If a Tree Falls In a Forest and No One Hears It, Does It Still Make A Sound?

Attention was grabbed by the Kony 2012 video. Attention was paid to the fact Joseph Kony is still at large. But did you know that:

“UNHCR has received reports of more violence by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in central Africa in recent weeks.

Since our last update on 6 March, there have been 13 new LRA attacks in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Most occurred in Dungu territory between 6 and 25 March. Two people were killed and 13 abducted, including a child in the town of Aba. The violence has also displaced more than 1,230 people in the Dungu area.

This brings to 33 the total number of LRA attacks in north-eastern DRC so far this year, with more than 4,000 displaced. There have also been reports of attacks by the Ugandan rebel group in Bondo, close to the border with the Central African Republic (CAR).

In CAR itself, attacks attributed to the LRA resumed in January after a lull since April 2011. Eleven LRA attacks have been recorded in the south-eastern part of the country this year. Eight of those took place near the towns of Zemio and Mboki, where UNHCR assists refugees and internally displaced populations.

Four people were killed during the attacks and 31 abducted, according to the CAR defence and security forces.

The security situation in south-eastern CAR remains extremely fragile. One exception is in the city of Obo, where the situation has improved with the presence of U.S. troops deployed last October to bolster efforts by the joint CAR-Ugandan armed forces hunting the LRA and its leadership.”

Has anyone been talking about these attacks? Not really. Everyone is too preoccupied with commenting on how badly Jason Russell is messed up given that he had a psychotic breakdown and even after that video no one cares about these attacks.
Are people in Uganda talking about them? No. Are people in the US talking about them? Well, I’m not in the US, but I have a Google alert set to tell me when stories about the LRA come out in the news. Out of the recent 30 stories, about 5 have been about the attacks. A whole lot more have been about criticism of the Kony 2012 video.
You can argue all you want to that the US is not needed to find Kony, that Africa can take care of itself. But the UNHCR says that the most secure region of the Central African Republic is the city where the US troops are present.
The tree has fallen: the LRA is still active and they are making noise and stepping up their game. But I’m starting to wonder if the world audience has been caught up listening to a very different forest. I think the Kony 2012 video did a great thing by calling attention to what’s happened with the LRA. But I think it’s also time people pay attention to what is still happening.
I had a conversation with a friend from UCU (the university my parents work at) the other day. While I disagree with a lot of the way he viewed the movie (which he now is very aware of) he did say one thing that resonated. Africa is always portrayed as being a war-torn impoverished nation. It is stereotyped as such and is treated with a general pity and misunderstanding. The fact is that there is some truly amazing richness in Uganda… maybe not material wealth but there is a richness and beauty in the culture, the people, the nature. There is such incredible beauty mixed among all of the poverty, that it’s easy to see one and forget the other. The amazingness that is Uganda should never be forgotten.
However, Africa does suffer. There ARE rebel groups that would not be permitted in the US. People DO live in horrendous situations. According to Wikipedia (go ahead, argue about how reliable it is) 5 people were killed in the civil unrest in London last year. How many weeks did we hear about that on the news? 6 people have been killed in recent weeks in central Africa. Has anyone heard about that?
It’s the sheer extent of the suffering, the unbroken tide which is not seen in the West. I visited a homeless shelter with my church youth group in the US a few years ago while they ate breakfast and had their clothes washed. Okay now read that sentence again. A group of youth visited homeless people. They were in a homeless shelter. They ate breakfast. They had their clothes washed.
As much as homeless people in the US are real, and they suffer, I was startled by how clean the people were. Yes, they had some dirt on them. Yes, they looked weather-beaten. But they had food. And they didn’t have to beg for it.
Yes Africa is stereotyped. But YES it is also true that three year old children are malnourished and starving and knocking on our car windows asking for the equivalent of 5 cents because they are so hungry.
I visited a shelter for homeless children here. It was the place where the police sent juvenile delinquents and children they didn’t know what to do with. Clean? Clean?! There was nothing clean about those children. I sat there with one four year old boy whose toes were literally rotting. The flies fed off of them while he bled. When I tried to ask the nurse to look at him, she just looked at me and said “I can’t keep up with all of this. There are kids in a lot worse shape. I can’t afford the time to look at this one boy”.
So, is Africa stereotyped and is it assumed that all Africans are poor? Yes. Are all Africans poor? No. Are there poor Africans? Yes. As Christians, do we have the responsibility to help those who suffer? The Bible tells me so. Argue all you want about foreign aid… at the end of the day in the last month more than 4,000 people have been displaced. Whether YOU hear it or not, I think that still makes a sound

