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Helen’s Testimony

In March, Karisia Gichuke talked to Helen Okot (not her real name), just two months after her escape from the Lord’s Resistance Army. This is Helen’s account of eight years in captivity and provides a disturbing insight into the casual brutality of the LRA (also referred to here as ‘the rebels’).

Abducted

My name is Helen Okot.* I am 20 years old, and from Kitgum Pandwong, within the town [of Kitgum].

I was abducted aged 12 around midnight on October 9 in 1996, from St Mary’s College, Aboke.

People were hitting the windows, and they began shouting that we should open the doors. They were pushing the gun barrel through the windows, saying, “If you don’t open the doors, we will shoot you all dead.”

One girl opened the doors and they came in with ropes. People started grabbing their clothes. We were asked to move to the main gates of the school together. Some rebels were at the main dispensary looting drugs.

We began to move through the jungle. We found out that Sister Rachele [deputy head of St Mary’s, a Roman Catholic nun] was following us when she caught up with us at 10am with John Bosco Ocan, another staff member from the school. We continued to walk together till 2pm when the UPDF [Ugandan government army] began engaging our group of rebels. The rebels did not return fire in that encounter. We were also attacked by a UPDF helicopter for 30 minutes. The plane hovered for over an hour but the rebels never stopped – they continued moving.

We began to run. We gathered at a place called Otwal village and Sister Rachele met with an LRA commander – Lagira. Sister Rachele wanted to return with the group, but they told her to wait for a while. By this time our hands were all tied. At around 6 or 7pm, 30 of us were picked, the other 109 were to return with Sister. I was one of the 30 who had to remain.

I have no idea why the other 109 were freed.

Sister broke down and began to plead, “Please, I’m here to go back with all, not just a few.” She knelt down, but Lagira refused.

The 30 of us pleaded, “Please Sister don’t leave us behind, we go back together.” We were beaten to keep us quiet. Sister prayed together with us and promised that she’d never forget us, that she’d keep struggling until we all returned.

After the prayer Sister handed over her rosary and told us to keep praying. She left with 109 girls. The remaining 30 of us were divided into groups of four people. Many other rebel commanders were around. There were four girls given to each commander. I and another three stayed with Lagira.

An escape attempt

We moved to an area near Gulu: Atto Hill, a popular rebel camp. The rebels had abducted a girl from that village, and were travelling with her to Atto Hill. On the way, they were staying at a civilian home. The abducted girl talked to the couple [whose home it was] and asked them to hide her, saying that when the rebels were gone she would give them some money.

At dawn the LRA started to move, and when they noticed she was not there they started to search for her. Eventually they found her hiding under a pile of clothes on a bed. They started beating her, but Lagira stopped them, saying he wanted her to be killed by the girls from Aboke. All 30 of us had to take a huge piece of wood and hit her until she was dead.

Then all 30 of us were told to lie down and were given 15 strokes of the cane. We were beaten because of the girl who had attempted to escape – the rebels said it seemed that we had organised it together, although this was untrue, we had not even had a chance to speak to her.

On the move

We moved quite a lot until November, away from the hill where we had camped. We met a group coming from Sudan – led by Omona Komakech, the then army commander of the LRA. We were moving away from Gulu towards Kitgum. The two groups met while crossing the River Achwa. Omona’s group was crossing from the Kitgum to the Gulu side. It was the rainy season, and many were swept away and died – I saw three little boys and four rebels drown. We had arrived at the river at 10am, and the last person did not cross until 7pm. We spent a quiet night together with the other group at the river bank, but in the morning a fight started. The UPDF were launching mortar bombs from their side of the river. The first fell at around 7am and we all began to run, as the UPDF continued bombing. As we went further away from the river, the UPDF bombs couldn’t reach us. No one was hurt.

We walked the whole day, moved to the village Lachek Ocot and spent another night there. The following day, we were supposed to cross a major road to Gulu, close to the Achwa branch. As we were crossing the road, we were ambushed by the UPDF and a fight erupted. One girl from Aboke escaped at that moment – one other was shot in the neck.

The girls from Aboke were divided in two groups of 14 and 15 to cross into Sudan. While crossing to Sudan I felt a lot of pain in my feet, which were bare. We crossed a long river called Kit into Sudan on 14 December 1996.

Inside Sudan

We went to the training base for the LRA. Nyeko Tolbert [the LRA’s chief of personnel] welcomed us to camp and informed us of the date. The LRA usually spoke Acholi the whole time, but when we were in Sudan some spoke Arabic.

At the moment of abduction, the rebels had made a small cross in oil on the head and chest of all abductees, then they mixed white clay with water, and made drawings in this white clay. We also had to get an egg and draw a picture of a heart on our chest, left arm, and back. We were not allowed to bathe or put on a blouse for three days.

Now, the rebels also got small stones, put them in leather, and tied them to our wrists – everyone has this – even the leaders. I think they wore the stones because during early times they would throw stones as bombs. The stones were put on us in Sudan, where they did another ritual of putting water on our chests, which supposed to be a sign of a blessing from God. I didn’t believe any of these things.

Nyeko Tolbert was in charge of dividing us Aboke girls. He picked us one by one. All the rest went elsewhere, but I remained with Tolbert.

