Uganda

On Saturday evening, Philadelphia will be among 44 cities around the world taking part in International GuluWalk Day. Participants will simulate a "night commute. " They will walk and stay overnight at a local church to raise awareness of children caught in war in northern Uganda. Gulu is a town in northern Uganda. In the last 19 years, 30,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves. Thousands more, called "night commuters," make a nightly trek from their rural homes to sleep in the relative safety of cities.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash and everything went grey and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime, of Selinsgrove, Pa., wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "...I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime is still in Africa, monitoring the medical care of five team members who were wounded by one of two blasts that shook Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.

At 14, Jacob Sekiziyivu is in his fourth year of school. He has learned to read and speak English in a classroom with no electricity and no desks, where one teacher instructs 79 students squeezed tightly on wooden benches. The youth considers himself very lucky indeed. In a country where 89 percent of the adults cannot read, on a continent where only half the children go to school, even the most spartan of educations can be considered a luxury. It's one Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, is striving to make commonplace.

  May 18, 2007 Heathrow Airport, London Ten hours in Heathrow has allowed time to review things with Abitimo. Turns out she has plans for us. Places to go, people to see. I told her we will look at UNIFAT and see what the school's physical priorities are. We will make a plan for what and when. There are now 15 groups committed to funding orphan tuitions. We hope to make ties to schools in the Philadelphia region as a way to raise money. Ten hours in Heathrow has allowed time to review things with Abitimo.

SELINSGROVE, Pa. - When nine of their colleagues flew home last week, five missionaries from this north-central Pennsylvania community stayed in Uganda to work at an urgent task. They hoped to finish a wall protecting their sister congregation's church and school in Kampala - in particular, one missionary said, to shield children from a scourge that haunts Uganda: ritual child sacrifice. "We've got time. We'll just stay. " That was how Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, described the volunteers' reasoning.

Six of 15 missionaries from Selinsgrove who went to Uganda June 16 to help build a wall around a church and school were due to return home July 7 but stayed to complete the work, a church spokesman said today. The six had reasoned that "we've got time. We'll just stay," according to Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church. While nine members of the team arrived home July 7 in Pennsylvania, the others' decision proved fateful: They were at a garden restaurant Sunday in Kampala watching the final match of the World Cup when terrorists set off a bomb beneath a table.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash, and everything went gray and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime of Selinsgrove wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime was still in Africa on Wednesday, monitoring the medical care of the five team members wounded by one of two blasts that killed 76 people.

The signpost for Busiro is a neat stack of bleached human skulls and skeletons. This is all that remains of peasants who failed to flee Busiro when the soldiers of Milton Obote came to pillage and murder. Those who did manage to escape have returned now to find their neighbors' bones and not much else. In Busiro, and all across the fertile farmland known as the Luwero Triangle, survivors have returned to confront the realities of Uganda's long descent into savagery. Former President Obote and his soldiers ravaged the area from 1980 through 1985.

On the day the dictator took him, James Sabune got a warning to leave Uganda. But the Rutgers University-Camden law student was defiant and stubborn. He hadn't done anything. Surely he could explain that the protests he led in America had his homeland's best interests at heart. And he had promised a friend he would attend her birthday party in a few days. So he stayed. That night in 1976, the 32-year-old was lured to Uganda's notorious State Research Bureau. His family never saw him again.

When then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visited this sunny, serene capital eight years ago, she hailed President Yoweri Museveni as a "beacon of hope" for democracy in Africa. Now many advocates of democracy worry that he's become a hindrance. After 19 years, Museveni remains in office. He's had Uganda's law on term limits lifted so he can run for reelection in February. Last month, he threw the man most likely to unseat him into jail on an assortment of charges of treason, terrorism and rape.

KAMPALA, Uganda - Ugandan criticism of a viral video about a brutal central African warlord continued to grow since a public screening in a remote Ugandan town once terrorized by the Lord's Resistance Army. The head of a Ugandan charity that showed "Kony 2012" said Thursday he would suspend further screenings after getting overwhelmingly negative reaction from viewers on Tuesday who did not understand why there were so many white faces in the video, or why Kony needed to be made famous.

THE EASTERN Africa nation of Uganda is suffering from a rampant AIDS crisis and the fallout of war. Now a live show, "Spirit of Uganda" is touring the U.S. to raise awareness of the country's plight. In the show, 22 Ugandan children between the ages of 8 and 18 perform traditional dances to music representing regions in and around the country. All of the show's music is original, based on traditional Ugandan music. A variety of drums, harps, and a 15-foot xylophone help create an authentic sound.

KAMPALA, Uganda - The young American boy sums up what his father does for a living: "You stop the bad guys from being mean. " Yes, the father says, but who are the bad guys? The child thinks, then offers a guess: " Star Wars people?" Though a galaxy away from this preschooler's American upbringing, the truth is far more sinister. The bad guys are Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal Central Africa militia that has kidnapped thousands of children and forced them to become sex slaves, fight as child soldiers, and kill family members.

KAMPALA, UGANDA - Advertisements pinned on the walls of shopping malls in Uganda's capital promise young women a free ticket to a well-paying job in Malaysia as a nanny, maid or bartender. Instead many are forced to become "sex slaves" to pay off travel fees and other costs, totaling as much as $7,000. The traffickers brainwash their victims into believing they may die if they quit. Authorities say that nearly all of the prostituted girls have college degrees but have failed to find jobs in Uganda, where unemployment is high.

Drone strike kills 8 in Pakistan PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistani intelligence officials said U.S. drone-fired missiles have killed eight people in the country's northwest tribal region near the Afghan border. The officials said the missiles hit a house Wednesday in Spalga village in the North Waziristan tribal area. The identities of those killed in the attack were unknown. But the area is dominated by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a prominent militant commander who has focused on fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan.

JIMMY ROLLINS has one heck of a story to tell when he gets back from Africa. But this wasn't a vacation. It's been a week since the newly re-signed Phillies shortstop left on a humanitarian journey to Uganda. Linking with the Right to Play outreach program, Rollins, his sister Shay and free-agent first baseman Derrek Lee are teaching life lessons through baseball to kids less fortunate. Rollins got the idea to link up with the outfit after watching an ESPN documentary that depicted the story of Uganda's Little League baseball team, which qualified for the Little League World Series in Williamsport last summer, but were denied travel visas.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday that he was dispatching roughly 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to help battle the Lord's Resistance Army, which the administration accuses of a campaign of murder, rape, and kidnapping children that spans two decades. In a letter to Congress, Obama said the troops would act as advisers in efforts to hunt down rebel leader Joseph Kony but would not engage in combat except in self-defense. Pentagon officials said the bulk of the U.S. contingent would be special operations troops, who will provide security and combat training to African units.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash, and everything went gray and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime of Selinsgrove wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime was still in Africa on Wednesday, monitoring the medical care of the five team members wounded by one of two blasts that killed 76 people.

The leader of a team of Pennsylvania missionaries who were injured in Sunday's terror bombings in Uganda has written a firsthand account of the episode. "I remember a bright flash and everything went grey and it felt like rain," Lori Ssebulime, of Selinsgrove, Pa., wrote from Kampala, replying on her blog to questions from The Inquirer. "...I heard screaming from every direction. " Ssebulime is still in Africa, monitoring the medical care of five team members who were wounded by one of two blasts that shook Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.

SELINSGROVE, Pa. - When nine of their colleagues flew home last week, five missionaries from this north-central Pennsylvania community stayed in Uganda to work at an urgent task. They hoped to finish a wall protecting their sister congregation's church and school in Kampala - in particular, one missionary said, to shield children from a scourge that haunts Uganda: ritual child sacrifice. "We've got time. We'll just stay. " That was how Gerald Wolgemuth, director of communications for the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, described the volunteers' reasoning.