“I want to help my people survive,” she said early this summer from her hometown of Lira, Uganda. She has returned to the east African nation after a spring tour of the United States, where she was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for a July 15 telecast.

Her goal is to get a degree in mass communications – all the better to help others understand the plight of the Acholi people of northern Uganda.

Grall was 14 when Lord’s Resistance Army terrorists tied up and kidnapped 139 young women from their school dormitory and led them like slaves through muddy banana plantations to LRA training sites in southern Sudan. Thirty of them were taken to LRA training sites in southern Sudan.
“Most of us were captured wearing only our thin cotton nightdresses,” Grall recalls. “We lost our slippers and shoes in the mud, and our feet were already blistered. We tried to ease the blisters by wrapping our feet with banana leaves.”

The LRA is a blend of Muslim and Christian fanaticism whose soldiers are fueled by promises of magical powers by former illiterate altar boy Joseph Kony. The LRA, backed by the Muslim leaders of Sudan, is waging a 15-year-old war against the Ugandan government and its president, Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni fears a war with Sudan, so his troops are unwilling to press a full-scale assault against the LRA. The resulting stalemate has caused widespread misery to the people – especially the children – of northern Uganda. So far, the LRA has abducted an estimated 8,000 children. Grall was lucky – she escaped -- but not after spending a hellish seven months being forced at gunpoint to serve the LRA.

“We were ‘distributed’ to Kony’s commanders as child-wives,” she says. “Kony told our ‘husbands’ that we should forget about going back to Uganda. We should be trained to fight.
“My life in Sudan was beyond any comprehensive description. Seven months after my capture, I was a walking skeleton. The commanders – our so-called husbands – provided nothing for us. We ate lizards, rats, wild fruits, leaves, roots and even soil. We walked three miles from camp to fetch water. And even then we had to dig in the sand with our fingers and wait hours for moisture to surface.

“Many could not walk, and the path to the waterhole was strewn with  corpses.”

A way out of hell

Once, Grall fainted from thirst and, thought to be a corpse, was buried alive. She came to and dug her way out of her own grave.

Her chance to escape came when the Ugandan army attacked the LRA training camp. After a long battle, Grall found herself alone under a tree amidst razed huts. She was not even bruised. Everyone else had fled. She stood and walked across the arid plains and headed for home 300 miles away.
Along the way, she met eight other young women and persuaded them to escape with her. After a long, perilous journey, she reached safety on Good Friday 1997. She had been away for exactly seven months.

But her abduction, captivity and forced “marriage” haunted her. Her peers at St. Catharine’s School in Lira were not as understanding as her former schoolmates and often taunted her. Her own stepmother called her “Kony’s wife.”

“You are no longer fit to go to school,” her stepmother said. “Just get married. Your dad should not pay your school fees. He is my husband. You should get your own.”

Undaunted, Grall eventually made it to college and found peace at Uganda Christian University, where she was scheduled to receive a diploma in August. Much of her studies have been remedial, and she plans to continue in higher education and major in communications.

She spent the early summer in Lira working with children who, like her, somehow escaped from the Lord’s Resistance Army. She understands the struggle they face attempting to return to a normal life.

She remembers her headmistress at St. Mary’s, a nun who hid the night of her abduction, then tracked the LRA and the children by following their footsteps the next day. “Sister Rachele pleaded [with] the commander for our release despite being threatened by rape or death,” Grall recalls. “But she was not intimidated and walked by our sides the entire day. At last, he released 109 of the girls. But I was one of the 30 he did not release.”

Sister Rachele’s bravery made an impression on the young Ugandan woman. Now she seeks to make an impact of her own.

“I have seen heads smashed and people beaten until their sockets swallow their eyes,” Grall says. “I have survived hunger, burial alive and assaults. This is not what I want for my people. The time has come. We must stop this war.”

To help young people like Grall, contact Diane Stanton, executive director of Uganda Christian University at 214-343-6422 for information about a special scholarship program that has been created. Visit http://www.ugandapartners.org/ for more information.