Content Advisory: This article contains distressing themes and references to violence, physical and sexual abuse, and suicide.
Her infectious laughter fills the air, and the rest of us can’t help but smile too. I’m standing on Library Lawn with Victoria Nyanjura, who has just spent two days traveling from Uganda to South Bend. Given the arduous journey, one might be surprised to find the native Ugandan mingling and eating raspberry ice cream late on a Tuesday night – much less agreeing to participate in a fireside chat with me. But those who know Nyanjura well also know that she will make time for anyone.
This time, it’s for the students of Notre Dame’s Innovation For Impact (I4I) club. The club works with St. Bakhita Vocational Training Center (SBVTC), a school in Kalongo, Uganda that provides women training in vocational and entrepreneurship skills. The school was initially founded in 2007 to educate girls affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) conflict and has grown significantly since partnering with Notre Dame’s Wendy Angst, a professor in the Mendoza College of Business’s Management and Organization Department in 2020. Under the helm of Nyanjura as their head of school, and with the support of Wendy’s innovation-focused courses, St. Bakhita has graduated over 150 “Innovation Scholars” and has also become the ‘proof-of-concept’ for the Powerful Means Initiative (PMI) at Notre Dame.
The I4I club is one way Notre Dame students can engage in work with St. Bakhita. Given that most club members have never traveled to Uganda, getting to meet Victoria at this ice cream social is special: it’s a reminder that their semester-long projects have an actual, tangible and real-world impact. Nyanjura settles quietly into her chair as we climb up on stage to begin the questions, her modest composure hiding the fact that she is likely the most impressive woman I’ve ever met. It's a privilege to get to retell her story here.
Nyanjura was born in northern Uganda, in a small district named Oyam. It is also where, at the age of fourteen, she was abducted by the LRA.
The LRA was formed by Joseph Kony in 1987 as a religiously-inspired militia group. According to the United Nations, the group was responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, the abduction of up to 100,000 children and the displacement of as many as 2.5 million civilians between 1987 and 2012. They used child abduction as a primary recruitment method, forcing victims to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves.
Such was the case one night in 1996, when LRA soldiers captured 139 girls from St. Mary’s College Aboke. A school nun was able to negotiate the release of most of the young women, but Nyanjura, who was attending the school at the time, was not among those released. Instead, she would go on to spend eight years in captivity.
“Life in captivity was horrible,” she recalls. “We had … sometimes nothing to eat, many people died of thirst. There was no water, especially in South Sudan … many people died because they were killed or escaping.”
During those eight years, Nyanjura was assigned as a wife to a rebel commander and had two children.
“Many young girls, under the age of ten, too, were abused sexually. They were given no medical attention because there was no professional doctor. One [time] I was flogged … My bumps were swollen – I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t do anything. I thought of committing suicide, but I couldn’t even do it because I was surrounded by so many people.”
The LRA claimed to be a Christian movement, but there was clearly no God in their actions. It makes it all the more impressive that Nyanjura, raised by a Catholic family and abducted from a Catholic school, was able to draw strength from her faith.
“I continued to recite my rosaries as we moved from one place to another. I later learned that … my family also started reciting rosaries every day … calling upon Mother Mary to keep me safe and bring me back home … That made it very possible for me to stay strong. I’m grateful to God for that.”
Captives were usually told that escape was impossible and that their only option to stay alive was to follow their commander’s order. Those who attempted escape were often killed as a deterrent to others.
Yet, Nyanjura’s prayers would be answered on a rainy night in 2004, when a fight between the rebels and Ugandan government finally gave her an opportunity to slip away. She explains how, carrying her son and daughter in her arms, the rain made their escape possible:
“After the eight years, God listened to my prayers … Another lady near me also had a child – we looked into each other’s eyes and … agreed to [leave] without letting anyone know … Thirty minutes down the road, heavy rain started [that covered our tracks] ... We started walking toward the dawn with fear that the LRA would shoot us ... But God was great: the LRA people didn’t find us.”
