Lent: Joseph Kony

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Blessing #14: Shared Dreams

Warning:  This post is not rated G or PG, as it discusses incredibly graphic violence.  The video at the end has a much more user-friendly rating.

Joseph Kony.

Joseph Kony.

I keep writing his name, hoping it will get easier, but it doesn't.

I try to not hate anyone, but I can't guarantee that I don't hate this man.  I've spent so much time debating with Nate Kerr what I should do if I ever met this man face-to-face.  I firmly believe that you cannot bring peace through violence, but it is Joseph Kony who is the question to my logic.  Joseph Kony tests every single thing that I claim as a conviction of morality.  I try to censor myself when I talk about him, as I don't like upsetting people, but I will not be doing that today.  The information I will share with you today is the result of years of research on my own part.

In the 1980's, a rebel force rose up against the Ugandan government.  After near defeat, a voice rose up among the rebels: that of Alice Lakwena, the cousin to the then unknown Joseph Kony.  In many ways, she was equated to Joan of Arc for her people.  But in 2007, after fleeing from more technologically advanced forces, she died while hiding in a refugee camp.

Enter Joseph Kony.

Joseph Kony pulled back together his cousin's troops, and promised to instate a government based on the 10 Commandments, but his own people were scared, and turned on him.  He was furious, and began kidnapping their children to brainwash and enlist in his military actions.  He believed (rightly) that it was a lot easier to teach values, rather than reteach values.

His methods are brutal, but effective.

When a child is captured, his or her first act as a member of The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is to perform a public murder of a prominent member of their community, usually their own parents.  Should their mother be pregnant, it is not unheard of for the child to be forced to slice open his or her mother's belly (while she is alive) and have to eat the unborn child him/herself.  This paves the way for a series of psychological traumas that break down the structures of a healthy human mind.  This way, the LRA can mold this mind to accept unnatural actions as normal.  Secondarily, the child is warned that, even if they could escape, they would have nothing to go back to; their community would not want them after they performed a crime so heinous.  This is, sadly, not untrue.

The child is treated well, briefly, but will soon be beaten within an inch or his or her life (assuming he or she is not deemed dispensable).  If they survive, they are expected to keep quiet and follow the orders of their higher ups, or else they will be beaten again, or, worse, forced to beat and/or kill someone they care about within the LRA.

Girls are treated the same as the boys, until they hit puberty, when they are assigned a husband.  Men are assigned wives, based on their rank.  The highest ranked men get the most beautiful and useful wives.  They also are allowed the most wives.  Wives are also valued by their ranking within the LRA.  They are expected to feed their husbands' sexual appetites on demand, doing anything and everything that he wants.  Wives are expected to have sons and lots of them.  The punishment of wives who fail to meet these expectations is left to the discretion of their husbands.

Children who escape require years of rehabilitation, and, even then, they are rarely welcomed by their communities.  Many of them are so indoctrinated by Joseph Kony (especially those who are born into the LRA) that there is no way to restore them to a healthy mindset.  Joseph Kony has permanently addled them.

But there is a solution.

This is a moment I have craved and yearned after for years.  The time is now.  Watch this video and take action.  It's thirty minutes, but you don't even notice them ticking by.  This may be the most important thing you watch this year.  The end of this horrific plague is drawing near.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Make a difference HERE.

Harry Potter Camp - Day 10 - The Final Battle

The last four days of camp were marked by the arrival of a letter from various enemies of Harry at the start of each class.  The final day, Lord Voldemort himself wrote to us, demanding that we turn him over.  There was only one problem: we didn't have Harry; we'd never seen Harry; we certainly couldn't turn him over.

The Slytherins suggested that we either join the Death Eaters or run, but the rest of the class out-voted them, suggesting that the Slytherins could sit quietly on the sidelines if they'd like, but if they joined the other side, "We duel to kill."  (No, that's not quoting my students in real life, it's quoting Professor McGonagall.)

