Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army by Opiyo Oloya
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The low ranking doesn't entirely feel fair, but then, this wasn't a three star read for me, not entirely. Partially I just wasn't expecting such an academic work - I thought it would be more of a narrative nonfiction read. So, the constant references to various thinkers sort of bored me. In general, I found a lot of it a wee bit boring. The section on the history of Uganda was rather on the confusing side and I thought that a lot of the parts about Acholi culture were a bit repetitive.
Where the book really shone was in the two stories of the CI (Child-Inducted) soldiers. They were really interesting. But they didn't feel entirely complete - at the end Oloya talks about how to reintegrate people who are both victims and perpetrators of the LRA, but neither of the stories at all discusses the way in which they were perpetrators. It felt rather one sided.
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