War Dance

War Dance is this incredibly awesome documentary that takes place in Patongo Uganda, an area claimed to have been the most "remote and vulnerable in the war zone" during the LRA insurgency. The movie is about a group of children who get to compete in the biggest music festival in Uganda and represent their war-torn village and show the rest of Uganda that the war didn't kill their love of music. The documentary highlights three children who tell their story and what happened to them and their families during the war. I very very highly recommend this movie! It's not just about the horrific things that happened in northern Uganda, but about the power of the human spirit and hope that brings for a better future.

This film made me realize that I need to keep in mind that I have absolutely no idea what the people I will be working with and talking to in Uganda have been through. I can't think that just from watching movies and reading material, that I can pretend to know anything about their experiences. The movie said that 30,000 Acholi children were abducted by the rebel army and forced to be children soldiers and over 200,000 children were orphaned by the war in Uganda. This tells me that if I end up working in one of the orphanages while in Uganda, many of the children will probably fall under those categories.

Keeping that in mind, I also learned from the movie that these children, despite the fact that they have experienced more than I can imagine and have characteristics of adults in that sense, they are still children. It showed one of the boys and his friends running to the little pond to take a quick swim, knowing they weren't supposed to, laughing and splashing each other and then quickly running back to the camp when they knew it was getting too risky that the soldiers might find them. Teenagers here do stuff like that all the time!