by Lindsey Yoneda
Under the blazing Ugandan sun, a group of curious children crowded around a young refugee boy who carefully sketched a helicopter in a notebook.
The notebook belonged to Cahner Olson, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln senior journalism student, who visited Uganda for three weeks in May 2017 through UNL’s Global Eyewitness program. The program, led by photojournalism professor Bruce Thorson, takes journalism students to developing countries to create multimedia stories about the culture, people and hardships they encounter.
After many tireless weeks of research and preparation before the trip, Olson found herself among the children of an orphanage, where she met Mary, a 16-year-old orphan and the subject of her story.
Mary lived at St. Bartholomew’s orphanage, which was originally located in South Sudan. But following a 2013 civil war, the children and caretakers fled to the Morobi refugee camp near Moyo, Uganda.
In addition to documenting the orphans’ struggles, Olson also experienced their struggles through intricate drawings the orphans sketched in her notebook.
*This story is the first part of a multimedia project led by CoJMC students in the Nebraska Mosaic class. To view the complete story, photos and videos, visit https://nebraskamosaic.atavist.com/painting-a-new-picture.