Second-year master’s journalism student Marc Ellison received an award for international development journalism from the International Development Research Centre in 2011 and spent three months in Uganda documenting the reintegration of former female child soldiers.
The Charlatan’s Holly Stanczak caught up with him at Ottawa’s One World Film Festival where Ellison raised over $400, which he said is enough to send the women’s children to school for 10 years.
The Charlatan (TC): Can you tell me a little bit about your project?
Marc Ellison (ME): My project was explicitly looking at the reintegration of formerly abducted women in northern Uganda. I initially wanted to do this to deal with two misconceptions, the first being that not many people . . . realize that actually a great many of child soldiers are women or young girls, and this is the case in northern Uganda.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was active from around 1986 until 2006 . . . Of roughly the 30,000 children abducted by the LRA in that 20-year span, about a quarter of them were young girls . . . taken at six and expected to be babysitters, and porters carrying these huge 20 litre jerry cans of water, and if they dropped them they’d be beaten or stabbed with bayonets. But as soon as they hit puberty, they were basically given away as wives to the LRA commanders, effectively as rewards.
The second misconception is that when the women return to their communities, everything is fine, but it is far from it. Most women were in these forced marriages and gave birth to one, two, three kids. So they’re coming back not only with the stigma of having been the wife of an LRA commander, but also they have these children as constant proof of their past. They are now seen as effectively unmarriageable, because in Acholi culture, the tribe of northern Uganda, if you’re a single parent, you’re seen as almost tainted goods. Often men won’t want to marry you . . . so that’s another phenomenon unique to the women coming back.
TC: So you gave five cameras to women to document their experiences. Is there a reason you chose to do that, rather than taking the pictures yourself?
ME: There were really a myriad of reasons why I chose to do that. It’s sort of part of this anthropographic approach, sort of combining anthropology and photography. So, in one of the very first interviews I did with this lady, Jennifer . . . the first thing she asked me was, she was sort of busting my balls, she said “why should I talk to you?” And the reason she asked that was because — and I knew that this would be a potential problem when I went out — but there’s a real sense of researcher fatigue out there. Academics and particularly journalists have been guilty of parachuting in during the conflict, wanting to talk to these women and getting them to recount how they’ve been forced wives, how they’ve been raped, all the horrible things. And so basically, I said to Jennifer is that “you don’t have to tell me anything about your experience in the LRA. All I want to know about your experience in the LRA is how did you escape and what’s happened to you since.” But then, just as a sort of extra incentive, what I said was, “I want you to be more part of the project.”
And so, I explained that I want [them] to help document [their lives.] I explained about the camera and I was saying I want you to take photos of your daily lives, be it something as mundane as making breakfast in the morning, going to the borehole to fetch water . . . I said, “I really want to tell your story and I want you to actively help me do that.”
TC: So how does that reintegration process work then?
ME: Most often, during an ambush by the Ugandan army, a woman will take that opportunity of the chaos to flee. After that, they are encouraged to go to a local Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) barracks . . . Many women said that they were registered, but they were also raped by the Ugandan soldiers who were supposed to be their saviours. So from there, they would then go to reception centres (where they would stay) for three to six months. Basically you’d get . . . ‘counselling.’ The reason I say ‘counselling’ like that is because the councillors I spoke to said they simply tell the women to forget their experiences.
TC: What made you focus on child soldiers, specifically women?
ME: I was interested in this partly because I’m an immigrant myself . . . and also I have an interest in Africa. I was particularly intrigued by the experiences of these women because the guns had arguably been silent for four or five years and yet these women are no better off. The Ugandan government is making the right noises saying that they are helping them, but they are really not.
TC: How did this project impact you, both professionally and personally?
ME: I’ve definitely been personally impacted. There was sort of this period where I reached something of a breaking point after about the 10th interview, where it was particularly traumatic. For example, Mary returned after 14 years, and has personally been accepted by her mother but her children have been rejected by her mother and abused by her brother. So it was really quite sad and I’d already heard sort of 10 similar stories . . . You kind of just have to deal with it.
TC: Are there any women that have been able to thrive? Are you seeing any progress in their lives?
ME: We talk about reintegration and some people would say that these women can never truly reintegrate. I mean, it’s possible you can never go back to life how it was. Out of 40 women, there were maybe a handful of good stories. In most communities in Uganda, they’ll sell dried fish. So one woman will travel to Kampala, which is 12 hours from her town. So she’ll do that about three or four times a month to buy as many big bags of these dried fish as she can for a much cheaper price and bring them back to Patongo to sell at the market at a significant profit. So that’s great and she’s doing really well. Though she doesn’t see her kids very much, she’s actually able to put her kids into a good boarding school. So there are some positive stories but you really have to sort of delve. Sadly, there are not too many.
TC: How are you moving forward with this project then? You’re going back next summer?
ME: That’s the plan . . . The idea is to take whatever money I can raise and spend it constructively. So there’s Janet who’s taking tailoring classes, but she doesn’t have a tailoring machine, so I would like to help her buy it. Another woman, she has some work but it doesn’t pay great and she can’t send her children to school . . . I would help her pay her school fees. To send one of their kids to school, it’s like 60,000 schillings a year which is like $25. Really it’s nothing, but to them, obviously it’s a lot.
