The InterDependent

In Gulu, Uganda, old-fashioned rites help maintain order where chaos once reined.

In any country, when violent conflict or catastrophic natural disasters turn lives upside down, old belief systems can be powerful tools in restoring social stability. In poor countries, when outsiders like United Nations agencies are in the mix, their representatives in the field sometimes find that it pays to listen to the wisdom of elders while at the same time introducing new ways of coping with the traumatic disruptions of traditional life.

The UN Population Fund and other agencies have been part of this development in northern Uganda. Out of the chaos, unusual partnerships were created. That’s how the Population Fund found itself helping to draft local declarations on protecting women, and the US Agency for International Development got into paying for the goats needed for forgiveness rituals.

In Uganda’s Gulu district, multiple calamities had torn apart the villages and towns of the ethnic Acholi people and other traditional clans as the horrifically brutal band of killers calling themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army roamed across large areas, destroying homes and families and abducting children to serve as soldiers or sex slaves. When the national army arrived to stop the carnage, which at its peak happened between about 1997 and 2005-6, forced displacement into makeshift camps followed, along with more abuses by troops determined to make examples of anyone suspected of rebel sympathies. Families were ruined economically. Sexual violence – and prostitution for money or food – increased. HIV-AIDS began to take a high toll.

“Young girls forced into sexual slavery face a lot of stigma now. Families are embarrassed. We should have a way of handling the problem of children who committed crimes against their will.”

After something close to normalcy began to return and people went home, aid agencies, Ugandan and international, helped them initially, bringing amenities to make life easier: food, water, medicine, counseling, rehabilitation and some materials for repair and rebuilding. They also brought new ideas. In the case of the Population Fund, helping women with reproductive health needs gave field staff the opportunity to talk about equality and domestic violence, which held back community development and contributed to high maternal mortality and the spread of HIV infections.

Among traditional elders, the post-conflict years created the opportunity to reassert rituals and traditions that could contribute to the huge job of social healing and the reconstruction of society, which will have to go on after the foreigners are gone. Clan leaders shared their ideas with the UN and others.

East of Gulu, in the town of Lira, home of the Lango people, Alfred Adeke, a practical-minded former accountant in the cotton trade and a clan leader helping victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army, explained how the important role of clan chiefs were broken in 1966, when kingships were abolished and the country became a republic. “Cultural institutions were restored after 1995 in the Constitution,” Adeke said. “But the respect was gone because years had been lost.”

The Lango and Acholi elders say that reviving their rituals can complement a modern justice system, with it win-lose judgments, and better serve the poor, who stand a low chance of winning in a government court. In a clan-negotiated system the outcome does not have to be so harsh; reconciliation is often the major goal.

In Gulu, there is the Acholi Ker Kwaro, a traditional repository of Acholi culture and customary law. Recently clan leaders added a paper on “Acholi Principles on Gender Relations.” The preamble reveals both changing attitudes from within their society and outside influences. It refers to the “evolving and dynamic nature of culture” and takes a stand against forced spousal sex and the belief that men have the right to use physical violence against their wives.

The trend has gone national. In March, the Forum for Kings and Cultural Leaders in Uganda, concerned about climbing maternal death rates and AIDS, signed a declaration on “enhancing cultural strategies” to discourage premarital sex and combat cultural beliefs and practices that are harmful to women. They named female genital mutilation, early marriage and widow inheritance – the tradition of giving a woman whose husband has died to another member of his family, without her consent and without HIV testing.

In Gulu, customary Acholi law is a matter of intense and especially timely discussion as cultural chiefs and government officials alike are considering how to deal with former soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army when they return home, as many have. Because so many Acholi youth, boys and girls, were abducted and forced into the rebel army, and those who have returned are often severely traumatized or addicted to life with a gun, elders say that customary rituals help in bringing peace.

In Gulu, Uganda, old-fashioned rites help maintain order where chaos once reined.

“Children are tormented, possessed by evil spirits because of all the deeds they did,” said Nepthali Ococ, deputy chairman of the Acholi Elders. “Young girls forced into sexual slavery face a lot of stigma now. Families are embarrassed. We should have a way of handling the problem of children who committed crimes against their will.”

The Acholi have rituals for such situations. There is nyono tonggweno, a cleansing ceremony involving stepping on eggs, a sign of rebirth, for anyone coming back from the bush. There is tumu kom, with the sacrifice of a goat, for the cleansing and blessing of a more disturbed returnee “who doesn’t behave in a normal manner,” Ococ said. And there is moyo cere, when a whole area needs to be rid of spirits that have interfered with the return to normal life.

Ococ added that corpses remaining from the war had to be disposed of ritually, since people feared unburied bodies. At first, there was not enough money for the right number of goats to be sacrificed. This is where foreign aid stepped in, Ococ said. The money for goats was supplied by Usaid’s Northern Uganda Transition Initiative, which recognized the value of assisting the Acholi to achieve community peace and harmony in their own way. The gesture will not be forgotten.