Like many children, Titus and Irene Ogweng's parents separated when they were young.
Titus (now 23) and his sister Irene (20) left the country’s capital Kampala to live with their father Luciano, a police officer, in the northern town of Lira. Their mother, Betty, made a new life for herself in Sweden.
Titus and Irene soon settled in the town but disaster struck one fateful day in 1999 when armed militia, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), murdered their father. The pair stayed briefly with a family friend before joining their grandparents in Adillebe, a small village 16 miles north of Lira.
Fleeing from conflict
Fighting between the LRA and the Ugandan army forced the family to flee to the Barlonyo camp for internally displaced people, close to Lira town. The family lost everything. Yet a greater tragedy loomed. On 21 February 2004, militia raided the camp and massacred 236 civilians. Titus and Irene’s grandparents were among those slaughtered.
"It was about five o’clock in the afternoon," Irene recalls. "I had been helping my grandma collect firewood. Then the rebels came."
Hiding behind her grandparent’s home, Irene heard her grandmother’s heart-rending plea to be spared. She was mercilessly hacked to death. Irene fled the camp through huts that had been torched by the militia. She still bears the scars on her arm and neck today.
Miraculously Irene made it back to Adillebe where her brother, who had been staying with a family friend in Lira, found her. The pair had lost everything.
Tracing and message
"Now that we are all alone," Irene says, "we are trying to get hold of our mum in Sweden." With no money, Titus and Irene cannot afford the cost of an international phone call to their mother.
Thanks to the Red Cross’ unique tracing and message services, people like Titus and Irene, separated by conflict, can exchange messages with loved ones. Every day, around the world, these messages bring family news and hope to those who have been separated.
"The only future we have now is our mum," says Titus. "She can make our future better. I hope we will be reunited with her one day."
The Uganda Red Cross has passed Titus and Irene’s message to the central tracing agency in Geneva who will ask the Swedish Red Cross to find their mother and pass on their message. In the meantime, Titus and Irene anxiously wait for news from their mum.
More about our tracing and message services