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Jan 02, 2005
A team from the Child-Health and Development Centre (CHDC) recently returned from fieldwork in Nakapiripirit district. The 10-day field study was about sanitation, state of hygiene and the availability and use of water in Pokot county.
A team from the Child-Health and Development Centre (CHDC) recently returned from fieldwork in Nakapiripirit district. The 10-day field study was about sanitation, state of hygiene and the availability and use of water in Pokot county.
The team camped in Amudat and Karita. The Pokot, also called Suk, are found on both sides of Kenya and Uganda border.
Initially, the Pokot struck me as a marauding war-like people, whose usual preoccupation is to raid.
But what did we find? A dignified, welcoming and hospitable people who were just as curious to find out who we were and what we had come to ‘give’ them? Did we carry some drugs, or did we come to repair the boreholes, they asked? There were of course the occasional requests for money, or soda. What else would one ask for?
A few times on our tours in some villages, people fled on seeing us. Were we, perhaps, part of the ongoing disarmament team? However, once we shouted out to them in the Pokot language the purpose of our mission, they quickly returned to meet us. The language is quite distinct from Ngakarimojong. Pokot are part of the Kalenjin group. This is why they are closer to their kins in Kenya than the Karimojong and often flee there during hard times.
Apart from the study, I observed that the Pokot are vulnerable people who are in dire need of security. In the dry season, they constantly move in search of water for themselves and their animals. Their boreholes are non-functional.
Social amenities like education and health services are lacking. There is only one primary school in the whole county and one secondary school near Amudat. There are hardly any health units even at Health Centre 3 level.
Amudat, the only hospital run by by the Church of Uganda, cannot cater for all maternity cases and emergency services. Nakapiripirit has no district hospital. Pokot county, almost the size of Nebbi district, has two health centre II units at Loroo and Karita run by an enrolled nurse and a nursing assistant respectively.
In 1969, the late Denis Cecil Hill, author of Man with a Lobelia flute, found the leading diseases as malaria, dysentery, trachoma, malaria and undulant fever.
The same were mentioned to our study team, plus strangely, the rare kala-azar disease. Female genital mutilation still remains a problem.
However, the milk diet has kept clinical malnutrition in children at bay, but malaria still looms large.
Pokot county in particular, and the whole of Nakapiripirit district, still deserves special consideration from the Government.
Ends
The team camped in Amudat and Karita. The Pokot, also called Suk, are found on both sides of Kenya and Uganda border.
Initially, the Pokot struck me as a marauding war-like people, whose usual preoccupation is to raid.
But what did we find? A dignified, welcoming and hospitable people who were just as curious to find out who we were and what we had come to ‘give’ them? Did we carry some drugs, or did we come to repair the boreholes, they asked? There were of course the occasional requests for money, or soda. What else would one ask for?
A few times on our tours in some villages, people fled on seeing us. Were we, perhaps, part of the ongoing disarmament team? However, once we shouted out to them in the Pokot language the purpose of our mission, they quickly returned to meet us. The language is quite distinct from Ngakarimojong. Pokot are part of the Kalenjin group. This is why they are closer to their kins in Kenya than the Karimojong and often flee there during hard times.
Apart from the study, I observed that the Pokot are vulnerable people who are in dire need of security. In the dry season, they constantly move in search of water for themselves and their animals. Their boreholes are non-functional.
Social amenities like education and health services are lacking. There is only one primary school in the whole county and one secondary school near Amudat. There are hardly any health units even at Health Centre 3 level.
Amudat, the only hospital run by by the Church of Uganda, cannot cater for all maternity cases and emergency services. Nakapiripirit has no district hospital. Pokot county, almost the size of Nebbi district, has two health centre II units at Loroo and Karita run by an enrolled nurse and a nursing assistant respectively.
In 1969, the late Denis Cecil Hill, author of Man with a Lobelia flute, found the leading diseases as malaria, dysentery, trachoma, malaria and undulant fever.
The same were mentioned to our study team, plus strangely, the rare kala-azar disease. Female genital mutilation still remains a problem.
However, the milk diet has kept clinical malnutrition in children at bay, but malaria still looms large.
Pokot county in particular, and the whole of Nakapiripirit district, still deserves special consideration from the Government.
Ends