“There’s something about being a boss,” Okello said. You can send people to get things. People respect you. You can pay back what they did to you.” Some bosses told rebels to cane people.

Harsh family reunions
One year after he was abducted, Okello’s unit met up with another group of rebels and he saw his brother Ochen, four years his elder, among them. Ochen had been kidnapped after Okello. 

“We met,” Okello said, but he didn’t show anyone that Ochen was his brother. He walked over to him, dark sunglasses covering his eyes. Okello looked at his brother, kicked him and growled the normal message, that if he tried to escape, he would be killed. Carefully, he lifted his sunglasses and made sure his brother knew it was him. “I said, ‘don’t make any sign that will show we are from the same village, the same family.’”

Ochen did not smile, Okello remembered. “There is no time” for such things, he said.

Okello pretended to beat his brother, but really was passing him a bag of beans to eat.

(Field recipe for cooking beans: Boil water and put it in large plastic water container. Pour in the beans, put the cap on, and beans will be soft by the following day.)

Somehow, Okello got Ochen in his unit. They stayed together one year, with Okello quietly taking care of him because Ochen had been in the rebel army longer and had wounds to show for it. One day, Okello returned from the field and his brother wasn’t there. Ochen remains missing.

To Okello’s great sadness, he could not help his father at all when rebels came upon him.

Two years after he was kidnapped, a year after he found and lost his brother, Okello’s unit attacked his home village. The rebels didn’t realize it was his village. They didn’t realize that the person they pointed him to and said, “Kill this man,” was his father.
His father, Okello said, recognized him. Okello’s account of what happened next is confusing.

He initially told a reporter he had killed his father – if he didn’t, the rebels would kill Okello and then have someone else kill his father. Later, he said he had not understood the reporter’s question and he had not killed his father. Another rebel had, whom Okello said he subsequently shot to death in a firefight with government soldiers. Photojournalist Stephen Shames, whose foundation has helped Okello for years, said the second account is the one Okello has consistently given the few times he has spoken about the death of his father.

Losing an arm
Early one morning in 2004, the Ugandan army ambushed his unit.

“They surrounded us,” Okello said.

In the fighting, the army threw bombs, one of which exploded near Okello and burned skin off his feet. He took off his New Balance sneakers, recently bought for his trip to the United States, and blue socks to reveal discolored skin on the sides of his feet.

Bullets were flying everywhere during that skirmish.

“I did not even know they shot me.” He felt no pain immediately, he said, though it didn’t take long before he did and saw he was bleeding heavily.

“After 10 minutes, I looked at my arm and saw it was different. I rolled under a tree.” As the rebels fled, the army found Okello and took him to a nearby hospital in the town of Kitgum.

He was still bleeding heavily and didn’t realize he had been rescued from the rebels. He was free.

Doctors tried for two months to treat his wound, but eventually, one physician told him his arm had to be amputated. “I said OK.”

As happens with many children who return from captivity, they are taken to the big radio station in Gulu, northern Uganda, MEGA FM, which is a joint project of the Ugandan government and Britain. It is an experiment in radio being used as a peacemaking tool.

Okello announced his name and the hospital where he was a patient. His mother heard him and went to him from the displaced person’s camp the remaining family had moved to while Okello was a rebel.