we work with, and may your generosity and willingness to share your resources with these people who live half a world away, continue to increase kindness in a world where there is great need.

Joseph Analyzes Orange Trees Outside Jinja

Spending Time with Immaculate in Soroti

One of the things I look forward to most whenever I visit Uganda is eating chapati. Before I returned to the US after a six-month stay in Uganda back in 2006, I attempted to learn firsthand how to create this flatbread from Immaculate, TCON’s infamous cook. Considering the only two ingredients in this flatbread are water and flour, one might presume that it is a relatively easy recipe to create. I had to sit through a handful of demonstrations by Immaculate, however, because without specific measurements I struggled to accomplish the right proportions of each of the ingredients. Now, over 5 years since I departed Uganda, I am still unable to master the art of chapati-making. In fact, I have given up trying and opt instead to get my chapati fix each time I visit Uganda.

I learned on this trip that Immaculate’s chapati is perhaps the best chapati in all of Soroti (the district where our Uganda office resides). So of course hers is likely to put my best effort to shame! In fact, Immaculate’s cooking in general is known to be exceptional. In a conversation with Immaculate on this recent trip I learned about how she began her own catering business on the side to fill her time and increase her income generation when she’s not working at the TCON house.

Immaculate’s story is one that highlights the limitations and shortcomings of relief aid and the potential that rests in development initiatives. A few years ago Immaculate developed a friendship with a woman who helped run our hospice facility. After learning the details of Immaculate’s life and her struggle to raise four boys on her own, the young American woman was compelled to offer Immaculate financial assistance so that her eldest son could attend a private school. Immaculate was deeply moved by the kind gesture and soon removed her son from the poorly performing government-subsidized school and placed him in the private school. The American woman paid for an entire year’s worth of school fees and promised to continue to provide assistance in the years to come. Unfortunately, the support fizzled out and Immaculate could not afford to keep her son in the school. When it came time to reenroll him in the government-subsidized school, the headmaster of the school retaliated by denying Immaculate’s son placement in the school. Eventually, after other’s advocated on Immaculate’s behalf, the headmaster conceded.

Ugandan Chapati Bread

Not more than a year later, another American woman temporarily moved to Uganda to complete an internship experience with TCON. This woman was equally as compelled to support Immaculate, only the assistance she provided propelled Immaculate to become more self-sufficient. This woman knew firsthand that Immaculate’s cooking was one of her greatest talents and suggested that Immaculate begin her own catering business on the side to earn extra income. The woman proceeded to purchase a few supplies in order to help Immaculate launch this business plan.

Finding The Balance: Aid vs. Development

Immaculate’s story illustrates how assistance that comes in the form of relief aid can perpetuate a state of dependency and can actually be detrimental to development and a progression toward self-reliance. On the other hand, assistance that comes in the form of empowering another to utilize her own abilities to improve her livelihood can lead to lasting change. It is the difference between offering a handout and offering a hand-up.

There are seasons and circumstances where relief aid is absolutely necessary and perhaps the first step toward development. But we simply stop there all too often in the non-profit realm. TCON has learned along the road that an aid organization can potentially be responsible for fostering dependency. That is not the type of organization we want to be. Instead, TCON is continuing to learn and develop strategies that ensure we are offering an effective hand-up to every woman we partner with.

More personally,

we each take stock of our own stories. Some of us had a year of celebration and victory while others dealt with enormous challenge and defeat. Its more likely that we all had a little of both. I personally went through an overwhelming vocational change after a decade of working in the same place. It was confusing, disorienting, and even a bit scary. This fall, my wife and I found out we’re having a fourth child next June. It was… hmmmm…. confusing, disorienting, and even a bit scary. Okay, we’re really excited, too! There are simply so many things to mark in 2011 and reflect on before midnight on Saturday. (an hour that my pregnant wife will likely never reach- maybe we’ll watch the ball drop in NYC live so she only has to make it to 10PM Colorado time?)

But I have experienced something quite different in these contexts. One look at a a Ugandan child who is growing up in the midst of a post-conflict zone encountering food insecurity and poor economic infrastructure reveals a surprise. The child herself has eyes for hope! And that is an impossible and beautiful thing worth exploring.

