Sleepover Aims to End Ugandan Nightmare

Around 50 Harvard students walked three miles from Boston Common to sleep on the hard floors of two South Boston churches Saturday night, joining tens of thousands of people across the world in raising awareness about children displaced and abducted in a decades-old civil war in northern Uganda.

The event, entitled “Global Night Commute,” was organized by the makers of “Invisible Children,” a documentary filmed in 2003 by three University of Southern California students.

The film, which was mentioned by talk show host Oprah Winfrey on her show last week, tells the stories of “night commuters,” the 40,000 children who walk for hours every night to avoid being abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel force led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony.

Elena I. Squarrell ’07 said she attended because she was outraged by the situation in Uganda. “What is it about being American that gives me more rights than an African?” she asked.

Although Rehema S. Kutua ’07 does not usually participate in activism, she said she felt compelled to act after seeing the documentary. “I couldn’t do work for the rest of the night after seeing it,” she said. “I dreamt about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Boston College freshman Meghan M. Battle said she devoted five hours a day for the last two weeks to organizing the Boston sleepover, which around 1,300 people signed up online to attend. “

This is what my education is going to be about, standing up for the rights of the oppressed,” said Battle, who said she has missed classes and deadlines. “If that means I’m not going to get all ‘A’s, that’s how it’s going to be.”

Camped out in Boston Common before walking to the churches for the sleepover, participants wrote letters to President Bush asking the U.S. government to pressure the United Nations and Uganda to end the civil war.

Although a smattering of hippies and skater punks added flavor to the crowd, the group mainly comprised college students decked out in make-up and brand-name clothing, hailing from Boston University and Boston College, and some even from out of state.

Acoustic guitars soon appeared around the Harvard students, and hippies with copious amounts of facial hair banged on makeshift drums made of buckets. A hint of marijuana flavored the air.

Students from Connecticut passed out tie-dyed t-shirts with a black bleeding Africa, and a tiny red heart in the middle of the continent, which they said they had spent all night making.

“The coolest thing about this is that people are not here for their own self-gain,” said Susan Lieu ’07, who helped round up the group of Harvard students to take part in the sleepover.

“They’re doing it strictly because they care about these kids....They don’t want this exploitation to continue, and that’s fabulous.”

—Staff writer Alex M. McLeese can be reached at amcleese@fas.harvard.edu.