Stories of Hope: Apiyo Joyce

If anyone deserves the right to be angry with their situation in life, it is Apiyo Joyce. Disabled, orphaned, and traumatized during her short lifetime, one might think she would be angry at God and the world. Joyce, who is 17 years old, must use a walking stick to hobble around on her weak and deformed legs. Accepted by her peers, but often excluded because of her disability, Joyce nonetheless puts on a face that says she is content with life. Although not decidedly outgoing, Joyce loves attention from friends and visitors. In her limited English and my very limited Acholi, we sometimes sit at converse as best we can. When there are no words left, we just simply sit.
The details surrounding Joyce’s disability are unclear. She tells me that disease affected her at a young age, leaving her crippled for life. Most likely, it was polio, a disease that has been eradicated in America due to simple inoculations. As with most Ugandans, Joyce has no pictures or records that document her childhood. No parent to tell her what she was like or what happened when she was young. All she has are her own fuzzy memories and perhaps the befuddled reminiscing of some elderly relatives. She does say, however, that she remembers her mother. When I ask what her mother was like, Joyce tells me that she was a peasant farmer, brown and beautiful. (By “brown”, she means that her mother was very dark skinned, a feature that her tribe, the Acholi, take pride in.) Her mother was brutally murdered by the LRA rebels in the year 2000. According to Joyce, the rebels came into the village one night and found her mother outside. In order to strike fear and to establish their control over the area, the LRA had established an unspoken “curfew” for the rural population. They would often murder any villagers found outside their homes after dark. Joyce and her siblings were inside sleeping while LRA rebels killed their mother with a panga (a large knife). Their father died the next year of disease.
Joyce was only about 10 years old when her parents died. At the time, her brothers, Dennis and Alan, were 8 and 4 years old, and her sister, Nancy, was 6 years old. Joyce was in P.4 at the time, but she and her siblings were forced to drop out of school because there was no one to pay their school fees. An aid group helped them go to school for another year and she was able to complete P.5. But then the children were again forced to drop out of school due to lack of funds. After her parents died, Joyce largely became the caretaker of the family. Different relatives would help and take them in for a time, but, in reality, the children were largely on their own.
During those years, war continued to rage in the North and, like many orphaned children, Joyce and her siblings often found themselves struggling simply to stay out of harm’s way. When I asked whether they were afraid, Joyce tells me that every night they would pray that God would allow them to see the next morning. Whenever word spread of an imminent LRA attack, the government troops who were supposed to be defending the villages and displaced persons camps, would flee, leaving the innocent villagers defenseless. The people would then leave their homes and run into the bush to hide. Joyce tells me that she and her siblings would run together to the bush, then split into two groups to hide. Oftentimes, when the threat of capture was great, they would sleep in the bush every night, only returning to their home during daylight hours. I asked Joyce about her youngest brother, Alan, who was only a small boy at the time. How did they keep him quiet? When they would hide in the bush, she says, Alan would often cry when he heard gunshots. They sometimes resorted to slapping him to keep him quiet. His cries could mean death for them all.
Joyce had several close encounters with the rebels growing up. One of those times, a group of rebels came during the day in search of money and food. But the children were alone, and they had neither money nor food. After searching the house and finding nothing, they asked the children where all the “big people” were. As the eldest, Joyce answered that their parents were dead. One of the rebels kicked her in the head. The LRA soldiers did not know whether she was telling the truth or not, but either way, they did not like her answer. The soldiers separated her from her siblings and took her outside, probably in an effort to intimidate and frighten her. After some time, the rebels realized that Joyce had no further information to offer, and they brought her back into the hut with her siblings. Once back inside the hut, one of the rebels ominously asked them for an ax. Joyce told him that they did not own an ax. The rebels told the children that they were going to search around the property, and if they found an ax, they were going to kill two of them. The soldiers searched for an axe, but when they did not find one, they decided to move on to the next home in the village. Before they left, they instructed Joyce and her siblings to remain where they were. As soon as the rebels left, the children ran to the bush and escaped. They did not want to wait around to see whether the rebels found an ax at another home.
Since then, Joyce’s life has calmed down considerably, especially as peace has gradually returned to her homeland. For the past two years, she and her brothers and sister have been living with a grandmother. In 2006, all four children were enrolled into Hope Alive! and returned to school. Joyce is now in her second year studying tailoring at a vocational school. She returned to primary school and studied up to P.7, but after such a long absence from her studies, the class work was difficult for her. She opted to attend vocational school instead of going on to the secondary level. Dennis is in secondary school while the two younger children are still struggling through primary school. Joyce hesitates to answer when asked what she dreams of doing with her life one day. As most Ugandan children who know little besides the camp and survival, she simply says that she wishes to finish her studies, to be able to work and make money, and maybe to become a tailoring teacher. These are certainly very noble goals. But then the question is posed another way: “If you could do anything with your life, if there were no constraints, what would you do?” As the translator relates the question to Joyce, a shy smile creeps over her face. She says would be a singer because she loves to sing.
Life still presents its challenges for Joyce. She faces the physical discomfort of having to hobble to school every day with the help of her walking stick. Aside from the physical pain, her heart still carries an obvious pain left by the absence of her parents. Joyce tells me that she has often wished that someone “big” – a parent – were still there to care for her and her siblings. Joyce’s grandmother is elderly and needs much care herself. Thus, as is often the case, Joyce, as the oldest child, carries the burden of responsibility. However, being disabled adds an element of difficulty to her already overwhelming job of being the head of the household. She says that it is sometimes difficult to watch over her younger siblings. They are stubborn, she says, and will often not listen to her advice. She cannot always monitor or control them. In addition, Joyce cannot do work in the garden due to her disability. Consequently, the family must rely on Denis and Nancy to do all the digging. Fortunately, Hope Alive! is able to fill in some of the gaps left by the lack of parents in Joyce’s home. The children receive food supplements regularly through the project. In addition, the mentors can provide some oversight and discipline that Joyce cannot provide to herself or her siblings. Indeed, Joyce confesses that the project has given her more than just food and the opportunity to go to school. It has also provided her with “morals” and preaching, as well as games and singing that help her to forget about her pain of the past.
As a victim of Uganda’s civil war, Joyce’s insights about the conflict carry much weight. She believes that if a permanent peace agreement is signed, then life will never be the same again because her people will finally be able to return to their villages and farm again. That is a poignant statement for several reasons, but most significantly because Joyce’s admittance that “life will never be the same” indicates that the only life she has ever known has been life in the camps. Joyce could not recall many memories of a life in the village without the threat of war. She only said that she could try to imagine a life without war, and that it would be so simple compared to her life now. She, like many children, has never experienced “normal” life within her cultural context. She does not really know what it means to live as an Acholi, peacefully farming on her ancestral lands. She only knows what it means to survive in an IDP camp in the midst of a brutal war. Joyce has definite feelings concerning the fate of the LRA’s notorious leader, Joseph Kony. With little hesitation, Joyce confesses that she thinks he should be executed because of what he has done to the people of Northern Uganda, and because of what the LRA has done to her. Indeed, Joseph Kony and the LRA have stolen much from her – her mother, her childhood, her education, her chance for a normal life. But what the LRA has stolen cannot match the new life and hope Joyce has found in her faith, her education, and her friends. The last thing Joyce tells me is actually a message for other people who have problems. She says to tell them that they should never forget God, even in their problems, because he is the provider and the restorer of hope. Joyce’s life is proof.