by Opiyo Oloya
In time, it is not unusual for the abductees to feel some sense of belonging and kinship to the members of household to which they have been assigned, often referring to the head of the household as baba (father) and the most senior wife in the house as mami or mama (mother).13 Ringo Otigo was sent to live with the LRM/A bush doctor who had shown kindness to him during the march to Sudan. Payaa Mamit recalled her life in the home of Vincent Otti, the LRM/A’s second-in-command:
At first, I was placed in the hands of Otti Vincent, who, at the time, was not yet Kony’s deputy. I stayed in the care of Otti like his own daughter. He did not want anyone to send me to do anything. When I became a young girl of a certain age, the men coming off the convoy would attempt to woo me. I would tell Otti immediately and he would tell them to leave me alone.
Otti Vincent never mistreated me. He would teach us, telling us to relax … Among the girls he cared for, we lived in his home as part of our duty as soldiers in position. He had his wives. Two of us were living with one of his wives. When he added other wives to his household, we had already left.
His wife took care of us. She gave us everything we needed to eat. But sometimes, she was not there. When there was soap, she told us to take it and go wash our bodies. ‘Take this oil and put on your body,’ she would say. She gave us clothes, khakis to wear.
It was within the recreated residential homestead that LRM/A girl abductees learned to become not only soldiers but also homemakers. Girls who were purified were now given away to officers and commanders as wives. Girls who had not begun their menstrual cycles were given to officers who looked after them as daughters. Miya Aparo recalled this arrangement: ‘The time came – when I was abducted I had not yet had my period, I was too young – in 1997 when I began having my period. In the bush, when you were young, and had not yet had your period, you were not given away to a man. As soon as you began having period, you were given away to a man. I was given to man, became pregnant, and shortly after gave birth.’
Meanwhile, when it became known that Amal Ataro had begun having her menstrual cycle, LRM/A leader Joseph Kony asked her to become one of his wives. This, Amal said, caused her many sleepless nights because she had grown to regard Kony as a father figure. She resisted at first, doing everything she could in order to avoid going to bed with him, but the LRM/A leader told her bluntly that ‘whatever you do, you are going to be my wife.’ She asked him how she could be his wife when all along he had called her ‘my daughter.’ She reminded the LRM/A leader that, in Acholi culture, a father does not sleep with his daughter. Kony reportedly replied, ‘I only did that [call her his daughter] because I could see that you were always thinking about your parents and I wanted to take their place.’ Amal then told Kony to kill her instead, and he simply replied, ‘You try to provoke me and see what will happen.’ In the end, after enduring a serious beating, Amal finally went to bed with Kony, and he brutally raped her. She conceived a child that very night.
At one level, one could interpret the horrific rape of Amal by Joseph Kony, whom the young girl looked up to as a father figure, as having nothing to do with cultural repurposing. Where is culture in such a cowardly crime perpetrated against a defenceless young girl by a war criminal? But a deeper look at the same act suggests its real motive. In fact, confining the analysis to the criminality of the heinous act by the LRM/A leader misses the deeper cultural context in which the act is buried. Fully aware that Amal regards him as a father figure, and that the young girl understands that incest and rape are taboos in the Acholi culture, Kony deliberately targets this cultural belief itself. He rapes Amal not because he wants the young victim to rethink the cultural knowledge she possesses, thereby somehow leading her to conclude that incest and rape are acceptable in the Acholi culture. Rather, the rape is committed precisely to undermine the foundation of Amal’s cultural understanding of the meaning of life itself. In this case, the message to Amal is simply that nothing else matters, certainly not the cultural taboos around which she previously constructed her identity. Nothing else matters except total allegiance to the LRM/A, and doing the rebels’ bidding.
