The Uganda Civil War Continues: Part Two

Blog Post Three    Civil War in the North: Part Two

And then, like in any war, heroes appear in the least unexpected places. Beginning in late 1994 Betty Bigombe, a state minister for Northern Uganda was charged with negotiating a peace treaty with Joseph Kony. Bigombe was a college graduate and a member of the Acholi tribe who served as the State Minister for Northern Uganda in 1988 and lived in Gulu. She was assigned by the government to convince the Lord’s Resistance Army to surrender. It was unusual for a woman to serve in a position of power such as this so early in Museveni’s young government but she was a wise woman and more than equal to the task. She began the treacherous mission of personally communicating with Joseph Kony and his senior officers in 1993. Eventually she met with him in the bush but he remained uncommitted and in February of 1994 he abruptly cut off all communication with her then increased his number of raids in the surrounding area. Another ten years would go by until Kony would consider participating in formal peace negotiations again. Reports from Gulu at that time suggested that Kony had just received a large sum of money; from where no one was sure. Renewed with determination he now had the resources to supply his army with more bullets and better weapons and went on to strengthen his guerilla operations around northern Uganda.

 But beginning in 2000 Betty did something unprecedented that eventually helped change the course of the war- she advocated for tolerance and mercy where none had been given and was backed by the Acholi people who had received neither from the rebels. She along with the Acholi elders, tribal leaders in the area, and local officials designed an amnesty agreement. The agreement stated that any member of the Lord’s Liberation Army who would  agree to put down his weapons and return back to his tribal home would not be prosecuted for war crimes, imprisoned, or harmed in any way. He would receive unconditional amnesty and would be left alone. This agreement also applied to any wives, servants, or female camp followers. It was a flexible and very private arrangement. The Acholi just wanted their sons and daughters back. Men and boys began returning home at night and were eventually seen in the Displacement Camps in the company of their families the following morning or later in the war they were suddenly observed in the tribal fields tending to their families’ crops. Some of the men who had been in the highest positions of authority within Kony’s  army defected.  There was no formal data kept on how many or when these people arrived home but several tribal leaders have estimated that at the end of the war in northern Uganda around 3,000 LRA guerillas and camp followers had been enticed to leave Kony and his army for good.

 In 2003, President Museveni petitioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in the Hague, Netherlands to do something about Kony’s reign of terror. Many citizens of Uganda who had previously supported Museveni’s efforts  to end the war objected to this formal request but in the end, his petition did get the attention of the international press corps who wrote about it, then commented on his actions during nightly news broadcasts all over the world.

 It caused the United States of America to become involved in the Ugandan Civil War under the leadership of President Bush. On February 8, 2004 the US Congress enacted “The Northern Uganda Crisis Response Act” (Public Law 108-283, 118 Stat. 912-915). It supported the peaceful resolution of the conflict in northern and eastern Uganda by providing resources to meet the relief and development needs to the Internal Displacement Camps and stop the abduction of children by the Lord’s Resistance Army  urge the leaders and members of the Lord’s Resistance Army and “all armed forces in Uganda to stop the use of child soldiers” ,seek the release and provide assistance to all individuals who have been abducted; work with The Ugandan Government to improve the professionalism of Ugandan military personnel currently stationed in northern and eastern Uganda, with an emphasis on respect for human rights and civilian protection and to make clear that the relationship between Sudan and the United States would not improve unless no credible evidence indicates that authorities of the Government of Sudan are providing support to the Lord’s Resistance Army.”

http://www.glin.gov/view.action?glinID=183387

There are two things of  interest in this public law: 1.) that the United States openly admitted that the LRA was not the only army or rebel group in the area that abducted children for use as child soldiers and 2.) that the United States was aware that the Ugandan military ( LRA) did not always support the civilian population in the north. Many residents of Gulu at that time gave personal accounts of beatings and maltreatment by government soldiers.  The Acholi elders believed that the army did not care about their suffering because they had openly supported the previous president of Uganda Tito Lutwa Okello. Okello was was an accepted member of the Acholi tribe who had been defended by the Acholi during Musseveni’s military coup..

