A Home for Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok

A HOME FOR LANYERO, LAWINO, ALOYO, AND AJOK

Gulu, Uganda

The Goal

The aim of this campaign is to raise funds to buy small plots of land for four women in Gulu, northern Uganda, who have been struggling for years to eke out a stable existence for themselves and their children. Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo and Ajok are all single mothers. All are also survivors of abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army, and were rejected by their families when they managed to escape their rebel captors and return to civilian life.

With this campaign, the hope is to provide all four women with modest homes and enough land for stable subsistence cultivation.

Background

As the origin point of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the northern Ugandan district of Gulu spent two decades at the heart of Africa’s longest running conflict. Though the LRA shifted its operations out of Uganda in 2006, recovery has been a slow and delicate process, and the scars of the conflict remain raw for many in Gulu and the surrounding districts.

One group that remains especially haunted by the war are LRA returnees -- people who were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army, and who managed to escape -- often after years of trauma. While many returnees have managed to rebuild their lives, many others still face complete rejection from their families and communities. Ostracized and cut off from any support network, they are left exceptionally vulnerable and often lead lives of extreme precarity.

Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok were all kidnapped by the LRA at various points in their youth. They crossed paths during their time in the bush, and later sought each other out again after escaping from the LRA. The four are bonded by shared traumas during their captivity, and by the fact that they all returned from the bush with small children, and have had to fend for themselves with no support from family, or from their wider communities.

Their isolation from their families means, among other things, that these four women have no access to land. In a society in which many households still depend on subsistence agriculture, land access can mean the difference between a stable existence and profound food insecurity.

While acquiring land won't solve all their problems, Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok all agree that land is critical to their futures. It is the one resource that can best provide them with a stable basis from which to build a secure life for themselves and their children.

Please read on below for a breakdown of the projected costs and phases of this endeavor. To read more about Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok, and to learn why land would be an absolute game-changer for each of them, please skip to the section entitled "A Note on These Women's Stories...."

Phase One: Purchase of Land (Approximately $3,360)

This is the first and most expensive phase of this endeavor. It is also the most urgent.

Because land within Gulu City limits is much more expensive, we will be looking for plots a bit further out of town. Even so, we are unlikely to find a plot suitable for all four women to settle on together. Instead, we plan to look for two separate plots of land. Lanyero and Ajok will each build homes on one plot and split the land for cultivation, while Lawino and Aloyo will do the same on a second plot. The cost for each plot is expected to be around 6,000,000 Ugandan Shillings (UGX), bringing the total for both plots to 12,000,000 Ugandan Shillings (UGX), or approximately $3,360 in U.S. currency.

The plan is to move ahead with this phase as soon as enough money has been collected. Although the subsequent phases are also important, procuring the land itself is paramount, as it will allow Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok to begin producing food for their families (even if they need to continue to live in their current accommodations a little longer).

Phase Two: Construction of Homes (Approximately $1,210)

The second phase of this project will involve constructing a modest grass-thatched house for each woman. When these are complete, all four women will be able not only to farm on their new plots of land, but also to live on them. Rather than negotiating precarious renting arrangements or moving between the households of various grudging clan members, Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok will each settle in permanent homes with their children.

The estimated costs for building the materials and labor necessary to construct these four houses are listed in the table below. They total approximately $1,210.

Phase Three: Land Title Registration (Approximately $1,960)

This step in the process is less urgent, but nevertheless critical for the long-term stability of Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok's homes. Land grabbing is rife in Uganda and poorer, female-headed households are at particular risk. By paying for a formal survey, registration, and demarcation of each plot, the women will safeguard their legal rights to the land they cultivate and live on, ensuring that no wealthy neighbor or investor can steal it out from under them.

The costs of the registration process are listed below, and total approximately $1,960.

Miscellaneous Costs and Accountability

The remaining ~$500 in the budget are intended to cover miscellaneous expenses (for example, reimbursing laborers for transport to and from the building sites), to address any unforeseen/emergency costs, and to act as a cushion against inflation and rising prices (a post-COVID phenomenon that has by no means spared Uganda).

In the interest of accountability, we will post updates (with photos, when relevant) to this campaign as each "Phase" unfolds. We will also keep receipts for all transactions, and will be happy to share these upon request.

A Note on These Women's Stories....

Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo and Ajok are all victims of the longest running war on the African continent. Their time in LRA captivity robbed them not only of years of their lives but also of irreplaceable ties with family and community. LRA abductees are often viewed as complicit in the crimes of their captors and, as such, often face tremendous stigma when they return to civilian life.

After their courageous escapes, each of these women suffered the added heartbreak of ostracization. Where they had hoped to find love and support, they instead came home to fear and hostility. Rejected by loved ones and friends, all four have seen their trauma compounded by abandonment, and all have had to contend with constant precarity as they struggled to support themselves and their children.

All four women’s pasts are full of deeply painful and private experiences, which they are under no obligation to divulge. Nevertheless, after discussion amongst themselves, Lanyero, Lawino, Aloyo, and Ajok agreed that they each wished to give a brief explanation of what they have been through. Below are summaries of what each woman felt comfortable sharing with the strangers she hopes might help her build a better future.

Lanyero Grace Oliver

Lanyero lost both her parents in an LRA attack when she was still a very little girl. A maternal uncle took her in after she was orphaned, but always made it clear that he did not see her as his child.

At twelve years old, Lanyero was abducted by LRA forces, and subsequently forced into sexual slavery as a "wife" to one of the rebel group's high-ranking officers. She spent eight years with her captors and was forced to bear two children before the age of twenty. One night in 2004, when a rare opportunity for escape presented itself, Lanyero gathered up her two toddlers and fled the LRA camp she had been living in in Sudan.