My response to the Kony 2012 video

So most people know that I have done a fair bit of work in Northern Uganda. My heart and passion lie up there, with my friends.

My friends have suffered. They have been invisible.

And now, because of this Kony 2012 video, people are talking about them.

I have tried for the last 3 years to tell people about what Kony has really done. And finally the pictures are being shown. The pictures of the mutilated faces, the actions taken by Kony and his band of child soldiers, are being talked about. There is a lot of criticism about this movie. But all I have to say is:

It’s about time. Thank God people are finally waking up.

The video does a good job of showing the terrible actions by Kony. But what it doesn’t show is how much, even with Kony gone, there is a need for recovery.

Northern Uganda has been destroyed by the war. At the orphanage I visited in Lira (see my post on Beauty and Pain in Northern Uganda) I heard three things.

1: a baby boy was in an Internally Displaced Person’s camp when it was attacked. Among the 300 people who were killed were his parents. He was left as a four month old baby to die. He was rescued, and is now in an orphanage in Lira. It seems like a good end to the story, his life can be said to be a success, but imagine the trauma he will face every single day. He is now 10 years old. Who is there to help him recover?

2: another young girl was tied to a tree during an LRA attack. Her parents were killed in front of her while she screamed “No, leave my mommy alone”. I heard this story from the founder of the orphanage.

3: The founder of this orphanage is an amazing woman, but she does not necessarily know how to help these kids. Something needs to be done for them.

Kony has caused these horrific things. When I spent time at Keyo Secondary School in Gulu one of the girls told me that at the primary school next door the children had been attacked. Many were abducted, and the ones who were too young were locked in a building and burned alive.

I can say that I personally saw the burned out building. I saw it. I heard the stories. I met the children who survived rebel attacks. I talked to people who came from towns where during an attack people’s lips were padlocked shut.

Did you get that?

The LRA burned children alive.

The LRA padlocked people’s lips shut.

The movie says what is necessary: Kony MUST be stopped.

But will bringing “justice” to Kony bring justice to people who have lived through these things? What is going to be done for the survivors? It is time the war stops. But it will be generations before the reverberations of the war have stopped.

Now we must stop Kony. What the movie didn’t say is that in February alone another 3,000 people were displaced in the DRC. It is time for this war to stop.

And finally people are talking. No one talked about it. And now people are talking.

There is a lot of criticism about this movie. People are saying that it’s too polished. Other people are saying that talking isn’t going to change things. But Invisible Children is right. The first thing to do is talk.

So let’s talk.

But let’s also be thinking about what WE CAN DO for the survivors of the war in Northern Uganda. There are long lasting effects of this war. So let’s think about what we can do without waiting for others to act. Let’s discuss not only Kony but the people who have survived this war.

A lot of criticism is coming out about the US involvement with the war. A lot of people are saying that the Ugandan government should sort the problem out themselves. But Kony isn’t in Uganda anymore. Kony is in the DRC, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. All three of these countries are a little preoccupied with other instability. And the Ugandan government isn’t well enough equipped to bring an end to this war. I mean, it’s been going on since 1986. This isn’t an issue of the US being the world’s police man. This is an issue of answering a simple question: is it EVER acceptable to leave people to die and suffer, or do we have the obligation to help where we can?

As far as I can see, we have an obligation to the children who are still being abducted. We have an obligation to the mothers of these children. We have an obligation to the orphans. We have an obligation, and if the only way to fulfill it is to send in troops from another country then that’s exactly what we should do.