She eventually came across government soldiers who took her to a nearby city to be reunited with her parents. After eight years, she finally returned home, grateful to be welcomed back by her village and begin the “long journey to healing through struggles.”
Nyanjura wanted to find a way to turn her painful experience into something positive. For her, this meant taking back something she had been robbed of in captivity: an education.
Returning to school would pose its own challenges, though. “School was not easy,” she says. Nyanjura had been lucky to be welcomed back to her community, but many families were ashamed to take back their victimized children. Often, kidnapped women were referred to as “the broken girls” – reflecting society’s view of them upon return as sexually impure or spiritually tainted “outsiders.” For Nyanjura, leaving her village would mean subjecting herself to stigmatization by classmates and others.
Undeterred, Nyanjura convinced her father to let her return to high school. After graduation, she thought she would pursue her dream of being an engineer. Yet, the feeling of empowerment she gained while in school called her to help other women who had gone through the same thing she had. So Nyanjura pivoted, earning her degree in development studies instead from Kyambogo University and joining an NGO to help other women transitioning from captivity.
At work, she met interns from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies who encouraged her to apply to graduate school at Notre Dame. She applied and was accepted – graduating from the University with a master’s in international peace studies in 2020.
During her time at Notre Dame, Victoria was contacted by Mendoza professor Wendy Angst for a coffee chat. Nyanjura learned that Angst wanted to partner with a struggling school in northern Uganda – SBVTC – for her “Innovation and Design Thinking” class that Fall. After seeing her story in a campus paper, Angst was hoping that Nyanjura could provide knowledge and expertise to help advise the class.
“We talked casually,” Nyanjura says when recalling their first meeting. “But I could see the vision [Wendy] had. She saw the need to revive the school and give opportunity to young girls to get quality education, to have opportunity, to have a place to call home.”
After the semester came and went, Angst decided to keep working with St. Bakhita, establishing a partnership to mutually enrich the students’ education at both Notre Dame and SBVTC. She wanted to tackle a new project related to the school and community each semester – and the class’ popularity skyrocketed.
As St. Bakhita gained momentum, Angst asked Nyanjura if she was interested in being their head of school.
Nyanjura was hesitant. But education is what had given her “new life and purpose,” and the chance to extend that opportunity to more girls was something she could not pass up.
Today, Nyanjura spearheads work with Notre Dame and St. Bakhita as a part of a powerful partnership between the two schools. Along with producing 156 graduates, the school also runs an Early Childhood Development Center, has planted 20,000 trees at “Innovation Acres” and has launched seven revenue-generating micro-businesses in the community.
“We are grateful that we have been able to touch so many young women who did not have hope,” Nyanjura says. “To have hope for education, to have an environment where you can call home and learn a variety of things.”
As with most impressive people, running St. Bakhita is just one of many hats that Nyanjura wears. She is also the founder of Women in Action for Women (WAW), the current Board Chairperson of United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking and a founding member of the Leadership Council of the Global Survivor Network.
Yet her demeanor and actions show how she hasn’t let the accolades get in the way of her mission. When she comes back to South Bend, she always makes time for students at events like this ice cream social. Laughing, she also admits, “I have never come back to South Bend without going to Chick-fil-A.” Her order of choice? “The chicken nuggets and waffle fries,” she chuckles.
To Notre Dame students, Nyanjura encourages those listening to “get out of their comfort zones, move around the world and see the kind of life that people lead. Listen and pay attention to issues that come your way … let it touch your heart and see the world from a different perspective, to develop a love for humanity.”
It starts with recognizing the privilege of a Notre Dame education. For Nyanjura, education was a source of hope after suffering. For the women of northern Uganda, it is a ticket to new life. The responsibility we carry to use our education well is perhaps Victoria’s greatest lesson for us all.
Allison Elshoff is a senior studying Business Analytics with minors in the Hesburgh Program of Public Service and Impact Consulting.
This article was originally published in The Observer, a student-run, print and online Newspaper serving Notre Dame, Saint Mary's and Holy Cross. See the original article here.