Reigniting the Fire: Grace Acan and Evelyn Amony Reflect on Presenting Ododo Wa in Uganda
In December 2019, the traveling exhibit launched in Uganda. The launch of "Ododo Wa: Stories of Girls in War / Ododo pa anyira ikare me lweny" was an opportunity to ground the exhibit in its original context in northern Uganda. For Evelyn Amony and Grace Acan, it was also a chance to show their community of fellow survivors the exhibit. The exhibit's tour in northern Uganda presented a unique opportunity for some of the women to see their drawings included in the exhibit.
Grace Acan and Evelyn Amony have co-authored a reflection about their experience. Read their reflection below:
The main reason we held the Ododo Wa event at the TAKS (Through Art Keep Smiling) Art Centre in Gulu was to reignite the fire. The will to address the issues stemming from our sufferings and those of our colleagues was dying. We needed to come together in solidarity with our sisters, with whom we experienced the same fate, so they would know they are not forgotten. We wanted our sisters to know we continue to fight together for our rights and advocate for reparations. We continue to call for the end of the abuse of girls in war.Living together with our fellow victims has built very strong bonds and relationships among us. We share ideas and challenges and we look for solutions to help each other whenever we go through hard times. Our experience has made us so close to each other that we feel the relationships we have are stronger than the ones we have with our own siblings.
There is a saying that "a friend in need is a friend indeed." That is how we lived in captivity -- we shared whatever we had to spare with friends who needed it most. Be it food, water, clothing, or any help we could offer, we gave what we had to someone who needed it. This is the attitude we have maintained. Even when we got home without anything except our lives, we gave emotional support to each other to encourage each other while we were starting a new life after war. In the original storytelling group there were only five members. We started sharing stories and the stories became our source of inspiration. Many more women saw the positive change in the lives of those involved with the storytelling and decided to make changes for themselves. This is the origin of our strong bonds.
We addressed issues with our sisters in Gulu to assure them and the broader community that we didn’t engage in the exhibition for only our sakes. Ododo Wa is not only about us. It about women and girls in northern Uganda as a region–girls who suffered and continue to suffer several abuses like we did.
It is also about girls and women globally. We have the spirit of sisterhood that we had before when we first started sharing our stories. Together with our sisters, we are determined to go far. We will advocate until justice is accorded to all women who have suffered in conflict in northern Uganda. Our commitment is evident in the exhibit through the inclusion of significant drawings that were jointly made as a group. We used visual art to express the challenges we went through. The drawings are a visual expression of passed suffering but they also remind us of our healing. Now the drawings are in the exhibit, which is a tool for advocacy.
The responses to the traveling exhibit were positive because it is a representation of all the affected women's experiences. The exhibit supports us as we re-emphasize the challenges we face. The presentations and dialogues around the exhibit showed that its audience agrees that our stories matter and that justice and reparations are urgently needed.
Before the exhibit’s launch in Uganda, we worried it would trigger past, bad memories of the war. But when we presented at the museum in Kampala, and then in Kitgum, the welcome was warm and positive. The audience expressed that many victims in Uganda do not have the courage and chances to come out and speak about their experiences, which deters them from getting complete healing. They live in pain because of fear over their community's reactions. One of the positive results of the presentation of the exhibit and the storytelling is that it gave courage to others. It created a space to express the needs of affected women and their families.
Gulu was our third stop during the exhibit's tour. It followed the events at the Uganda National Museum and the National Memory and Peace Documentation Centre. We agreed to take the exhibit to Gulu because there were more conversations to have among the women and the community in the region. Women are still facing challenges. Those in attendance, who include affected women, parents of affected people, and community members, appreciated the efforts we made to disrupt the increasing silence on the plight of women and girls who suffered during the war. The presentation in Gulu encouraged us to continue what we started and the audience was appreciative of the good work we have completed so far. They kept asking for the next plans after the Ododo Wa event.
We continue to advocate for reparations, and we are appealing to the government of Uganda to speed up the work of the national transitional justice policy so that meaningful reparations are implemented. Reparations include victims' reintegration needs. That includes our social, economic, and psychological needs. We also need Non-Governmental Organisations and international communities to support us in our struggle. We need to ensure that women affected by war access social, economic, and psycho-social justice. Psycho-social justice supports survivors to heal emotionally through counseling and social support. We need to end the stigma and encourage acceptance by survivors' communities. Survivors need to feel loved and safe in their communities. Direct support, buying the hand-made products made by survivors, and the support of income generating activities, are all important in empowering survivors so that they can sustain a means of livelihoods
