All Join Hands: Uganda
A Ugandan child helps restore faith
KITGUM, NORTHERN UGANDA - I didn't expect to feel healed when I came to Uganda to see firsthand a situation I have followed for more than a decade: a civil war in which about 30,000 children have been abducted to serve as soldiers or sex slaves.
I didn't expect to have my cracked faith spackled while spending a night watching the fitful sleep of children, whom I consider to be the most victimized in the world - and the most ignored.
But I did and it was.
A lot of thoughts careened around my mind as I walked after nightfall with 12-year-old Johnson Tokadi from a camp where he and his family temporarily live to the courtyard of St. Joseph's Hospital, about two miles away.
A town always seems different at night - a little meaner, a little more threatening. That's why most parents in America keep their children, especially the youngest ones, off the street after dark.
And that is why - it occurred to me as I strode to keep up without stepping in puddles - the moonlit silhouettes of so many kids walking along a road looked so sad.
It is this 19-year civil war, and the threat of abduction by a group called the Lord's Resistance Army, that caused these children to journey from their rural homes to sleep in towns where rebels don't go. This routine has earned them the label of "night commuters. "
So Johnson walked, carrying the blanket he wraps himself in before resting his head on the cold cement floor.
I instantly liked Johnson. He is a shy boy who made good on his promise 24 hours before to meet me so I could accompany him on a night commute.
He looks, too, like a street boy named Maurice, whom I befriended when I worked in Rwanda for UNICEF in 1998.
It now seems ironic to me that Rwanda borders Uganda, since Rwanda was where my crisis of faith began and Uganda was where it ended.
Rwanda is home to the 1994 genocide in which extremist Hutus triggered a massacre against the minority ethnic group, the Tutsis. Extremists were joined in the frenzied slaughter, which saw as many as 1 million people killed in 100 days, by ordinary Hutus who were mesmerized by the hate propaganda all around them.
Try to understand a Hutu mother killing her part-Tutsi child, a Hutu son slaying his Tutsi father by the intimacy of a machete chop.
I could not.
What happens to a person about to commit an atrocity at that moment when his hand is lowering a blade to cut the throat of a loved one? How does the decency I believe is in every person snap in that instant?
I have struggled with these questions, even as I gave birth to a wondrous daughter, joined synagogues, attended services, and asked for travelers' blessings before going to dangerous locales overseas. I have struggled, even as I felt an internal spark of faith that urged doing more to protect children.
I still believed, but not as much as before Rwanda.
One of my aims in Uganda was to describe a night commuter's walk to a safe haven and back home. Little would come, I thought, from staying up all night and watching a bunch of kids sleep. Wrong.
By midnight, I was the only one awake. I looked out over the 50 or so kids and could not believe that in 19 years, the world has not come to these children's rescue.
At about 2 a.m., I heard rainfall and felt the cold and hunger that squeezes so many in northern Uganda.
At 4:35 a.m., I felt deep in my bones the vulnerability of living in a war zone when I heard what sounded like gunshots. In this supposedly safer setting, what really was there to protect these kids from an attack? The flimsy fence? The old, haggard watchman with a cane? The sick and dying in the hospital?
It was early in the night, when I began to feel different, when I realized the cracks that had appeared in Rwanda were gone. My crisis of faith was replaced by a stronger-still belief in God.
I tried to rationalize why and how that moment had happened amid a human tragedy. Maybe it was seeing the children laugh, play and share their possessions with others despite their situation.
Maybe it was an inexpressibly satisfying feeling that at least for one night, I could help protect them, that I was acting on my concern for these kids.
Maybe it was all that and other reasons, too. But after my night commute, I don't care anymore about dissecting what happened. Now, having faith that it did is enough.
I didn't expect to have my cracked faith spackled while spending a night watching the fitful sleep of children, whom I consider to be the most victimized in the world - and the most ignored.
But I did and it was.
A lot of thoughts careened around my mind as I walked after nightfall with 12-year-old Johnson Tokadi from a camp where he and his family temporarily live to the courtyard of St. Joseph's Hospital, about two miles away.
A town always seems different at night - a little meaner, a little more threatening. That's why most parents in America keep their children, especially the youngest ones, off the street after dark.
And that is why - it occurred to me as I strode to keep up without stepping in puddles - the moonlit silhouettes of so many kids walking along a road looked so sad.
It is this 19-year civil war, and the threat of abduction by a group called the Lord's Resistance Army, that caused these children to journey from their rural homes to sleep in towns where rebels don't go. This routine has earned them the label of "night commuters. "
So Johnson walked, carrying the blanket he wraps himself in before resting his head on the cold cement floor.
I instantly liked Johnson. He is a shy boy who made good on his promise 24 hours before to meet me so I could accompany him on a night commute.
He looks, too, like a street boy named Maurice, whom I befriended when I worked in Rwanda for UNICEF in 1998.
It now seems ironic to me that Rwanda borders Uganda, since Rwanda was where my crisis of faith began and Uganda was where it ended.
Rwanda is home to the 1994 genocide in which extremist Hutus triggered a massacre against the minority ethnic group, the Tutsis. Extremists were joined in the frenzied slaughter, which saw as many as 1 million people killed in 100 days, by ordinary Hutus who were mesmerized by the hate propaganda all around them.
Try to understand a Hutu mother killing her part-Tutsi child, a Hutu son slaying his Tutsi father by the intimacy of a machete chop.
I could not.
What happens to a person about to commit an atrocity at that moment when his hand is lowering a blade to cut the throat of a loved one? How does the decency I believe is in every person snap in that instant?
I have struggled with these questions, even as I gave birth to a wondrous daughter, joined synagogues, attended services, and asked for travelers' blessings before going to dangerous locales overseas. I have struggled, even as I felt an internal spark of faith that urged doing more to protect children.
I still believed, but not as much as before Rwanda.
One of my aims in Uganda was to describe a night commuter's walk to a safe haven and back home. Little would come, I thought, from staying up all night and watching a bunch of kids sleep. Wrong.
By midnight, I was the only one awake. I looked out over the 50 or so kids and could not believe that in 19 years, the world has not come to these children's rescue.
At about 2 a.m., I heard rainfall and felt the cold and hunger that squeezes so many in northern Uganda.
At 4:35 a.m., I felt deep in my bones the vulnerability of living in a war zone when I heard what sounded like gunshots. In this supposedly safer setting, what really was there to protect these kids from an attack? The flimsy fence? The old, haggard watchman with a cane? The sick and dying in the hospital?
It was early in the night, when I began to feel different, when I realized the cracks that had appeared in Rwanda were gone. My crisis of faith was replaced by a stronger-still belief in God.
I tried to rationalize why and how that moment had happened amid a human tragedy. Maybe it was seeing the children laugh, play and share their possessions with others despite their situation.
Maybe it was an inexpressibly satisfying feeling that at least for one night, I could help protect them, that I was acting on my concern for these kids.
Maybe it was all that and other reasons, too. But after my night commute, I don't care anymore about dissecting what happened. Now, having faith that it did is enough.
