Kony 2012

What if one evil man could be brought to justice not with years of war and thousands of dead, but with one year, and thousands of outspoken people that donate a few dollars?

I watched the Kony 2012 video like many others, only I already knew his name.  I already know his children.  I already have seen the crimes he has committed in the faces of women and children who have been raped, had their families murdered in front of them, and forced to live in the wild or fear capture.  I visited northern Uganda in January/February 2011, and I will never be the same.

Me with one of the children from ChildVoice

I visited my friend Natalie (her blog) who volunteered for an organization, Child Voice International that hosts a center for young women and their children to attend to learn life skills so they may provide for their families.  They stay for a year or so and then return to their villages where they can hopefully get a small loan and start their businesses.  (At the time I visited they were working on the last part).  These women and children were all so happy and joyful, it’s hard to believe that they had been tortured just a few years prior.

The “mother” of the center told me a story of how she had to run from her village with just her twins and no supplies because the Lord Resistance’s Army was coming to kill everyone.  She saw many murdered.  She told me of not knowing who of her family and friends survived and who died.  They lived in the bush for years wondering if tonight would be the night they were discovered and killed, or kidnapped to become a sex slave. 

Many of the women have children, not because they are promiscuous, but because of rampant rape in the bush.  I could write for hours about these women’s absolutely horrific stories, you could fill pages with their suffering, but what I want to talk about is their hope.  They WANT a better life for their children.  That’s why they are at the Child Voice center, to work hard for a way to provide for their families.  But Joseph Kony and his LRA are still a threat.  What if everything they have worked so hard for is destroyed and taken from them over night?  This is why Kony needs to be stopped.

Some of the kids from ChildVoice

What’s the best way to stop Kony?  I’m not sure.  I honestly don’t know if blanketing cities in posters is the best idea (sounds like an environmental hazard actually), but it’s the first idea I’ve heard that puts the power in the hands of the citizens of the world. 

Not everyone can afford to fly to Uganda and volunteer at Child Voice, but everyone can afford to post a video to Facebook to raise awareness.

There have been many critics to the Kony 2012 movement, but what good movement hasn’t?  People have issues with Tom’s Shoes and even the Red Cross, but for me all three of these organizations do enough good to justify my donation.

I’d like to imagine a world where an evil dictator can be imprisoned with the power of millions demanding it and a few highly trained people executing it.  No need for massive wars, bombs, or deaths, just a couple hundred troops of the country where the evil man is residing with some additional training and help from others to capture a man that has spent his life capturing others.  This world I imagine can be real.  I’m going to at least try to help make it happen.

  

That butter container is for me to WHAT?!?!

Everyone is called to do something in this life – using their talents for others.  Helping Africans in Uganda is not mine. 

These are the words I wrote in my journal while I spent two weeks in Uganda in February visiting my friend Natalie Committee.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the experience and am so glad I went; it just felt so weird that I actually missed Afghanistan.  I was on vacation in a beautiful country, and I missed my warzone.  I needed to rid myself of guilt and realize that discovering what I’m not meant to do is a vital step in figuring out what I am meant to do.

Natalie and I knew each other since she was about 3 because I grew up with her big sister, Christina.  We were in her sister, Christina’s wedding in the summer of 2010.  Natalie had just decided to move to Uganda for a year and I had just had my first interview for a position in Afghanistan.  To most of our friends and family we were either mentally unstable or living a dream that they wished they could.  We held strong to each other and supported one another in our “crazy” adventure.  When Natalie first told me about her idea to volunteer in Uganda I promised her I would visit.  At that point I was still working at Marshall and would need to save for years to afford that trip, but I knew somehow I would make it happen.  After all, how often do you have a friend to show you around Africa?  Thankfully fate stepped in and I got a job in Afghanistan and could save the money to see Natalie.

We met up in Kampala, the capital city.  It is bustling and quite intimidating.  We rode “boda bodas” everywhere.  These are dilapidated motorcycles that you have to hold onto the back bar and balance on (you never hold the driver) while the driver weaves in and out of traffic so close to the other vehicles that your knees literally brush the sides of vans that are whizzing by.  Natalie and Jess Blackwell (Natalie’s friend who was visiting and helping out for a month) greeted me with huge smiles.  I brought them icing and hot sauce! (delicacies they couldn't find in Africa).  We stayed at the Red Chili Hideaway.  If you ever find yourself in Kampala, this is the place to stay.  There were people there from all over the world.  At night we each got a beer and just relaxed outside talking to Australians, Brits, Macedonians, Germans and whoever else waltzed by.  We then took a 3 day safari around Murchison Falls.

