GuluWalk goes global
Two Toronto men were inspired to raise awareness of a vicious conflict in a place they’ve never visited. Their nightly trek across the city has inspired a worldwide walk next weekend, reports John Goddard
hey let their walking
do the talking.
For 31 nights in July,
Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward trekked 12 kilometres from Victoria Park subway station to City Hall, slept in Nathan Phillips Square, and lumbered home again at dawn to raise awareness about one of the world’s starkest — and least known — child atrocities.
“ GuluWalk” they dubbed their action and, in an encore next Saturday night and Sunday morning, people in more than 40 cities around the world plan to walk symbolically with them as well.
“ It works because the message is simple,” Bradbury says of the global response to GuluWalk. “ You can sum it up in 30 seconds.” Amystic rebel force called the Lord’s Resistance Army has for 19 years rampaged through northern Uganda. Last week, the International Criminal Court announced it has indicted the LRA leadership as war criminals, the first indictments issued since the court was founded in 2003. To keep their numbers up, the LRA raids rural villages to abduct boys as soldiers, and girls as porters and sex slaves. As many as 30,000 children have been seized so far, United Nations agencies estimate. To avoid capture, children throughout the region leave their mud homes every afternoon for a walk of up to three hours, some walking as much as 12 kilometres. They sleep at the town centre, then return at dawn.
“ We’re letting the kids know they’re not alone,” Bradbury says.
Neither of GuluWalk’s leaders has ever been to Gulu. Bradbury has never even been to Africa.
At 35, he calls himself “ an ordinary Canadian” — a married father of two young children, 5 and 2, working in media relations for the varsity teams at the University of Toronto. When his first child was born, Bradbury found himself taking a greater interest in world affairs, particularly children’s rights issues. Two years ago, he founded Athletes for Africa, now a registered charity, raising small sums of money and donating it to aid agencies with African programs.
“Musicians and artists do a fantastic job talking about international issues,” he says. “ Sport does an awesome job in the community, but at the international level it’s really underrepresented.” Through Athletes for Africa, Bradbury heard about Gulu. Documents he came across told of up to 40,000 terrorized Acholi children in northern Uganda commuting by foot every night to avoid abduction.
T“ I couldn’t believe I had never heard about this,” he recalls. “People were calling it, ‘the most ignored humanitarian disaster in the world.’ It was like some badge of honour — ‘ Congratulations,’ and that was it.” Then he got an idea. Bob Geldof had announced his Live 8 concerts for July 2 to draw attention to African poverty. The G-8 leaders were about to meet on the same subject.
Beginning July 1, for the whole month, Bradbury decided he would walk 12 kilometres symbolically every night and every morning for the Gulu children. For company, he called on Hayward, 30, a colleague who runs children’s summer sports camps for the U of T. He had also spent a year in Tanzania and eight months in Zambia running sports programs for children’s charities.
“ Mine was a pretty quick ‘ Yes’,” Hayward recalls. “This was a way of trying to make a difference through pushing ourselves. Instead of a one- day protest, this was something that was really going to affect our lives.”
Right away, they drew supporters.
“ My son and I, and a couple of friends, walked with them the first night,” says Dr. Jacqueline Otto, a medical doctor and past president of the city’s Acholi Community Association, representing about 100 people. Her mother is from Gulu, her father from the neighbouring district of Pader, also affected by the instability.
“( GuluWalk) became a big rallying point for all Toronto Ugandans,” says Opiyo Oloya, born in a village west of Gulu and now principal of Divine Mercy Catholic School in Maple.
Oloya had travelled briefly to Gulu in March to see conditions for himself, and in July he joined GuluWalk several times to write about it for The New Vision, a daily newspaper in Uganda. Some nights, fewer than a dozen people walked. On three occasions, more than 200 did so. Altogether 2,500 people took part, Bradbury says, and through the Internet word spread worldwide.
“ We were getting emails from Berlin and from Sydney, Australia,” he says. From New York, Canada’s ambassador to the U. N., Allan Rock, wrote saying their efforts to raise awareness will make a difference. From Gulu itself, the King of Acholiland, David Onen Acana II, wrote thanking them for bringing fresh attention to the crisis.
“ There was a huge buzz in Gulu,” says Erin Baines, a research director at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, who was in Gulu throughout July and August. “A lot of my colleagues were writing home saying, ‘ Who are these guys? This is really great,’ and the news had spread to some of the shelters ( built by aid agencies for the commuters). The kids were doing their little dances of joy.” With momentum building, Bradbury and Hayward thought of holding a worldwide GuluWalk, and settled on Oct. 22. In Gulu, residents and aid workers will be walking with the children that night, from outlying villages to the town centre. Groups are also walking in Kampala and Nairobi, Kenya. They are walking in Beijing, Perth (Australia), Uzice (Serbia), London, Boston, Chicago and New York.
In Toronto, Bradbury says police are preparing for at least 3,000 walkers, with a full escort from Lawrence Ave. down Yonge St. to Metro Hall. Ugandan authorities are downplaying the need for foreign attention.
“ More than 95 per cent of the areas in northern Uganda are safe right now,” Ugandan military spokesperson Lt. Col. Shaban Bantariz said recently by phone from Kampala.
“ Previously, 30,000 to 40,000 children were commuting. Now there are about 3,000 to 5,000.”
Aid agencies such as War Child Canada agree that the Lord’s Resistance Army appears to be losing strength, and that far fewer children than before are commuting nightly in the three Acholiland districts of Gulu, Pader and Kitgum.
“ There are fewer attacks and fewer children commuting,” Dr. Otto said.
“ But the numbers go up and down. My father told me ( by phone two weeks ago) there was an attack near our village, between Gulu and Pader.” An even bigger problem, however, is that the vast majority of the population remains in displaced persons camps, living in appalling conditions and — say U. N. administrators — dying at a rate of 1,000 people a week.
Bradbury and Hayward intend to help keep the issue before the public. They are beginning to make plans to visit Gulu sometime this winter. Asked whether a global GuluWalk might be held again next year, Bradbury and Hayward say they hope that won’t be necessary.