Kony fought on. His raids intensified but it became obvious that his funds had seriously decreased.  By February 2004 he and his guerillas were credited with the horrendous Barlonyo Massacre. Barlonyo was a Displaced Persons Camp (DPC) located just outside of the town of Lira in northern Uganda. It was officially recorded by the government that 200 unarmed members of the Acholi tribe were shot on sight that day by the Lord’s Liberation Army but local accounts estimate that more like 300 people were killed, some in horrendous ways and that over 80 children were  abducted by Kony’s men as well.

On October 13, 2005 the International Criminal Court issued five arrest warrants and indictments against Joseph Kony and four his senior officers Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Raska Lukwiya and Dominic Ongwen ( already dead by then)  for “crimes against humanity and specific war crimes.”

Betty Bigombe was living in the United States by now and working at the World Bank but was so disturbed at how the violence and murders of her people had escalated that she returned to Uganda in hopes of reinitiating the peace process once again. From 2004 to 2005, she was the chief mediator in the second peace initiative. This time she depended on her knowledge of Kony’s tactics, his personal crusade, and his need to be heard to bring Ugandan government officials and the members of the LRA together using her own funds to prepare for the meetings. As before Kony spoke about his mission and the future of a new Uganda but after a series of meetings with members of the peace initiative he would not commit to a surrender and moved his army further back into the bush. The last meeting with Kony and his officers occurred on April 20, 2005, but he left without signing any documents and cut off all further communication with Bigombe.

The third peace initiative, the  “Juba Talks” took place between the years 2006 and 2008. It was named for Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan and was coordinated and mediated byRiek Machar Tely, vice president of Southern Sudan. Several times Kony, his officers, or his son participated in a series of meetings in order to negotiate a ceasefire and identify the terms of a final peace agreement in order to bring an end to the Ugandan Civil War.  It was during the first set of meetings in 2006 that Joseph Kony allowed himself to be interviewed by members of the International Press. He denied charges that he had committed any crimes and accused the leaders of the present government of Uganda for making him fight in order to protect the people of his Acholi Tribe. The talks began positively and even led to a short ceasefire in September of 2006 but after two years of sporadic meetings Kony yet again declined to agree to the terms of the surrender or sign off on the peace agreement. Kony refused to consider signing until he had proof that the International Crime Court had dropped the indictments and warrants against him. By June 2008, he stopped talking and claimed that the Southern Sudanese army had attacked an LRA camp although this report was never confirmed. This so-called assault prompted the LRA to raid a Southern Sudanese Army camp at Nabanga. Twenty-one people were killed by the LRA and the camp was burned to the ground. After this brutal attack the Southern Sudan government withdrew its support by refusing to continue to host or mediate any further meetings.

Between 2005 and 2007 the National Resistance Army (NRA) or as it is now called the Ugandan’s People’s Defense Force (UPDF) pushed the LRA farther and farther north. The last attack Kony made on a Ugandan village was in 2006. Kony eventually fled with his troops out of desperation into Southern Sudan then moved them back and forth between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the southern region of the Sudan. Both of these countries existed under very unstable conditions at that time: South Sudan was trying to break away from the more powerful Khartoum government in the north and a corrupt and overwhelmed DRC government was embroiled in a new and sporadic form of guerilla warfare designed by groups of well organized rebel forces and led by powerful Congolese warlords who were openly befriended by terrorist groups such as al- Queda and Al-Shabaab, Islamic terrorist organizations. Members of these two organizations were seen dining in the company of these same Congolese warlords in the finer restaurants around Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In April 2008, The BBC reported that the LRA was on the move and had abducted 1000 new recruits and that by all accounts there were only  600 guerillas from the original army left.

^{http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7420461.stm}

In May 2008 the government of Uganda established their own War Crimes Court to try human rights violations committed during the twenty year civil war in the north. This high court was given the power to try and sentence all rebel leaders in the area including the LRA. This was seen by many Ugandans as a move to convince the ICC to drop the indictments against Kony and the LRA so the Juba Peace talks would continue on as planned but it was too late.

By 2009-2011 Kony had moved his dwindling forces into the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a lawless and extremely unstable area that has been compared to the American “Wild West” -only this time everyone is packing automatic weapons. The power of the gun continues to dictate the course of events in these dense tropicial forrests and “Might makes right!” This area is filled with Congolese warlords, terrorists, and rebel groups from Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda who enslave the local people and steal their supplies by force. The Congolese governmental troops are no better and have been known to kill and steal from the very people they have sworn to protect. One of my sources was born in the eastern Congo and still receives mail from her family in this area. They write to her each month and recount similar stories about how one or another rebel force has come down from the mountains and raided a new village. Sound familiar?

