‘My wife was washed away by the floods’
THE knife sliced her womb open. Water spurts out. With it, escapes a pungent fish-like stench. It is just two hours since Grace Adero’s body was recovered. Two days since the bubbly woman, who was so full of life, drowned. Floods swept her away as her husband fought to keep her afloat. And now, he
By Harriette Onyalla
THE knife sliced her womb open. Water spurts out. With it, escapes a pungent fish-like stench. It is just two hours since Grace Adero’s body was recovered. Two days since the bubbly woman, who was so full of life, drowned. Floods swept her away as her husband fought to keep her afloat. And now, her body is fast decomposing.
Adero was eight months pregnant. Teso tradition dictates that the baby be removed from her womb before she is buried. Two people, the Iteso believe, should not be buried in one grave, even if the second person is an unborn baby.
The 27-year-old mother of two drowned in the floods that have devastated the eastern and northern parts of Uganda for the past two months. The floods have killed 10 people and displaced about 250,000 people.
The damage caused by the floods in the districts of Amuria, Katakwi, Bukedea, Kaberamaido, Kumi and Soroti is estimated at sh20b, but what is the cost of Adero’s death?
A sharp wail rends the air. It is the piercing voice of Adero’s mother, the wail of a mother in anguish. Dark clouds swirl menacingly. Thunder rolls across the sky and in quick succession, lightening strikes. Thunder, lightening and wailing join into a dirge that resounds across Oringoi village in Amuria district.
Adero is being buried just outside Aguria internally displaced people’s camp in Oringoi. Her body could not be carried across the whirling waters, which killed her, to Aluka village, where her husband’s family lived before they fled the 2003 Lord’s Resistance Army rebel incursion in Teso and sought refuge in the camps.
However, Oringoi is also more uphill than the neighbouring villages of Angicha, Alito and Opuko, which are all, flooded.
All the residents of the camp are here. They are doing their best to ignore the fetid smell in the air. Adero’s body is blistered. The skin of half of her face has peeled off. Mere bits of dried dark skin stick to her arms and beneath her breasts.
The operation to remove the baby is finally over. It is a boy. He would have probably weighed four kilogrammes. Like his mother, chunks of skin peel off his body with every touch.
A stone’s throw away is the shallow grave where in less than an hour, Adero will be buried. Though the ground is soggy, the digging of the grave is difficult because he walls of the graves keep caving in. And with everything being done in a hurry, Adero’s grave will not be the usual six feet deep. The body had just been recovered at about 1:30pm that day. It is 3:00pm.
For the past four days, the rains seemed to have relented after weeks. The sunshine helped dry the ground. In some spots, it is only the top layer which is dry. One wrong step and the marsh underneath oozes out to stick on your feet. But today, it looks like it is going to rain heavily.“We have never seen this kind of rain. It can rain from 7:00pm to 2:00am and then again the next morning and the cycle goes on for days,†James Ebiru, a resident, says.
Huddled under a nearby tree, the men look on, indifference plastered on their faces. But worry steals past their calculated façade as they constantly glance upward.
Michael Oyaba, the widower, sits quietly. He seems lost in thought. This 28-year-old man has just been brought back from Amuria health centre, about 20km away, where he was admitted for two days and treated for shock. Is he still in shock?
The two were returning from Aluka, about 1km from the camp. Since settling in the IDP camp three years ago, families still find their way home to grow food and pick the harvests stored there.
The camps are congested; there is no room to grow or store food. But they found their home flooded and were forced to return quickly.
Adero asked that they make the trip that September 14 morning. She had woken up at dawn. As usual, she set a pot of porridge on fire for her husband to serve their two children after which he would join her in the garden.
However, since her husband was organising for the sale of their two goats, he delayed. But Adero returned quickly, there was bad news. Their gardens had been flooded and the groundnuts were rotten.
