Caregiver of Dogs: Francis & Tommy
From a Child Soldier to Caregiver of Rescued Dogs
Taught as a boy that he had no family, Francis now spends his days giving dogs the kindness he once went without.
On workdays, Francis rides his motorbike about 30 kilometres from the land he owns in Omoro to The BIG FIX Uganda, where he cares for the dogs of the Comfort Dog Project. He feeds them, looks after them and treats each one with a gentleness that no one taught him as a child.
It is a quiet, ordinary routine. For a man who was once told he had no family and no future, it is the proof of a life rebuilt.
Taken at Eight
In 1995, when Francis was only eight years old, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted him from his home, where he was with his parents. He was taken to Sudan as a child soldier.
Many of the children who were abducted by the LRA were forced to become child soldiers. Francis was one of them, a boy taken from his parents’ house and made to grow up inside the rebel ranks.
When the group reached Sudan, the rebels selected the 30 best soldiers among them for further military training, and Francis was one of those chosen. He was taken to a rebel training camp in Khartoum.
There, the lessons went far beyond fighting. The boys were taught that they had no family apart from the people in the camp. The rebels instilled in them a heart of no fear and no family, and they had to learn to live and to survive.
After his training, Francis was deployed and spent six years as a child soldier, serving under three rebel leaders.
“We were taught that this is the only school we shall know and the only parents and friends we shall have, nothing more”
A Scar He Still Carries
In 2004, as Francis returned to Uganda with the rebel group, government forces ambushed them. They came under heavy gunfire, and a grenade fired from a helicopter hit his leg, leaving a scar of war that he lives with to this day.
In October of that same year, the year the exchange of fire almost cost him his life, he moved to an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Kilak to seek medical attention. As he slowly recovered, he decided to return home and reunite with his people.
It should have been the end of his struggle. Instead, it was the beginning of another.
When Francis returned, many people stigmatised him, including his own brothers. They told him he did not belong, since he had no piece of land on which to farm and live. The tension between them grew, until his father eventually gave him a small plot on which to build a hut.
A roof, however, did not guarantee survival. Francis still had nowhere to farm, so he depended on his uncles, who occasionally offered him small pieces of land to grow some food.
“When i returned home, i found that the place i knew as home wasn't the same anymore, most of our land had been grabbed and so it was survival for the fittest”
A Meeting in the Village
Before Francis ever joined the Comfort Dog Project, the local council chairman (LC1) of his area told him that The BIG FIX Uganda was coming to his village to meet with survivors of the LRA war. Francis agreed to attend.
At the meeting, the survivors were briefed about the Comfort Dog Project by Francis Okello Oloya, the director of the project and of the schools programme. Okello Oloya is himself a survivor of the LRA war, an ordeal that left him blind.
In 2020, Francis enrolled in the project and was paired with a dog named Tommy. Over the course of the programme, the pair formed a bond, and that same year they graduated together.
The following year, in 2021, Francis was given a role as an Animal Caretaker at the Comfort Dog Project. He has treasured it ever since, because it allows him to give back to the dogs the same kindness and care that once changed his own life.
Since joining the project, Francis’s life has never been the same. He has been able to buy a piece of land of his own in Omoro, where he now lives, and through his work he has also bought a motorbike that carries him between home and the office.
The boy who was told he had no land and no place now has both.
“When I see how far I have come ever since joining the CDP, I feel very grateful because the project changed my life in a way I could never imagine.”
In 2025, Francis unfortunately lost his best friend, Tommy. It was a sad moment for him, but the Comfort Dog Project stood by him once again, giving him another dog. He named him Tommy 2, in remembrance of the friend who walked the early part of this journey with him.
Today, Francis continues to care for the dogs of the Comfort Dog Project, passing on to each of them the compassion that helped him find his way home.