Indeed, inside the LRM/A camp, young male abductees were often forced to become wegi ot (fathers of the house) to demonstrate their masculinity by providing for their newfound families. As won ot, a young man was expected to speak with authority over matters pertaining to his household. He could not be seen to be weak in the eyes of the other abductees since he was the head of the household. He must be courageous, brave, and enthusiastic, even in battle. Meanwhile, as min ot (mother of the house), a young female abductee was expected to serve her husband and bear his children.14 In the community of the LRM/A, she was expected to perform all the duties of a wife, cooking, taking care of the house, and, when needed, carrying a gun to defend the homestead.
Perhaps as testimony to the degree to which the LRM/A attempted to integrate the abductees into family structures, the death of the household head was occasion for deep sorrow. The repercussions were felt throughout the household as the family was broken up and widows redistributed to other officers. Such eventualities, according to the female child combatants, were often the harshest moment of kwo matek (difficult life). Miya Aparo recalled having such an experience when the young man she was living with was accused of trying to escape and was executed by Kony: ‘When the men were killed by firing squad, we entered a difficult period. Already saddled with children, you were labelled the “wife of a rebel” – meaning the condemned men were planning to defect to government forces. There were painful beatings; everything was taken away from us. We had cultivated many fields, and had a good harvest. We were farming, making charcoal which was taken by vehicle and sold in Juba. We had enough money to care for us.’
By contrast, returning from military operations often provided occasion for celebration. At those times, families were reunited and looted provisions were distributed to everyone.
Pwonyo Mony (Military Training)
The pwonyo mony phase usually comes after the wiiro kom ritual in which the kidnapped child is inducted into the LRM/A. The training lasts from a few weeks to several months. It mainly consists of using light weaponry, learning the different parts of a machine-gun, how to disassemble and assemble a weapon, and how to lay ambush. Abductees slated for the medical corps as dakta (doctor) or as nac (nursing assistant) were not expected to fight in battles, but they were required to carry their weapons at all times during combat.
Most child abductees learn on the job, walking in the convoys alongside more experienced LRM/A combatants, picking up the skills needed to lay an ambush, form a defensive line, make a safe retreat in the face of withering enemy fire, and, in general, think like soldiers. Soon after his abduction, Camconi Oneka was forced to accompany LRM/A soldiers into battle. In shootouts, his handler steadied the muzzle of the machine-gun on the boy’s bared shoulder while he fired at the enemy. ‘The skin peeled off my shoulders because of the heat from the gun barrel,’ he reported. Can Kwo, for his part, recalled the occasion when he began to think of himself as a soldier: ‘I know when I began thinking that I am now a soldier …We were being trained on marching and how to take apart and assemble a rifle … I realized at the time that the business of being a soldier had begun, and this was what I was brought for.’
Learning to survive in combat, where child abductees depended on more experienced fighters for survival, further fostered and reinforced their sense of belonging and solidarity within the rebel organization. Over time, there was a melting of residual suspicion and fear as the child abductees began to feel as part of the LRM/A family.
Cito ii Tic (Going to Work)
The cito ii tic phase concludes the journey to becoming a child combatant. By this time, the child abductees would have been forced to do the bidding of their abductors, kill a person or watch a killing, undergo purification rituals, and become part of an LRM/A household in a home away from home. Effectively, he or she has left the familiar cultural perspective i
n which the life of another person is sacrosanct, and has entered one in which the life of another is not worth a moment’s consideration. As Ringo Otigo put it, ‘in a way, I gave myself to do what they wanted done so that I could preserve my life.’
Gradually, my informants viewed being chosen for cito ii tic as a privilege that promised rewards, since items looted during an operation were often kept by those who did the looting. When he was offered the hand of a widow, Ringo Otigo declined to take her. ‘I told them, at the moment, I am not in a position to care for this woman, and do not have any clothes that she can wear; to take her, I need to go on expeditions as others do.’ Meanwhile, having become a young mother with a child, Miya Aparo was forbidden from going into battle any more. She told me, ‘There, once you had a child, going on operations to loot food was no longer an option. Those without children went. The rest of you worked the fields in the headquarters.’
