Everyone Needs a Piece of Peace

Peace is a woman with a constant grin on her face and gives off a contagious vibe of happiness everywhere she goes. Her life is pretty dang hard, yet I’ve never seen her with a frown. My life is pretty dang easy, yet I walk around half my life like Eeyore on Winnie-the-Pooh! Not to mention, she has the body every woman dreams of…tall, thin, dark, model-like high cheekbones, and a million-dollar smile. Or billion-dollar smile. Or even trillion-dollar smile. Or even…you get it.

Peace’s mother and father started their family in the Karamonjong District (Northern Uganda) until Rebels during the Rwanda genocide invaded their village and murdered their seven young children right in front of their parents eyes. The parents then frantically escaped Karamonjong and moved to Mbale, Uganda where they started a new family and had three more children. One of them being Akori Peace Rose. WHOOP WHOOP! Peace is now 28 years old and has been married for 14 years. Yeah, 14 years. Let me help you out with the math…she was married at 14. Yeah, 14! Her husband, Phillip, was recently laid off his job in Mbale and is now unemployed. The two of them are currently three months behind on rent and are on the search to find any work.

They have four children, all enrolled in school. The kids range from five to 13. Peace can only afford to feed her family once a day. They usually have posho (flour mixed with water…yum) every evening for supper because it is inexpensive and filling. Peace dreams of the day she can afford to feed her family three meals a day and have a never ending supply of passion fruit. I dream of the day I will only eat one meal per day. Pretty ironic. Wanna switch, Peace?  

Peace never had the opportunity to attend school nor had the chance to learn English. Since her children have been enrolled in school she has slowly picked up on their English. You’d have a hard time believing this is the way Peace learned English, because she is completely fluent with only three years of practice over the dinner table. Though financially Peace is struggling to keep her family in a home with food in their bellies, she keeps her family as her first priority and has an optimistic view on the future. She’s also the only woman here that can pronounce my name right, and she really won me over when she said, "You resemble Jesus with your hair down."