Planting Peacer Profile: Rosemary Kojoki

Kojoki RoseMary, a 25 year old hails from the Northern part of Uganda, which is located in the Eastern part of Africa. Uganda is also known as the “pearl of Africa” because of its all year round green vegetation cover and beautiful sunlight. I come from a family of eleven and we live in Kampala (capital city of Uganda). I studied social sciences particularly Administration and Gender studies from Makerere University in Kampala.
Between 2003 and 2009 I felt an inner urge to work in St. Monica Girls Tailoring Center in Gulu (Northern Uganda), a school that warmly receives formerly abducted girls, women and children who have been tortured, traumatized by the LRA rebels as well as rejected by their families and communities thus leaving them very vulnerable. This school therefore helps to restore the dignity of these disadvantaged girls, give them love so that they are able to give love to the children of these rebels, give them psycho-social support, and impart basic skills of tailoring, computer, beads making, secretarial, home care management and cake making so they are able to rebuild their lives, restore their dignity, cope with the future and are given a chance to survive and succeed.
I have personally contributed to this institution and particularly to these disadvantaged women by listening to their stories, encouraging them to forgive the rebels, counseling some of them, opening my heart and life to them, showing them and their children love and teaching them how to make beads as well as baking cakes inorder to make a living. This gives them a sense of hope.
Living in a conflict free world maybe a dream- but we must dream towards it: it is only the dead that do not dream. I have a dream to create a conflict free world, a passion deep within me that made me take up my job with Mennonite Central Committee Uganda as a logistics officer. Together, horizons will never be infinite.
Passionately Ugandan I remain.