Jess, Me and Natalie in front of some murderous hippos

The safari was absolutely incredible.  We saw all the “biggies” elephants, lions, hippos, crocodiles, wildebeests, warthogs, and meerkats.  The whole cast of The Lion King was there.  At night we stayed in tents with warnings to not venture outside because you might get run over by a hippo.  They kill more people than any other animal in Africa!  After the safari was one of the most nervous times I have ever been in my entire life.  We needed to go north to Gulu, but our safari was returning the 3 hours back south to Kampala.  Natalie decided we could just hop out at the next big town and jump on the next bus that was going to Gulu.  Fool proof plan.  I wasn’t a big fan to begin with.  It all sounded too up in the air.  There might be a bus at this time, hopefully it’s not too full, we should be able to find a place to wait.  Well then our safari van broke down, in front of a military compound so Ugandans came chasing after us with M4s to move.  As we waited at a restaurant for the van to be fixed and the minutes ticked by, decreasing our chances of catching the last bus to Gulu which came some time in the afternoon, I went from being not a big fan, to downright obstinate about Natalie’s “plan.”  But she was the Africa expert after all, so we went with it.  At the stop, the van dropped us off and our only American friends – a 7 month pregnant woman and her husband, wished us well and gave us a look like "I really hope I’m not going to be interviewed by Nancy Grace about what happened to those cute American girls we went on safari with."  We got to the stop where the busses fly by and there were Ugandans all around trying to sell us goods and shoving meat on sticks in our faces.  We had no idea if a bus to Gulu had passed by or not, and there are no hotels or anywhere else to stay for literally hundreds of miles.  Also of course we are the only, Mzungus – Whiteys, for hundreds of miles as well.  Thankfully a bus pulled up marked Gulu and we hopped on.  It was the most relieving feeling ever, until I smelled the live chicken in a cage next to me.

We arrived in Gulu and then took boda bodas back to Lukodi where Natalie lived.  She worked for Child Voice International.  They are an organization that rehabilitates women who were former child soldiers or ravaged by the war.  The Lord’s Resistance Army ravaged northern Uganda for years raping women and killing men.  Many of the women at the center were forced “into the bush” where they lived for years off the land in the forest to escape the murdering and raping that was occurring in their villages.  They are the strongest women I have ever met.  Through all this tragedy, watching their family be murdered in front of them, having children from rape, instead of wallowing, they want to make their life better.  They came to the center to learn a trade, so they can provide for their children.

Natalie's mud hut home

Our hammocks, bath tub, water jugs, dishes, and pee cups

One of the women braiding Jess' hair

I thought I understood “poor.”  I had no idea.  All of these women and children have one, just one outfit.  It usually includes a shirt with holes in it, ratty pants, and a pair of incredibly thin and worn flip flops.  We all ate the same meal twice a day, everyday.  Rice and beans.  Natalie had commandeered some spice packets from the last girl that volunteered, so every night we chose to convince ourselves we were either eating chili, enchiladas, or anything with hot sauce on it.  Although these women had little to nothing, they were always trying to do things for us, give to us.  It was amazing.

We lived in a mud hut with no running water and electricity for only a couple hours per night.  It was February and sweltering hot.  We slept in hammocks with mosquito nets to prevent disease.  The first morning I awoke to Jess’ alarm clock tone which sounded eerily similar to the mass casualty alarm on KAF.  I freaked out trying to get out of the net I was zipped in to jump to the floor, then I remembered I was in Africa.  Natalie was incredibly proud of the fact that she managed to get me my very own…pee bucket!  A lovely used butter container.  For any other matters, there was  literally a hole in the ground (no seat of any kind) with a wooden shed around it.  When I first took a tour of the grounds I saw a cage of rabbits and thought they were adorable pets for the children, I was quickly corrected that they were delicious special holiday treats for the children. 

