Aid to the Church in Need: Uganda: After 20 years of War many need to learn how to live again

Uganda: After 20 years of War many need to learn how to live again

Posted by ACN News on 25/8/2008, 10:39 am
Message modified by board administrator 25/8/2008, 10:40 am

ACN News, Monday 25th August 2008 – Uganda

Uganda: After 20 years of Civil War many need to learn how to live again

How the Catholic Church is helping refugees who want to go home.

By Eva Maria Kolmann

Father Cosmas Alule, the rector of the seminary of Alokolum in Northern Uganda, spoke recently to the Catholic Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), and warned that many of the refugees, who have been living in camps for the past 20 years as a result of the civil war in Uganda, have forgotten what it is to live a "normal life". Almost an entire generation has been born or grown up in the refugee camps by now, and while many have since returned to their villages, numerous others are afraid of returning because they no longer know how they are going to shape a life outside the camps, he said.

"The entire working culture has been destroyed, because people have been receiving their food rations each day and no longer know how to earn a living independently", Father Alule told ACN. This is where the Church must now help and counsel people, because the state is not really even aware of the problem, he said. While the government is giving the returning refugees some building materials and seeds for sowing, this is not the whole answer, he points out, for it is a matter of "helping the people to re-establish their lives in a psychological, cultural and spiritual sense as well".

Fr Cosmas Alule

The inaction and passivity to which the people in the camps had been condemned has moreover led to an increase in alcohol abuse and sexual immorality, which in turn has led to an HIV/AIDS rate that is at least three times higher than in the rest of the population, he told ACN. Although as a whole, the infection rate in Uganda has actually fallen as a result of Church and state programmes, in many of the camps over a fifth of the people are now infected. "We must save as many as we can", says Father Alule.

The greatest problem however, is the fact that many people are deeply traumatised. "They have seen their children kidnapped, their sisters, mothers, daughters and wives raped and their fellow humans murdered", the rector warned. In the seminary of Alokolum, which is located within one of the refugee camps, the trainee priests are being specially trained to support these traumatised people and help them. In reality many of the 171 seminarians who are currently training there have themselves suffered deep trauma. This is an additional challenge for those who are training them. The spiritual directors of these seminarians have to work intensively on these problems. Yet at the same time it is a good thing, he believes, that these "future priests have actually shared the experiences of the people themselves", because "we need priests who know what suffering is". For when someone has been through these painful experiences himself and shown the capacity not to be destroyed by them, then he can help others more effectively, the rector believes.

A Refugee camp within the Padibe parish in Kitgum, Diocese of Gulu

The Catholic Church in northern Uganda is also endeavouring to encourage the refugees to help one another. The older ones, who still know how to plant the fields and run a household, now need to convey this knowledge to the younger ones. People must learn to provide mutual support for each other. The Catholic Church is pinning her faith in this "strategy of solidarity", Father Alule told ACN. The priests are sharing the lives of the ordinary people, identifying with them and in this way they are in a position to understand and encourage the faithful.

With regard to the prospective peace accord which is intended to officially end the civil war, Father Alule expresses a "profound optimism" that peace will indeed come. He is convinced that peace has come about not simply by means of a treaty, but that "God has brought the peace by leading the people to become tired of war. And he adds, "We have the feeling that the war is over".

The war in northern Uganda, between the Ugandan government and the rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, has been rumbling on ever since 1988 and has seen the signing of a number of partial peace accords. But the final peace accord has yet to be signed.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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