The Loss of Innocence

Several weeks ago I traveled by road to one of the areas that has seen a lot of LRA activity in the last year. It is hard to describe the hardships people have faced as the LRA have spread their web of fear over northeastern Congo. It is especially hard to describe what this conflict has cost the children.

I was taken to see a young boy of maybe ten or eleven years of age who had recently been recovered from the LRA in an operation to rid them from the area. He had been a captive for almost a month and half, having been abducted in June, and had spent his days carrying supplies for the LRA while eating roots and other barely edible foods. Along with other boys his age he had been forced to walk for hours each day and night through the wilds searching for another garden to raid, another home to pillage, another village to scatter with fear.

How do we begin to comprehend the loss of innocence, freedom and hope? All over northeastern Congo there are thousands of children growing up in fear; many of them traumatized for the rest of their lives by what their eyes have witnessed – what no one should ever have to witness. How do we make sense of this world where so many can grow up in an unfolding tragedy while others live lives untouched by the ills that are so prevalent in places like Congo?

I also recently visited an old woman who is caring for 26 orphans. My heart breaks because she is giving her all for the children but is barely making it. There isn’t money for school fees and she can hardly find the milk powder to feed the tiniest of babies she is caring for.

This has got to end. This war, this pain, this loss of innocence.