The warlords encamped there are well aware that the new DRC government is incapable of maintaining order or of enforcing the laws and take full advantage of this situation  Kony had been down on his luck, scraping out a living, and fighting to survive while in Uganda when a fortunate twist of fate occurred. Now that he had been forced to set up camp in eastern DRC he found that this region contained large deposits of valuable, raw minerals including gold that could be mined and sold on the world market for enormous sums of money- millions of dollars it seemed. Joseph Kony was in business again. He could plan raids in order to collect the supplies he needed, enslave young girls, and replenish his army with young boys just like he had done in Uganda and who was going to stop him? He designed a moving army this time composed of small units that could disperse and reunite quickly depending upon his needs. He realized that the use of high-tech communication devices gave his movements away so he reinstated the original communication methods used by his ancestors in the bush many years ago. Most recently he entered the Central Africa Republic and continues to move between three separate countries: Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5825990n                 60 Minutes – The Price Of Gold

In October 2011, President Obama honored a foreign policy commitment to Uganda by notifying the United States Congress that he was sending one hundred US special forces troops to help the Uganda People’s Defense Force ( UPDF) subdue and arrest Joseph Kony and his senior officers.

My next post will explain Kony’s current locations, mission, and the problems encountered by the UPDF in their attempts to capture and arrest him and his senior officers. 

Kat Nickerson      Kingston, RI,  US

Joseph Kony: Civil War in Northern Uganda

 www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73949.html

I was recently informed that a video about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Liberation Army has gone viral on the internet. My question upon hearing this news was- why now? Haven’t we known for years about the Civil War in Uganda and the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and his rebels?  And why some six years later-after the civil war has finally petered out and the rebels have lost their support have we become interested? Where were we when the war raged on in the north and Kony unleashed unconscionable attacks upon his own people and took their children away to serve in his army as wives and soldiers? Where was the world then?

My next few blog posts will try to help the reader better understand the reason for the Civil War  in Northern Uganda beginning with the overthrow of Obello Lutwa. I assure you that like any war there are issues leading up to the conflict which must be understood first.  This entire event began in shades of opportunistic grey but quickly turned into a struggle between good and evil.

My post has been based on the testimonies of many individuals living in Kampala who were born and spent their formative years in Gulu or Kitgum, cities where the Ugandan Civil War took place. I have also included information divulged by professional drivers who brought journalists into the bush to speak with Kony at pre-arranged sites during the war. Although they shared a diverse range of personal experiences, their descriptions of the war and the actions of Kony were very similar. The picture I have posted along with this article is not one of mine. I have never met Joseph Kony but I have had the opportunity to listen to what many of his victims told me about their individual experiences during the war and how it changed their lives.

According to my files his real name is Joseph Kony and he is the founder and sole leader of the Lord’s Liberation Army, a band of Ugandan rebels who still remain in close contact with other groups of terrorists in the regions of South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Central African Republic ( CAR). He began his civil war in the north to bring down the present Ugandan Government under the leadership of the current president Yoweri Museveni in order to create a new Uganda.

