International Peace Day: ‘In Uganda I help children who, like me, fled conflict in South Sudan’
A refugee himself, Seme Ludanga recalls setting up a community organization in a World Food Programme-backed camp
Updated 21 September 2020 to mark International Peace Day. Listen to World Food Programme chief executive David Beasley talk to Seme Luganda:
Seme Ludanga is one of 230,000 refugees living in Bidibidi refugee settlement and one of 1.4 million refugees in Uganda. He arrived in August 2016. Less than a year later, moved by the trauma he witnessed among children in Bidibidi, together with a friend he founded a community-based organization, I Can South Sudan, specifically to help them.
In 2018, the 26-year-old participated in WFP’s Storytellers project, which aims to empower young people to tell their story in the most engaging way. Below: Seme, in his own words.
War was always present when I was a small child in the late 1990s — it wasn’t something on TV. And it affected schools. You’d run away from school, go home. And when things were calm, you’d go back. This scenario always happens: you are in the classroom and suddenly you hear bombs outside, and guns. People start running for their life.
You can feel the helicopters and see them dropping bombs blasting around you. We’d dig trenches to hide ourselves.
In school, teachers and older students always make sure that the younger ones are saved first. When the fighting was near our home, friends, my parents and my elder brother did the same thing, guiding us to trenches.
Smaller children may get pushed down and people can trample them. And later, when things calm down, you find that someone is not there because people ran over them.
‘Most of these children refuse to socialise with people. They’re afraid. They are just given to someone to take care of them, they don’t know where they are.’
I was born in Kupera, Lainya County, in what is now the Central Equatoria state of South Sudan. My mother, a teacher, and my father, a farmer, came to have four boys and three girls — I was the middle child.
Aged 10, I started going to Sunday school in an Anglican church. I loved music and started playing different kinds of instruments.
I joined the choir. We went from place to place to conduct gospel music concerts. I thought, “One day I’m going to be someone who moves from nation to nation, teaching people the word of God and also helping people physically, financially — however I can.”
Even now that I don’t move to the countries I dreamed of, I still find myself moving a lot — doing all these conferences, teaching and helping in other ways.
Making a move
I left South Sudan in July 2016. It all started in Juba in 2013 — I was living in Yei at the time. And then the fighting cooled down. So I moved to Juba — but then in 2016 the current war started.
‘There was an organization working with trauma for older people. But nothing for the youth — unaccompanied minors, children who have seen very terrible things’
I remember the day they started fighting — 7 July. The next day it continued intensely for three days. Then it calmed down for about five days and that was when I decided to leave the country.
A Ugandan convoy came to pick up their nationals and evacuate people every three or four days. “Anyone, South Sudanese, whoever, if you feel you want to move, we are willing to help,” they’d say — many took up their offer to cross to the other side.
Crossing the border, I was alone, without my relatives. I was sad because that is not a good way of leaving your country. You’d think that every time I leave my country, I could happily expect to visit other countries and come back to my own. But the way that I left wasn’t good. It was not a happy day.
All I had was my backpack and my guitar — the only thing that always stays close to me. I started learning the guitar when I was 15. And I was playing the drum set, learned the piano a little bit, too.
A new home
When I arrived in Bidibidi settlement [in Uganda’s Yumbe District] it was new for me. So many people — people I don’t know. Then my friend Tom turned up on a UN charter truck. I knew someone!
After registration, I was given a card and practical things like a blanket and a mat. I was thinking of what to do: “What kind of life am I going to have here?” Day by day I started getting into things — people were building, putting up their shelters. I built my house.
Towards the end of 2016, I started to change my mindset, doing activities with young people. I thought of involving myself with the youth because back home, in South Sudan, I was involved in youth activity, trying to build ideas of what we can do. I was elected as a youth leader in Zone One of Bidibidi camp, where I live — engaging young people in sports and music activities.
The idea to set up I Can South Sudan came in 2017. There was an organization working with trauma for older people. But there was nothing for the youth, especially unaccompanied minors, children who have seen very terrible things.
Most of these children refuse to socialise with people. They’re afraid. They are just given to someone to take care of them. They don’t know where they are. They are just left thinking of their parents. Music, drawing, drama and dance help to children to process trauma, to know that there is also hope, that the life they are in now is not like the end of it. There is another life that they can see ahead of them.
It helps them socialise and free their mind and also build opinions among them. Back home, much of the fighting that is happening, it’s so tribal.
We are fighting as an NGO to drive away negative teachings children might pick up. No more, “That tribe is the reason you are an orphan”. These are children from different backgrounds who will grow up knowing, “We used to play together.”
Interview by Peyvand Khorsandi. Seme married Faith Blanchard on 25 July.
