Ring Banggol: The life I went through, it was really terrible. There were names they
would use to address me, "abid," "abid": that means slave. If you escape you will be amputated.
And I’ve seen it from other people. The way they would beat me, the way they would
hit me was really unbearable. It became apparent to me if I didn’t have to escape I would
always end up here, and these people are bound to kill me. I even forgot what my name was.
The only way to introduce myself was "I was the slave of so and so."
Sunday Achan: My life history started like this. When we escaped from Sudan to Uganda,
we lived in Kitgum refugee camp. We had had the rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army,
came and attacked different refugee camps. One evening they came. The rebels decided
to kill us. So, they started selecting people to kill, and my mom was one of them. They
started beating her head with an axe. My mother died at that moment. The boy came at me with
a machete and he cut me on my face, my forearm, and my breast. I pretended to be dead. I saw
the rebels go after my sister. They beat her so badly that her head cracked in two pieces.
My sister had been carrying her two little girls. I must have fainted at some point.
I woke up and everything was quiet except I could hear children crying. I took Amata
hand and slowly we started to make our way through all the dead people.
Hakim Monykuer: In 1988, most of the people were starving. The famine was so, so bad and
there was lots of hunger, people were dying of hunger. There were so many people dead
on the way. By that time, my mom was pregnant. So, when we were about to reach to Ethiopia,
my mom was really in agony. Crying. We were just looking at her; helpless. There was no
way we could help her. And there, my mom delivered, with the help of my dad. The following morning,
we took off. My mom had to continue moving. My dad became so weak; he can't move again.
If you could have taken my photo back then, and look at it right now, you wouldn't believe
it. I was so thin; the whole body dried up. The suffering I have seen, and courage [unintelligible],
to pursue my studies.