Although she had already set the food they had stored back in Aluka on makeshift platforms, Adero was worried the water level would rise and soak the food. She urged her husband to go with her to check things out and bring back some grain.
On reaching the home, Oyaba and his wife packed groundnuts, beans and millet in a saucepan and hurried back to the camp. It was threatening to rain.
“We heard thunder and my wife said it was raining in the neighbouring village. She was worried the rain would destroy all our crops,†he says.
With the saucepan on her head, Adero stepped into the murky waters flowing slowly over a makeshift bridge the villagers had put across the road.
But just as Oyaba joined her, water burst forth. Adero staggered and reached out for Oyaba’s arm. The water kept pounding at their feet as it rushed past. Within no time, it had reached their knees, rushing ahead of them to block their way.
Oyaba raised his voice above the sound of the gushing waters to tell Adero to let the saucepan go. But she held onto it just as tightly as she clung to his sleeve. The water gushed on. Lucky enough, there were some stones underneath and Oyaba managed to keep steady for a few minutes.
Unfortunately, Adero was losing ground. She did not say a word, but Oyaba could tell from the look in her eyes and the weight increasing on his arms.
His saw someone rolling a bicycle behind them. He shouted for help. Luckily, it was John Ouno, the IDP camp LC1 chairman. He cast his bicycle aside and ran to Oyaba’s aid, but the water was building up fast. The frantic Oyaba and his wife were thrown into the mainstream.
“I struggled to keep her afloat. Ouno came quickly, but the water was too strong. It was bubbling. My hands were getting tired, but I could not let go of her. She tried to fight to stay above the water, but she was pregnant, I could see she was getting exhausted,†Oyaba says.
Ouno reached Oyaba and the two held the expecting mother, but water kept pushing them ahead. They then decided to move in the same direction as the water so that it carries them along instead of resisting their movement as they made their way to safety. As fate would have it, Oyaba slipped. The water carried him on. He only survived after being washed into shrubs.
Behind him, Adero became more agitated on seeing her husband being tossed about by the water. In the process, she weighed down Ouno’s arms as he tried to keep her head above the water. She kept sinking and bouncing out. And as if to assert its clout, a wave of speeding water yanked Adero out of Ouno’s grip. In no time, she sank.
We never saw her again,†exclaims Oyaba as he finally bares his soul. Grief is etched in his every gesture, but he is trying to put up a brave face. He looks down with tears in his eyes. As he looks up, trying to talk again, a tear drops. He wipes it off quickly, embarrassed.
“We tried looking for her in the water, she was no where,†he continues in a shaky voice, stammering as if unsure of his words. “We even… ,†he stops, another tear on his eyelashes. Faster this time, it drops on his daughter’s head.
Oyaba toys with the shoelace of the new white and pink plastic snickers on her legs. The two-year-old Ruth is chewing sugarcane, innocence protecting her from the knowledge that just metres away, her mother lies dead.
Hailstorms forced the villagers to abandon the search. Oyaba and Ouno were rushed to Amuria health centre and treated for shock. Oyaba’s sister Anna Agunyo heard about Adero’s fate and collapsed. The two women were close.
Agunyo also had to be rushed to hospital. She almost failed to attend her friend’s burial. The woman who only days ago was telling her about how she was saving to ensure that her baby is born in Soroti Hospital was dead.
“I cannot believe it. I have seen her body, but I cannot believe it,†Agunyo exclaims, her voice shaky. She looks towards the small group hurriedly wrapping Adero’s body in a blanket.
As Adero is lowered into the grave, the dark clouds roll on to the far eastern skies, thunder following in their wake. The sun suddenly makes its way through. Within no time, it shines like there is no tomorrow.
But there is a tomorrow. A thorny one as this village starts life from scratch. With ‘rotting gardens’, where will this hardworking people find food?
Where will their shelter come from when the walls of their mud-and-wattle huts are falling apart after being soaked by floods?