Soon, the epic battle was underway.

As an early elementary schooler, my reading material of choice were the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.  If it wasn't for the fact that these were not Accelerated Reader books, I never would have read anything else (and thus never would have read Harry Potter, so it all turned out for the best).  So, when I found a PowerPoint game, designed as a Harry Potter-Lord Voldemort Choose Your Own Adventure battle, I could not turn it down.  The game was loaded up with 60 different slides, two to three options on each slide, and (from what I can tell) one way to win.

This thing kept me happy for the forty minutes that we played (because each house had four lives, and it took almost all of those lives to finally beat it).

In the end, it was, surprisingly enough, the Slytherin house that defeated Voldemort.  For doing so, they were awarded 160 points, as per the movie, which was enough to make up for all the points they had lost along the way for doing their Slytherin-like antics, such as not doing/turning in their work or not participating.  I was so glad that it turned out the way it did, because I hated seeing them so clearly far behind everyone else.  Unlike the books, though, it was not the house that defeated Voldemort that won the house cup.  Rather, it was Ravenclaw, coming in with over 500 points.  This worked out well for me, because there were two students to whom I was considering giving an award "for special services to the school" (aka perfect attendance and best attitude).  As one of them was a fifth grader in Ravenclaw and the other a sixth grader in Hufflepuf[f], I decided the best course of action would be to give it to the student who hadn't yet been recognized for her achievements.

I promised her that if she needed help reading it, we could get together and have some Harry Potter fun.

"And suddenly, their wardrobes were empty, their trunks were packed.  Neville's toad was found lurking  in a corner of the toilets; notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays ('I always hope they'll forget to give us these,' said Fred Weasley sadly); Hagrid was there to take them down to the fleet of boats that sailed across the lake; they were boarding the Hogwarts Express; talking and laughing as the countryside became greener and tidier; eating Berttie Bott's Every Flavor Beans as they sped past Muggle towns; pulling off their wizard robes and putting on jackets and coats; pulling into platform nine and three-quarters at King's Cross Station...

"'Hope you have - er - a good holiday,' said Herminone, looking uncertainly after Uncle Vernon, shocked that anyone could be so unpleasant.

"'Oh, I will,' said Harry, and they were surprised at the grin that was spreading over his face.  'They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home.   I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer..."

The End

Superheroes (Part 2) - The hero doesn't always win.

You may have seen these photos on Facebook already, but that's okay.  I'm going to talk a little more about them here.  After talking to my kids last Global Zone about heroes (which you saw), I talked to them about villains.  I had to start just by teaching them the word "villain."  It's kind of counter-cultural to have someone who hurts the group, so it took a little coaxing to get them there, but with the help of some Superman, Harry Potter, and Dragon Ball Z references plus an episode of the PowerPuff Girls (click on the title of this post to see it) we finally got there.  In fact, I didn't ever give them any part of the definition; I let them come up with their own.  Two of my classes had pretty much the same answers:

But it was my third class of which I was really proud.  We spent some time talking about how a superhero isn't always handsome, just as a villain isn't always ugly, but what really blew their minds was when I told them that the villain didn't always have to lose to the hero, so that couldn't be one of the characteristics.  I could tell that they weren't being able to fathom that idea, so I used the only example that popped into my head: September 11th.  Luckily, they had heard about that, and could follow my example.
Then, they did the other thing I wanted them to do: they realized that it was the same characteristics setting superheros apart from heroes that set super villains apart from villains.  This left the conversation open to talking about how easy it is to turn from being good to being bad, and that we always have to fight to be good.  We talked about how we have to always fight the bad guys, even when they win, or else we become bad guys too.  It was a really good lesson.
I want to share their notes with you too.  The top half is their answers, followed by their examples underneath.  Please note, that all I did on this list was act as scribe and veto the previously mentioned wrong answers:

I'm so proud of them, really, I am.

Keep fighting evil, guys.  The fight is not yet over.

Love you!