At The Mercy Of Humanitarian Aid

Feb 04, 2004

AFTER 45 miles on a risky murram road from Kitgum town, our unescorted convoy of four lorries and two land cruisers with Red Cross flags, finally reach Kilak Corner camp in Pader district.

AFTER 45 miles on a risky murram road from Kitgum town, our unescorted convoy of four lorries and two land cruisers with Red Cross flags, finally reach Kilak Corner camp in Pader district.
As the convoy kicks up a thick spiral of red dust, half-naked and dirty children dash over and surround our vehicles. By 1:30pm, more hungry-looking human beings, mainly in dirty and torn clothes and barefoot converge quickly in the compound. They are all happy.
“They think we have brought for them food, that is why they are jubilating,” says Bondon Joseph Oloya, an official of the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS).
For a displaced community, traumatised and homeless without clothing and beddings, the mere sight of people from a humanitarian agency sends their hearts pounding with joy. So when the URCS ferried four trucks of jerrycans, blankets, laundry soap and saucepans, it was a relief to many broken souls.
The URCS, which early last year suspended relief distribution following an ambush and abduction of its staff in Pader, has resumed operation. With a Euro1.3m (sh2.9b) fund from the European Commission for Humanitarian Assistance (ECHO) through the Danish Red Cross, the society is to help over 100,000 people from 20,000 households in Pader and Kitgum internally displaced people’s camps.
“We hope that it is going to be safe for us to move down there,” Alice Uwase, the URCS deputy secretary general, said during the launch of their resumed activities on January 29 in Kitgum.
Of the 2,288 households (each household has an average of five people) in Kilak Corner camp, half of them benefited that day. Each family got two blankets, two saucepans, two jerrycans and two bars of soap.
According to Hillary Kupajo, the URCS field officer for Northern Uganda, other camps, to be aided in phases, include Rackoko, Puranga and one of the camps in Acholibur. “We are not dealing in food items, because the World Food Programme (WFP) is handling it,” says Uwase.
But Penderiko Ongwech, the camp commandant of Kilak says: “The food given by the WFP is not enough.”
For each household, the WFP gives out 75 kgs of posho or maize, 25 mugs of beans and one litre of cooking oil. That ration is expected to last for two months before another batch is dished out. “This is too little if you have a huge family,” explains Ongwech, adding that most of the families here eat one meal a day.
But if those in the IDP camps are lamenting over inadequate food, thousands of others displaced outside the formal camps are worse off. They have never been given food by the WFP, neither are they the target of most NGOs who prefer formally organised IDPs. So the parents have to search for menial work around town to raise money to feed the children and themselves.
Right in the middle of Kitgum town, for example, there are thousands of displaced people –– mostly children and women who have neither shelter nor what to eat. During day, they hang under the trees near the main Kitgum Hospital, and at night they sleep out in the cold on the hospital compound. No body knows their exact number, because the number keeps fluctuating, depending on rebel attacks. “We live here as destitutes. The biggest problem is food,” says, Madlena Atoo, an old woman of about 60, who, together with her six grandchildren, sleeps on the veranda of the hospital. “Even when it rains, we sleep outside here because there is no where to go.”
Adilang was displaced last year from her home on Lira-Kitgum road by rebels. Although Oxfam has erected tents for the internally displaced persons at the hospital, many still sleep outside because the tents are not enough.
Madlena Ato has had no shelter. “I fetch water for people who give me money to buy food.” Her unemployed husband, John Okot grazes people’s cattle for which he is paid peanuts.
At the town council grounds, another woman, Angela Oketa, has a similar tale: “When you get sh400 a day (from fetching water), you have to divide it for buying food, soap and salt.” Frail and emaciated, Juliana Aya, a widow with six children, is also paying the price of a war whose target is more brutality than capturing state power. She was displaced three years ago when the rebels killed over 400 people including her husband in Mucwini.
“I wish the government or some NGO can build for us some house where we can sleep,” pleads Sylvia Angwech.
According to the Kitgum district chairman, Nahaman Ojwe, over 235,000 people out of the 281,000 population of the district are displaced. Many live in overcrowded unhygienic mud-and-wattle camps near town and in the remote areas.
They hardly have access to medicine when they fall sick. Besides, water shortage is a general problem. “I bathe once in a week because I cannot get water,” says Noya Amone, 53, reeking of booze and sweat. In most, if not all camps, there are few boreholes where women and children queue for long hours to fetch water.
Whereas many use polythene bags and old blankets as bedding, others have nothing at all, so they sleep on bare ground or cold cement floors in churches, schools, shops and hospitals. “We appeal for more of this humanitarian intervention to continue because we don’t know when this war will end,” Ojwe says at the Red Cross offices. “Because of the war, the community has been reduced to a state of destitution.”
As the Lord’s Resistance Army war in northern Uganda enters its 18th year, more people are affected. And their hopes can only be kept glowing through handouts like clothing, shelter, food and household utensils, without which their shattered lives hang in balance.
Ends

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