“You walk only at certain times.  You sleep only half-way.  Everything you do, you do knowing they’re coming – they could be there when you turn around.”

Annet was referring to LRA soldiers.  Her entire childhood was spent hiding from them. Mastering silence.  Becoming invisible.  After witnessing her father’s abduction, Annet and her siblings moved through each day with a single thought racing through their minds – don’t let them get you.

Miraculously, they eluded capture.  Horribly, Joyce did not.

Joyce, Annet’s roommate at Kwagala Project, was abducted while gathering firewood just meters from her family’s hut.  She was fourteen, and just like that – one afternoon or early evening in 2005, with a machine gun pointed at her face, Joyce lost her childhood forever.

She spent two years in captivity.

Freedom came the night a spate of gunfire tore through the camp.  Who had opened fire was uncertain, and still is.  Joyce never saw them. Within the first few seconds of attack, she grabbed only her shoes and raced through the chaos – into the unforgiving bush.  All she could think about was seeing her family again.  She ran most of the night until finally collapsing from exhaustion.

When she’d reached her village, days later, there was no welcome.  There was no family. They had all been killed.  Depleted and traumatized, Joyce set off for Gulu.  She realized quickly there was no place for girls like her to work, stay, or even beg for food without being berated and possibly beaten.  She slept in the streets until a group of teenage girls found her and brought her to the ghetto where they stayed.  The only way to survive, they told her, is to sell your body.

Joyce was starving to death.

Her new life of freedom mirrored the hell she’d just escaped from.  It wasn’t long before her will to live was extinguished by utter lack of hope.  It was at her lowest point she met Pauline, our Project Director in Gulu.

“God has kept you alive for a purpose,” Pauline told Joyce.  Nodding, Joyce agreed and said there just wasn’t another plausible explanation for surviving the past couple years. Trusting Pauline and welcoming her counsel, Joyce grew intent on being loosened from her traumatic past and discovering what that purpose might be.

It’s been over three years since Joyce moved into the Total Impact House.  She was the first beneficiary to walk through its doors and witness hope realized and prayers answered – ours and hers.  She is also the first to graduate. After wholly participating in the recovery programs at Kwagala Project and completing technical courses offered through the Red Cross, Joyce is now gainfully employed at Krochet Kids in Gulu.  She is paid a handsome wage to do what she loves, crochet and chat with other women.  It’s a dream job replete with additional life-skills training and exceptional mentoring programs.  Joyce is surrounded by people who care for her deeply. This has become normative – a welcome disparity from when love seemed beyond the bounds of possibility.

To date, Joyce has saved enough money to purchase a modest plot of land under an even more modest home.  She will live there with Nelly, her daughter, whom she was reunited with last year. Above all else, Joyce is eager to be a mother.  And she now has the income, life skills, and family support necessary to raise Nelly in a nurturing, loving environment.

What’s more, she’s acutely aware of the enormous impact she can make – not just in the lives of those around her but for countless children who have been trafficked or exploited in the commercial sex industry. Her story is remarkable. Allowing us to share it is equally remarkable.

The girl who spent years waiting in silence to escape from the enemy is now defeating it by refusing to remain quiet.

Her life is an example of what is possible – an incredibly beautiful one.  We reJoyce!

Until a few months ago it was possible to weave through Kabalagala’s anxious traffic; traverse side-streets choked with burning garbage, and eventually arrive at a house-turned-bar-turned-brothel surrounded by hundreds of equally nondescript structures used for the same purpose.

What set this house apart?  Our then nine-year-old Diana (left) and her two sisters once called it home.  Desperate to keep food in their bellies, the three girls, ages 12, 9 and 4, were forced to run the bar themselves when their mother disappeared for days at a time or passed out from drinking.

We learned about the girls from a local prostitute.  Having been raised in the same notorious slum, her childhood was sadly similar to those of the sisters.  She knew what was going on at the bar and asked if we could get them out of there.  We told her we’d go.  The rest was up to God.

A few days later one of our social workers located Diana’s mother.  She was perched outside the corrugated metal and cardboard house waiting for customers – a scene that impels even the most compassionate person to toggle between pity and blood-boiling indignation.  Sitting there was an exasperated woman whose body had visibly yielded to chemical dependence, AIDS, and hopelessness.  She, amidst the sea of others within a stone’s throw, was just one more victim of the insidious cycle of poverty and oppression.  Or not.  Or she was one more addict willing to destroy her kids for a fix.  We’ll never know exactly which demons gave her the permission to sell her daughters’ innocence.  All we could do was offer to take them out of the situation.

Surprisingly, when our social worker told her why she was there, the mother was responsive, even grateful.  Humanity wasn’t completely erased from her consciousness – she still wanted a better life for her girls.  We offered to help her as well. We told her we’d take her to a clinic, but she declined.  She could better care for herself, she said, if she didn’t have to worry about the girls.

Her house burned down four weeks later.

Diana and her sisters have been with us at Kwagala Project since March of 2011.  The once punishingly shy little girl is now one of the most animated in the home – zipping around like a firefly and playing with everyone.  She’s made a best friend there, a girl her age named Vivian (right).  Together they spend hours making up dances and songs.  They draw pictures of animals and rainbows and play “model” with the hair accessories in our salon.  It’s never difficult to discern Diana and Vivian’s whereabouts.  Every couple of minutes their activity is punctuated by the explosive, unmistakable giggles of adolescent girls. It’s as contagious as the hope their new little lives represent.

Diana is now in second grade and she just celebrated her tenth birthday.  Her favorite thing to do is put on her new fancy dress and attend church with her biological and new sisters. She had the opportunity to tell her mother all about it during a recent supervised visit.  The juxtaposition was lost on no one.

They’re all doing uncommonly well, Diana and her sisters, in their new home with a new family willing to move heaven and earth to see them heal and succeed.  Each one of the girls has embraced it, especially Diana.  They are all a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, the unparalleled power of love, and the gift of a second chance.