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| (Source of photos: Watoto.com) |
Last Friday, I got to see the Watoto Restore Tour. The Watoto Children’s Choir basically NEVER performs in Uganda (so if they come through your town, be sure to see them!), so I was really excited about this opportunity. The Restore Tour is different than a typical Watoto Children’s Choir performance. There were a few children, but it was mostly young adults. And instead of a typical concert, it was more like telling a story through music, dance, song, video, and spoken word. It was the story of Gulu, which I explained in a previous post. This was particularly the story of the children who were affected by the war: the boys who were kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and the girls who were either raped and left in their villages or kidnapped to be given as soldiers “wives.” It was amazingly powerful because the people sharing stories during the performance were the actual people who had lived the stories; all the testimonies were given by their actual subjects. Since the war started almost 30 years ago, many of those who were children at the time are now in their 20s and 30s.
Another thing that made the performance so powerful was that the whole focus was on forgiveness and hope. The young adults who had lived through these terrible acts or even committed these terrible acts stood up on stage and pronounced their forgiveness of the perpetrators, of the LRA leaders, and of themselves. And they pronounced the hope they have for their communities through the forgiveness and healing power of the love of Jesus. It is only through God’s love for each individual, his forgiveness, and his call to forgive one another that true healing and restoration can be achieved in northern Uganda.The Restore Tour had just finished traveling around the globe for six months, and their last performance was given at the main Watoto Church for VIPs only. Many important government workers, including Members of Parliament, “governors,” and mayors were there. Watoto wanted them to understand the work that they are trying to do in Gulu, that it’s not about Watoto, but it’s about Uganda.
Because our EMI team had just done a project to design Watoto’s new agriculture/technical college in Gulu, one of the Watoto staff suggested that we ask to be put on the VIP list. I forgot to follow up on this until a few days before the performance. Fortunately, at the last minute, we were able to request and be put on the VIP list. About 24 hours before the performance, we found out we were going and we found out that it was a formal event! Of course we weren’t going to buy formal gowns (which it turned out would have been overdressed anyway), but we wanted to go for as nice of wedding-type apparel as we could pull off. So all day Friday was pretty much a clothing/shopping day, and very little work was accomplished. The 4 male interns went downtown to buy shirts, ties, shoes, etc. in the local shops along the streets. I and the 2 female interns wanted to avoid going shopping if possible (ironic, huh?), but we managed to come up with some dresses, shoes, and jewelry from what we had with us and what we could borrow from a couple of the staff wives. We had to leave the office at about 3:30 to change and then take a special hire taxi downtown to have dinner before the performance so that we could beat the crazy rush hour traffic. (Another part of the day became less than productive due to the fact that one of the intern’s boyfriends showed up in Uganda completely unannounced [with the help of the sneaky intern coordinators] and proposed to her!) What an exciting day!
Ok, now it’s time to go do my laundry with the help of my headlamp.
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