Follow-up: Canadian photojournalist on reintegrating former child soldiers

Marc Ellison took a different approach to his research of the stories of former female child soldiers. The Ugandan women, who had been abducted and forced to participate in the Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), were skeptical of yet another journalist, so Ellison put cameras in their hands and asked them to show him their stories.

Ellison wrote about his approach to anthropographia in Uganda back in March for J-Source, and in a special to the Toronto Star on Saturday, tells Alice’s story in particular:

“I am slowly getting used to this new life, but whenever I encounter difficulties here I get depressed,” Alice says. “I sometimes feel that it would be good if I was in the bush still because at least there I had power and access to whatever I wanted.”

I ask her what she means.

“In the bush, you can get what you want from people because you have a gun — but here I do not have a gun. In the bush, we were free to do anything we want without much control. You could ambush vehicles, you could loot.”

Check out the story on the Star’s website, where Ellison describes the NGO effort for former LRA soldiers, and the difficulties that men have accessing the same aid resources as women.