Ronald Okello, a former child soldier, is now a top student and Prefect of his class.
Age 18-years-old
School Crane High School – Kitintale campus
Class Senior 4 (11th Grade)
Village Paipir/Pader District
Family situation I stay with my mother and brother. My father was killed by the rebels.
I want to be an engineer.
Ambition I want to start an NGO to help children that lived in IDP (refugee) camps.
Hobbies Reading and talking with my friends.
My story
“I was abducted by the Lords Resistance Arm in 2001 at the age of nine. When we went to the market at 10 am, the rebels ambushed us and took my older brother and I. I was tied up with a rope, my brother was beaten up. We moved for a very long distance carrying heavy loads. They beat me. After four months my brother and I were separated. I have not seen him since. I did not have a gun. I was too young, too small. I carried heavy loads and took care of the small babies.
I was instructed to kill my father. I told them, ‘I am not going to kill him. If you want to kill me you are free to kill me.’ The rebels killed my dad by hacking him to pieces with a machete. They beat me for refusing to kill him – 36 strokes with a big stick on my buttocks and back. They made me lie down and put a big stone on my neck. It hurt a lot.
During a battle between the LRA and the UPDF (Ugandan army), I was running to save my life. I was shot in the arm. After I was shot, I did not have the energy to run, so the LRA just left me. The soldiers took me to the barracks, then to the hospital. The next day the doctors decided to cut off my arm because it was getting rotten. After I was released from the hospital, my mother and I moved to Pader camp for internally displaced people, a refugee camp, for safety.
L.E.A.D Uganda enrolled me in 7th grade at St John Bosco Katende Primary School. At first, I sat by myself after class and cried. But through the efforts of L.E.A.D Uganda and Sister Max, the headmistress of the school, I started healing. By the end of the term I was elected class prefect.
I am now in high school and studying hard. I was elected class prefect in high school also. L.E.A.D Uganda’s staff and Uncle Steve helped me deal with my anger. This allowed me to concentrate and improve academically. I moved from the bottom third of class to the top track in two years. The L.E.A.D family — my broithers and sisters, aunts and uncles — helped me regain faith in myself and the world. L.E.A.D even took me to the United States in 2008, where I received a prosthetic arm.
I dream of one day becoming an engineer. I want to start an NGO to help children that formally lived in IDPs. (Internally Displaced People’s camps).”
