While we were in Uganda, there was a semi-big flap in one of the local papers, because our group didn’t travel to Northern Uganda. Northern Uganda is by some expert opinions and pretty much all local opinion I heard, a pretty fucked up part of the country.

The group didn’t head there largely, not because of the deliberate snub as the article would suggest, but the sheer logistics. It’s a haul on bad roads, and we already had a lot of miles to cover. I would imagine the organizers had to figure in the risk-benefit of trucking us into a war zone, as well. You know, old fashioned American liability issues.

Anyway, a group from the north did come to us and met in a conference room at our hotel. There, leading women from the community, including one who had lost her daughter for seven years and another who has been a foster mother to children limping home from war, and a colonel from the legit army gave us a background on the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony and an update on the current state of affairs. The signs are the conflict might end soon and Kony surrender. The fucked up part to me was all of the talk of forgiveness and reconciliation.

You see, to my jaded, western perspective, a madman who starts an army in the name of god and kidnaps children to be his soldiers gets no forgiveness. He gets no reconciliation. He gets no healing from me. Nope, he gets locked in a very dark, dank place forever.

The women passed around drawings the abducted children had made while in the company of counselors trying to help them put down weapons and wounds and move on with childhood. I took these excerpts at the conference room table with my iPhone.