Walking the talk
Adrian Bradbury’s annual hike brings the desperate plight of Uganda to the world
BY Wendy Glauser
Photography by Colin O’Connor
In the reception room of a posh condominium in downtown Toronto, Adrian Bradbury, the 37-year-old cofounder of GuluWalk, is introducing a special guest. Rwot Acana, the paramount chief of the Acholi—an ethnic group in northern Uganda that has been hardest hit by a 21-year rebel conflict—is here to talk about local justice initiatives for the hundreds of rebels who will return home if peace talks between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the government succeed. Bradbury explains why Acana’s role in northern Uganda’s peace process is so vital. “It never was and never will be our war,” he says.
Bradbury is wary of international intervention in northern Uganda, which is somewhat surprising for someone who brought the average Canadian’s attention to the conflict. After hearing two years ago that a rebel group had abducted over 20,000 children in the last two decades, Bradbury began to walk 12.5 kilometres each night with friend Kieran Hayward. Their walk—which ended at city hall in Toronto—symbolized the plight of the several thousand northern Ugandan children who trudge into the town of Gulu at dusk to avoid capture by rebels. His determination captured the attention of the world.
This October, GuluWalk, now a massive one-day fundraiser for NGOs that aid the children of northern Uganda, will take place in more than 100 cities. The irony of GuluWalk’s mass appeal is that now that Bradbury has visited the northern Ugandan region, he’s finding the conflict “difficult to sell in a 30-second sound bite.”
The LRA, a group that first formed with the goal of overthrowing the government, has been accused of maiming and mutilating civilians, as well as abducting children as soldiers, since the late 1980s. But for various reasons—most notably that it’s been supported by the Sudanese government to the north—the LRA only attacks civilians in the country’s northern region. The efforts of President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, to end the conflict have been criticized for exacerbating the problem. He’s forcibly confined 1.6 million Ugandans in camps for the internally displaced.
Some activists and politicians have argued the death rate in the camps—1,000 a week due to disease and malnutrition—is akin to a genocide against northern Ugandans. Although Bradbury himself has called these camps “underserviced prisons,” he shudders at this concept. “It allows politicians to just sit around and debate whether it’s a genocide or not.” Bradbury also thinks the International Criminal Court has jeopardized current peace talks by issuing arrest warrants for five of the LRA’s top commanders before they’ve even been captured. “When it comes to justice, we’re where we were with development many decades ago, saying, ‘We know what’s good for you.’”
Bradbury is determined not to perpetuate the idea that Africans need western help. “When I asked Roméo Dallaire what he thought the biggest misconception westerners have about Africans was, he said, ‘We think they’re all dummies.’” He laughs. “What a myth.”
When it comes to raising awareness at home, however, Bradbury says he’s “convinced that if the two people walking in Toronto were Acholi, GuluWalk wouldn’t have gone anywhere.” So while he relies on Acholi leaders to figure out the political stance GuluWalk should take, he relies on people like Sarah McLachlan and Steve Nash to capture the attention of politicians at home. It’s another irony that isn’t lost on Bradbury. “I’ve learned to live with a lot of contradictions,” he admits wryly.