I was recently struck by an incredible little Ugandan proverb: One who sees something good must narrate it. It is a powerful appeal to hold a different kind of posture, even in the middle of a time where many Ugandans are rebuilding after decades of instability. Maybe its why I’m deeply connected with TCON’s work right now. I can state it simply- I have seen something good in Uganda, and I feel called to advocate for it and tell the story. I have eyes for hope, and I believe I can be a part of encouraging that hope in small ways.

I will be returning to Uganda next month, and I can’t wait to begin implementing our 2012 plans with our team there! We are going to reach into Gulu with agricultural initiatives for the first time with thousands of new widows. We will also be doing more focused development projects with some new partners in Teso. This month we have been encouraging you to “Give Hope” with TCON in tangible ways. I hope some of you will be motivated enough to take a few simple minutes right now to donate to our our work with widows and their children in 2012. Our online giving is straightforward and secure, and you can access it here. Two numbers to consider: $150 can bring initial seed and training for ten Gulu widows. $30 allows ten widows to attend a conference that brings encouragement, training, networking opportunities and more. We are grateful for so many people that make TCON an effective NGO in Uganda! To friends and partners of TCON- we wish you a wonderful New Year, and we look forward to continuing the story in 2012!

As an adult, I have experienced this season in a very different way. The shopping and preparing that often takes place in the midst of the day-to-day management of life can serve as a sufficient buzz-kill. Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays once they actually arrive, but managing the chaos leading up to them is what I could do without. So instead of anticipation or excitement, there is busyness and hurriedness. The truth is, it’s been a long time since I truly longed for something or felt the agony of hoping and waiting.

I read a news story this week captioned, “A True Holiday Miracle.” It was about a young girl who was swept away in the 2004 Indonesia tsunami and thought to be dead. Miraculously the girl returned to her parents this week after being released by a woman who had discovered her shortly after the Tsunami and forced her to work as a street beggar. I imagine the hope of returning to her family was at times what caused her heart to ache the most and was also what simultaneously sustained her desire to live in the midst of suffering. That you girl held onto hope for seven years. Could there be anything more powerful than experiencing the fulfillment of one’s ultimate hope?

Recently I have also wondered if there could be anything so tragic as the experience of hope disappointed. A friend and fellow graduate of my alma matter was anticipating the arrival of his firstborn son in late November. The baby boy, already named Jackson Brave, was a week late when the couple discovered at their check-up that he no longer had a heartbeat. To experience the building anticipation of a long pregnancy, to struggle through the labor and delivery, for a child whose laughter you will never know, whose life ended before it truly began – that is devastation some will know, but few can bear.

I am trying to remember what it feels like to long for something desperately in these final hours of Advent. And in so doing, I can’t help but think of the women and children of the Acholi region in Uganda. They have endured over two decades of civil war, political unrest and life in internal displacement camps. But in the recent years, all of that has begun to dissipate. The rebel army has retreated, there is relative stability and they have been sent back to their family land. For many of the Acholi people, their hope has been realized. But for the widowed women, whose husbands died of violence, AIDS or other causes, their hearts are still aching for help. So perhaps I have personally forgotten what it is to truly long for new life, but through these women I am able to witness the ache of longing and the all-surpassing joy when one’s hope is actualized.

Floating around Facebook (and Pinterest) today was an image of two photos strategically aligned side-by-side. One of them was a gut-wrenching portrayal of a few starving children from a developing country. The other was a photographic depiction of parents hauling karts full of electronics and just-released toys to the checkout counter. The caption – “Define Necessity” – may have been enough to sufficiently shame just about anyone who celebrates this holiday by partaking in the gift-giving rituals and family traditions. Instead of merely highlighting the needs of the presumed “have-nots” and shaming the “haves” for excessiveness, I’m more interested in collectively embracing the spirit of giving.

It’s been five years since my family and I returned to Colorado after spending nearly six months living in Uganda. Just before we departed, my husband and I traveled with our three daughters from Kampala (the capital of Uganda) to Soroti (the rural village where most of TCON’s efforts were centralized at the time). I wanted my girls to experience firsthand the dissonance between our livelihood and the livelihood of the children in this region of the world. We went to the market (an experience in itself) and purchased some items to give to an orphan-led household of eight children. The eldest daughter, who at the time also had an infant daughter of her own, became responsible for the care of her seven younger siblings after her widowed and AIDS infected mother passed away.

