Kony 2012

     In the great international uproar generated by the Kony 2012 video from Invisible Children, the story of one truly heroic woman's challenge to Kony  that began 15 years ago at the risk of her own life, appears to have been lost.

     The woman is Sister Rachele Faserra, an Italian nun of the Camboni order, who as Deputy Headmistress of St, Mary's school in Aboke, Uganda, went after thugs from Kony's LRA after they had abducted 149 girls from the school in a night raid in October 1996.

     Traveling by bicycle, carrying money from the school for ransom, Sr. Faserra, somehow confident she would not be harmed because she was a white nun, found the raiders and persuaded them to release all but 30 of the abducted girls. She offered herself up in exchange for the remaining 30, but the LRA soldiers refused. Eventually, she was joined by parents of the remaining 30 in forming the Concerned Parents Association and they took their campaign to every authority imaginable, including then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, even Muammar Ghaddafi and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who actually was supplying the LRA with weapons and other needs in return for raids they were conducting against the Christian population in Southern Sudan.

     The last of the 30 Aboke girls, Catherine Ajok, was released 13 years later in 2009. She was pregnant with a child by Kony who had taken all 30 as his wives. Some died in captivity.

     The extraordinary saga of the girls and Sr. Faserra's tireless and courageous campaign to rescue them was recorded in a book, "Aboke Girls, Children Abducted in Northern Uganda," by another courageous woman, Belgian journalist Else de Temmerman. The book never went "viral" but it should, now that that's possible.

     I first read this book in 2005 while I was in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda, on a writing assignment for Catholic Relief Services to bring attention to the conflict there in which CRS was supporting programs to help rescued victims of the LRA -- all former child soldiers and "wives" of LRA militiamen, as well as programs to protect people from abduction and death at the hands of the LRA. I have posted those articles elsewhere here on my blog.

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     Regarding the viral video "Kony 2012," it occurs to me that if each of the people who have viewed the video so far -- an estimated 40 million to date -- were to contribute $1 or even 50 cents to a bounty for Kony's deliverance to justice, he'd probably be delivered up in a hurry. 

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     One final observation: If Kony ever is captured, the world that dedicated itself to that end will have to find ways to deal with the young and old, men and women, who have been with him all these years -- practically all of them against their will. They will have to be re-integrated into a society that is barely able to eke out a decent existence even without the threat of the LRA. That will take money, too. Lots of it.