In any case, over time, the LRM/A used the phase of cito ii tic to build solidarity among abductees by sending them on military operations where they further bonded as comrades-in-arms. In this phase, abductors and abductees become friends, family to each other, trusted and relied upon as protection against attacks. The camaraderie enables the child to begin to see the world as a matter of ‘us’ against ‘them.’ Noticeably, at the start of their captivity, the informants used the word adwi (rebel) to describe the LRM/A while government troops were called simply mony (soldiers) or mony pa gabumente (government soldiers). However, as time progressed, abductees referred to the LRM/A as mony (soldiers) while the UPDF troops became lumerok (the enemies) or even adwi (rebels). Furthermore, when informants spoke of LRM/A casualties, they used the word dano (people), as in dano dong oto ma pe wace (many people died beyond words). But, when referring to UPDF casualties, they used joni (those people), as in waneko joni madwong (we killed a lot of those people). The linguistic change denotes the feeling of transformation as they went from being abductees who viewed the LRM/A rebels as the enemy to insiders who identified with the rebels, whom they now considered as family. In this way, as examined in more detail in the next two chapters, the LRM/A achieved control of abductees in all their actions and behaviour as soldiers.
In conclusion, the LRM/A’s brutal exploitation of Acholi culture as a war resource succeeded precisely because the abductees were forced to accept new stigmatized identities without giving up the original, desired identities that they had earlier formed in their own villages. In chapters 4 and 5, Jola Amayo and Ringo Otigo provide detailed personal stories of how as abductees they learned to reconstruct new identities in order to manage the violent environment of war (Martin-Baro, 1996; Ressler, Boothby, & Steinbock, 1988) without letting go of their earlier identities.
Chapter Four
The Jola Amayo Stories
Jola Amayo is a thirty-three-year-old Acholi mother of three children, aged two, six, and twelve. She was twelve years old when she was abducted by the LRM/A, and she subsequently spent twelve years as a CI soldier in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. Although Jola Amayo attended three different schools, she had barely completed Grade Three when she was abducted. She blames a combination of bad luck (her father passed away) and the worsening security situation due to war for ‘growing up like that with no proper education.’
She agreed to provide details of her time with the LRM/A after she was asked to do so by the director of GUSCO, Robert Okeny. We met at the GUSCO offices on 21 July 2008, at 10:03 a.m. in the morning. The sun was just above the trees, casting what the Acholi call lak nyango, the soft mid-morning glow that precedes the intense heat of midday.
In the room that served as a library, I arranged two wooden chairs by the window that overlooked the road leading to Gulu town centre. I could see children in school uniforms walking along the dusty road, noisy motorcycle taxis known as boda-boda rattling by, women with babies tied on their backs and loads on their heads walking to the market, and the occasional car raising yellow dust. Inside the room, it was already getting humid and warm. I had my back to the window, facing Jola Amayo, who sat quietly, waiting to be spoken to.
What Jola Amayo lacked in formal education, she made up in common sense. In telling her story, she was alert, matter-of-fact, and incredibly gifted in remembering details of events that happened to her prior to, during, and after her life as a CI soldier. It was just as well that she is a natural storyteller because I spent just six hours with her, during which she narrated as much as she remembered or cared to remember.
The Cultural Context of an Acholi Childprior to Abduction by the LRM/A
Jola Amayo was born on 20 November 1978 in the village of Ot Ngic, Omoro County, northeast of Gulu town in northern Uganda. Her birth was just five months shy of the end of the dictatorial reign of Idi Amin Dada in 1979. The fourth in a family of seven children, she had two sisters and four brothers. Her parents were peasant farmers who eked out a living by planting cotton, simsim, cassava, and beans. Most of the money from the produce paid the poll tax and school fees, while the rest went towards buying clothes and other household necessities. She remembered those days well, especially her close relationship with her parents, who taught her about personal integrity, morality, and Acholi tradition:
My father loved and used to teach me things, saying, ‘One day when I am no longer here, protect your name among other girls, especially when you marry in another clan, show respect to your in-laws. I do not want your hands to steal. You are still young, but stealing is not for a young girl or a young boy, instead work hard with your own hands. If you work hard with your hands – work does not kill – you will have an easier life among others.’ He used to teach us, saying, ‘If you are born poor, you learn by sitting beside the food granary, away from everyone else’ – that was a teaching he used to teach us. He displayed his love for us through his teachings. In the evening around the log fire, he would tell us folktales. As we separated the simsim seed from the pods, he posed riddles, told folktales, teaching us at the same time.
