Dennis and Gulu pt 1

alright, I should probably do better with keeping my life updated. I have never been in such a whirlwind. There are a few things I want to write about and then I'll put on another update on our projects.

Last week on thursday night we invited our friend dennis to come and eat with us and tell us his story. He is a 26 year old from Gulu in northern Uganda who is now a freshman in high school because he was abducted as a child. This is a sad story so if you want something happy, I wouldn't read this right now.

When Dennis was eight years old the LRA came into his village and stormed his house. They took his father and two mothers out infront of their children and told dennis that since his dad worked for the government, he needed to be killed. And dennis needed to do it. Dennis refused and there was some arguing as they tied his parents naked to a tree. When he had a second, out of fear, Dennis took off running and the LRA took their guns and shot after him, they hit him in the arm but he ran into the bush and hid for a little bit of time and then made the decision that he should go and die with his parents so went back to witness his father and mothers massacred. They were cut down the middle, their throats cut and insides pulled out of their bodies. He had a drawing of what had happened that he showed to everyone. After that, the LRA took dennis (he was the oldest) to be a soldier and left his siblings orphaned, in their village.

Dennis spent EIGHT years in the bush. He tried to escape once but got caught and was caned until he couldn't walk. He finally escaped the second time and was successful. During his time in the bush he was forced to kill a man. it was either he die or the man die and so he shot a man as a young child. The LRA used to play games to with the people they would capture and force them to fight 1x1 and the survivor would move on to the next round like a sick sporting tournament. they would then wait until their were 2 people left out of 60, leave a note with them and tell them to inform the government that they were in that location with 50+ dead bodies waiting to fight. He also talked about how brainwashed the child soldiers get, where some thirst to kill and how joseph koni is possessed by the devil and has powers to predict the future.

He talked really matter of factly about the experience and said there were many things that happened that were too much to explain. He talked about the problems in gulu today with HIV, girls that were raped and then drop their babies in bushes or pit latrines, and starvation associated with people forced to leave the IDP camps.

when he came back after 8 years in the bush he found two of his little brothers and had a little place for them to stay as he went to school and tried to provide for them. he would lock them inside while he was gone and then come back with food from the school to feed them. One day while he was at school his siblings were playing with fire in their hut and accidentally set the hut on fire and both ended up dying.

He then lost all of his fathers property and luckily found someone to sponsor him for school. He since has moved to jinja (about 30 minutes from us) and is trying to support another orphan girl who was his neighbors child and who he promised to look after. She is 2 and living in gulu with someone that he put her with.

I am amazed by Dennis. He wants to build an orphanage and is working on raising funds for that. I am so impressed with his outlook on life. He says that sometimes he doesn't feel like he should be alive and wishes he were dead, but then he reminds himself that God chose him to stay alive and he needs to help as many people as he can.

He joined the LDS church and found a sponsor for his schooling through a contact their but that is a population that is a lot of times left to the waste side, the returning abductees who are in their teens. There is a ton of funding for elementary school kids, but not enough attention is paid to those who are older and escape.

I'm still digesting that reality mixed with the fact that I just came back from gulu at 5am this morning. I'll write another entry about that. I'm sorry about the grammar errors but I don't have time to really re-read over this right now.