War Victims Raise Voices on the Side of Harmony

Not long ago, Francis Akonyu’s fantasy was to have something to eat, to have the hair grow back on his head and to return to his homeland in Uganda with both of his parents alive.

He also wished for a place without gunfire.

Thursday, he was in Disneyland--far from famine, death, poverty, war and disease.

Along with 30 other war orphans, the 11-year-old survivor was performing at the park as a member of the African Children’s Choir.

Some visitors stopped to listen to the music, but most walked on by. The children’s sweet chorus of African songs seemed to meld into the benign surroundings.

They looked almost like any other elementary school choir, not tiny ambassadors who have been the victims of persecution.

But they were not here to meet Mickey Mouse. They didn’t know who he was. They were here for another purpose.

Their voices were trained over the past several months to entertain audiences and to move them to donate to the organization sponsoring their tour, the Ambassadors of Aid.

The Christian charity hopes to raise $1 million in nine months of touring to build an orphanage in the children’s native Lowero, Uganda, for some of the starving and homeless there.

“I saw children wandering in the bush, starving. I saw the horror of Auschwitq. There’s no way you’re prepared for it,” said the organization’s founder, the Rev. Raymond E. Barnett of Vancouver.

With the initial help of a group of Canadian pastors, Barnett started the charity last February and organized a tour of North America to raise money.

The hardest part about arranging the trip was not the logistics but choosing the children for the choir, Barnett said. On his many African visits he had seen thousands of them. A few had been rescued from near death before being taken in by the missionaries.

More than 400 children representing 18 tribes auditioned, he said. Many of them had one or no parents. When Francis Akonyu was chosen, he was living in a refugee camp in Sudan, recovering from malnutrition that had caused the loss of his hair--which now has grown back.

One mother was so disappointed her boy did not make the final cut that she moved from Uganda to Nairobi to lobby the choir directors while they arranged for passports and visas for the others, Barnett said.

Those left behind are being cared for by the charity’s missionaries until relatives--many of them political refugees --are able to return to Uganda. Although many children fear they will never see their parents again, church spokesman say, none of the children is available for adoption because a parent might be alive.

Since the choir arrived in September, Barnett said, it has raised $40,000, performing mostly for church congregations.

On Tuesday the choir will meet with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and on Jan. 20 it will perform at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

Choir plane trips from Africa and throughout North America were donated by several airlines, and hotels and parishioners have provided free lodging.

Most of the children who spoke English indicated they do not want to go back home. But tour chaperon Rosette Lumu plans to return. “I must,” she said. “I have responsibilities to my people. I want to change things and make them better.”