The kids were my favorite part of the entire trip.  They don’t understand a word I am saying but they laugh and play just the same.  When we would go for our evening walk and come back they would all rush the gate screaming, “MZUNGUS!!!” and leap into our arms.  We felt like rockstars.  When we were on our walk, Ugandans would stop us and ask in their language that only Natalie understood, “What are you doing?!”  It was such a foreign concept to them that someone would walk for no reason other than to walk.  They get so much exercise from doing all their daily tasks of preparing meals by beating grain with a large bat, doing laundry by scrubbing clothes against a metal plate, fetching water in huge containers from the well that is far away, that one would never need to talk a “walk.”  

The kids watching Natalie and I paint a hopscotch

They were all so sweet and so welcoming even after all they had endured.  Natalie and I talked about how much guilt we felt.  Guilt that we were born into a life of such luxury in West Virginia while these children in our eyes were born into despair.  To them though, it's not despair.  They thank God everyday in beautiful hymns that they were so blessed to be spared.  They lived another day, and that was something to thank God for.

In Uganda to say Good Morning you say, Apwoyo Matek which literally translates as, “Thank you for waking.”  I was dirty, stinky, without caffeine, hot and cranky, and yet every single Ugandan I pass is thanking me for being alive.  What a simply beautiful way to live.

Sacrifice

I started reading Where Men Win Glory today by Jon Krakauer.  It is the story of Pat Tillman.  I had heard something about Pat Tillman back when he died, but considering I was in my freshman year of college, I had much more important things to do (like eat Taco Bell in ungodly amounts and procrastinate by talking on AIM with my friends back home until ungodly hours) and grossly ignored it.  Recently I ran Pat's Run, a 4.2 mile race in Pat Tillman’s honor.  This got me interested in his story, so my friend Ryan lent me the book to read.

Pat Tillman Race/Marathon Training Side Note/Update: I was super worried since I hadn't run on anything but a treadmill for 7 months, but Aaron signed me up for the run and then told me he did later, so I had no choice.  But I did well, 36.05 not too shabby for just starting out.  Most importantly it gave me confidence to run more!  It was really cool to run a race past military vehicles driving, and they debriefed us at the beginning that if there was a rocket attack to jump in the nearest ditch.  Well that’s something you normally don’t hear at a race debriefing.  It was also awesome because some units ran, so they were chanting and other soldiers wore their combat boots, or flak jackets!

I haven’t written a blog post in a long time, and every time I say I should, I feel uninspired.  I also haven’t picked up a book in a long time.  Now I’m three chapters into this book, and immediately thought of so many things I wanted to say.  Lighbulb moment!  Reading good books with others' words fuel my own words!

Anyway, when thinking about Pat Tillman’s life the first word that comes to mind is sacrifice.  He sacrificed so many things.  He passed up a $3.6 million deal with the NFL to enlist in the Army.  He ultimately sacrificed his life.  I found this quote the other day and in the Easter season I find it extremely fitting:

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom. - Anonymous

Out here I see sacrifices everyday.  Some of them big like troops lying their lives on the line for their friends, some medium sized like an airman having to watch the birth of his child on Skype , and some small like a soldier offering to let someone cut him in line.  I am surrounded so much by their lives, I seem to forget about the sacrifices people have made in my own. 

I was talking to my coworker yesterday about how excited I am getting for my vacation home.  It will be the first time I will visit home in 8 months.  He said, “It will be even harder on them when you leave this time.”  It hadn’t even occurred to me, but I’m sure it’s true.  My family is so amazing that they never mention if they are worried about me, but I’m sure it does take a toll when they see the latest news bulletin about 480 Taliban prisoners escaping in the city I currently live.  My parents have sacrificed so much for me to have a comfortable life, and here I am volunteering to go to a warzone. 

My parents and I at my college graduation

In the 7 months I have been out here my parents have remodeled a bathroom, put siding on the house, a new deck has been installed, and they have painted virtually every room.  I feel like a tool admitting this, but you see until 7 months ago I was still cashing the checks from the bank of Mom and Dad.  They still paid for my car and insurance and the occasional thing I needed along the way.  I can remember my parents talking about wanting to get siding literally years ago, I even recall talk of remodeling the bathroom when I was in third grade!  But, they didn’t.  They made sure we had all we could ever want or need before they thought of themselves.  It’s a selflessness that I know I couldn’t maintain right now.  It makes me think of all my friends that are mothers and fathers with a sense of awe.  They sacrifice.

