Invisible Children
It's 6:00am and you're being roused from a light, fitful sleep by the insistent shaking of your best friend. You've been sleeping on a thin mat set on the damp floor of the cellar of a church you've never been in before now. You thank God that you made it through another night without being found and abducted by the brutal and violent rebel army. Throwing on your now damp shirt, you head upstairs and outside to wash your face with cool water from the pump. Outside the cool dawn light shows the forms of the hundreds of children who were not able to make it into the church or the hospital to spend the night and had to rely on physical proximity, sheer numbers, and a bit of luck, to make it through the night unharmed. Many of them are also stirring and waking up; getting ready for the hike back to the village for school and the day's other activities.
This is a typical morning for thousands of children in northern Uganda who walk nightly from their villages to larger cities to sleep huddled together in churches, hospitals, bus stations, and on the sides of streets to avoid being abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA is a paramilitary group that operates in southern Sudan and northern Uganda, engaged in a struggle for authority against the Ugandan government. They abduct 8- to 12-year old children and force them to serve as soldiers. They are brainwashed through repeated exposure to violent, gruesome killings, physical abuse, rape, and torture. Some are forced to kill or harm their own family members and friends. When some of them are rescued or escape, we see that their minds are broken. If asked to draw a picture, they consistently draw gruesome pictures of dismemberment, murder and rape, for this is all they have been exposed to for years.
As a result, 3- to 17-year old children from small villages and displaced person camps walk up to 12 miles to the nearest city to sleep, simply because the rebels are less likely to come there. By the hundreds and thousands they come into the city and lay down to sleep anywhere there are other children, anywhere that offers a little bit of shelter. This is life for these children.
Three college students from San Diego, California decided to go to Africa to make a documentary, not knowing what they would find. This is the story they found. The documentary they made is called Invisible Children. You can watch it on Google Video here. It's about an hour long, but it's worth watching.
Last year these children were remembered with the "Global Night Commute," where over 80,000 people around the world walked on foot to the nearest city to sleep in parks and streets. This year, the event is called "Displace Me". It's scheduled for April 28th. You can get more information about it, and sign up at their website: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceMe
More Information:
http://www.invisiblechildren.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army
This is a typical morning for thousands of children in northern Uganda who walk nightly from their villages to larger cities to sleep huddled together in churches, hospitals, bus stations, and on the sides of streets to avoid being abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA is a paramilitary group that operates in southern Sudan and northern Uganda, engaged in a struggle for authority against the Ugandan government. They abduct 8- to 12-year old children and force them to serve as soldiers. They are brainwashed through repeated exposure to violent, gruesome killings, physical abuse, rape, and torture. Some are forced to kill or harm their own family members and friends. When some of them are rescued or escape, we see that their minds are broken. If asked to draw a picture, they consistently draw gruesome pictures of dismemberment, murder and rape, for this is all they have been exposed to for years.
As a result, 3- to 17-year old children from small villages and displaced person camps walk up to 12 miles to the nearest city to sleep, simply because the rebels are less likely to come there. By the hundreds and thousands they come into the city and lay down to sleep anywhere there are other children, anywhere that offers a little bit of shelter. This is life for these children.
Three college students from San Diego, California decided to go to Africa to make a documentary, not knowing what they would find. This is the story they found. The documentary they made is called Invisible Children. You can watch it on Google Video here. It's about an hour long, but it's worth watching.
Last year these children were remembered with the "Global Night Commute," where over 80,000 people around the world walked on foot to the nearest city to sleep in parks and streets. This year, the event is called "Displace Me". It's scheduled for April 28th. You can get more information about it, and sign up at their website: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceMe
More Information:
http://www.invisiblechildren.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army