To Stop a Warlord

by Shannon Sedgwick Davis

  I knew the strain Laren was under, how tough and lonely it was to be in remote areas for long stretches, across the world from his wife and parents in San Diego, how challenging to be the sole person with the job of communicating between diverse organizations and personalities. And I knew how deeply Laren internalized his experience, how he tried to manage everything himself, only speaking when he had to. But I was oblivious to the danger he’d been in.

  34

  CALLED OUT

  A MONTH BEFORE the second SOG class was to graduate, I held a sleepy Brody in my arms as we entered the inner-city mission church in downtown San Antonio for the candlelight Christmas Eve service. Connor pulled Sam ahead to get candles, alert to the privilege of holding a flame in his own hands, and I stood in the hallway near the sanctuary, nuzzling Brody, his head warm on my shoulder, his hair soft on my cheek. I savored these moments, the pure peace of being with my boys, no other thought weighing on my mind.

  “I get a candle, too?” Brody lifted his head to ask.

  “Yes, love.” Dear boy, eager to claim his independence. He’d started in the fall at the Pineapple School, a wonderful Spanish immersion preschool, and every night at dinner when we shared our highs and lows from the day, he said his high was “apple school.” It threw me sometimes, his babyhood already gone. At work, time seemed to creep by, the tedium of communication lags, the painfully slow pace through the bush. But at home there was never enough time. I’d blink and my boys would have outgrown another shoe size, their blossoming so swift they were out of a stage before I’d even gotten used to its having begun. Witnessing who they were becoming took my breath away. And every celebration of growth, the constant evolving and unfolding, was a loss, too. I swayed with Brody, breathing deeply, trying to preserve the moment in memory before it too was gone.

  “It must feel so good to be home.”

  I opened my eyes to see that one of the church members had joined me. “It does,” I said.

  Time at home was especially precious because Sam’s mom—the boys called her Mimi—had just been diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. A strong, vibrant matriarch with four children and eleven grandkids, Mimi was a music teacher, an organist and pianist, who would engage me in passionate discussions of women’s and international human rights. She had always been healthy and energetic—and she wasn’t a smoker—but by the time she was diagnosed, the cancer had already made its way to other regions of her body and she’d been put on an aggressive course of chemo. Sam had immediately stepped in as a caregiver. We didn’t know how much time was left.

  “Those little ones must miss you an awful lot,” the church member said.

  “It’s hard on us,” I agreed, rubbing Brody’s back, the cotton weave of his red-and-yellow polo shirt, everything about him soft, holding him extra tight.

  “You’re doing good in the world,” she said, as the gathering crowd milled around us, looking for friends and family before heading into the sanctuary. “But don’t forget your family. You have a responsibility first to your boys.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been called out by a well-meaning person for the time I had to spend away from home. I was used to people implying that I wasn’t being the best mom because of my job. This had been a point of tension my entire life as a mother. While I had learned to face decisions and criticisms in my work with confidence, there was nothing as daunting and challenging as being a custodian of another human being, and I was always second-guessing my parenting. It was tough when others hit me where I already felt vulnerable.

  As much as my fellow church member’s judgment stung, it reminded me that one of the biggest messages I spoke to my boys was my wholehearted wish for them to be whomever in the world they were created to be. Doing the work I felt called to do was the best way to show up for my boys. To model for them what it means to act on your passions, to be who you were made to be, to show up where your heart feels strong. If I didn’t model these values for them, who would? And how could I expect them to live as their full selves if I was not fully being who I was created to be: a mom and an advocate? Many moms do this, and in creating and living out their passions they honor their greatest gifts: their children.

  This was the truth in my heart. “Merry Christmas,” I said, and carried Brody into the dark room filled with candlelight.

  35

  THE FARMER

  I RETURNED TO Camp Bondo in January 2012 for the second SOG class graduation. For the first time in the decades of the conflict, the Ugandan military was ready to deploy a full battalion of specialized soldiers. Eeben had fulfilled his contract with us for the two rounds of training. The trainers’ work was done. And the US Special Forces were beginning to deploy. Over the next few months they would build their own bases near each of the three SOG forward bases, and be dispersed into twelve-man teams. The operational detach teams were designed to be self-sufficient—each had a weapons specialist and a mechanic, and every soldier spoke at least one language in addition to English. They were essentially “diplomatic warriors” who would work with the Ugandan military and local personnel in each area of operation. And they would take over the training of the next group of Ugandan soldiers.

  By then, my worry had become chronic. I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time before I woke up, heart racing out of my chest. But now that our training intervention was coming to a close, the tightness in my chest began to loosen.

