By: Claude Omona
What began as a mere plane conversation en route to the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, is fast shaping up to be a major philanthropic work for Uganda’s destitute children.
Inside the Boeing Jetliner were Hiroki Ikeda, a Japanese high school teacher, and Lucy Lamunu, a Ugandan who has lived in Japan for two decades, working at the Uganda embassy in Japan. Education for the vulnerable was the binding cord of their sky-blue conversation as they munched familiar Japanese seafood.
Other than the fruity cabin aroma, the two shared common tales of ringing bombshells, with Ikeda bringing to the table the Hiroshima bombing thread and Lamunu, Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) brutalities. Both knew all too well that education is key to rebuilding the ruins of war.
And so, the discussion shifted to the plight of children affected by the LRA conflicts in northern Uganda.
Lamunu struck the chord with a graphic illustration of Omoro District’s barefoot schoolchildren trekking more than 10 kilometers to and from school daily.
With a total land area of 2,986.47 square kilometers, Omoro district has 140 schools composed of 66 government schools, while 74 are privately owned, making it extremely hard for many to access free universal primary and secondary education.
Inspired Action:
In 2021, the moving tales of the LRA war inspired Hiroki Ikeda, also a football coach, to initiate a fundraiser back in Japan towards assisting Lucy Lamunu’s village, back in Northern Uganda’s Omoro district. The initiative managed to raise 3 billion shillings in Uganda.
Ikeda is a seasoned philanthropist. He is the Executive Director of Gojo Club, a Japanese non-profit organisation. She says the funds should build Komorebi Primary School, a modern primary school in Omoro district, to empower Uganda’s poor population.
According to the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), Northern Uganda remains the poorest region with a very high illiteracy rate. According to the 2021 Housing and Demographic Survey, the region’s poverty rate stands at 68 percent, above the national average of 20.3 percent.
Lamunu herself is a survivor of gripping poverty. While young, she endured the long walks to and from school for many years before she broke even. She is determined to change the story of her village today.
“The vision is to make Komorebi Primary School and the Football Academy in Lapainat Parish, Koro Sub County, hope-giving and pro-poor for sustainable talent and human capital development.” She states.
High Suicide Incidence:
The entire Koro Sub County is popular for the wrong reason: the high incidence of suicides, in which victims end their own lives out of frustrations and mental challenges related to the lingering burdens of the LRA War, including high poverty rates, low levels of education, poor public infrastructure, and alcoholism. In some years, up to 22 people take their lives in one month, according to records of the Uganda Police Force (UPDF). In other months, up to 22 people died while 31 others were rescued.
The incidents have prompted Koro Sub-County authorities to convene high-level multi-stakeholder meetings in which they requested research-focused institutions and organisations to undertake a rapid assessment to identify the causes of the rampant and growing suicide cases, their impact and implications, as well as appropriate responses, in the sub-county.
Faith-based organisations responded with counseling religious messages, while non-governmental organisations introduced and implemented short-term psychosocial interventions.
With all their gains reversed by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Koro Sub County, like other parts of Northern Uganda, is back to ground zero, with a bleak future for humanity.
Operation Restore Hopes:
Lamunu and his friend, Ikeda, are now out on a mission to restore hope in the dark corners of our planet. Through the school project, the face of the parish is changing one stroke at a time. This week, graders and heavy earth moving machines broke ground for the construction of a one-and-a-half-kilometer community access road to link villages to the most needed services in Gulu City, some 15 kilometers away.
They hope the infrastructure can disrupt the trend of mothers giving birth in the hands of untrained traditional birth attendants by improving access to healthcare for expectant mothers seeking maternity services in the dead of night.
On the priority list of learners for admission to the school are children born into LRA activities. They remain largely landless and rejected by the communities in which they were reintegrated. Today, they face a major identity crisis as they are unable to access Uganda’s National Identification and Registration Services due to unexplainable paternity questions surrounding them.
Stella Lanam Angel is the Executive Director of the LRA War Affected Women (WAN), a community-based organization of former women abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army. She says “The majority of such children are unable to get registered in the National Citizens’ Database with the National
Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) over unclear paternity. Some of them have been born in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
Technically, this alienates all of them from accessing public services. Lanam says there are more than 20,000 such floating populations spread across the Northern Region.
There is no official data on the number of people killed, maimed, or abducted by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army during the two decades of brutal conflict in Northern Uganda. According to Lanam, her organisation estimates the number of those forcefully abducted to be more than 50,000 between 1980 and 2004.
In December 2023, more than 100 such recruits were rescued and repatriated from the Central African Republic (LRA) with women and children. Analysts say their return goes so far as to demonstrate that the conflict is still very far from over.
Mary Laker is one of the many women abducted from Atiak during the infamous April 20th, 1995, Atiak Massacre, which claimed an estimated 300 people. She managed to escape with two children born out of rape in 2011.
“I have given up on trying to register my children and get them national identification cards after we failed to get them certified birth certificates from government hospitals to indicate where they were born.”
Laker hopes Komorebi Primary School will inject new momentum in their lifetime by recruiting war-affected children from across the region. Worth noting is that similar past humanitarian interventions failed to bring tangible results with Laroo Boarding, the Primary School for War-Affected Children, and the Commonwealth Youth Centre Labora, especially after they were left in the hands of the government.
Vision Cast on Stone
Ikeda’s initiative now firmly sits on a Memorandum of Understanding inked with Omoro District Local Government. Florence Acen, the acting Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, signed for the Omoro district.
According to the document, the education project will be funded by the Japanese private sector, the Foundation for Global Children, Japan, and Japan’s registered non-profit organization, Gojo Club.
Okello Douglas Peter, the chairman of LC5 for the Omoro district local government, commended the collaborative efforts, stating that “this contribution is an example of what can be achieved through international cooperation. It goes beyond what we are seeing now and the future engagements that may follow.”
Okello believes that the education project will facilitate the comprehensive rehabilitation of children affected by Nodding syndrome in the district.
Japan enjoys a long-term development partnership with Uganda. Through Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Japan has contributed to the significant improvement of Gulu Regional Referral Hospital by building and equipping a modern two-story complex worth UGX 37 billion.
