Ms Hellen Lanyom’s mouth which was cut off by the LRA rebeles, is now
emitting pus and her ability to perform any tasks is reducing by the
day. PHOTO by Moses Akena.
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Uganda legislators Clash with Museveni over Bigirimana: Mps insist he must go while Museveni insists he must stay
Uganda’s Born again first lady is under scrutiny for traveling 8 times to Israel in one month : Janet Museveni faces questions over OPM cash saga
68-year-old LRA mutilation victim swims against the tide
By MOSES AKENA
Posted Saturday, November 10 2012 at 02:00
In Summary
Monitor Correspondent
GULU
Hellen Lanyom’s homestead in Owoo Village in Bungatira Sub-county is dotted with lush green vegetation of trees and food crops such as maize and cassava. It ironically gives the impression that all is at peace. But it is not the case.
It is here that the 68-year-old Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) mutilation victim, who has for the past 21 years witnessed countless psychological and physical torture, resides.
Lanyom poses a giant physique and dark complexion. She is charming and welcoming. However, it is her swollen lips that grab your attention on meeting her. The lamp-like growth on her lips has covered her chin and stretched the skin on her face.
How it all began
Ms Lanyom’s upper and lower lips were cut off in an incident when the rebels of the LRA attacked her home on October 4, 1990 in Pawel Angany, Patiko Sub-county in Gulu District. “They gathered all of us and asked me where my two brothers (one a local council chairman and the other a soldier) were. When I told them that I did not know, they said that they will teach me a lesson for what they termed as stubbornness,” she recalls.
She only blurry remembers the moment a young rebel brandished a machete ready to cut her lips and only regained consciousness the next morning on a hospital bed at St Mary’s Lacor hospital in Gulu town where her wounds were stitched.
Ms Lanyom was just 31 then and nostalgically remembers her once glorious looks. “I was very beautiful and the incident still makes me sad,” she said, before staring blankly at the mango tree .
To her horror, her husband was killed by the LRA on his way to Patiko from Gulu Town, just a few weeks after she was mutilated. After the incident, she was offered a place in Bungatira Sub-county about 5kms from Gulu Town by a man she identified only as Oneka, where she now resides.
No land
However, she is facing challenges as the owner of the land is asking that she leaves the place. But this comes amidst years of endurance that saw her lead peace talk efforts as part of the government delegation. Despite the pain of meeting her former tormentors, she did not bulge down. It is her courage that won her accolades from most people.
“Her years of grief could have easily settled into deep furrows across her brow. But when I look at her, I can see she is free, she has forgiven. She does not show much bitterness or self-pity. Being free is a difficult thing to fake,” says an Australian journalist Sara Sally in her book Go Go mama that profiles the lives of such 12 African women.
Last year, Living Hope, a Watoto Church project took her on and 20 other mutilated women for reconstructive surgery at Corsu Rehabilitation hospital in Kisubi, Entebe. A medical report seen by the Saturday Monitor indicates that she was admitted for 11 days for upper lip loss, and buccal sulcus reconstruction on March 2, 2011.
She again went back from March 28th to May, 2, 2011 for free anterolateral thigh flap.
However, unlike the other women, Ms Lanyom’s condition has worsened with a large swelling on her mouth and she struggles to live with it due to the severe pain it has caused to her.
Her mouth started emitting pus also in the process. As a result of this, her ability to perform any tasks is reducing by the day. She can neither carry 20 litres of water nor collect firewood.
“If I carry water, it feels like a big stone on my head,” she said. The operations director of Living Hope, Ms Christine Lutara. acknowledges that there is a risk associated with surgeries said Ms Lanyom will be taken for further corrective surgery abroad.
Despite the challenge, Ms Lanyom is currently hiring a small plot of land where she has planted beans, sweet potatoes and maize. Her worry is that she may be forced out of the place anytime.
When OPM money scandal sucked in Janet, Mbabazi
Sunday, 11 November 2012 22:15
First Lady Janet Museveni was forced to issue a
statement defending herself against accusations that she made eight trips to Israel in one month using money meant for the
people of northern Uganda.
Ms Museveni’s statement followed media reports
suggesting, for the first time, that the First Lady had questions to answer in
the ongoing graft scandal in the Office of the Prime Minister. The media
reports came after the Auditor General, John Muwanga, met members of the Public
Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) on Thursday.
Muwanga’s special audit report into the OPM
finances, which he discussed with MPs shows that part of the misappropriated
Shs 50bn meant for the Peace, Recovery and Development Programme (PRDP) in
northern Uganda
was spent on purportedly unexplained trips by Ms Museveni and on a new Mercedes
Benz for Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.
Muwanga’s audit revealed how aid from Ireland,
Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Britain, among other donors, was transferred to
unauthorized accounts, resulting into the loss of billions of shillings meant
for post-war recovery efforts in northern Uganda. Geoffrey Kazinda, the
interdicted principal accountant in OPM, who is the main suspect, and 16
officials from OPM and the ministry of Finance were arrested and charged.
What happened after the meeting, and how it was
reported is what infuriated Ms Museveni, forcing her to speak of media being
used by politicians to tell lies. Because Muwanga did not directly address the
press, it was left to PAC members to tell the media what transpired, with not
the highest degree of specificity. Speaking to The Observer late on Thursday
night, after watching NTV news, Muwanga expressed surprise that MPs had quoted
him as having implicated the First Lady over the eight trips to Israel.
“I did not implicate anyone. I simply provided
the accountability that I was given by the cashier, showing those eight trips,”
Muwanga said.
Ms Museveni says she only travelled to Israel
once. This would suggest that cashiers could have made up the figures in a bid
to satisfy Muwanga’s nosy auditors. An MP who attended Thursday’s PAC
meeting had told The Observer that Muwanga cited an instance in which Shs 14bn
was sent to a personal bank account of the OPM permanent secretary, Pius
Bigirimana, under unclear circumstances.
Our source said Muwanga had reported that
Bigirimana had told investigators he did not know how the money landed onto his
account, before going ahead to spend it. However, Muwanga told The Observer he
had not talked about any money going to Bigirimana’s account.
As it turned out, Muwanga had been talking about
the Shs 14bn that went into the Crisis Management Account. The OPM had earlier
said, in Observer article, that Bigirimana had written to Kazinda questioning
the source of money in that account but had failed to get a satisfactory
answer.
Enter Mbabazi
Muwanga’s report also revealed that OPM had spent
up to Shs 1.7bn of PRDP funds on the Prime
Minister Mbabazi’s Mercedes Benz and other cars for the office. In May this
year, the Aruu county MP, Odonga Otto, alarmed the public when he said in
Parliament that the OPM had bought Mbabazi a car at Shs 600m, which money was
meant for northern Uganda’s
reconstruction.
In his response, the prime minister said it was
not his duty to explain the source of the money for his car, as he is not the
accounting officer and is not involved in procurement of vehicles for his
office. He said the government bought cars for ministers using money that has been
budgeted for the purpose.
The PAC vice chairperson, Paul Mwiru (Jinja
municipality East), who chaired the meeting, said the committee would
meet this week to consider the Auditor General’s report.
“We shall be meeting all the individuals who have
been mentioned by the AG and we hope that the country will know the truth after
we are done with our investigations,” he said.
Mwiru said the people that PAC will meet include:
the Prime Minister, the First Lady, Bigirimana, officials from Barclays bank
and Kazinda.