Kony is no longer young although many of the pictures of him on the internet show a much younger man and were probably were taken in the late 1980’s during the peak of the Ugandan Civil War. He is now fifty-one years old and has been living in the bush as a fugitive for a good six years. He was born in a village east of Gulu in 1961 into the Acholi tribe, one of the largest tribes and which is found in Northern Uganda close to the Sudan border and bordered by the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Joseph Koni is his real name and no one who knew him as a child described him as anything but ordinary. It is known that his father was a very religious man, a deacon in his local Catholic church and that Kony served as an altar boy. He spent a great deal of his youth inside a church. But he was also exposed to the local practice of voodoo and he and his brother willingly trained to become voodoo shamans. This is not an uncommon practice in East African villages. Although most villagers practice some type of organized religion, the belief in the power of voodoo remains- the first belief has never replaced the second. Voodoo rituals are commonly performed to ensure good luck or to stop something bad from happening to an individual or loved ones.  Spells and curses are cast and lifted by the village shamans and villagers pay them for these services. What was surprising though, was that at some point in Kony’s life as a young adult and no one is sure exactly when, he became convinced that he had been chosen by God and that God had charged him with creating a new Uganda. No one in the villages has ever claimed that this was a self-serving ruse on his part or that he did this only for political power. By all accounts he has never wavered in his belief that he is “the chosen one” and that his mission is to build a new Uganda. At the same time that he built an army of young men he established a new religion for the Acholi based on a combination of the Old Testament, voodoo rituals, mysticism, spiritualism, and the use of physical terror. He also included worship of the Ark of the Covenant which he borrowed from the Coptic Christians living in Ethiopia. Kony was not the only spiritual leader to come forward in the north at this point in time. Many villagers believed that he was deeply influenced by “The Holy Spirit Movement” and incorporated some of their rituals into his own to bind his troops to him.

Kony began to raise his army on the streets of Gulu and Kitgum. Some sources have compared his techniques to that of Adolf Hitler. He had the same ability to say just the right thing by which he endeared himself to his audiences and was very convincing. He was a passionate and eloquent speaker and many times he spoke the truth about Uganda’s troubles but always from his own perspective. People began to take notice of this young man and as he drew larger crowds of men and women to him many of them aligned themselves to his cause. He attracted young men for a multitude of reasons: some because they wanted to help build a new Uganda, others because they desired to live the life of an Acholi warrior, and a third type who just wanted something meaningful to do. Uganda like many East African countries has an astronomically high unemployment rate especially in the rural areas.  Men were expected to continue the age-old occupation of farming small plots of land located near their families’ compounds. Many members of the Acholi tribe continue to this day to live in round huts constructed from a clay-like mud reinforced with sticks and topped with grass-thatched roofs. Strong, vibrant young men stand around in groups all day long with nothing to do; forced to watch others manage their kiosks in the market place or move purposefully through the streets of Gulu.  It is not difficult to understand why so many of these bored young men were drawn to Kony and his cause just because he offered them something meaningful to do each day.

 Soon Kony sent word out to the all of the Acholi villages that he was “the one, true messenger blessed by God and charged with creating and populating a new Uganda.” He began his war in earnest in 1986 because he strongly objected to the overthrow of the Ugandan dictator Obello Lutwa by the general Yoweri Museveni in a military coup. Museveni is the current president of Uganda and the National Liberation Army remains in power to this day.  Kony was not the only one to oppose the new government. The Acholi tribes in general were wary and unsure whether this new government would retaliate against them for the part they played in the previous government. Some of Lutwa’s former officers urged the people to fight back before the army of the south came to kill them all. The deposed President Lutwa was an Acholi and many of the soldiers in his army as well as his personal staff came from the Acholi tribe. Many had fought for Lutwa against the National Liberation Army (NRA) led by Museveni. This left a large number of Acholi convinced that a new Acholi-led government was the only answer. There were already other rebel groups operating in the area. The strongest of these was the Uganda People’s Democratic Army. It is a well known fact that Kony and his troops received their first military training in guerilla tactics from members of the UPDA.

At first the elders of the Acholi tribe agreed with Kony’s vision of a new Uganda and he gained many sympathizers in the Acholi villages. But in time Kony needed supplies to fight his war so he began arriving in the middle of the night to raid Acholi store houses and take what he wanted then used the villagers to transport these supplies back to his camps. Many times these porters never returned back to their families. When criticized for his tactics, his public response was that he was fighting this war for all of the Acohli in order to ensure a better Uganda so the villagers were obligated to support him in this fight. The Acholi complied at first but then began to resent and finally openly oppose his actions. This infuriated Kony who considered them an ungrateful people but he also began to view them as a potential threat to himself and to the success of his mission for the Lord.

It is at this point that he began employing terror tactics to keep the villagers in line. Now when he entered a village the first thing he did was to mutilate one or two adult men or women in front of the rest of the village. He ordered his lieutenants to use their knives to cut off noses, ears, lips, arms, and legs. This so terrified the Acholi people that they instantly complied; believing that if they gave him what he wanted he would go away. But Kony’s aim was not just to punish them for their insolence; he continued to torture them in order to keep them terrified and submissive.

