The scene is surreal: a small hospital stands on one side of a dirt road; timber dwellings and storefronts align the other. Three roads meet nearby and out of the darkness children emerge, hundreds of them, walking in long processionals converging in the light at the gate of the hospital. Welcome to Gulu, northern Uganda.
The "Night Commuters", as they are known, walk in from surrounding villages and urban centres to stay at shelters like the one established by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the grounds of Lacore Hospital in 2004.
Many children walk distances of up to 10 kilometres every night to get to the shelters and the reason is simply safety. It is estimated that over 20,000 children have been abducted during the 20 year civil war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF).
Boys are easy targets for the LRA to bolster its military ranks. They are also easy to psychologically manipulate, indicated by the fact that many current high-ranking LRA officers were themselves abducted as boys.
While some are used for military purposes, most girls are abducted for use as sex slaves and some are given in marriage to officers.
It doesn’t take much to see that the shelters have become not just a safe refuge for the children, but somewhere where they can actually be children. "It’s a great paradox," said MSF’s resident psychologist in Gulu, Tine Meyer-Thomsen. "If you look around Gulu you see all these children, yet there are no children in Gulu. They’re not allowed to be children."
One of the biggest problems Meyer-Thomsen sees is an increasing amount of parental responsibility falling on the shoulders of elder siblings. In many cases they are taking on more of a parenting role as the parents are either killed, wounded or succumb to any one of the social problems like alcoholism, or HIV, affecting northern Uganda. "From such a young age, 12, 13, they have no life anymore," she said.
The children also know many others who have been abducted, killed or have simply disappeared, and have to live with that constant fear themselves. "It’s insecurity about the present moment and about the future," Meyer-Thomsen said. "They are completely lost and feel deflated because they have no future perspective."
An average of 1,200 children now sleep at the MSF shelter in Gulu every night. However, that number has risen to