Joyce It all started on 21st February 2004 [15]. I saw rebels approaching the Barlonyo IDP Camp. They surrounded us from all directions. We decided to get into our houses when I heard a bomb explode. I ran outside and collided with people who were also running for safety. I lay flat on the ground trying to take cover. Meanwhile bullets were exploding in the air. I got up to help my drunken husband but given his state I could not do much, he just fell to the ground.
I started running, as I was running a bullet hit the person who was running behind me. I kept on running as another bullet hit yet another person behind me. I was just trying my luck with a baby on my back. I continued running until I reached a thicket, that I dived into. I could hear gunshots close to where I was hiding. I started asking myself: What are you going to do? If you stay here, these people will surely kill you.
I started crawling in the opposite direction of the gunshots. It is then that I met my niece.
‘Let us run before these people kill us’.
I warned her not to say a thing. As we were preparing to leave, she started vomiting, fell down and died.
I jumped over her body and continued running. I ran for a long distance until I found a bush where I rested. I settled under a tree but the bullets continued getting closer. I tied the baby to my back and set off again. On hearing gunshots ahead of me, I started running backwards.
I entered another bush. I heard people screaming, ‘Run, run, run the rebels have been defeated’. I refused to get out of my hiding place. A soldier saw me and ordered me out, ‘You old woman, get up and run’. I pleaded with him not to kill me, ‘I am a mother please don’t kill me’.
I had to do as ordered. That was at about 9 pm. I could see fire spreading to every homestead, soldiers were scattered everywhere and children were screaming on top of their voices. All of a sudden there was silence, the rebels had left. I spent that night in the bush.
I returned the next morning, it was a Sunday, only to find the body of one of my sister’s children. She had been axed to death and flies were covering her body. My husband’s face had been sliced into four pieces with a machete. I gathered the different bits of his face and tried to put them back in their rightful places, then I used a piece of cloth to hold them together. My mother was watching from a distance. She told me to take good care of the dead because death is death and death is real.
As I moved closer to inspect the remains of my home I was informed that my brother was also dead. I only got half of my brother’s body and pieces of my granddaughter. I could only identify my brother by the bits of his red shorts that still clung to his thigh. The rest of his body was bones, oil was oozing out of his body. His dead children, both girls, were lying next to his corpse.
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Euan Denholm/IRIN
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With no clothes to cover our backs, we walked until we reached the trading centre. My husband’s brother who was working in Lira collected his body and took it for burial in Lira. My other brothers and sisters were buried in the mass grave in Barlonyo. That was what happened. At that time the fighting had reached its peak, I don’t know how I managed to survive. We mourned for the dead and the men tried to give them a descent burial but after three days we found that the bodies had been exhumed.
When the government realized that the bodies had been exhumed, they brought cement, exhumed the remaining bodies, put them in black polythene bags and reburied them. But even after this the bodies were exhumed again. This is when government decided to give them a fresh burial.
That morning people gathered, we were all involved, all of us had lost someone. The mass burial started with prayers and two cows were slaughtered to feed the mourners. At that time, the rebels were still causing havoc within the neighbourhood. We were instructed to stay in one place. After the burial, filled with uncertainty, we all left for Lira town. I settled in a swampy place close to Lira were I stayed for one year. I then relocated to Abim, stayed there for one year then I returned to Ogur Centre. But life became so difficult at that Centre I relocated to Awealem from where I returned to Barlonyo.
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[15] Over 200 people were killed at Barlonyo camp near Lira by the LRA