Jew World Order

That Lydia is hugging anyone, never mind the Queen is a small miracle: during
her short years she has witnessed an unbearable amount of suffering and
misery.

But it is a miracle which came about thanks to the rehabilitation projects run
by Uganda’s Watoto Church for the victims of the war waged by the Lord’s
Resistance Army and its notorious leader Joseph Kony for 20 years from 1987.

The LRA was born out of the resentment some of the Acholi people in the north
of Uganda felt against the country’s central government, and launched a
guerilla insurgency.

But, fuelled by Christian fundamentalism mixed with African mysticism, Kony
and his men turned their fire on Acholi civilians, driving thousands from
their homes, killing adult villagers and abducting their children to force
them to become child soldiers. It is estimated 25,000 were pressed into the
LRA’s ranks.

Lydia’s ordeal began in 2004, when the LRA entered her village of Palabek,
close to the border with South Sudan. Going from mud hut to mud hut they
butchered the adults, including Lydia’s father Walter and her uncles.

Her mother Margaret was killed in front of her eldest daughter, Gladys, then
aged six, as they were making their way to the village well. Lydia and her
six brothers and sisters managed to save themselves by fleeing into the
bush.

Lydia’s grandmother was one of the few adults to survive, and she managed to
send for an aunt in the Ugandan capital Kampala, eight hours drive away, who
took in the children. But when the aunt lost her job as a housemaid the
children were forced to return to Palabek.

It was at this point that Watoto stepped in, finding a place for the orphans
at Laminadera, one of the three children’s villages the Pentecostal church
operates in the country, caring for more than 2,500 children at a time.

Brenda Peko, a social worker in Gulu who was herself regularly forced to flee
into the bush as a child to escape LRA raids, said: “When Lydia and her
brothers and sisters arrived at Laminadera they required rehabilitation,
therapy and counselling, to deal with their trauma. They need love,
security, affection and a structured life after years of chaos and
suffering.

“They have overcome it by being able to talk about what happened to them and
by finally being able to accept it. It is a very tough process.”

Key to success is family strucutre: Lydia and the other children live in
groups of eight in simple, but well maintained houses, built around a
communal garden.

The houses have running water, electricity and an indoor toilet – which most
rural homes in Uganda lack – and each one is presided over by a ‘house
mother,’ in Lydia’s case, Mamma Santa.

She welcomes us into Lydia’s home, where her school certificates adorn the
walls.

“Lydia’s transformation from when she came here three years ago has been
amazing,” says Mamma Santa, whose husband died of an Aids-related disease.

“She talks about how her mother and father died, but she is also very happy
now. She loves reading and she is performing very well at school.

“She is very sociable and loves playing with her friends, but she also does
her chores – sweeping the veranda, doing the dishes and keeping her bedroom
tidy.”

Lydia rises at five and, after a breakfast of bread and milk, attends school
from 6am until 4pm. Education is prized and the curriculum is heavily
influenced by the British model, a legacy of colonialism in a country which
celebrates 50 years of independence this October.

Her class is only a few steps away in the centre of the village – each village
has a school and a clinic – leaving plenty of time afterwards for play and
choir practice.

Sitting on Lydia’s bunk bed, her friend, Prisca Atim, 10, is missing her.
“Lydia is a good friend,” she said. “She loves sharing stories, singing and
playing with us.

“I’m sure she is doing a good job where she is now and I’m sure the dreams she
has will come true.”

All Watoto children are given the opportunity to audition for its six choirs,
which spend half the year on fund raising tours around the world.

It was a highpoint for the organisation when Lydia and the 21 other members of
her choir were invited to sing for the Queen as part of her Diamond Jubilee
Pageant last weekend.

The tours are an essential part of Watoto’s aim of raising men and women
equipped to deal with the outside world as equals.

Hugging the Queen is unique, but there are plenty of others in Gulu whose
lives are being transformed.

At the church’s Living Hope project, on the edge of Gulu – a town of 100,000
which during the war suffered frequent raids and incursions but is now
bustling with new businesses – hundreds of women gather each day to undergo
trauma counselling and learn skills which will give them economic
independence, such as basic literacy, tailoring and peanut butter making.

Many have lost their husbands to Aids, which was endemic in this part of
Africa, or are HIV positive themselves. Others were abducted as children by
the rebels. Some were forced to fight, others became sex slaves. In the
worst cases escape was punished by mutilation, with ears, nose and lips cut
off.

Nearby is Baby Watoto, a centre for over 80 of the many hundreds of babies
abandoned by mothers who cannot cope, either through disease or mental
breakdown, or destitution; poverty still stalks the area.

Since the war ended six years ago when Kony and his fighters were finally
forced out of Uganda and into Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and
the Central African Republic, life is undoubtedly better.

Farmers can grow crops, trade is on the up, businesses are being established,
HIV infection rates are down and oil finds in western Uganda and Chinese and
Indian investment have created an urban middle class.

But only one in five children celebrate a fifth birthday while for every
100,000 live births, 310 mothers die; in Britain the number is 8.2.

Hope of a better future and the legacy of war are played out as we are greeted
at Living Hope by women performing a courtship dance, traditional for this
time of year, in which each woman presents the man with a hand-carved bead
as token of their affection.

There is a shortage of men, so some of the women play the part of the men, but
there is hope too: children who lost parents to the rebels are dancing in
front of a crowd which includes former child soldiers.

Among the child soldiers given a future by Watoto – which is funded from
private donations from around the world – was David Ochola, now 19. At the
age of nine he was abducted and forced at gunpoint to kidnap other children,
using a machete to hack to death those who tried to escape.

“We went from village to village killing every living thing,” he said. “We
killed children, we killed babies, bashing them against trees. I killed too
many people to remember.

“I had little choice; the rebels were holding a gun to my head. But I feel
very, very bad about it.”

During one skirmish, three years after he was abducted, he came face to face
with an uncle serving in the Ugandan army. The chance encounter that led
David to surrender.

He was brought to a resettlement centre, but, shunned by surviving relatives,
his future looked bleak, until he was admitted to a government-run
children’s rehabilitation project in Gulu.

Now a student at the Watoto’s high school in Kampala, David wants to become an
engineer.

In Gulu women who survived the conflict frequently recognise former rebel
soldiers allowed back into the community under the terms of a government
amnesty. Their first instinct is to vent their rage and attack their former
tormentors.

But Christine Lutara, Living Hope’s operations director, says they come to
learn a simple lesson.

“If you chase after the snake that bit you, its poison races faster around
your body and you die quicker,” she said. “We say to the women, ‘you can
either choose revenge and chase the snake, or you can choose to live’.

“The best revenge is to survive and succeed and that is what these women and
children, like Lydia, are doing.”