As Seth sprinted off to the surgical ward to accompany Dr. John Kelly in a complex fistula surgery our first day, I wandered into the post-op recovery ward hoping to make some friends and listen to some of the women’s stories. People say that Ugandans speak English, but that really means a select few educated Ugandans speak English fluently. When speaking to people from villages, you have nothing if you cannot communicate in Lugandan, Bantu, or Runyankore. Needless to say, I had nothing.

I slowly walked through the ward feeling like a self-conscious spectacle as most of the women unabashedly and curiously stared at my every movement. Young white women are not the usual in the Kitovu fistula ward. Smiling and trying pathetically to communicate through hand gestures and facial expressions, I felt like I was going to be the day’s main attraction. After about 15 minutes of inadvertently amusing the nurses, Mama Winnie, the head nurse and a fistula survivor, led me to a young girl from the North of Uganda who sat quietly reading the Bible on her bed. Mama Winne told me that this young lady was a very special patient I would be able to speak with her. Her name is not Jessica, but that’s what I’ll call her in order to hide her identity and protect her from the danger she escaped.

In perfect English, Jessica introduced herself and invited me to sit with her and play cards. I was immediately stunned by her ability to express herself, her confidence and her unwavering faith in everything she said and did. We passed the morning chatting Jessica even taught me to wear an African headscarf (resulting in my immediate celebrity status in the fistula ward). Jessica was from a very small village, but spoke English as well or better than many of the educated professionals we encountered along the way. I wondered how this twenty year old woman full of poise, who in any other life would be experiencing her first years of college, ended up in rural Masaka for a fistula repair? I soon learned the heart breaking answer when Jessica and I went for a walk on the hospital grounds. We stopped on a grassy knoll and I listened to her unimaginably tragic story. Her words left me with a confusing mix of admiration of her strength and complete disgust at the depth of humanity’s sadism.

As she painted my nails, Jessica told me about her village in the North of Uganda and how it has frequently experienced the brutal aggression of the Lord’s Resistance Army or LRA. For those of you not familiar, the LRA is an extreme rebel group claiming to bring a theocratic government based on the Ten Commandments and the Bible to Uganda. In order to implement their vision, the LRA regularly resorts to a variety of human rights abuses including rape, abduction and maiming of civilians, especially children. The LRA is led by an especially brutal megalomaniac named Joseph Kony. When Kony’s influence with the population began to wane, he set about abducting children from villages and indoctrinating them through unspeakable violence into his inhumane regime Kony uses children in his war because they are easy to manipulate, intensely loyal and are emotionally immature. Young boys effortlessly carry small automatic weapons that create mass carnage and young girls are forced, in many cases, to be sex slaves.

At fourteen, Jessica returned to her village on holiday from the school she attended in the South and one night was abducted from her home by the LRA. She was brought to Kony, who gave her as a ‘wife’ to one of the Commanders of the Army. She spent the next four years living in the bush. As she lifted her long skirt to show me the scars from the bullet wounds she endured while fleeing from the fighting, Jessica told me there were many girls who lived such a life. Girls who are taken from their families and lives, forced to cook, clean, care for and sleep with strange men. Girls forced to forget those who love them, run for their lives when fighting started, feel the bullets intended for soldiers, live the war that stole their innocence… Jessica eventually became pregnant at 18 and went into labor in the bush. But something went very wrong, and her baby died after days as she laboured in the bush, trying to push it out of her small malnourished body. As Jessica describes it, she died and God brought her back to life. Only, the life she was brought back to left her with an extremely severe vaginal and rectal fistula. Kony allowed her to seek treatment in a neighboring country and she made a bold decision to take that opportunity to flee – a choice that often ends in a brutal death.

I do not really have the words to describe how I felt when I listened to her story. I do not believe a string of sentences exists that can convey the suffering in her eyes or on her sweet youthful face, neither of which we can actually show you for the sake of Jessica’s safety. Nor can I describe the depth of her Faith and her profound belief in God’s plan for her.

When you read these stories, or others like them in newspapers or magazines, its easy to imagine a far-off place that almost feels fictional. But, these tragedies are real. They destroy lives, they abhor our senses and ultimately, they inspire our action.