Let’s never lose sight of the fact that we need to help end the war and bring about restoration. Thank you to Invisible Children for bringing such an important issue to people’s sight. And now:

Let’s talk.

Let’s fight.

Let’s act.

Let’s restore.

Should it really be simple?

Here are some of the awesome highlights of m life.

I have stood at the highest point next to Mont Blanc. I have taken a cable car through the alps from France to Italy.

I have stood on the pyramids, and walked through ancient Egyptian temples.

I have sat in the Haga Sophia (or Aya Sofya) and seen some of the oldest mosaics in Turkey.

I have climbed through tropical rainforests (alright fine, so I slid through them).

I have eaten a crepe in a medieval walled city in the French Alps.

I have eaten freshly made Bakhlava after dark in the middle of the Hippodrome of Istanbul on the first night or Rhamadan/Ramazan.

I have sipped my coffee while watching the sunrise over the plains of Karamoja (for you none Ugandans let’s say the planes of Africa J )

Here are some of the realities I’ve dealt with on an every day basis:

I drive past starving children every day.

I can see a slum from my school.

Children who I care about were orphaned by war. They have experienced horrific things. And there’s not much I can do to help.

My friends are all different races. And I never notice it.

My parents just bought my one way ticket back to the US for college. I leave on June 30^th. Here are some overwhelming thoughts about the US:

In the last 8 years (as of April 8^th) I have spent less than 28 weeks in the US.

I do not know what a checkbook is, or if people even still use them.

I have no idea how you use a credit card.

Malls? Are you kidding me? Those are just big overwhelming traps. As far as I can tell. In other words, they scare me half to death.

Why are there so many white people??????

Walmart. Way too many choices. How can you have so many types of jeans?

No, I do not get in state tuition. Anywhere. But yes I do qualify for federal financial aid. Want to try making sense out of that?

Changing rooms. They’re a nice alternative to trying on jeans practically in the street in the middle of Old Kampala. But I’m still not quite sure how they work. And people who help you find your size in a store? What the what?! There are multiple sizes! And colors! And did I mention the people to help you find them?

So I wanted to write this, because a lot of people who knew me before we moved view me as an American, and think that I should have no problem sliding back into American culture. Guess what? It isn’t going to work that way. I’m going through some missionary kid re-entry programs. I was talking to a girl who is visiting as an exchange student at the university the other day who grew up as an MK. It’s true: MK’s speak another language. We deal with things differently… It’s going to take me a while to settle back in. It’s a big, overwhelming change coming up.

Sitting on the Razor Wire

Note: I do not intend for this to make me sound different or better than other people. I apologize if it comes across that way. This is what is on my heart. I am not condemning my school or the people in it. We are westerners, we live a western life. If you find this offensive, please let me know. I’m just sharing what is on my heart.

The sun is starting to set, setting fire to the red dust which floats through the air. My attention is drawn out towards the brown hill that the sun is starting to set behind. My eyes focus on what is between me and the sun aside from the choking red dust which gets in your eyes, ears, and mouth. The slum called Kamwokya lies right outside the razor wire. Shanty buildings shoved together seem to lean on one another, like a whole line of dominoes. Some have tin roofs. Some have wood roofs. Some have concrete walls. Some have wooden slats as walls.

I can see a clearing in the middle of the slum. Children with thin arms and distended bellies yell and run around, kicking up the fine red dust. The rags they wear barely conceal them. There is so much dust in the air, the children’s hair has even taken on a reddish tinge. Green and brown streams of mud and sewage run through the clearing, and I watch as the children splash in it. Everything is dead. Everything is dying.

People return with ten liter jerry cans, one in each hand. They must be returning from fetching water. I can only pray that it’s from a clean water borehole. But it is the dry season. Most of the places these people get water from have dried up. And so the eight year old with bony arms and a sleeping younger sibling on his back returns with a minimal amount of dirty water.

There is no cheap produce available. It has not rained in a month and a half, and there are no vegetables in the market. 3 tomatoes cost 1,000 shillings, or 50 cents. That may not seem like much, but the parents who now come to collect their children from the communal play sewage area probably only make about 2,000 to 5,000 shillings a day.

