July 21st: Elizabeth's Post: Writing the Names

Collingswood, NJ
7:30 PM (Although in my jet-lagged stupor, I’m not sure what time zone I’m in, let alone what day it is.)


As I walk around the corner towards home, the sun is dipping, low and warm, into the trees. Suddenly, Uganda seems far away. I am surrounded by houses with colorful porches with flowerboxes; telephone poles stretch up from the ground; cables run like tightrope down the street. This night, I brush my teeth with tap water for the first time in weeks. I have to remind myself that electricity does not only come on between certain hours of the evening. There are sidewalks everywhere, streetlights, running water. No bicycles piled high with matoke, no goats, no people stopping to chat with me on the street about the pride, the care, with which they consider their country.

With every step I take back into my familiar world, my home, I feel Uganda recede.

How easy it becomes to slip into our daily routines and ignore the world around us! I can feel myself doing it already. But I don’t want to. I don’t want my visit to the Minakulu IDP Camp to fade into fantasy; I don’t want to forget the time spent speaking with children (children!) who had spent years of their lives in the bush as unwilling soldiers. As we were interviewing one former child soldier, a nineteen-year-old young man named Dennis came up to us. Through our translator, we learned that Dennis had heard that some people (us) were there “to write the names of those who had been in the bush.” He wanted to tell his story, and patiently waited five hours to do so as we finished speaking with others before him.

My point is, people want their stories told. Problems will not improve until people are no longer faceless. I already long to return to Uganda, but until then, I will myself to remember. I resolve to tell their stories, to write their names. I can only hope that others will do so, too.

Posted by Elizabeth