And, they are probably wondering if they will survive; say the falling huts or the gushing flood waters or hunger or malaria from the mosquitoes breeding in stagnant flood waters or cholera from water muddled up by flooded latrines?
THE knife sliced her womb open. Water spurts out. With it, escapes a pungent fish-like stench. It is just two hours since Grace Adero’s body was recovered. Two days since the bubbly woman, who was so full of life, drowned. Floods swept her away as her husband fought to keep her afloat. And now, her body is fast decomposing.
Adero was eight months pregnant. Teso tradition dictates that the baby be removed from her womb before she is buried. Two people, the Iteso believe, should not be buried in one grave, even if the second person is an unborn baby.
The 27-year-old mother of two drowned in the floods that have devastated the eastern and northern parts of Uganda for the past two months. The floods have killed 10 people and displaced about 250,000 people.
The damage caused by the floods in the districts of Amuria, Katakwi, Bukedea, Kaberamaido, Kumi and Soroti is estimated at sh20b, but what is the cost of Adero’s death?
A sharp wail rends the air. It is the piercing voice of Adero’s mother, the wail of a mother in anguish. Dark clouds swirl menacingly. Thunder rolls across the sky and in quick succession, lightening strikes. Thunder, lightening and wailing join into a dirge that resounds across Oringoi village in Amuria district.
Adero is being buried just outside Aguria internally displaced people’s camp in Oringoi. Her body could not be carried across the whirling waters, which killed her, to Aluka village, where her husband’s family lived before they fled the 2003 Lord’s Resistance Army rebel incursion in Teso and sought refuge in the camps.
However, Oringoi is also more uphill than the neighbouring villages of Angicha, Alito and Opuko, which are all, flooded.
All the residents of the camp are here. They are doing their best to ignore the fetid smell in the air. Adero’s body is blistered. The skin of half of her face has peeled off. Mere bits of dried dark skin stick to her arms and beneath her breasts.
The operation to remove the baby is finally over. It is a boy. He would have probably weighed four kilogrammes. Like his mother, chunks of skin peel off his body with every touch.
A stone’s throw away is the shallow grave where in less than an hour, Adero will be buried. Though the ground is soggy, the digging of the grave is difficult because he walls of the graves keep caving in. And with everything being done in a hurry, Adero’s grave will not be the usual six feet deep. The body had just been recovered at about 1:30pm that day. It is 3:00pm.
For the past four days, the rains seemed to have relented after weeks. The sunshine helped dry the ground. In some spots, it is only the top layer which is dry. One wrong step and the marsh underneath oozes out to stick on your feet. But today, it looks like it is going to rain heavily.“We have never seen this kind of rain. It can rain from 7:00pm to 2:00am and then again the next morning and the cycle goes on for days,†James Ebiru, a resident, says.
Huddled under a nearby tree, the men look on, indifference plastered on their faces. But worry steals past their calculated façade as they constantly glance upward.
Michael Oyaba, the widower, sits quietly. He seems lost in thought. This 28-year-old man has just been brought back from Amuria health centre, about 20km away, where he was admitted for two days and treated for shock. Is he still in shock?
The two were returning from Aluka, about 1km from the camp. Since settling in the IDP camp three years ago, families still find their way home to grow food and pick the harvests stored there.
The camps are congested; there is no room to grow or store food. But they found their home flooded and were forced to return quickly.
Adero asked that they make the trip that September 14 morning. She had woken up at dawn. As usual, she set a pot of porridge on fire for her husband to serve their two children after which he would join her in the garden.
However, since her husband was organising for the sale of their two goats, he delayed. But Adero returned quickly, there was bad news. Their gardens had been flooded and the groundnuts were rotten.
Although she had already set the food they had stored back in Aluka on makeshift platforms, Adero was worried the water level would rise and soak the food. She urged her husband to go with her to check things out and bring back some grain.