As the war progressed he found that he needed to replenish his army.  As his original troops died off he needed a way to enlist more men to his cause. So he used what was around him- the Acholi people. He could have selected adult males from the various villages but he risked the threat of insurrection if enough of them were armed with weapons and remained to opposed him so he took the young boys instead. He used a brutal form of psychological coercion to convince them to fight for him. He began kidnapping boys to serve in his army as young as 8 years old.  Kony considered these boys soldiers and they were equipped with knives, rifles, and bullets as well as single shot rifles and automatic weapons- “AK forty-sevens” supplied to him by Russian arms dealers. He also provided his child soldiers with invincibility charms that ensured they could not be killed in battle. In order to demonstrate their allegiance to him and his cause they were sometimes required to shoot and kill neighbors, friends, family, even their own mothers and fathers.  In response to his nightly raids, the people of Acholi began walking their children to shelters in the city where they would sleep together under armed guard every night in order to protect them from the rebels. Little by little the child soldiers and wives escaped; some ran all the way back to their village compounds only to find the huts empty and the clans living together in Internal Displacement Camps.

Psychological research has confirmed that young children make very effective killers. They are not able to empathize with their victims so do not hesitate to kill nor are they at the level of moral development to understand the finality of their actions. Many of these boys became dedicated soldiers who believed that Koni had been given special magical powers by God and that he could not be killed.  The young girls he brought to his camp he gave to his troops as wives with the plan that they would give birth to as many children as possible  in order to populate his new Uganda.

It has never been conclusively determined from whom Kony received the money he used to purchase the knives, guns, bullets, and an assortment of tactical gear he used to wage his civil war. It was widely known that Kony and his men operated as terrorists. He stopped and pillaged cars and trucks on the main roads into Gulu, extorted money from wealthy individuals, sold drugs, and fenced items such as precious gems and pieces of jewelry but  these actions alone did not account for the many expensive purchases he made at the beginning of the war. During the middle of the war Kony even had expensive new uniforms made for himself and his officers. Many of my sources still believe that the funds he needed to sustain the war came from the Khartoum Government in the Sudan. Others think that it was Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who supplied Kony with funds in order to disrupt the newly-formed government under Museveni. More still go on to blame the People’s Republic of China for channeling the money through the Sudanese government in order to support Kony’s endeavors to form a separate government in Northern Uganda that would eventually align itself with the government in Khartoum. China and the Sudan established diplomatic relations around the year 1959 and have gone on to become very close trade partners. Whatever the reason, as the war progressed it was evident that whoever had financed Kony’s war endeavors had stopped. Somehow and for some reason he had lost his major backer and by the end of the war Kony, his men, and his camp followers were scraping by on what they could find in the bush or steal from the villages around them. 

The Civil War in Northern Uganda raged on from 1987 until 2006- almost 20 long years. The last attack Kony made on a Ugandan Village occurred in 2006. Shortly after that Kony was forced by the Ugandan’s People Defense Force (UPDF) to leave Northern Uganda for good and has remained on the move between South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ( DAR) ever since. He is also known to travel through the Central African Republic (CAR) and it was most recently reported that he had camped out in this country during  most of 2011

My next post will explain the second part of Kony’s movements and the attempts to catch him up to the present day. 

Kat Nickerson      Kingston, RI, USA

15 March 2012 Welcome to my Africa Blog!

 

Welcome world to the birth of my Africa Blog!

Be sure to look for a new post once a week. I shall add a new post every Sunday evening around 8:00pm

My name is Kathleen J. Nickerson. Let me begin by saying that I am indeed a real person,an associate professor in the Education Department at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, USA and my professional vitae can be accessed on the university’s home page under “University Faculty.” I have an earned Doctorate in Education which makes me Dr. Kat. My purpose for creating this blog is twofold: 1.) to share my many personal adventures with you all and 2,) to educate you about what I have come to understand are the most important issues in East Africa at this time.  I also promise to use my original photographs and film clips in my posts taken during my travels especially the six safaris I had the pleasure to experience in southern Kenya and northern Uganda. 