While we were still in Uganda, a second-lieutenant had slept with one girl (aged around 17) who came from Karamoja. When the news reached the commanders, it was publicly announced that the lieutenant had broken the rules. Then he was taken aside and killed – stabbed with a bayonet.

Life as a commander’s ‘wife’

We went to a place in Sudan called Jabilan. (During 1998 this place came under frequent attack, but the LRA camp there was not dislodged.) Initially, Tolbert was taking care of me. He had five wives, two had a child each. All were young girls, but above 10 years old.

I was treated well for about one week, then one of the wives, Alice Achiero, began mistreating me and would encourage the rest of the wives to mistreat me. I was mistreated for one whole year, which included being beaten with a stick, slapped, made to do lots of work until late at night, and to collect heavy items and bring them back to the compound. I was given hardly anything to eat. This lasted until 1998, when the other women and wives in the camp became concerned and began protesting.

Tolbert’s wives responded that they were worried that I would be the most favoured wife because I was educated. All the women decided to report Alice to Tolbert, who cautioned her. The relationship with Tolbert’s family then improved for me. However, Alice became angry with everyone, including the co-wives, and she escaped in June 98. However, she was actually moving deeper into Sudan, not towards Uganda, and the rebels captured her and brought her back. She was beaten alongside two of her friends whom she had told of her mission – one died from the beating. The relationship grew sour between her and Tolbert and she was moved to be wife to a different officer. (In 2000, Alice escaped again, and this time made it back to Uganda.)

During this time I was trained how to administer medications and injections by a doctor from Juba (an English-speaking man) and one doctor from Gulu who was based with us in Jabilan camp.

I was also trained to fight.

In 1998, Tolbert started telling me to become his wife, but I kept on resisting. One night, Tolbert came to me after midnight with a pistol and said if I refused him this time he would kill me. I had to go with him to the room where he stayed. I began living with him as a wife until 2000 when we left Jabilan and went to a camp called Lubanga Tek (meaning “God is Great”). I have no idea why we all had to leave Jabilan.

In August 2000 I was taken by car to the main hospital in Juba, as I was pregnant. Most girls deliver in the camp, but sometimes you have the privilege of delivering from hospital, it depends on the health of the mother – I had had a malaria attack. A month later I gave birth to a baby boy whom I named Emmanuel.

(The rebels have a rule, that they cannot sleep with any girl who hasn’t yet had her [first] period. When a girl has her period she is isolated – she isn’t allowed to cook, fetch water, or go where men sleep.)

Hungry and under attack

In October 2000 the Arabs [Sudanese] stopped supplying the rebels with food. That meant that from 2001 our main duty was cultivation and harvesting.

In February 2002 there was an attack on the camp. We were informed that the UPDF were coming [Operation Iron Fist], so we left the camp before they came.

We moved to the Imatong Hills, and stayed there until June, when we made an entry into Uganda. Many mothers were set free because with young children to carry, they were a burden to the rebels. However the rebels were cautioned that no one abducted from Aboke should be set free – the LRA had received information that there was a lot of publicity about the Aboke girls, and knew that releasing them would make people very happy, so they refused to do so.

The rebels then moved, with all of us from Aboke, to a national park close to the Nile, where we stayed for some time. There were so many wild animals, we had to light a huge fire to keep the animals away. The main problem was a lack of food. Many young children and newly-abducted died in the park. The rest of us survived by eating wild fruit and boiling the leaves of wild plants.

[Helen’s group camped in the national park for six months, then moved on again. Helen worked in the rebels’ sick bay. Tolbert, her ‘husband’ sent rebels to collect her to rejoin him, and after moving all over northern Uganda, she eventually arrived in Pader district in January 2004.]

Home

I had always kept the idea of escaping at the back of my mind, but acting on it wasn’t easy because the LRA said that if you should escape, the people [civilians and army] will simply kill you.

We had just cooked lunch. People had got up and started walking again. I branched off as if going for a short call. I waited, squatting under a bush, until even the two rebels who bring up the rear (to round up escapees) had passed. I then took the opposite direction, but following the same track that the group had taken.

I walked from 2pm until 6pm carrying Emmanuel. By 6pm I reached a camp called Pot Ogali. I was with an army detach by 7pm.

[A few days later, Helen was at the Rachele Rehabilitation Centre in Lira, named after the teacher who had followed her into the bush all those years before.]

Seventeen Aboke girls and many, many others are still in captivity. Although at times it was okay because the rebels were not always fighting, I was happy to leave. I thought about my family often, but not about much else from my old life.

I would like to go to school, to study – I am maybe in S2. I don’t know where I will settle. It is not difficult to care for Emmanuel – I don’t see anything of the rebel in him. However, he will stay with my parents. He is in nursery school, and he likes being at home here.

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Further Stories

Kitgum Cross project gives hope to mother who killed
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Nowhere to lay your head
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Figthers to footballers
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A Cross maker's story
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Story of the Kitgum cross
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Northern Uganda attracting glimmer of political attention
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Resources

Updated information pack [August 2004]
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Write to your MP
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'Cwa' Crosses from Kitgum
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