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For Abducted Ugandans, An Elusive Reintegration
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Samuel Ogwal, who is 30 now, escaped the way many abductees have, during a government bombing run that scattered his rebel settlement in southern Sudan.
He made it to a Ugandan military camp, where many former rebels have found refuge, and was tormented by the prospect of being rejected by his community. At the same time, he said, he wondered whether his parents, his wife, his four children and other relatives had survived the war. He wondered about his farm.
"I had some big trees I had planted before I was abducted," Ogwal said. "Neem trees. And I would focus my mind on that. My friends, I kept thinking of them . . . Nelson, Ambrose, Solomon, Peter."
Finally, one day last year, he decided to go. He climbed with no possessions into an army truck that drove him to the red dirt road leading to this village of mud-brick huts, sprawling mango trees and tall yellow grass, where people had only recently returned from years in displacement camps.
He walked along the hazily familiar terrain, and the first person he recognized was an uncle. He froze a moment, then saw that his uncle was running toward him.
"He carried me on his back all the way home," Ogwal said, recalling a sense of profound relief. "He greeted me in his arms. He welcomed me and thanked me for reaching home. It felt good."
Ogwal began asking about the whereabouts of others. His parents were killed in the war. His friends? "So many had died," he said. His wife had waited for him, and his four children -- two girls, now 12 and 10 years old, and two boys, 8 and 6 -- were fine, though he hardly recognized them. His constant worry these days is how to support them.
People in Oculokori say they worry about how to support their newly returned neighbors, who include several abducted children, and other former LRA commanders such as David Amar, who came back a few months ago.
Like Ogwal, he was afraid of being viewed as a killer but found that the ties he had established before his abduction remained more or less intact. "I felt so relieved," Amar said, recalling his welcome. "I really felt life was now changing."
Neighbors said they remembered Amar and Ogwal as men who enjoyed dancing and reading, not as the people they became in the bush. They gave them seeds and what little money they could to get them started.
"I just gave him one of my blankets, said Amar's old friend Leion Okwany. "I told him: 'People go through problems, but since you are back, be encouraged. Just be close to us, and we shall support you where you are failing.' "
Other villagers have not been as pleasant. Amar and Ogwal said that when some of their neighbors drink, they often taunt them and call them names. "They call you 'rebel' and things like that," said Amar, sitting under the cool shade of a mango tree. "I just try to ignore them and go on with my life."
