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.
Ojara Alex holding his son’s ID card.
Ojara Alex lost his 19-year-old son to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 2001. Olum Thomas was at their farm on that fateful day. “My son was a calm, hardworking, and bold young man. We would leave for the farm as a family early in the morning and come back around 10AM, but on that day he decided to stay behind and work a little more,” said Alex.
Thomas was abducted from the field he was working in, and Alex has not seen or heard any news of his son in the last seven years. He said that for a few years he would get information about Thomas’s general well-being from people who had managed to escape from the LRA, but the last information he heard was that his son had crossed to Sudan.
“My son had trained as a driver and hoped to get a job to support his family aside from the farming he did,” Alex said. “I have kept his driving permit to date since it’s the only document that has his photo. I also remember him through his son who was just a year old when his father was abducted,” he added.
Alex says he still has hope of seeing his son return home one day. “Unless one sees the body of a loved one or hears the news of his or her death, you can never lose hope. I would love that he comes home one day,” he said. “My friend’s son came back this year after 12 years in captivity. That alone has restored hope in me.”
His message to his son was that he should come back home and that nothing will happen to him. He says that because many people around his village were killed during the insurgency, his son might think that all of his relatives are gone and that no one is waiting for him back home. Sadness was written all over his face as he imagined speaking to the son he hasn’t seen in 12 years. “We are all waiting for you my son. You should see the child you left behind, he is growing up fast and needs you by his side.”
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