ENTEBBE, Uganda---When Jane Kade saw a story on the news eight months ago about schoolgirls kidnapped by armed men from a boarding school on the other side of Africa, their plight resonated with her deeply.
"I had nightmares that night," the soft-spoken 25-year-old, who has shrivelled hands and a scar running up one arm, told AFP. "They are also suffering, like me."
Nearly two decades before Boko Haram abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of Chibok, 139 other girls were snatched from St. Mary's College secondary school in Aboke in northern Uganda.
And 11 years before #bringbackourgirls was trending on Twitter, about 16 others, including Kade, were taken from the Redeemer Children's Home and Orphanage in the northern town of Adjumani.
They fell into the hands of warlord Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, a puritanical and ruthless militia whose leader has claimed to be a prophet.
Before she was kidnapped in June 2003, Kade, then 16, lived in Manyola village with her farmer parents, younger sister and brother. She had reached the final year of primary school and enjoyed singing.
- Still afraid -
"I thought I would die," said Kade, who was helped and cleaned up by another hostage. "My life was miserable."
Nearly a year later, when heavy fighting erupted between the LRA and the Ugandan army, she escaped.
During her six-month recovery in an Adjumani hospital, Kade met a friend of her mother's and went to live with her. But she never returned to school.
"I feared it because people would have abused me and called me a lemur (meaning 'lame' in the local dialect) because I'd lost some toes," said Kade. "It's hard to get used to normal life after captivity."
"Even if I feel scared, it is still my home," said Kade, adding she often fears walking in the bush alone. "I think that I'm with the rebels, or they're coming to capture me."
She still wonders about the fate of her siblings, and the two Redeemer abductees who never returned home. And now she's praying for the 219 Nigerian schoolgirls who are still missing.
"Let them be strong," said Kade.
- Kony at large -
Grace Achan, one of the Ugandan schoolgirls kidnapped from St Mary's College Secondary School in 1996, is also thinking of the Nigeria's missing schoolgirls.
"When I was being held by the LRA it was my dream to go back to school," said Achan, taken when she was 15. She is now aged in her mid-30s.
Shortly after the raid, most of the St Mary's girls were released. But about 30 were held, the majority of them not escaping until 2004. Four were killed and one is still missing.
"The government is not helping us, we need school fees," said Consy Ogwal, Achan's mother, adding that 12 girls rely on Canadian-based NGO Children of Hope Uganda for this. After years of waiting, Uganda's Parliament in April voted to provide a gender sensitive reparations fund for Kony's victims.
AFP
