Interview with Lydia

I actually meant to write about my interview with one of our students, Lydia, yesterday. But with rapidly diminishing internet time, I ended up writing about the People interview.

And like yesterday, there is little time left for me online, so let me say this, and you will learn the rest of the details when I return to the States:

Lydia was abducted at age 15. She was forced to be a wife to a commander in the LRA, had a child and lost a child in the bush, and lost a leg to a land mine while fighting with the LRA. I knew most of those bare-bones details of her story going into it.

But what I didn't know (and neither did Steve or any of the other students) was this bomb she dropped mid-interview: She lived next door to Kony (the leader of the LRA) for five years. She said that the man in the news photographs of "Kony" is never Kony. The real Kony does not have dreads or the signature crazy look in his eye, but is a slender, intelligent man who always wears his hair short. She knows that this is the real Kony because he is the person that everyone answers too... including others who sometimes claim to be Kony. He also has fifty wives... far more than any of the other LRA commanders. I asked Olee if her description of Kony was accurate, and he insisted that he had met the same man Lydia knew... not the man from the newspaper photos.

More later...