If he was not teaching us through stories, he would teach us Acholi traditional dance. He used to drink some beer, and when he returned in the evening, he would teach us how to dance Acholi dances, and other ancestral customs. He would say, ‘When our fathers were still alive, they used to teach us in this manner, telling us, “You must live this way, never look down on anyone, when you see a leper, a crippled leper, when he comes to your home, and asks for water, give him water. Even when you come across someone who crawls on all fours, don’t despise him, you must help him. When you meet a blind person on the pathway, do not despise her, you must help her.”’ Those are some of the teachings he taught us among many other excellent ones.
The closeness of family and extended family also taught Jola early on the importance of interdependence for support and to resolve disputes. As a girl growing in an Acholi village where the ‘good daughter’ was judged by her ability to cook and care for her family and extended kin, she could depend on her mother and grandmother to teach her important skills:
When we were little, our mother cooked for us because we were too young. When a lot of food needed to be made, my mother would do the cooking; but when it was everyday cooking, my mother would say, ‘Peel the cassava, put it in the cooking place, and prepare peas in a pot and put it to cook. When the peas are ready, try roasting the simsim, should you burn it, that’s your problem to take care of. If it is not burnt, put the simsim in the mortar and pound it and if that’s not enough, prepare it anyway.’ And if the simsim was prepared well we would pound it in the mortar, and if not, we would rush to grandmother’s house, she would be home, she would then grind it into smooth paste. When simsim was ready, she would come, cook, and we would eat.
When I visited my grandmother, she would teach us, saying, ‘When we are cooking later today, stay close to the cooking place, and do not ignore cooking because cooking is life. If you are lazy, you will not eat, you will sleep with hunger. If told to do something, you run away, that’
s not a child who can be taught anything, a child who will never listen to her mother.’ My grandmother taught us a lot of good things, including how to play such games as dini-dini.1 As well, she taught us that when caring for twins, there should be a ritual ceremony to bless the twins and you. She showed us everything, this thing is done this way, that one is done the other way, grandmother taught us all.
Jola and her siblings attended a local school where her view of life was slowly formed, including the idea that good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people. Jola’s conception of good and bad was tested and reinforced at home, and by subsequent events that happened to her. As she put it, ‘Mother used to teach us, saying, “If you despise others you meet with accidents later in life.”’ She therefore worked hard at being a good daughter, friend, and neighbour. She had a best friend with whom she spent a lot of her spare time. They took time helping each other’s mother: ‘Whenever we visited her house, we helped, and she came to our house, she helped me, she helped fetch water and grind the millet flour. When we went to her house we also fetched water, we ground millet into flour. That’s how we helped each other out.’
But as Jola grew older she started to believe that simply being good did not guarantee the good life. There were always other forces at work and not all of them necessarily positive for her or her friends. Her superstitious upbringing slowly oriented Jola to believe in yir (sorcery), which, according to Ocitti (1973, 15), is the ‘misuse of spiritual powers’ to harm someone for reasons known to the sorcerer. In the case of Jola, these evil powers seemed to dog her wherever she went. First, the roof of her schoolhouse collapsed, killing two children outright. Jola escaped with some minor injuries, and moved to a new school. Then her best friend fell victim to a spell cast by a village witch. According to Jola, the witch was a neighbour with a disability who asked the two girls to help her dig cassava. After the girls had completed the chore and brought back the cassava, the witch cooked some food, summoned the girls to eat, and somehow cast a spell on Jola’s friend, who started complaining about pain in her leg. Jola remembers the occasion: