Victims teach forgiveness
Film Ugandans who suffer brutality achieve true healing
KITCHENER, Ont. - In more than 20 years of working as a TV news reporter, Rick Gamble saw a lot of gruesome sights. Yet they didn't steel him completely for the moment he locked his eyes on John Ochola.
Gaping holes occupy the centre of Ochola's face where a nose used to be. Scar tissue glistens where ears and an upper lip should be. And instead of fingers, routine jobs are done with meaty pincers that occupy the places where he once had hands.
Gamble had come face-to-face with one of the many atrocities committed in the jungles of northern Uganda.
"I was fixated by the mutilation," he said in an interview.
But after listening to Ochola speak and seeing him flash his broad smile, Gamble said, the horrific image faded away.
"The humanity of this man just overwhelms everything."
Gamble recalled that first meeting with Ochola at the recent premiere of a documentary film called Bending Spears.
The film, which was screened in Waterloo, resulted from a collaboration between Gamble, a former CKCO-TV reporter who lives in Brantford, Ont., and Dave Klassen of Kitchener. Gamble met Klassen in 1994 while reporting on the genocide in Rwanda.
Klassen, who worked in Africa for Kitchener-based Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, acted as Gamble's guide. Born and raised in the Congo, he eventually worked for the aid organization in Uganda.
There he learned about the brutality of the struggle between government forces and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.
The army and its leaders have been accused of kidnapping more than 30,000 children and turning them into sex slaves and sadistic killers who target civilians.
The International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands has indicted leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, including its top commander, Joseph Kony.
But a tentative peace deal between the government and rebels would have seen them tried in Uganda. In April, Kony stood up government negotiators during a meeting to sign the final treaty between the two sides. So the two-decade-long conflict continues.
Klassen said he and Gamble talked about doing a film for years. Unable to find an agency to sponsor the project, which has cost nearly $50,000, they looked for individual donors and raised money as a project of the Across Boundaries Multifaith Institute.
Two of the institute's steering committee members, Bob Chodos and Ginny Freeman MacOwan, live in Waterloo Region.
Chodos said the institute was pitching the film to a distribution company that specializes in films about Africa. He said he hopes the film will become a resource for university courses, social justice groups and religious congregations.
Klassen now works as an energy adviser for the Residential Energy Efficiency Project (REEP). Gamble teaches journalism at Wilfrid Laurier University's campus in Brantford and is pastor of a 60-person congregation called Followers of Christ.
Gamble said that he and Klassen produced the film for four reasons:
* To record the history of the atrocities in Uganda so they can't be denied.
* To show solidarity with the people of Africa.
* To break the stereotypes of Africa as a continent that can only receive western aid and wisdom. In truth, Gamble says, Africans can teach us a thing or two - especially about forgiveness.
* Finally, to promote the personal application of forgiveness.
The 100 friends, donors and family members who attended the film premiere saw an 80-minute parade of horrific images - but also tales of forgiveness.
Ochola, the man whose mutilations fixated Gamble, was 23 when he was abducted by the rebels five years ago. They accused him of being with the Ugandan military. He denied it, but two rebels used a knife and an axe to hack off his nose, ears, top lip and fingers.
But Ochola's testimony didn't stop at the mutilation. His was also one of many stories of forgiveness.
Through a translator, Ochola says that at first he wanted to retaliate and mutilate the young man who had accused him of being with the government forces.
"Now I feel like I have put the burden down," he says. "I couldn't undo the mutilation. So I consoled myself by abandoning the whole idea of revenge. I abandoned revenge, anger and worry because they don't help anything."
The film highlights a traditional form of justice used by the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda.
The system, called mato oput, calls for the perpetrator to admit he or she has done wrong. The parties drink a solution of bitter herbs to represent the swallowing of bitterness, hate and revenge. The perpetrator must ask for forgiveness and make restitution. Only then can reconciliation take place.
The film takes its title from an ancient African tradition that saw foes symbolize the forging of peace by bending their spears to make them useless as weapons.
Many of those appearing in the film say they prefer to follow such traditional forms of justice than to employing the international court because western-style justice focuses too much on punishment and too little on reconciliation.
Punishing every perpetrator would breed resentment and ignite cycles of revenge, they argue.
Not everyone in the documentary film says they can forgive former child soldiers. But the message of forgiveness is the focus for Canadian viewers, Klassen said.
"We want people to be challenged by their stories and consider forgiveness - consider making relationships right instead of holding a grudge and perpetuating revenge."
As human beings our tendency is to seek revenge, he said. "(But forgiveness is) unbelievably healing if it's genuinely done."
Near the end of the film, Ochola is shown smiling as he pecks at a keyboard in an Internet cafe, using the stumps of his hands.
Gamble said he believes that scene is a metaphor for what can happen in Uganda.
"Ultimately it's not a story about atrocity. It's about hope."
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