Ugandan children "haunted" by hunger

 A disease caused by malnutrition has parents in Uganda keeping a constant watch on their children. It is called "nodding" syndrome; a strange condition similar to epilepsy that has children going into convulsions whenever they attempt to eat food. Because of a lack of medical support, some of the parents are abandoning their children or decide that they simply "haunted"

From the Inter Press Service, writer Henry Wasswa describes the condition further. 

On a wet earth littered with fresh fruit from a large mango tree in Tumangu village in northern Uganda, Betty Olana (42) sits on a papyrus mat watching over four emaciated children infected by the mysterious nodding syndrome that leaves victims mentally challenged and nodding repeatedly when they see food or cold water.

One of them is her daughter, Joyce Laram (15), who sits with her mouth agape, and saliva running down her chin. The sick children rarely speak and even when the do, they utter unintelligible words only understood by their parents.

“It is mostly at night, when the moon is up that she gets delirious. She hardly gets sleep at night. She cries out suddenly and we have to tie her up. She is now saying: ‘I am seeing ghosts. The ghosts are there. I am seeing them with my eyes. Please protect me,’” Olana told IPS of her daughter who was completely normal until the age of 10.

Victims of the unexplained neurological condition experience numerous symptoms, including continuous nodding, mental retardation, epilepsy, rashes and trembling hands. Many of the infected also suffer from malnutrition as their seizures are triggered by food.

“At the beginning, she started nodding. She has been on medication (for epilepsy) for a long time. The medical people say it is epilepsy, but I do not think so. I think this child, like the rest in this village, is haunted by the spirits of the dead,” Olana said.

Health experts say that the disease is non-communicable. But scientists remain in the dark about the fatal disease that has no known cure, and which first appeared in Tanzania in the 1960s. The Ugandan government estimates that as of January, 200 children have died from the disease.

The children have to be watched constantly as some have fallen into fires and rivers, while wild animals have eaten others. Some parents tie their children to trees or lock them up when they go to farm or to the market. But many have been abandoned.

Now, parents and relief workers in northern Uganda, where nodding syndrome is prevalent, are angry that the government is not doing enough to combat the disease.

The region has been left devastated by the country’s war with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), headed by Joseph Kony. It was one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts, which began in 1978 and has since moved to neighbouring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The LRA has been accused of human rights abuses, including the abduction of 20,000 children, the murder of almost 100,000 civilians, mutilation, slavery, torture and rape.

Lord's Resistance Army might strike again, during Christmas

During the last two Christmas seasons the Lord's Resistance Army has committed atrocities to people in Uganda, Sudan and the Republic of Congo. Aid groups fear that the group could do it again this year, and they are calling on the international community to step up enforcement in the region to prevent a repeat.

From the BBC, we read more about the fears that the LRA might strike again.

Figures show that the LRA over the past two years has become the most deadly militia in the DRC, the aid groups say in a report.

On Christmas Day 2008 and over the following three weeks, LRA beat to death more than 800 people in north-eastern DR Congo and Southern Sudan, abducting hundreds more.

In December 2009, the brutal militia killed more than 300 villagers in DR Congo in the run-up to Christmas.

An LRA spokesman denied that his organisation was responsible for the atrocities.

The rebels - originally from Uganda and also roaming across parts of Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR) - killed or abducted more than 1,000 people in remote areas of DR Congo last year alone, the report says.

The challenge to provide after surviving war

A positive story that we found today talks about some strides that Uganda's war survivors are making to improve their lives. During the war many children were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army to fight or be wives to the soldiers. Now that the former abductees are adults and the war is largely over, they struggle to provide for themselves or loved ones.

From this New Vision story that we found at All Africa, we learn of some initiatives led by the UN Food and Agriculture Orginization to help the war's survivors grow food and save money. Writer Joshua Kato introduces us to one female abductee named Eunice Odok.

"I want to be the first woman in the village to construct an iron roofed house," she says. Her fellow women ululate. She will also buy new clothes so that she is 'respected.'

Odok's dreams are not far fetched.

Very soon, she will be harvesting from her sunflower field, from which she will earn sh1.4m! Very soon too, she will be getting her share from the sale of two acres of onions that belong to the Field Farm School (FFS), to which she is a member. The school has about 30 members.

As a group, the women hope to earn about sh3m from the onions. This means that each of them would take home sh100,000.

According to FAO's Emmanuel Niyibigira, FFS are set up like adult education schools.

However, they are practically oriented to give an array of knowledge to farmers, with emphasis on 'how' and 'why' questions.

The system was adapted to the way of life in the north, including internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returning populations. Odok is a former IDP.

