They live by begging for a day’s meal

Aug 02, 2010

IT is July 21, 2010 at about 1:00pm. The timekeeper hits the old school bell several times to announce the lunch-hour break. Pupils burst out of their classrooms through doors and windows, shouting jubilantly.

By George Olupot

IT is July 21, 2010 at about 1:00pm. The timekeeper hits the old school bell several times to announce the lunch-hour break. Pupils burst out of their classrooms through doors and windows, shouting jubilantly.

In their light green school uniform, they dot the school compound; some chasing one another in school prank fights, some peacefully playing juvenile games, and the majority streaming out of the school through several footpaths into the IDP camp which they call home.

But inside the P.1 classroom, two little brothers, Robert Olegem, 8; and Simon Ileet, 6, remain glued to the floor where they always sit for lack of enough desks for all the pupils. Olegem and Ileet are not in school uniform; they do not have any.

Each of them blankly stares into space, lacking courage to suggest to the other to go home to begin preparing lunch.

After realising they have stayed behind too long, Olegem, the older of the two, takes his brother by the hand and they both stagger out of the classroom, tears welling up in their eyes because of hunger.

They quietly head to the camp. A few metres away from their hut, their eyes behold their neighbours having lunch a meal of beans and posho lunch. They stop and look, hoping that the man or his wife will invite them to join their children who are eating in a circle around a huge plate of posho.

The man and his wife ignore them and continue to munch mouthfuls, before one of the children finally tells them off stubbornly: “Olegem and Ileet, go to your home. Didn’t you also receive relief posho and beans yesterday? My parents are tired of you begging from us daily.”

Without uttering a word, the two proceed to their hut which is at the extreme end of Kapelebyong sub-county IDP camp. Kapelebyong is one of the counties on the border of Teso, Karamoja and Lango. It is in Amuria district.

Olegem and Ileet are just one example of the many child-headed families in Teso. Amuria was carved out of Katakwi district in 2005. It comprises Amuria and Kapelebyong counties and borders Katakwi to the east, Soroti to the south, Kaberemaido to the west and Moroto and Lira to the north. Its headquarters are in Amuria town council, 40km to the north-east of Soroti town on the Soroti-Abim road.

Amuria is one of the poorest districts in Uganda, with a human development index of 0.422 far below the national average of 5.60 (UNDP Human Development Report of 2007). The high level of poverty is attributed to persistent insecurity due to cattle rustling by Karimojong warriors, which dates back to 1956; insurgency and civil war led by the UPA in the mid-1980s and early1990s and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) invasion in June 2003.

“Being the entry point for LRA into Teso region, Amuria bore the brunt of the LRA killings, abductions and other brutal acts which led to extensive loss of lives, property and mass displacement of the people to IDP camps and other districts,” says Julius Ocen, the LC5 chairperson Amuria.

When they reach their hut Olegem and Ileet quickly take on their usual tasks. Ileet washes the only two worn-out saucepans and four plastic plates and lights a fire in front of their hut, while Olegem hurries out to collect firewood and water.

As the beans boil, the boys narrate their experience in the camp. They were born in the camp. Their mother, Magdalena Aranit of Acegerekuma village, died when Olegem was aged five and Ileet was three.

Their father, Charles Anuto, who met their mother in the camp, had not traditionally married her and he abandoned them one month after the death of their mother. To date they do not know his whereabouts.

Their eldest brother, Simon Erepu, who was nine years old at the time their mother died, took care of them for only one year. Erepu, who dropped out of school in P2 due to harsh camp life, survives by labouring in exchange for food. He stays in households that occasionally need his labour. He only joins Olegem and Ileet when he hears that they have received relief food and quickly leaves when the food is over.

“We survive by begging for everything – from cassava flour, vegetables, medicine and salt – from neighbours. Sometimes they give and when they don’t, we go to bed hungry,” says Olegem. Ileet adds that they have forgotten the taste of sugar and that they taste meat only when a Good Samaritan gives them, like during Christmas holidays. They eat greens which they pick from people’s compounds and borrow cassava flour which they use to prepare a meal once a day.

Because they do not have money to buy soap, they take several months without washing their clothes, a pair of shorts and a shirt each, and a torn blanket.

There are large holes in the roof of their hut, the floor is dusty, the walls are disintegrating and when it rains at night, they have to stand up and wait for the day to break. For bedding, they spread their torn blanket on their removable door shutter where they lie without taking off their clothes. In the morning, they put back the door shutter to give an impression that their house is locked, before they run to school.

The daily attendance register at school indicates that the times they attend school are fewer than the times they do not. When one of them falls sick, the other goes out to beg for money to buy drugs or beg for the actual drugs from a nearby drug shop. And if the mission fails, they resort to herbs. If the sickness is acute, a Good Samaritan rolls the sick one on a bicycle to Kapelebyong Health Centre IV.

The toes and soles of Ileet’s feet have been disfigured by jiggers. Now that IDPs are resettling in the villages, Olegem says in December last year, they tried to resettle in their maternal village of Acegerekuma, but their uncles chased them away, saying there was no land for bastards.

“We had to come back to the camp. We don’t know where to go. Maybe the Government will do something for us. We need help,” says Olegem. Ileet says other children in the camp do not freely interact with them because they have dirty clothes and they stink.

“Some children bring us leftovers from their kitchens, while others steal food and toss it to us because they are scared of jiggers,” says Ileet. Eddy Malinga, a community development officer in Amuria, says it is not easy to establish the exact number of child-headed families in the district because more people are still returning from wherever they had fled to during the insurgency.

“They are many. We connect them to NGOs like Childfund International, PfCW, ASB, Pilgrim and government programmes like NAADS, NUSAF, NUREP that implement projects that support children,” says Malinga.

In the nearby Katakwi district which experienced similar upheavals, Betty Akareut, the district probation officer, says by 2008, there were 480 child-headed families in Katakwi district alone.

“Today, there are 26,000 orphans and vulnerable children up from the 24,000 the district had in 2002. People are coming back to the district from where they had run for safety,” says Akareut.

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