My eyes are drawn directly down again. I see the healthy green vines growing over the bars, barely concealing the razor wire which keeps the slum away from us. This disturbs me. Do they not understand? How can we be separate from Kamwokya? I turn and look behind me. The buildings which cost millions of dollars to construct so that wealthy ex-patriots can spend sickening amounts of money attending loom over the slum. They cast a dark shadow over the houses. I look at my friends, and I know I need to return and help them set up for this dance. The school has paid 400,000 shillings on a DJ for a few hours tonight. We have sodas sitting buried in ice, and our crisis is whether or not we should spend another 35,000 shillings getting ice brought on the back of a boda boda so that our sodas will be colder.

I look at my friends. I look at the slum. I look at the razor wire. I look at my skin. I am white, which means that I am on the inside of the razor wire. I am guilty, I am one of the ex-patriots whose family pays so that I can have a quality education. Should I feel guilty? Should I wish that I was on the other side of the razor wire? I cannot do that. I need to get a good education so that I can come back some day, maybe 10, 20, or 50 years later. And when I come I will return with wire cutters and tear down the stupid razor wire. I will bring enough clean water for the entire slum. I will pick up all of the children outside the razor wire and bring them inside, and feed them a solid meal.

Ok. I started daydreaming about my return. But one day I will return, and things will be different. Things have to change, right?

Faith, Knowing, and Humanity

I have to take a course in school called Theory of Knowledge. We look at different ways of knowing things. It’s pretty much philosophy. We were given essay topic options, and one of them was “faith as a way of knowing”. I don’t want to write something to fill in all the necessary criteria, but I do want to write this.

What do I know about humanity? I know that it is cruel. In Uganda, one of the ways people get revenge is to pour acid on another person, torturing that person. There was an article in the newspaper today about robbers who have taken to beating their victims, then covering them in gasoline and lighting them on fire. What I know about humanity is that it is unjust.

I have no faith left in humanity. How can rebels turn children into soldiers and force them to kill their parents?

Humanity is cruel. Children endure things that they never, never, never should have to even think about. You want me to have faith in humanity? Sorry it isn’t going to happen. Humanity is superficial and commercial and selfish, and downright evil and cruel. We scar each other, sometimes for no reason at all. You want me to have faith in humanity? Fine. I have faith that humans will hurt one another if left to their own devices. My faith in humanity means that I know that humans will act in ways which will hurt others. My lack of faith in the goodness of humanity means that I know we will hurt each other. All evidence suggests this.

Well, almost all evidence. There is one key factor missing so far.

Have you ever noticed that what makes a difference in what we know of humanity is the faith that we are capable of having? Even at her darkest, most depressed times Mother Theresa had faith that God would love the children she loved. And He did. And she kept going.

One of the things that is interesting about living in Africa is the obviously joyful spirit of those who suffer yet have faith. The woman, Mrs. Tamali, that runs the orphanage in Lira that captured my heart and passion, has suffered untold things. Her husband was killed during the tumultuous time of Idi Amin. Her house was taken. Her life was taken. She lived in Northern Uganda throughout the horrific war. She saw the people she loved packed like animals into refugee camps. She saw life taken.

But her faith was never taken.

Mrs. Tamali wrote letters every day for 19 years to people in the government demanding that her house, captured by Idi Amin’s soldiers, be returned to her. She waited with faith that someday someone would hear her cries for what God had provided to be returned to her. Finally, her faith led to legislation that all homes taken by Idi Amin’s troops in Lira be returned to the families.

Mrs. Tamali’s faith had shown its results. But was that good enough? No. She wrote more letters, asking for her house to be repaired, until finally troops were sent for three months to rebuild her house.

And now she runs Father’s House, the amazing orphanage where so many scarred children have come to find love.

I do not have faith in the goodness of humanity. But I do have faith in the strength of the human spirit. I have faith in our ability to hope and turn situations around.

What I know about humanity is that when we have faith, we are an amazingly strong and joyful creation.