By Richard M. Kavuma
April 22, 2004 - Monitor
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Tiptoeing my way to avoid stepping on yawning and snoring children in Gulu’s taxi park I came face to face with agony.
He bit his teeth as if to lock out the pain, and raised the head, trying, with the half-open left eye, to see the people chuckling around him. Fifteen year-old Denis Ojok writhed, a scaring deep cut exposing red flesh on the inside of the eye-socket. The policeman in charge of guarding the children sleeping in the park said Ojok had been caught by a stone thrown by one of two girls. Having run to town for safety from LRA rebels, the girls, aged around 14, found they were not safe from rowdy boys groping and tugging them. The girls fought the unwelcome attention from the boys. “What are you doing for this boy, Afande?” I asked the policeman with urgency. “Aah, this one?” the cop replied, his flickering eyes red; his breath heavy with alcohol. “This one will stay here until tomorrow. There is nothing that can be done.” Afande staggered to his feet, lazily shrugging his shoulders to pull his navy blue raincoat closer to his body. But Afande, his eye looks bad. He could lose his eye, I pleaded. He said there was nothing he could do, adding that he was being honest with me. “This is normal my friend,” he said. “They fight. You just stay here; you will see others coming with blood.” Away from the brutal reality of Ojok, I walked to Andreas Olal Road, in front of The Monitor Gulu offices. It was an hour to midnight. About six boys were playing war games, shooting and kicking out at each other like their film heroes, Rambo and Bruce Lee. Among them, I was surprised by the composure and eloquence of a little, 13 year-old. His name, Tek Kwo, translates into “hard life’. Their parents send them to town for safety because rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army that is fighting the government could abduct them at night. “If you do not start walking early even the soldiers can cause you problems,” says Tek Kwo. “What problems?” I ask. “They can do anything to you if they want. They can even kill you.” “Because others are drunk. Or when a witchdoctor has sent them for a head of a boy.” Tek Kwo used to live at Nsambya, a suburb of the capital Kampala. His father worked at Uganda House as an accountant. He died in 2000. Tek Kwo’s mother died in 2001. He now lives with his grandmother about six kilometres to the north of Gulu town. The children are taken in by the excitement of Gulu town’s nightlife. One boy lights matchstick after matchstick and tries in vain to set fire to the padlock on The Monitor office. Another jumps on a mineral water bottle, exploding it – like a bomb blast, which he amplifies with another blast, from his mouth. A little boy, 9, wanted to watch city Crooner Jose Chameleone who was performing that night at Gulu’s Diana Gardens – but he did not have enough money. I thought of the warm bed I was going to, and then looked at the children – sleeping on the bare, cold, dusty floor; hungry; with nothing to cover their bodies. It was 11.30 p.m. I resolved to stay a bit longer. As the boys taught me some Luo words, I advised them to continue evading the rebels. That is not easy. The rebels had abducted about 9,000 children in the previous 12 months. With Tek Kwo, we talked about his name, “hard life” “May be my mother had difficulty when he gave birth to me,” he said. “May be that is why they gave me that name.” I struggled to find something to inspire Tek Kwo, who did not even have a blanket to cover himself that night. “May be God knows you will have a hard life; but am sure He wants you to have life,” I said. “ So, you must continue protecting your life from the rebels.” The figure of these “night commuters” is estimated at 20,000 for the three districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader. NGOs Save the Children Denmark and Noah’s Ark in Gulu, and Oxfam in Kitgum have provided shelters for the children to sleep in, but they are not enough. “We are overly concerned about the future of thousands of children and young people who spend years on the streets, missing out on the opportunity to grow up in a secure home with their family in their community where they learn values and responsibility,” said an Oxfam official in Kitgum. Oxfam has provided some of the night commuters with blankets, jerry cans and soap. Even with the helping hands, Acholi point to the night commuters as a sign of how helpless the war has made them. George Omona, country director of the NGO ACORD, cites an Acholi saying “you run with your children and hide them under the pumpkin plant.” Today, because Kony is targeting the children, community leaders are questioning the practice of sending them to the towns. Both Omona and Julius Tiboa, Programme Coordinator of Gulu Support The Children Organisation raise concerns over immorality amongst the night commuters. “Some of the girls who come to sleep in the streets are picked up by town youths and taken to popular discothčques in Gulu,” says Omona. Tiboa points out that adolescent night commuters keep to themselves in boy-girl pairs and seem to prefer the verandas even when shelter is provided. “With the fear of HIV/Aids, may be the next war after this one will be to fight HIV/Aids, which is silent at the moment,” Tiboa says. “It is probably going to be a serious explosion, may be, when the war ends.”
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© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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