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SOS Childrens Villages Saves Child Victimized by Ugandan Civil War

July 13, 2007

At the age of twelve, Otto was an innocent victim of the 20-year civil war in Uganda and suffered terrible facial wounds from a bullet. Today, thanks to SOS Children’s Villages and the generosity of medical personnel, Otto is regaining his lost childhood.

To see 16-year-old Otto bent over a desk with his teacher going over class work, one would never guess the trauma that he has seen in his short life. He is tall, fairly confident and appears to be concerned about understanding the English lesson - like any other adolescent school boy. It is only when he lifts his head that you notice the scars on his face and the way his nose has a darker pigment than the rest of his skin. If he was a boy in Europe you would think, perhaps, that Otto had been in a car crash or maybe had fallen through a window. But once you know that Otto is from northern Uganda and lived the first twelve years of life through a civil war you might guess at other fates - a machete wound? A gunshot?

The truth is that Otto’s injuries were caused after he was kidnapped by the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, which regularly abducted children to use as child soldiers and sex slaves. In one sense Otto was lucky. His abductors were ambushed by the Ugandan army shortly after taking him and other children, and Otto was rescued. Other children have been kept for years to service the rag-tag rebel army, often dying on the battlefield or suffering grizzly deaths at the hands of their masters. But even though Otto was freed soon after being taken, he was shot in the crossfire of the ambush, incurring serious facial injuries that left him without a nose, only partial hearing, and in terrible pain.

Otto is taken to Nairobi

SOS Children’s Villages co-workers were in northern Uganda in May 2002 when they found Otto in a reception centre. They were there to investigate the possibility of establishing a children’s village in Gulu to cater for the freed abductees and the children born in captivity. Otto was taken back to SOS Children’s villages and offered free surgical reconstruction for his face by Placet, an organization that provides plastic and reconstructive surgery to victims of terror, war, torture, etc., and SOS children.  Otto spent 6 months in the Berlin Children’s Village to see special doctors for his wounds, and all operations possible were completed in fall of last year.  He is now back in Uganda.

He has undergone many experiences

In his short life Otto has experienced a great deal. From a normal boy living his childhood in Uganda, Otto became an innocent victim of a brutal war and suffered unbearable pain. Through his suffering Otto has also learnt about compassion - the compassion of one person for another - and through this compassion he slowly began the long and painful road to recovery, starting at the SOS Children’s Village Nairobi. In the village Otto learnt how to become a child again - to live with a family, to go to school, to make friends and to play with them, in a secure and peaceful environment far from the horrors of war.  At home in the village, he does not feel like an orphan boy- but a normal boy, with a nurturing family and home.

SOS Children’s Villages workers and mothers dedicate their lives to helping children.  With your help, we can continue to save children just like Otto.

Topics: Africa, Case Study |