Dirty things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army

In post-war northern Uganda (as elsewhere), the reintegration of ex-combatants into their home communities is an ongoing process that involves long-term social and spiritual labour. The “re” of “reintegration,” however, might falsely assume a static and cohesive Acholi cosmology within which the parameters of such labours are clearly defined. Pathways taken with the goal of lessening suffering caused by war are tread by Acholi civilians and ex-combatants alike, and the ways former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters attempt to alleviate spiritual distress illuminate wider struggles for moral authority in everyday life. These practices are embedded in cosmologies which, though predating the 20 years of violent upheaval that ended in 2006, are sites of contestation where the politics of belief and doubt are played out. Drawing on insights gleaned from ethnographic fieldwork over the last decade, we focus here on targeted research from January to August 2014 with former LRA individuals who were part of a bigger study of clients at an ex-combatant reception centre. We explore how these persons have experienced, described, and responded to the suffering caused by ajwani (“dirty things”) – the stuff of a polluted cosmos. We further discuss the politics of “belief” and doubt in contemporary Acholi. The labour of ex-combatants and their communities to alleviate spiritual suffering demonstrates how ritual practices both challenge and uphold the power of moral authorities. In the wider context of post-war sociality in Acholi, effective and socially acceptable alleviation of spiritual suffering is contested, processual, and highly constrained by material resources and perceptions of ritual legitimacy. The practices of belief and doubt are not only a matter of metaphysics or ontology, but of shifts in worldly power.