 "Photo: Nathan Bobinchak")
 "Photo: Nathan Bobinchak")
 "Photo: Nathan Bobinchak")
The lyrics "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier" from The Killers' "All These Things That I Have Done" greet visitors stepping off the elevator into the Loyola University Museum of Art. This idea embodies the theme behind the "Be a Witness" exhibit that began Tuesday night. The exhibit is comprised entirely of artwork about and by Ugandan children.
Twenty children who have been helped by the Dwon Madiki Partnership, which means "voice of tomorrow" in the local language, Luo, created the artwork. These children now have shelter and access to education, without which they would be homeless, alone and easy prey for the militias that kidnap children to make them into child soldiers.
The roots of this artwork began in 1986, when the Lord's Resistance Army began a civil war against the Ugandan government. The LRA, a guerilla fighting force in Northern Uganda, is accused of using terrorizing tactics and many human rights violations, including rape, torture, abduction and the use of child soldiers. Though a cease-fire has been in effect since 2006, there is still very little peace in the region. Nearly 2 million people have been forced into camps as internally displaced persons.
Though they have fled their homes because it is too dangerous to live there, the people in the camps are not guaranteed security; the number of abductions from the camps has risen to nearly 18 per day in 2004. With many of these abductions performed at night, many children, who are especially vulnerable, have become so-called "Night Commuters," walking up to 12 miles from the camps to seek refuge and sleep in larger cities.
Life for the displaced children is a tough affair, as witnessed by the keynote speaker, Caroline Akweyo. Akweyo lived in Uganda from the time she was born until she was 27, at which point she was given the opportunity to emigrate to the U.S.
Life on the street is "a horrible life for the kids," she said, recalling her own trials growing up in the same situation. Kidnapped as a child, Akweyo's future was bleak, but through outside aid she was able to get an education and leave the country. After seeing what a difference education has made in her life, Akweyo made it her responsibility to give as many children from Uganda the same opportunity.
"I do this because it moves me personally," she said. "If I get educated, I want every child in nothern Uganda to get educated."
The Dwon Madiki Partnership is the group that Akweyo and Loyola's Invisible Conflicts works with, giving 20 children the same chance that Akweyo received.
"Without this partnership," senior Katie Scrantom said, "[the children] would be lugging water every day ... without any kind of support."
The art exhibited at LUMA indicates the effects of the war and the impact the partnership has had on the Ugandan children. Winding its way through the Push-Pin Gallery on the third floor, the walls tell the convoluted story of a war that has torn a country apart, affecting an entire generation of children. Almost every set of drawings included men with rifles, fire raging from all sides and helicopters roaring overhead.
Photographs depict the children, gaunt and tired, some with wounds and scars from the violence they experienced. On the wall facing the first hallway, there is a poem that begins "War war everywhere ..."
At the same time, there are depictions of daily life, as the children try to live as normally as they can. Using pencil, marker and banana leaves, the children lay out a traditional African tableau, with men, women and children carrying food and goods around their villages. There are questionnaires as well, which show that the children are still just that - children. One child, when asked what he would want to change about his life, responded, "A cat."
The spread of films such as Invisible Children, which documents the struggles of the "Night Commuters," has contributed to increased awareness of the conflict in Uganda. This exhibit, however, focuses on the lives and experiences of the partnership-sponsored children.
This show attempts "to witness not just to the conflict, but to the children's lives," junior Eric Stetzer said.
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