A Personal Reflection: What Uganda Taught Me About Peace, People, and Myself
Fall 2013 is a season I return to often in my memory—not because everything was easy, but because everything was real. That semester, I left the comfort of theory-driven classrooms and stepped into Gulu, Northern Uganda, a place still carrying the scars of a brutal conflict. I arrived with an open mind and a head full of peacebuilding theories, but I didn’t yet understand how different lived experience would be from what I had studied. Arriving in Gulu: When Theory Meets Humanity Before traveling, I had read about the Lord’s Resistance Army and the years of violence and displacement that followed. But nothing prepares you for meeting the people who lived through it—the mothers rebuilding homes, the young men seeking identity after war, and the elders trying to reweave their communities. Gulu changed me. Everyone I met carried a story of loss, but also a level of resilience that humbled me. They didn’t speak about theory; they lived it. And I quickly realized that my peacebuilding...