There were many aspects of that experience that were surreal. Sitting in the middle of the Ugandan “bush” with my three extremely light-skinned and light-haired daughters and watching them distribute clothing, school supplies and a few sweet treats to these children whose faces lit up as they immediately began to try on their new outfits was a time-stopping moment. Watching my youngest daughter (who was only two at the time) reach for the eldest daughter’s infant and refer to her as “my baby” was enough to melt anyone’s heart. But perhaps the most memorable aspect of this experience was the conversation I had with my oldest daughter, Faith, upon our departure from the one-room mud hut that housed these orphaned children. I sensed that she was still trying to process all that she had just encountered as she looked to me and asked, “Mommy, would it be alright if we give those kids all of the toys that we have back at our cottage in Kampala?”

Based on that concluding question you may be inclined to believe that I have an angel child. Let me be clear, though I adore Faith, she has been no angel. She has moments of selfishness and stubbornness just like the rest of humanity, but in that moment she was basking in the transformative experience of giving. You see, that is the paradox of giving – when you give to others there lies the potential for your own growth. What we were able to give those children on that particular day was more than material and consumable goods. Our material gifts were quite frankly symbols of hope and gifts of joy. I wonder if there is a greater change agent than to witness hope restored, or to see joy written on the faces of children who have suffered greatly.

Hope and joy are infectious. They have the power to call forth each of us beyond our own existence, and into the lives of those we have the ability to help.

“The fighting has left us with a lot of scars- but that is not where our story ends.” -Patongo Primary School Teacher

The 2006 documentary War Dance follows the journey of a group of primary school musicians from the town of Patongo in Northern Uganda, all the way to the nation’s capital of Kampala.  The children are traveling to compete in Uganda’s National Music & Dance Festival. But the trip is about more than a competition.  These Acholi kids represent a region devastated by the rebel group the LRA, and they are only recently coming to terms with the trauma they have experienced while living in IDP camps.

Patongo Students Prepare for Competition

To read about the horrors experienced in this part of Uganda when the LRA was at large here is challenging.  The movie conveys statistics many of us may have heard- 30,000 children abducted, and several hundred thousand orphaned in the Acholi region.  But statistics can often keep us at a distance, while personal story draws us in.  War Dance focuses on the stories of a few Patongo kids who were brutally caught up in the regional violence.  Some were abducted, others orphaned, and one was forced to kill innocent adults in the town.  One might assume that such awful recollections by a group of kids would yield a dark and depressing documentary.  Quite the opposite, War Dance is a story of building hope out of devastation.  Through the Patongo Primary School, the kids are afforded the opportunity to focus on music and dance routines that they will perform in Kampala.  Their talent is staggering, and their passion to succeed despite the post-traumatic stress they each are under is even more unbelievable.

TCON’s founder, Dave McPherson, has been encouraging me to see this movie for awhile.  I studied music education in college before I got involved in international nonprofit work, so this movie had a real synergy of two things that are deeply important to me- music and hurting people.  To see music play the role of healer in a context I’m now working to help was deeply inspiring.  For me, War Dance brought insight to a few questions that we are always asking ourselves at TCON: What will peace look like?  How will hope arise here?  What does it look like to truly battle poverty in this region of the world?  

Children are always the most victimized in conflict zones, and yet they are also the same people who can possess a surprising capacity to heal and see a way forward when the conflict stops.  This was evident in my time with kids in Uganda this August. In War Dance, as the Patongo Primary students prepare to head to Kampala for the competition, one student comments, “I’m excited to see what peace looks like!”  He is of course thinking of the capital city being a place far from the war zone; a place that must have peace at every corner. But the statement takes on different meaning after watching the kids perform.  The truth is that the Patongo Primary students saw peace long before they reached Kampala.  Peace is not tied to a location on the map, but a position of the heart.  How encouraging it is to believe that it can be attainable for some of Uganda’s next generation who have suffered so much.