  Before leaving Uganda, I met with Laren and Eeben at Faze 3, a yellow-walled restaurant, half tandoori joint, half pub, minutes from the airport in Entebbe. It was our last meeting before Eeben and his men would pack up and leave Bondo. Our partnership was over. Laren and I expressed how grateful we were for his efforts and effectiveness, and Eeben wished us luck with the work ahead.

  * * *

  —

  On paper, we had completed what we had set out to do. But our year and a half in the field had taught us how naïve we had been to believe that the training would be the silver bullet—and how much more might be possible in the fight against the LRA if we stayed. We could focus our efforts on supporting the work in the field, and trying to fill the air support gap. There’d been too much progress made to pack up now.

  With Generals Wamala and Aronda, we began to plan what was next, in what ways Bridgeway could best be present and support the Ugandan SOG battalion and complement the US Special Forces team. Intelligence from informants in the north had helped the SOG pick up the LRA trail they’d lost after Kony’s near capture in September 2011. It was evident that at least one LRA group had moved in that direction, but the Ugandan military didn’t know if the LRA was based in one location in the north or still on the move. Then their informants reported a new commodity for sale in a market in Kafia Kingi. The new product was simsim, a small seed traditionally grown in northern Uganda and eaten by the Acholi, not a crop traditionally eaten in that region. The Ugandan military commanders believed that the LRA could have brought simsim up north to cultivate. If they were growing simsim crops, enough to sell a surplus at market, then they must have a permanent camp nearby.

  There was finally a glimmer of hope that we could discover Kony’s exact whereabouts. But the logistics of getting the SOG soldiers up there, supporting them and staying in communication with them while they were so far from base, and getting them back to the forward base—it was more than we could realistically take on or afford.

  “US Special Forces will be forward and operational soon,” I reassured Laren. “We’ve just got to trust and keep moving forward the best we can.”

  * * *

  —

  Hope came faster than I dared expect, and in an unexpected way. After our final meeting with Eeben, I traveled to Congo on business and met Howard Buffett, international philanthropist and oldest son of Warren Buffett, who was also on the same trip.

  Howard was wholesome and robust, with hair gone whi
te. It was easy to picture him on the back of a tractor. He looked like he’d have a steady, measured manner, but he acted with childlike joy. With a constant supply of junk food—black licorice, cherry Twizzlers, Tootsie Pops, Mint Milano cookies—that he passed around on the plane, he was full of boundless energy. When the rest of us were trying to nap on the flight, he would talk and talk, doing karate chops in our faces to keep us alert. He quickly discovered that I had a weak spot for purple Tootsie Pops and he’d save them for me, tossing them to me with a smile on his face.

  My sense of joy was running on fumes those days. Howard’s lively and joyful presence alleviated some of the heaviness. And I soon discovered, when we had the chance to talk one-on-one, how brilliantly his huge heart and wisdom shone. He had a fascinating mix of interests—an accomplished farmer and conservationist, he was also an avid photographer and he had a background in law enforcement. He’d been to 152 countries—including every country in Africa, plus Somaliland and Western Sahara, the two disputed territories there—and was rich in stories that revealed his hunger to contribute to the betterment of the world. He was more than a donor. He was an eager learner, a voracious student of the human experience.

  He told me about serving as auxiliary deputy sheriff in two counties in Illinois, helping US Marshals serve warrants and canine units search for drugs; supporting victims of child and domestic abuse; farming fifteen hundred acres himself, doing all the planting and combining; providing grants to research conservation farming. “More people are recognizing the importance of taking care of soil,” he said, “of using Mother Nature to break up soil compaction, increasing organic matter so you have cover on your soil year-round.”

  Once he was started on the farm talk I thought I’d never be able to move him back to a topic of shared experience, but then he started saying things that completely intersected with what I knew to be true in humanitarian work: “It’s about technology. And knowledge. And then of course a lot of it is what you’re able to pay for,” he said. “And it all has to start with deep listening, with trying to understand what’s really going on.”

  We were on a small plane, headed between remote villages. Driving would have taken us days. He waved below us at the beautiful terraced farms that rose up into the green hills. Some of the crops had been planted in lovely spiral shapes, as artistic as they were sustaining. He saw where my gaze had landed and said, “Terraces are one of the best conservation measures ever and they’re the oldest known to humans. It’s baffling—if you step back and look at the world, we’ve spent hundreds of billions, probably trillions of dollars on research for corn, soybeans, rice, wheat. And we’ve spent a minuscule amount of research in Africa on African solutions.”

  When he asked about my work in the region I started to give him a vague answer. The list of people who knew the details of our collaboration with the Ugandan military was very small. But I felt I could trust Howard, and that his insights would be a huge asset. I confidentially shared with him what we were doing to stop Kony. Every time I told the story of our involvement, I remembered how many months and years it had taken me to warm up to the idea, how crazy it would have sounded to me at the beginning, and I waited for Howard to express surprise or even admonishment. But he didn’t. He got it. Instantly.