After serving for so many summers in East Africa I have made many friends from professional colleagues to taxi cab drivers who contact me on a regular basis throughout the other nine months of the year. They candidly supply me with specific details about what they believe are the most critical problems and inequalities occurring within their own countries. They wonder if the rest of the world has any idea or cares about the personal tragedies they endure each day. News about specific countries in East Africa is scarce especially in the United States. Information  about Africa is not included in our nightly news broadcasts. It is my intent to provide my reader with the most current and honest information about the critical problems currently faced by the people of East Africa. Like any good reporter I will never identify my sources. Revealing names can get my friends shot or jailed and from what I have witnessed individuals who have been exposed as informants always end up dead. But I do swear to search out and confirm each and every fact I include in my blog entries and make sure that each has been correctly explained and is based on the most accurate information. I will never base the topics I choose to post on the testimony on one source alone and will only select issues that have been reported by several reputable individuals.

I shall also provide links for you, the reader to access in order to investigate topics that are of further interest to you. East African governments in general have become very sensitive to negative publicity and are quick to retaliate. Elite police squads like the KweKwe Squad did exist for several years, and according to some citizens, have not been disbanded as reported. They are very real para-military groups who have considerable expertise in the use of deadly force and who have been given the power to censor anyone at anytime without warning.

 http://wlcentral.org/node/1817  2011-05-28 Kenyan cables provide critical material for ‘evidence  war’ on extrajudicial killings

The Kenyan government’s official position is that the KweKwe squad was discontinued on January 29, 2008 by Internal Security Minister George Saitoti but many Kenyans disagree and fear that the members of this notorious squad who currently serve as ordinary police officers throughout Kenya have been brought together from time to time and called upon to carry out “special orders” assigned by the president, the prime minister, and other powerful members of parliament.

http://nipate.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5407&p=38444     EX- KweKwe Squad Police Commander John Kariuki Dies Suddenly with Police Secrets.

I love the people of East Africa and since the year 2006 have had the opportunity to travel to Kenya and now Uganda in order to continue my research on “the educational needs of children in trauma”. My experiences began at an orphanage for Children with AIDS called Nyumbani created by a Jesuit Priest/Psychiatrist from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Father Dag as he was more lovingly called showed up at my university’s Fall Convocation and invited me on the spot to come to Kenya and work with him the following summer. The first summer I stayed for two months, supervised two SRU students and returned the following year. During my first summer in Kenya I also worked at the Nyumbani AIDS clinic in Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa.

A couple summers later I brought five SRU education students with me for the month of August while I spent from May to the beginning of September working with individual orphans and developing an instructional curriculum for the students at Nyumbani who were on one of their tri-semester breaks. The following year I became part of a team of professors from SRU who had been invited to The Catholic University of East Africa, CUEA (for short) where we taught classes in the counseling program to graduate students pursuing a master’s degree in the field of psychology. Psychology is a undeveloped field in East Africa and although vitally needed there are few trained African counselors working in community organizations around Kenya. My graduate students were some of the bravest and most resourceful students I have ever met. Most of them worked for or were members of religious organizations. Then I stayed for the rest of the summer at the Nyumbani Village for orphans in Kitui where I helped to establish a primary school. This district is located in a remote area of Kenya in the western part of the country towards the Somali border. While in the village I lived in a tiny four-room guest house without electricity, traditional toilets, or running water.

I continued to work in Kenya until the summer of 2011 when I was invited to come to the country of Uganda for the month of June. I served as a visiting professor at Kyambogo University. Kyambogo is a large government-sponsored university located in the capital city of Kampala. I spent the summer conducting workshops on Trauma and Resilience Training for the faculty in the Education and Psychology departments and helping the junior faculty there develop their theses and dissertation research topics. While in Uganda I had the opportunity to travel through Gulu and learned a great deal about the war in Northern Uganda, child soldiers, the guerilla Kony, and the Lord’s Liberation Army from the people living and working around me -all of whom I will blog about at a later date.

I’ve thought about creating my own African blog for a very long time now. Thanks to some dear friends, mySRU students, and especially my sons, Micah and Joshua Nickerson who urged me to share my concerns and adventures in East Africa with the rest of the world-I’ve finally done it!. This blog has been designed especially for young people who care about others and dream of making a difference. Take this knowledge, make it yours, then do something with it! 

Kat Nickerson    Kingston, RI, USA