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Rosa is fifty-five year widow (her husband was a soldier who died in a battle with the LRA) and has six children aged fifteen
to twenty five. She also takes care of one of her grandsons - the mother of
which died during childbirth.
Rosa makes her money as a retailer of sardines. During the wet season she
also sells tomatoes.
On the 16th of June 2002, the LRA raided her village. They were going to take
her youngest daughter, but she insisted they take her instead. The LRA agreed as
her daughter was lame due to an earlier bout of Polio. The LRA took everything
of value from her village and broke all the village bicycles so no one could quickly
inform the government soldiers.
Rosa was forced to carry 75kg bags of sorghum with several chickens strapped to
her arms. She was forced to run for six miles,
then walk for six miles, and
so on. Many fellow villages died on the journey.
During her three month stay in the LRA, one abducted man managed to escape with
one of the LRA's guns. The LRA was not happy. They went to the man's
village and killed fifty-six people in the hope that one of them was the man who
stole the gun. They
later learnt that they hadn't killed him and repeated
the exercise, this time killing eighteen. A similar result meant another raid
killing six people. Still they could not kill him, so they gave up.
The man is said to be living in Gulu somewhere. A high price for one gun...
Rosa spent most of her time in the LRA with one of its more dangerous generals.
She was sent to fetch water one day and just kept on walking. She eventually
made it back to Kitgum.
She wishes she could expand her business so that she could raise school fees for
her children.
Rosa is not happy that three-quarters of the women in Kitgum are widows and feels
that the problems all stem from Yoweri Museveni - the current Ugandan president
who has been ruling for twenty long years.
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