Uganda has been my parent’s home for just over a year. We speak on the phone and exchange emails but I confess I know very little about Uganda. Through my parent’s
The last few days Uganda has really been on my mind. The children of Uganda have been on my heart. It has consumed my days and nights. I think of them before I go to sleep, when I wake up and sometimes in the middle of the night.
The other day, on Oprah, I saw a Special Report on the children of Uganda…children known as the Night Walkers. Children in Northern Uganda are being kidnapped and forced into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The boys are beaten and trained to kill. Their mouths are busted open and they’re given no medical attention. The girls are raped, repeatedly, and even used as human shields. Both the boys and girls are trained to kill. Large pieces of their flesh is cut off and cooked, then sent to their parents. It is an almost indescribable horror. The images and stories of these children have haunted me for days.
Nightly, close to 40,000 children walk 3-5 miles to be corralled into huge holding pins to sleep. They are locked in so they will be safe at night.
Uganda is at the front of my mind because my parents live there. I have so many questions and concerns that I’m researching daily.
In the other countries like the Sudan, Darfur and Chad a genocide is taking place and nothing is being done.
I beg you to visit the links in the journal entry and see what you might be able to do. Something as simple as writing a letter to the President and your Senator would be a powerful act.
These people…these children must have someone speak for them. I believe we can be that voice and force. Not because we’re Americans but because we are humans. This is a human atrocity.
I worked today but tonight I took part in a rally for Night Walkers. Invisible Children.com sponsored a rally and a sleep over in a park not far from my store. I didn’t spend the night, as many did as a sleeping protest over the thousands of children sleeping locked up in Uganda, but I stayed for a couple hours. As hundreds and hundreds of us arrived, we had a Polaroid picture taken and we were asked to write letters to the President, our Senator, and to create some piece of art (using the picture symbolizing why we were there.
I wrote my letters and talked to those around me. I was empowered by the presence of so many (most with sleeping bags in tow), who were there to act on behalf of these children. As I turned my attention to my art…I was at a lost. Many were drawing, painting, etc. I couldn’t decide what to do.
So…like I do a lot of times when I don’t know what to do…I wrote.
Absorbing why I was there and remembering the images of the children I’d seen earlier this week, I began writing.
I thought of the power of the night. Night is when our bodies rest and regroup. It’s when we dream. I wrote a piece called Night Walkers and envisioned a time when they could once again sleep and truly rest and dreams. Their nights are filled with terror and not the dreams that accompany childhood. That to me is one of the greatest crimes against them.
Visit: www.invisiblechildren.com
Visit: www.creativevisions.org
Visit: www.theirc.org
Visit: www.savedarfur.org
Visit: www.genocideintervention.net
Visit: www.worldvision.org
Visit: www.ugandarising.com
Visit: www.unicefusa.org
There is so much we MUST do.
Please join me.
