Wishing the new cabinet in Uganda well

Today is one of those days that I find myself thinking about a myriad of things. In fact, I have just been reflecting about the newly sworn in cabinet and parliament. It is funny that every time these thoughts pass through my mind, I quickly remember that scene at Minakulu, St. Thomas Moore community – a small parish along Kampala-Gulu highway in northern Uganda where my family and I practically lost everything to the ‘new soldiers’. Many of them were as short as I was. Many of them only wore the army shirts with tall guns passing way above their heads. Yes, I still remember that blue dress my father had bought for me when he had returned from one of his trips abroad. I still remember the scene of the looting of our groundnuts – that year the Lord was pleased with my parents and the family had yielded a granary of groundnuts. I was only 9 years old but still remember how that piece of cassava lying outside of our kitchen saved our mother, the young soldier had already shouted “…kashini”; a Kiswahili word I later understood meant ‘sit down’. As the little soldier prepared to shoot his gun at my mother, he saw the cassava, went for it and began to eat it raw. He then ordered my mother to give him water to drink. When all of these dramas happened before my eyes and the eyes of those of my younger brothers and sisters, more soldiers came into our compound demanding for drinking water. Soon or later my mother had became the good one at our expense as all our food and water for that day and many weeks ahead had been taken by the new soldiers.

As I grew up, I learnt that these new soldiers were actually of a new government of the NRA/NRM. I still wonder up to this day why they had to disrupt our lives and future. Our lives following, these events did not to remain the same. My siblings and I never went to school for most of 1986 and 1987 as rebel groups formed to fight these new soldiers turned their guns on civilian population. We lost everything, ranging from household items to farm products to bicycles and many others, yet with no one to report to, let alone complain to as the properties of our neighbors were equally taken. With time, my family and I were not safe with the new soldiers and even more unsafe with the rebels. Around this time, we also had to deal with the Karamojong (a nomadic tribe found in the north east horn of Uganda and regularly terrorizes neighboring tribes and communities in search of cows) atrocities. We spent so many nights sleeping in the bushes around home rather than sleep in our home for fear of both type of soldiers.

Since then up to this day, every time, the same government swore in themselves as members of parliament or ministers etc, I relive this memory. I wish I could complain to someone about this injustice mated on our family. All the same, I wish the new cabinet well and pray with them that these kinds of atrocities may never happen to other children in Uganda.