Abductions by Joseph Kony’s rebel army have contributed to thousands of missing children throughout East and central Africa. This is a story of one still missing.
September 8, 2002 is a day that Ajok Christine will never forget. It is the day that her son, Ajal Bonny, was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
“Before his abduction, his dream was to become a soldier or a driver for the army,” she explained.
But, in a twisted turn of fate, Bonny was abducted at 12-years-old, forced to fight for Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army instead of the Uganda People’s Defense Force as he dreamed.
Ajok Christine sits with one of her sons near her home in Omot Sub-county in northern Uganda. The baby, Ogwang Roman, was born long after her son Bonny was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army. She hopes that Bonny will return home and the two can meet one day soon.
Bonny was abducted on a Friday afternoon. Christine heard that the rebels were approaching so she hid her children in the bush as far away as she could from the direction she was told the LRA was coming from. The LRA is known for stealing food and looting homes so she also took some of the merchandise that she was selling in a small shop and hid it throughout the bush as well.
Unknown to Christine, the rebels had been watching her.
“When we realized we were close to the rebels, the children took off running,” Christine said.
It was not until the next day that Christine learned that Bonny – a bright student in Primary 4 who loved to play with his friends and help with housework – was taken away.
“I started looking for him but could not find him. I came across another group of rebels and had to escape from them,” she said.
Christine and her family had just made a plan to take the children to Lira, a larger town center, where they would be safer from possible abduction. The rest went the next day, but Bonny was already gone.
Some of Bonny’s siblings and other children returned home just in time to hear Christine tell Bonny’s story to Invisible Children staff. She tries to keep his memory alive by telling them about him.
A young girl who escaped from the LRA met the family when they were in Lira.
“When this girl looked at me, she was able to identify me with him. She said ‘there was a boy named Ajal Bonny who looks like you,’” Christine said. “I knew it was not just a coincidence because the names matched.”
She heard about him again later in 2005 when another young boy escaped from the LRA, but has not heard any other news since then.
Christine keeps Bonny’s memory alive by talking about him with her other children. Another community member returned from the bush in 2011 said she did not see him. But since the LRA operates in many small and scattered groups around central Africa, Christine knows that Bonny might still be alive.
It is hard for her to be hopeful, but she tries to be.
“Ajal Bonny, I am your mother speaking to you. It is me who gave birth to you. If you are hearing my voice, please…come back home,” she said in a “Come Home” radio message to him.
She told him about his family – about his sister Amony Betty who is now married, Betty’s son who is a mechanic and a driver and about Bonny’s younger siblings who were born after his abduction – also mentioning the family’s plans to continue investing in education, small businesses and their homes.
“Come and take care of me. I am still alive,” she said.
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