Celebrate everything. Every escape. Every name. Every life.
This week, our partners at the supporter-funded rehabilitation center in Uganda gave us exciting updates about George, a recent escapee from Joseph Kony’s LRA. George’s story has inspired us throughout our current #zeroLRA campaign, and we a thrilled to show our supporters the lives they have helped change.
UPDATE: NOVEMBER 2013
When the World Vision Uganda and ICU team last visited Okane George in August, he had just returned to his home in Kitgum. After spending 12 years in the LRA, George was unsure of how his family and community would react to his return. What he found were parents who were ecstatic at the sight of their son who they thought had been killed years before and a community who welcomed him with open arms. The local leaders of his community promised to support him where necessary and George is now feeling settled at home with his family through a successful reintegration process.
With funds that he was given to invest in his future, George has been able to purchase a cow and is now cultivating land and growing crops, such as tomatoes. Now settled at home, he is able to work toward his dreams for the future: continuing farming and starting a family.
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In 2001, when George was only 15 years old, he was abducted along with 20 other boys and two girls when the LRA raided his village at daybreak. He walked day and night, and after two years he was forced to become a soldier himself.
George said, “While in captivity we were often told that no one is waiting for us out there and that everyone hates us because of all the atrocities we committed.”
George says he is so happy to have taken that bold step together with his best friend and escaped from the LRA. “I had seen enough and I was tired. Worst still was the day Joseph Kony summoned members of our unit and ordered the shooting of our commander and one other soldier who were once very close to him.” He says he realized that he would be better off risking an escape than dying fighting for a cause he no longer understood.
Upon his escape in Obo, Central African Republic, in April this year, George was flown back to Uganda in May and was able to go through the World Vision rehabilitation program funded by Invisible Children and finally reunite with his family.
“My stay at the rehabilitation center helped me a lot. Through counseling I accepted that what happened to me was not my fault and that I needed to focus more on the future than in the past,” George said.
George’s mother, Mary, said “I remember when some of our family member got fed up of the long wait and asked that we carry out funeral rites for my son, I decline, I could feel it in my heart that he was still alive and would one day come back home.”
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