To think that these achievements are happening in an area that was under war a few years ago is impressive. In the Lango sub-region, many women have taken the hunger and poverty bull by the horns.

Not far from Odok's home is Aboke sub-county, where school girls were abducted by the Lords Resistance Army in 1996. By then, Odok was 12 years old.

The child mothers of Uganda

Early childhood abductions and mass rapes have been two of the weapons of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. The Army will kidnap young girls to be made wives to the soldiers, or young boys will stolen away to fight in the army. The girls suffer beatings and rapes by "husbands" who don't love them. The women are forced to bare the children that were conceived by the rapes.

If any of these women are able to leave the Lord's Resistance Army they are not quite accepted by the community. The "rebel children" suffer more taunting and beatings, and are unwanted by anyone but their mothers, even by new husbands. In Uganda, children who are born out of wedlock face a bad social stigma, it is much worse for the children born out of the rebel army.

From CTV, writer Darcy Wintonyk visited Uganda with the Canadian International Development Agency. In this story, Darcy gives a few examples of the kidnapped girls who escaped and went on to improve their lives.

Twenty-eight-year-old Beatrice Akello has been praised for her beauty her entire life. As a child growing up in Atiak, Uganda, elderly women in the village would pinch her smooth cheeks as she walked by, her long silky black hair always tied with bright ribbon. She loved the attention -- until she was abducted by rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, in 1995.

In captivity in Sudan, she was kept segregated from men until she got her first period at age 13. Then she was forced to marry a 30-year-old rebel. She was the first girl picked from a group of dozens.

"I never loved him," she tells me. "Because I feared for my life I had to accept."

Beatrice was one of seven wives, all physically and emotionally abused at the hands of their husband.

"If I refused to sleep with him he would beat me seriously. Or just rape me. He said I was the most beautiful so he gave me the most attention. I wished I was ugly."

Against her wishes, she would bear two children with him in captivity.

Famished and desperate in the jungle, Beatrice told the commander the women in the village were starving to death. The rebels released her, along with several other child mothers. Her youngest child was two.
...

All alone with no income, Beatrice took out a $200 loan from World Vision in 2008 to buy three sewing machines and selected a group of child mothers to start making clothing to generate income so they didn't need to rely on men and could independently support their children.

She now runs the Lacan Pe Nino Child Mother's Association (LPNCA), a school program run from a one-room warehouse that used to store cotton in the 1970s. Of the 21 child mothers, only one says her partner approves.

"I think the men are just jealous," Beatrice says. "We just want to work hard. We missed the chance to go to school. We are finally making a difference in our own lives. Even if it's just a small group at least it's a start."

Video: the child soldiers of Uganda

Wow! This is a stunning video.

25,000 children have been kidnapped through the years in Uganda. They are taken and turned into soldiers for the Lord's Resistance Army.

A heavy amount of brainwashing is done on these children to turn them into soldiers. When they escape the army, the process of undoing the brainwashing is difficult and delicate.

Rev. Donald H. Dunson first traveled to northern Uganda in 2001. He has kept going back to get to know more of the former child soldiers. Rev. Dunson has now written a book that tells their stories. The book is called “Child, Victim, Soldier,”, but we were unable to find more info on the book thru a quick web search.

Rev. Dunson is featured in this video, which does a good job of giving some background on the situation in Uganda.

One note though, the video is from the newspaper the News Herald from northern Ohio. You will have to sit through their :15 ad before the story begins..



The accompanying article also has more on the first meeting of the boy mentioned in this video Sunday Obote. Here is more from Rev. Duncan about the meeting.

Dunson remembers the exact day he met Sunday Obote: July 4, 2001. The tall, handsome teen with the broad smile and bullet in his leg joined Dunson under the tree.

“Sunday Obote was the very first child soldier I met. He was the one who opened a door that would become a floodgate,” Dunson said. “Within five minutes of talking to Sunday Obote, I knew for sure I was in the presence of the most vulnerable person I have ever met in my life. He had been kidnapped at age 7.

“He killed several hundred people. He used to eat lunch seated on the dead bodies of the enemy. How can a child survive that and go back to normality? He was gone for at least eight years with the rebel group. He forgot the face of his mother and father, what they looked like. He forgot what love is like.”

Obote was one of Joseph Kony’s bodyguards. He abducted beautiful women who would be forced to marry Kony. He was once beaten for bringing back a girl who was not pretty enough.

Now, Dunson and Obote correspond frequently and Dunson visits him when he annually returns to Uganda. Obote is a student now, not a soldier. He’s in fourth grade, though he’s in his early 20s.