NORTHERN UGANDA - Jennifer Anyayo's reunion with her family would have to wait. First, our taxi driver took us from Entebbe International Airport to Kampala to exchange currency and grab breakfast. We sat down at the pricey Speke Hotel - and that's where Jennifer, 16, first flashed some of the attitude she picked up in America.
She didn't like the eggs.
"Oh, these eggs are salty. Why do they do that? I don't like salt," she said. "My doctor told me not to eat salt."
Still, she finished her meal, and she, Inquirer photographer Michael Wirtz and I piled back into our minivan taxi. Ahead of us lay a four-hour drive on a rutted dirt road to Gulu, where Jennifer would see her mother and a sister for the first time in 15 months.
As we drove out of Kampala, Jennifer moved farther from her life in the Philadelphia and Washington areas. There, she had undergone six major operations for severe burns to her face and left hand, wounds inflicted during a war between the Ugandan government and a rebel force called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
Seven years ago, LRA rebels attacked her village and set fire to the hut she was in. Her mother, Regina Adong, said Jennifer probably saved her own life by throwing a goat skin over herself as the hut burned.
A cease-fire has a tenuous hold in the country now, and talks may end 21 years of fighting. During that time, the LRA is estimated to have abducted 30,000 children and forced them to be soldiers, porters and sex slaves. About 1.3 million people remain displaced. Peace cannot come too soon or stay too long.
In the United States, Jennifer evolved from a stigmatized victim of war to a confident young woman with a taste for hip-hop and a sense of possibilities. The teen who returned now actually embodies two Jennifers: the metro American and the rural Ugandan. Would they mesh or clash? And would that American sense of possibility be a blessing or a burden?
The first days back revealed the blessings.
As she recognized buildings and signs in Gulu, Jennifer gave high-fives and happily snapped her fingers. In the center of town, she ran up to hug 73-year-old Abitimo Odongkara, who had been her guardian in the United States.
Abitimo, who has homes in Gulu and Philadelphia, had returned to Uganda two weeks earlier. In Uganda, Jennifer attends Abitimo's primary school and lives in her compound along with several other children who need shelter.