  “This isn’t a military operation,” he said. “It’s law enforcement. It’s calling the police. Like if your neighbors were screaming and had a problem, you’d call the cops. And if the cops weren’t there, next time you’d form a police department.”

  He posed great questions about logistics, intel, equipment, strategy—questions he knew to ask because of his own experience in law enforcement. When he asked what our greatest challenges had been, I told him how the lack of air support was essentially crippling any momentum that we gained.

  “Why don’t you just provide the air support?” he asked.

  “The cost, for one.” But there was another barrier, one that I hadn’t articulated to Laren yet, or even fully to myself. It was the stubborn hope that another entity—a more appropriate and established entity, like the UN or a government, would step up and do the necessary thing. I had largely moved past the incredulity and anger into action, but the truth was I was still frustrated that Bridgeway’s intervention was even necessary, and the more months we were in the field the more vulnerable I felt. “Even if we could afford to fly and fuel a helicopter, is it really our place to get involved in that level of military operations?” I asked.

  Howard laughed. “Is it really ‘your place’ to train an army?”

  He had a point. Here I was drawing lines everywhere, limits beyond which I wouldn’t go—but essentially, we’d already gone all in.

  “Look,” he said. “You’re absolutely not doing what private foundations usually do with charitable money. Private foundations reintegrate child soldiers, help orphans, create economic opportunity for people who have lost all their resources. Private foundations try to solve the problems that come as a result of someone like Kony. But if you just address the symptoms of problems you never get at the roots.

  “Yes, you’re doing something risky. And very unusual. But isn’t it also the most efficient way to use charitable money? Isn’t trying to actually stop a warlord—instead of just responding to the damage—the least risky solution? It’s very clear to me. If you knew someone was going to start a forest fire, would you wait for him to start it and spend the next however many days or months trying to put it out? Or would you do your absolute best to stop him from starting the fire? As for the cost,” he said, handing me a package of Twizzlers, “our foundation will cover it.”

  He offered to provide us with a helicopter and help us fund a small fixed-wing plane. With his law enforcement background and decades of humanitarian work, he also understood the tactical power a tracking dog team could add to the mission. He said that he would fund a team of Kenyan dog handlers and Belgian Malinois and Dutch shepherd dogs to assist with more targeted tracking to recover victims. And just like that we had a new partner, one of the globe’s biggest philanthropists, a man who is all heart and finds a way to bring laughter in the midst of some of the hardest problems in the world.

  GULU UNIVERSITY

  David Ocitti

  ONE JANUARY MORNING, nine years after his abduction, David was racing to school, late for his first lecture. He was two years into a business degree at Gulu University, the lucky recipient of a Gulu District NGO Forum scholarship, without which he wouldn’t have been able to continue his studies past high school.

  As fortunate as he was to be able to pursue a degree that would put him among the very most educated people in northern Uganda, the opportunity left David with a scar. For years he had lived and studied alongside peers who had also lost parents to the LRA. He knew he was innocent, he knew it in his head. But in his heart he felt that he was enjoying a privilege he didn’t deserve.

  As he ran across the red dirt road, someone shouted his name. A group of kids he knew from high school was crossing the same street. One of the young men had been orphaned by the LRA. David knew exactly when and how his parents had died. He had always felt protective of this boy as they grew up.

  “I’m late!” David called to him. “I want to catch up but I can’t talk now.”

  “I’m late for lectures, too,” the young man said.

  “You’re at university?”

  His friend nodded.

  “I’m so glad for you.” David knew the boy didn’t have money for school, and asked how he was able to continue his studies.

  “My friends and I all got scholarships from a group called Invisible Children that supports LRA victims.”

  If there was an organization out there repairing lives and helping his friends, David wanted to know everything about it. He decided to visit their office in Gulu that very afternoon.

  * * *

  —

  After his m
orning classes, David found the Invisible Children office and met Jolly Okot, the country director and the person David would learn was most instrumental in creating the projects in northern Uganda.

  “Is it true you offer scholarships to victims of LRA violence?” he asked.

  Jolly, a middle-aged mother of young children, had short hair, full heart-shaped cheeks, and a playful twinkle in her eyes. She nodded.

  “How?”

  She told him that in order to give northern Ugandan survivors a chance to go to school, groups of crazy mzungu—Westerners—traveled around the United States, telling American college students about the LRA and raising money to help people affected by the conflict.

  “What if people stopped giving money?” David asked. “What would happen to all of the Ugandan students’ scholarships?”

  Jolly said that Invisible Children had been enormously successful in engaging American youth in activism and charitable giving, but that was the only revenue stream. If Americans—in this case, mostly young American students—stopped giving, the funds would dry up and the scholarships and other rehabilitation opportunities cease.