HOLT | Invisible children's struggle
In a grey colonial house, nestled at the end of a cul-du-sac, lives a little girl with brown hair and big brown eyes.
She spends her days on her bike, traveling the neighborhood and exploring the local park. At night, the two-story playhouse in her backyard hosts slumber parties and late-night giggle fests between her and her friends. There is a picket fence in the front yard and a loyal golden retriever at the foot of her bed every night. It is the quintessential American fairy tale.
Half a world a way, though, is a little boy. He is the same age as that brown-eyed girl, only his world could not look any different. Months ago, he was abducted from his village and handed a machine gun. He was forced to watch his comrades mutilate his countrymen, forced to kill others. He has never seen a photo of himself, or even a camera, and fears that even if he could escape, his captors would find him only to torture and kill him.
Uganda has been torn apart by a civil war for 23 years. Rebel forces, known as the LRA, are led by a man named Joseph Kony, who considers himself a god and savior.
Kony attacks villages and communities without warning and for no reason other than to recruit for his cause. By recruit, I mean kidnap children, many younger than 12, and threaten them into submission. These children are trained to be soldiers and killers. They are told that if they escape, they will be found, tortured and killed. To make that point, many of these children have seen family members and friends killed in front of them.
More than 3,000 children currently yield machetes and AK-47s, pushing through the jungles of Africa, following orders and missing out on all the beauties of being a child.
Invisible Children, an organization raising awareness about this war, has just one plea: rescue these children.
An organization based out of San Diego, Calif., IC began six years ago when a trio of friends set out to learn about the atrocities happening in Uganda. After a pilgrimage to the Congo region of Africa, the group decided to unveil for the world what really is happening.
I make it a point to know what's going on in my world, but I was unprepared for some of the images in the IC documentary 'The Rescue.' Haunting frames with malnourished boys creeping through the underbrush, holding guns, ready to fight.
The documentary showed one boy who had escaped from Kony's army, but life on the other side was not really a life of freedom. He said he would rather die than live, since running away meant spending the rest of his life continuing to run.
It's easy to find reasons to support a cause; sometimes it's harder, as broke college students, to actually act. But Invisible Children is not just asking for donations. They're asking for activism. They're asking for action. How? Check out their Web site, invisiblechildren.com, to learn more - if not to become involved, at least to become informed.
I cannot do their message justice in this column, but I do know one thing: This big world is getting smaller ... and I think we owe it to each other to do something to make it a little better. Don't you?
