Whilst I have been in Soroti the film "Kony 2012" has been circulating the internet. You may have seen this account of the Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony and his war which ravaged much of East Africa between 1987 and 2006. The film and its author have been much criticized, especially here in Uganda. Why? Because the Ugandan people expelled Kony in 2006 and Uganda has since established a semblance of peace. Being associated with Kony angers those that have worked hard to rid Uganda of his image. Kony, has however, left an awful legacy. Kony is number one on the International Court of Justice's most wanted list. He was higher than Colonel Qaddafi or Osama bin Laden. This was due to his military tactics. Rather than using male adult soldiers in conventional war, he kidnapped boys. The boys parents were killed and the sisters taken into prostitution. These boys were brutalized.
The legacy then is that these boys are now in their early teenage years. Kony is accused of using between 60,000 and 100,000 child soldiers from 1987 captured mainly from Northern Uganda. Halcyon High School, like most schools in Soroti have a number of boys who were forced to fight as child soldiers. I spoke to two of them Joseph and Jacob. The public internet is not the best place to tell you what they had to say. When I return to school in late July or September ill be sure to do an Assembly and tell Joseph and Jacobs story.
Joseph Kony
I was unfortunate enough to contract malaria last week. It came hot on the heals of a jaw infection which meant I couldn't eat and lost some kilos. Malaria is pretty debilitating. It was similar to Swine Flu in its symptoms but with some added joint pain. I got a strain called falcipuram from which 655,000 died in 2011. These however, are mostly children so I wasn't really at risk. A good dose of a drug called quinien flushes it out of your system. This was after I had moaned to Amy for a week. Funnily as a doctor she didn't believe me that men suffer more severely from illness than women!
We had used all sorts of preventative drugs, mosquito nets, sprays and plug adapters to try and avoid getting bitten by the anopheles mosquito (the main carrier of malaria). We failed to keep the tyke at bay, probably as it is currently mosquito season here. I felt a little daft on returning to school after a week off to find that pretty much every child also had Malaria, and yet still attended lessons. Luckily the malaria drugs are affordable here and treatment reduces the symptoms within a week so the kids just got on with life rather than lying in bed! It did strike me though how the pupils took Malaria in their stride regardless of its potential to kill.
We had a close run in with a Black Mamba snake last month that found its way into our bedroom. It had made us more conscious and careful to look out for them as they are the worlds fastest snake and amoungst the most deadly. However, it doesn't scare as much as the mosquito. At least you can see the snake, the mosquito is omnipresent and barely visible. I don't think i could put up with its every present danger in the way that Ugandan's do. Hats off to the kids.