On reaching the home, Oyaba and his wife packed groundnuts, beans and millet in a saucepan and hurried back to the camp. It was threatening to rain.
“We heard thunder and my wife said it was raining in the neighbouring village. She was worried the rain would destroy all our crops,†he says.
With the saucepan on her head, Adero stepped into the murky waters flowing slowly over a makeshift bridge the villagers had put across the road.
But just as Oyaba joined her, water burst forth. Adero staggered and reached out for Oyaba’s arm. The water kept pounding at their feet as it rushed past. Within no time, it had reached their knees, rushing ahead of them to block their way.
Oyaba raised his voice above the sound of the gushing waters to tell Adero to let the saucepan go. But she held onto it just as tightly as she clung to his sleeve. The water gushed on. Lucky enough, there were some stones underneath and Oyaba managed to keep steady for a few minutes.
Unfortunately, Adero was losing ground. She did not say a word, but Oyaba could tell from the look in her eyes and the weight increasing on his arms.
His saw someone rolling a bicycle behind them. He shouted for help. Luckily, it was John Ouno, the IDP camp LC1 chairman. He cast his bicycle aside and ran to Oyaba’s aid, but the water was building up fast. The frantic Oyaba and his wife were thrown into the mainstream.
“I struggled to keep her afloat. Ouno came quickly, but the water was too strong. It was bubbling. My hands were getting tired, but I could not let go of her. She tried to fight to stay above the water, but she was pregnant, I could see she was getting exhausted,†Oyaba says.
Ouno reached Oyaba and the two held the expecting mother, but water kept pushing them ahead. They then decided to move in the same direction as the water so that it carries them along instead of resisting their movement as they made their way to safety. As fate would have it, Oyaba slipped. The water carried him on. He only survived after being washed into shrubs.
Behind him, Adero became more agitated on seeing her husband being tossed about by the water. In the process, she weighed down Ouno’s arms as he tried to keep her head above the water. She kept sinking and bouncing out. And as if to assert its clout, a wave of speeding water yanked Adero out of Ouno’s grip. In no time, she sank.
We never saw her again,†exclaims Oyaba as he finally bares his soul. Grief is etched in his every gesture, but he is trying to put up a brave face. He looks down with tears in his eyes. As he looks up, trying to talk again, a tear drops. He wipes it off quickly, embarrassed.
“We tried looking for her in the water, she was no where,†he continues in a shaky voice, stammering as if unsure of his words. “We even… ,†he stops, another tear on his eyelashes. Faster this time, it drops on his daughter’s head.
Oyaba toys with the shoelace of the new white and pink plastic snickers on her legs. The two-year-old Ruth is chewing sugarcane, innocence protecting her from the knowledge that just metres away, her mother lies dead.
Hailstorms forced the villagers to abandon the search. Oyaba and Ouno were rushed to Amuria health centre and treated for shock. Oyaba’s sister Anna Agunyo heard about Adero’s fate and collapsed. The two women were close.
Agunyo also had to be rushed to hospital. She almost failed to attend her friend’s burial. The woman who only days ago was telling her about how she was saving to ensure that her baby is born in Soroti Hospital was dead.
“I cannot believe it. I have seen her body, but I cannot believe it,†Agunyo exclaims, her voice shaky. She looks towards the small group hurriedly wrapping Adero’s body in a blanket.
As Adero is lowered into the grave, the dark clouds roll on to the far eastern skies, thunder following in their wake. The sun suddenly makes its way through. Within no time, it shines like there is no tomorrow.
But there is a tomorrow. A thorny one as this village starts life from scratch. With ‘rotting gardens’, where will this hardworking people find food?
Where will their shelter come from when the walls of their mud-and-wattle huts are falling apart after being soaked by floods?
And, they are probably wondering if they will survive; say the falling huts or the gushing flood waters or hunger or malaria from the mosquitoes breeding in stagnant flood waters or cholera from water muddled up by flooded latrines?