For our second installment of Perspectives on Peace and the War, Apio Maurine, a Researcher with Invisible Children in Uganda, talks about her experiences in secondary school at St. Mary’s College in Aboke - the school that was made famous in 1996 when 139 students were abducted by the LRA.

It all started when I was a young girl in primary school. My cousin was a student at St. Mary’s College in Aboke, an all-girls boarding school under private ownership. I had a strong desire to study at this great school, so I worked hard to join. In October 1996, a year before I joined the school, the LRA rebels abducted a number of students from the dormitories. About 109 came back, but 30 were taken as captives to Sudan. The rebels promised to come back to the school and take more students.

As much as this event traumatized the community, it did not discourage me from joining the school. Because of its good academic reputation, I decided to begin my studies at St. Mary’s College in Aboke in 1997. Unfortunately, my experiences in secondary school were traumatic and filled with the sounds of gunshots. The worst experience came one day during my fourth month at school. We heard a series of gunshots, and all of the students were immediately crouched on the floor. I felt powerless and thought I was going to die, but after the school administrators addressed the students, the situation calmed down. Many incidents like that one happened during my four years at school.

Sometimes the students who had been abducted would tell us stories of their time in the bush with the rebels. You couldn’t listen to their experiences if you weren’t strong. “We were made to walk long distances without food and water to drink,” one girl said. Another described her time in the bush as “very nasty.” When the school held assemblies, prayers were conducted for the girls who had been taken to Sudan, but this only succeeded in bringing up frightful memories of the event over and over again. The relatives of many of the students had also been abducted and taken to Sudan as captives, mine included, and this caused even more pain. Each night when I went to bed I would ask myself, “What will you do when the rebels attack? Run away and be shot, or follow them to wherever they are going?” These nights were the most difficult times for me. I could not sleep well because my mind was occupied with thoughts of the rebels.

With all of these fears, I trusted that God would perform a miracle for us, and indeed He did because nothing terrible happened. Although I went through such a difficult time in secondary school, I am proud that I attended St. Mary’s College in Aboke. The school administrators worked hard to help us overcome the trauma we faced, and I learned to cope as best I could.

I came out of my experiences in secondary school with an understanding of the dire need for an end to the war in northern Uganda. We are tired of the war and in one way or another, it has brought suffering to all of our lives. Even today I carry my experiences in secondary school with me. I firmly believe that there is a need for the government of Uganda to join hands with development organizations and the international community to put an end to this war.

Peace is what I desire now.

*If you want to read more about the abductions that took place at St. Mary’s College in Aboke, pick up Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda by Els De Temmerman (Fountain, 2001).

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