She eventually made it back to Uganda, but found herself shunned by her family when she reached home. Apart from the pain it caused her, this rejection also left her utterly vulnerable, with nowhere to live and no access to land on which she might cultivate food for herself and her children.

For a time, she entered into a relationship with an older man who initially offered her support and security. They had two children together, but the man eventually abandoned Lanyero, leaving her to care for four children on her own.

For much of the past decade, Lanyero has cobbled together a living by washing neighbors' clothes and selling "odii" (a local sesame and groundnut paste) by the roadside. Even at the best of times, though, life was precarious. Food was often scarce, and Lanyero frequently had to choose between paying her children's school fees, or paying the rent for the one-room thatch hut where they all live.

Then came the Pandemic.

Uganda experienced some of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world. While these may have helped to stem the tide of COVID-19 there, they also devastated local livelihoods. Lanyero lost literally all her sources of income. She and her children survived through a mix of charity from neighbors and informal arrangements in which they worked other people's fields in exchange for a small portion of the food that they planted and harvested.

Lanyero says the past two years have been harrowing for her. While much of the Ugandan economy has reopened, Lanyero no longer has the capital with which to resume her odii business. Meanwhile, the people for whom she used to do laundry have themselves lost income during the lockdowns and can no longer afford to hire her.

Lanyero longs for safety and security. With her own plot of land, she will be able create a permanent home and take up farming for herself and her children, at last granting her family the stability they have struggled for, for so long.

Lawino Grace

Lawino was abducted as a young woman, in the early 2000's, and spent several years in the bush. Like Lanyero, she was forced into sexual slavery, eventually giving birth to two children (a girl and a boy) during her time in LRA captivity. In Acholi culture, names often describe the circumstances of a child's birth. Lawino named her first child Acayo, from the Acholi verb meaning "to despise," because she felt scorned and despised by the world at the time of the girls's birth. Later, when her son was born, she named him "Onono," from a word that translates to "nothing" or "empty." She says she chose the name because she feared she had absolutely nothing to give the child.

Lawino managed to escape the LRA with her two children while they were still little. When she reached home, though, she learned that during her absence her mother had been killed. Since her father had passed away before her abduction, Lawino now had no immediate family to turn to for support.

An organization paid to send Acayo and Onono to school, but as "lutino lum" (a derogatory term for children born in LRA captivity) they faced such extreme abuse and stigmatization -- from teachers and classmates alike -- that, despite their mother's pleading, they soon dropped out altogether.

In her early teens, Acayo took up with an older man who promised to support her, but soon left her abandoned. Onono, meanwhile, turned to petty crime -- a fact which pains his mother, though she laments that she sees few other paths for him. For her own part, Lawino begs on the streets in Gulu. All three try to stay together, shifting between the homes of various clan members, but never finding a permanent place to stay and never, Lawino emphasizes, being allowed to farm on their clan's land.

"There is no such thing as home for us," Lawino explains, "We have never had that." Her greatest wish, she says, is for a place where she and her two children could settle down in safety and take up subsistence cultivation. "There is no reason for us to starve like this," she says, "I know farming. I farmed my whole life; even with the LRA, I farmed. If we just had the land, we could build a quiet life and live in peace."

Aloyo Janet

Aloyo was abducted by the LRA in 2001, at the age of thirteen. Like her friends, Aloyo endured repeated rapes in the bush. At the age of fourteen, she gave birth to a boy she named Opiro Gabriel. In 2003, when Opiro was still an infant, she succeeded in escaping from LRA captivity.

Aloyo's father had passed away not long before her abduction. When she reached home, she was met with the devastating news that, during her two years in the bush, her mother had died as well. Although she was only fifteen years old, Aloyo's relatives told her that if she wanted a home, she would have to find a man to give her one.

Aloyo married an older man and gave birth to another four children. For some years, her life was relatively stable. Then, at the start of the Pandemic, when Aloyo was pregnant with her husband's fifth child, he abandoned her, leaving her to care for the children alone, with no stable home.

Aloyo and her eldest son, Opiro, scrape together a means of survival for themselves and the younger children by working other people's fields in exchange for small amounts of food. They find shelter by negotiating a series of temporary housing arrangements with various clan-members, none of whom are willing to take the family in on a long-term basis.

With a plot of land, Aloyo and her children could build a small home, begin cultivating their own crops, and secure a stable and more hopeful future.

Ajok Jennifer

Ajok was abducted in 2000 at the age of fifteen. Two years later, heavily pregnant with the child of an LRA officer, she managed to escape from her captors. Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a little girl whom she named Aloyo Too -- Acholi for "I overcame death."

Initially, Ajok was able to live at home with her mother and stepfather. She felt safe during this period because her mother defended her fiercely whenever anyone tried to antagonize her about her past. But this feeling of safety came to an abrupt end when Ajok's mother died a mere year after her return to civilian life.

Cast out by her stepfather, Ajok took her child and went to live with one of her uncles. For a time, she was allowed to farm a small plot of land by his homestead. But Ajok's cousins resented her presence on their father's land and soon chased her away, saying they didn't want to live with "lakwena" (a word literally meaning "messenger" but with historic associations to the LRA that have made it a derogatory term for former LRA abductees).

At one point, Ajok began receiving skills training from a foreign NGO, but the organization's funding ended before she could complete her course. At another point, a different aid agency promised her and several other returnees housing. Yet before the project could come to fruition, funding once again dried up.

Today, Ajok and her daughter stay with members of their clan but are expressly forbidden from farming on clan lands. "All I want," says Ajok, "is a place where I can farm, where no one will come to harass me. A place where Aloyo and I can have a permanent home, where no one can ever again tell us, 'Go back to the bush, go back to the LRA. You don't belong here.'"