things to their parents. Things that would never be accepted in our culture. But they could do it with a gun in their hands. It was like a children’s revolution against adults. “We have REAL POWER!” they would shout at their parents and other adults. They would laugh at their parents or adults who were kneeling or lying down begging for mercy, before either hacking them to death or shooting them.
Over the following two-year period, the LRA trained us in the bush how to use weapons such as the automatic rifle, AK47; rocket propelled grenades, laying landmines, defensive positions and attacking tactics like ambushes. We also carried out lots of raids into villages. I have no idea how many men, women and children we killed either by machete or with the gun. You follow orders because you were soldiers. If you disobeyed, you were shot on the spot or your victims was forced to hack you to death or they would deliberately leave you severely wounded so that you died a slow anguishing death.
You no longer had fear as you saw adults, who once towered over you as a child making you feel scared; suddenly with a gun in your hands, there they were, on their knees or even lying down before you like little children. They were the ones now begging you to have mercy on them. You could let out your anger at their weakness in not protecting the children from the wicked men who have destroyed children’s lives. At the beginning, I wept quietly for having killed my own dear mother. Her bloodied face returning in my dreams to trouble me. She was pleading with me to kill her rather than seeing me killed. My love for her self-sacrifice made me angry and bitter at the weakness in the ability of the men in the villages to join together to defend those of us who are the weak ones.” Olum paused and stared blankly at the floor, like a lost soul in some eternal helplessness. Dr Olok was about to interrupt his vacant look when Olum continued, his countenance now hardened and his voice steady.
“As I grew older, I became more of a warrior and less afraid from victories over the NRM. They were cowards fleeing many times, leaving their weapons when the fighting got hot. Sometimes, we heard over their abandoned radios, the commanders giving false reports that they were completely out-numbered by an ambush of ten times their actual numbers consisting of a well-trained army. We laughed at the reports knowing that we were just a handful of kids who gave the appearance of a large number of LRA by using bush war attack tactics.
The LRA knew well that the NRM soldiers were not really interested in fighting them. Many of them used the excuse of the war to raid the local villages, rape men, women and children. They stole all the livestock and food granaries, including harvesting crops from the fields they could find. They emptied all the granaries into sacks. They even forced the villagers to harvest the sweet potatoes, cassava, yams, and bananas, loading them on to trucks, which carried them back to their own homeland and the big cities to make them fortunes. So it made it easy for the LRA to defeat them, why die for a cause you don’t really believe in? We were fighting for our Acholiland against these evil foreigners.
If only the NRM were really committed to peace and were caring, then the LRA would have lost easily, and I would not have lost my mother and my village would not have been destroyed.” Olum stopped.
Dr Jakobo Olok stopped the tape and pointing to a large table with two boxes of coloured pencils and A3-sized white sheets said,
“I want you to do some drawings for me. Drawings of the pictures you see in your dreams that trouble you. Also, any other pictures that constantly repeat in your mind. When you finish, we can discuss what you have drawn and then you can leave. I will arrange for another appointment. Also before you go, I will give you some medicine to help you sleep at night without the bad dreams.”
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