Fields of Life

SEVENTEEN children from four different schools in Uganda have banded together to form a choir and will travel thousands of miles to Northern Ireland to attempt to sing their way into the hearts of people here.

The boys and girls aged from twelve to seventeen years old, who live in some of the worst areas of poverty and deprivation in East Africa, will arrive on the 29th August to spend four weeks of singing and dancing at venues right across the country. They want to say thank you to donators here through the Fields of Life charity, for their schools and education and to help raise enough money to build a school in neighbouring Burundi, for children even less fortunate.

Since the parents of the young choristers were fortunate to have survived the political purging, torture and killings of two cruel dictatorships in the 1970’s and 80’s, albeit with horrific memories, the young singing scholars have a lot to be thankful for. One of the four schools involved, Shammah High School, Luwero is based in an area formerly known as the `Killing Fields of Africa` which experienced violent ethnic cleansing, where tens of thousands of people were slaughtered. More recently, another seat of learning, Dara Christian High School, Lira in the north of Uganda, has witnessed the kidnap and enforced soldiering of young girls and children by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a murderous rebel force operating from nearby Sudan. The districts where Grace High School, Kasangati and Mount Carmel Secondary School, Kayunga are based, have both suffered the double effects of war and disease.

Burundi, a tiny East African country, has just come out of years of bitter civil war and through conflict resolution is struggling to heal old wounds and build a future. The Ugandan children of the `Voices of Life` choir feel they can now repay the debt of generosity shown to them, through song and dance and in the process help raise funds to give young boys and girls from Burundi an equal opportunity for an education and a brighter future.