The Foreign Service Journal, November 2003

visit to that town, the hospital provided safe haven to over 4,500 people seeking protection in its compound. Numbers in the past have peaked at an estimated 15,000 in the same compound when security in the region has been unstable. How the U.S. Is Helping USAID has provided assistance to these children in the amount of $253,000 over a five-year period through the Gulu Support the Children Organization. This assis- tance is part of a larger grant of $15.4 million to the Community Resilience and Dialogue program sponsored by USAID/Uganda to assist victims of conflict and torture. It does this through psychosocial support, en- hanced participatory dialogue, and HIV/AIDS services, as well as through capacity-building of local NGOs and community service organizations. In addition to GUSCO, there are many other institutions providing support to former child soldiers. For example, the Kitgum Concerned Women’s Association established a reception and reintegration center in the town of Kitgum in Gulu province to build the capacity of its members to best respond to the needs of formerly abducted children and families. Caritas, a Roman Catholic charity, manages a reception center which receives adults formerly abducted as children. Caritas provides direct assistance to adult returnees and maintains a network of trained community-based counselors through- out the region to guide returnees, families and communities through the reintegration process. The work of the two rehabilitation centers in Gulu — one run by World Vision, the other by GUSCO — is truly heroic. Both facilities provide physical rehabilitation, vocational training and psychological support services to help ease these children’s physical and emotional pain. The goal of these services is to help the children to successfully move beyond their incomprehensible experiences and reintegrate into their families and community structures after one month. Predictably, those who have been most severely emotionally and physically traumatized and injured will stay longer in the centers for additional, concentrated support. The personal work that these young people must undertake to facilitate the healing process is far from easy. But children by nature are resilient and, with great support and nurturing, they can at least learn to cope with the nightmares they have lived through, sometimes for years on end. The Lost Children of the World Right after a rainstorm, I spent a lot of time strolling around the muddied compounds of both centers, during which I was able to watch the children as they clustered toget- her, talked and played. Some were laughing, while some were sitting by themselves. But all clearly mani- fested wounds of war. I hung out mostly with the teenaged boys as the girls seemed skit- tish around me. (Who could blame them for being reticent to be around men?) The boys joked and laughed with me as we talked mostly about “guy” things, and I hoped that our interaction was a helpful respite for their traumatized bodies and souls. Yet even as we kidded around, it was impossible not to focus on their physi- cal scars, inflicted by numerous beat- ings, gunshot wounds and panga (machete) injuries. I saw their wiz- ened, saddened eyes. One teenager I talked with had been shot through the lower jaw. The entire portion of his face below his mouth had been man- gled and then nailed and stitched back together. His scars are ghastly, his face forever marred. He will never look the same again or speak clearly or chew easily. He will undoubtedly suffer pain for the rest of his life. Yet in spite of his injuries, his face radiat- ed beauty as he laughed and smiled with me. And eerily, his behavior seemed somehow unscathed by war— almost normal, whatever “normal” is for any of these children anymore. I also spent some time with another bunch of young guys who were hanging around the outdoor kitchen at one of the centers, crack- ing jokes with them in my passable Swahili (many of the children do not speak English and only some are capable of speaking Swahili in addition to their local language). One tall, strongly built 16-year-old boy laughed with me, before telling me about how he had been shot and beaten several times during his time with the LRA. He showed me the scars from three gunshot wounds he sustained in his abdomen and stood proudly and grinned as I looked at his stomach and back where the bullets had entered and exited. He showed me the scars from the panga and gunshot wounds he suffered to his legs, a mosaic of ravaged and hardened scar tissue engraved into his lower extremities. In some ways the scars these boys carry are their tattoos, their indelible, lifelong reminders of the horrendous experi- ences they all experienced during their ordeal with the LRA. If any one victim of the LRA can be said to stand for them all, it might be “Benjamin” (name changed to protect his privacy), who is 17 years old. When I met him, he was dressed in shabby shorts and a stained T-shirt. His legs were noticeably scarred and he had a slight limp as he walked, yet he is still a fit, handsome young man. He agreed to sit with me in a corner of one of the buildings in the compound to talk privately with me about his personal experiences with the LRA. When Benjamin spoke, his voice 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 3