Exile is a term that is used very often in the world today with people running from their countries as a result of persecution, political unrest and estrangement, among other reasons. Leaving your country to live in exile in another country is one thing, living in exile in your own country is quite something else.
I was born in exile and when my family returned, the war in Northern Uganda had started so that led to us living in exile within our own country. We could not travel home to Gulu.
Even when my parents died, we had to bury them with so much security surrounding the place in case the rebels attacked. At my mother's funeral, we just buried her and left. This breaks my heart to this day. That is not the way of the African burial. We stay with our people even in death. We eat with the mourners and celebrate the life of the dead. We do not just leave them and walk away. This is what the war made us do. The war took almost more than twenty years before I was able to go back home and visit with my relatives.
Years later, just when I'd made it a habit to keep returning home and get to know my homeland making up for all the years lost, I found myself needing to leave my country. I am in exile now feeling what my parents must have felt when they had to leave in the dead of the night.
'The War Song' is a collection of stories from friends, family and other people who allowed me to tell their experiences of the war in Northern Uganda. Stories of exile and survival, and the far reaching effects of the war long after it ended.
My late father wrote the essays that I use as my prologue and my epilogue. He died asking these questions because that coup completely turned his life upside down. It turned the lives of the Acholi, his people, upside down and planted a series of insurgencies in Northern Uganda after that.
What I found absolutely fascinating was the fact that he must have written these essays between the late 60s and early 80s but the facts within the essays ring true to the politics in my country today.
Was this coup really necessary?
This is the same question that I ask right now. After talking to all my relatives and friends, this is the question that shouts really loud. Reading the notes and the manuscripts that my late father left behind. He was writing a piece of history for the people that would come after him. I am benefiting from his insights. I do not have my father's voice but I am glad for the voice that I have. It is amazing that the circumstances that he was in at the time of my birth is what I am experiencing now and I must say have been experiencing all my life.
Acirocan - this means 'the resilient one'. That is my name. It is Aciro in short. Why it spells Achiro right now circles back to tribalism and the tribe that could not pronounce it correctly without the 'h'. This is how the 'h' came into being. The same goes with my father's name, which is my surname - Olwoc as the elders called him and how he called himself. I call myself Olwoch with the added 'h'.
It is almost as if the universe knew that I would have to leave my country in the future, that is why it set me on my journey to learn about my home. The universe always knows.
I think that the first days in exile are the worst. All the fear and the uncertainty that you had in your country travel with you. It does not immediately disappear as you would expect it to. Then comes the uncertainty of being in a new country. Not really having a home. Not knowing what will happen to you. Will you be allowed to stay, will you be sent away? Will the homeless wandering continue? This is what goes through your head each and every day.