We had a Wounded Warrior (soldier harmed in the line of duty waiting to get therapy and be sent back out in the field, or go home) who volunteered in the center recently.  He is the same age as me, 26.  He has a wife and three children.  We discussed our lives and how foreign the other one’s life seems.  He talked about the different ideas he had in high school like nursing school, or opening his own chain restaurant, but now he needs to do what is best for his family.  I tried to picture if my life was his, but I couldn’t.  It seemed like this parallel universe that I would have to fall down a magic hole or walk into a mythical wardrobe to enter.  At the ripe old age of 26 I don’t feel like I am mature enough or selfless enough to have children, let alone at 18.  He sacrificed.

When I was in Africa with Natalie she talked about having feelings of guilt.  Guilt that she had so much.  She is living in a mud hut with no running water or electricity and she is feeling guilty?!?!  She sacrifices.

I have heard a quote at some point in my life (probably from a sappy romantic comedy) that it's not a sacrifice; it's love.  That Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock, or whoever it was, was right.  Because when it's love, for your children, spouse, job, country, or ideals, it doesn't seem like a sacrifice to you, it's your life and you wouldn't want it any other way.

REPRESENT

Through the four years of my education at Central Catholic High School a few things were repetitiously ingrained in my brain:

1. The sun shines inside you and me.
2. Always leave enough room for the Holy Spirit while dancing
3. You represent CCHS when you are in uniform, no matter where you are, so do us proud.

While working as a recruiter at Marshall, the same mantra was in place.  I represented Marshall to students who may have never even heard of it, so I needed to make Marshall proud.

Now in Afghanistan, I represent so many things.  I represent the USO.  Even when in a PX buying laundry detergent, someone will say, hey USO girl.  I represent WV.  Countless soldiers have told me they have never been to WV, and they’ll ask what’s it like.  When I go to big social functions, a different nation’s DFAC (dining facility) or to the French compound I represent the entire United States!  It’s sometimes exhausting to constantly feel “on.” 

That’s why I’m so glad to have some genuine friends here.  That way I can belt out any song that pops in my head, or horribly imitate Shakira’s dance moves with some mangled gyrations, or wear bunny ears for no reason all with lots of laughter and little judgement.

In other news, I am SUPER excited to be going to Uganda at the end of this month to see Natalie Committee!  When Natalie first told me she wanted to go to Uganda I was so excited for her!  I told her I’d come visit, but at the time I thought, yeah I have no money to do that.  I’m so happy that I’ve been blessed to now be able to visit and see the work she’s been doing.  When Natalie was gearing up to go to Uganda and I was first going through my interview process for this position, my sister Gretchen was in India, and I was bursting at the seams to tell someone who would think what I was doing was sane!  Natalie was my go to gal.

I’m also looking forward to experiencing a new culture, possibly going on a safari and just playing with kids.  It’s kind of odd here to never see a kid, never hear a cry or giggle while at the restaurant or at the PX.  Most times I don’t realize it, but then after I call Ang or Erin and hear the chattering of kids in the background, I remember.  I’ve babysat all my life, then was a live-in nanny for Christian and Faith, and proceeded to live a block down the street from them for the past 2 years.  I miss chasing them, laughing with them, and hearing their crazy stories.

Three and half months in and it’s still super hard to say goodbye to people.  Since we are a large base, troops that are redeploying (going home) or just getting here before going downrange (out to FOBs or COPs) are usually stuck here for a week or two.  They usually don’t have missions to go on, so they are free most of the day.  Some will volunteer at the center.

So just imagine getting a new coworker, work directly beside them at a shared desk for 10 hours a day for 2 weeks straight, train them, develop a repertoire where you know what tasks they prefer and which you prefer, eat meals with them, joke together, talk about family, friends, and your favorite things, maybe even experience a bonding experience like a fire alarm (or rocket attack) where you have to stand outside in the cold for a half hour.  Now say goodbye and probably never see them again…EVER.  It’s a little jarring.  I always wonder who will stay in my life and who will slowly inevitably fade away.   What’s the quote?  Even though they may stay for only a moment they can leave an impression on you that lasts a lifetime.