It is not difficult for Ocaya Jimmy to remember the night he was abducted by the LRA. The year was 1997, and Jimmy was 9 years old.
“They came in, broke in the house where we were at and they tortured one of my cousins seriously,” Jimmy recalls.
Soon after, he and four of his cousins were abducted.
Luckily, Jimmy escaped just over a week later. His uncle, a local leader, decided to bring him back home instead of sending him to a rehabilitation center.
Jimmy, a Legacy Scholarship Program scholar at Ugandan Christian University in Kampala, is an example of resilience. He is determined to work hard and make his family and community proud.
Jimmy is studying agriculture, motivated by his desire to have a successful future and the potential of farming land in his village.
“All I can say, that education is not just the preparation of life, but education is life itself,” Jimmy said.
Education has also helped him to expand his worldview.
“I feel like, though I’ve never been to other countries, the people I’ve met here can represent me in their countries. So I feel I can visit other countries and that country won’t be something strange to me because I already have friends there,” he said.
If you have an education, Jimmy explains, you cannot be robbed of it.
“Maybe the thieves, the LRA, they can come and rob you everything, but you can use that education to take back everything that you have lost,” he added.
Jimmy joined LSP in 2007 as a secondary school student and plans to graduate from university in 2015. He is another example of a person looking to move beyond the impact of the LRA conflict and continue working to achieve his dreams.
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