Feature article written while Information Officer for Action by Churches Together (ACT) International
Escaping the conflict but remaining trapped in poverty
By Stephen Padre, ACT International
Northern Uganda, July 27, 2005--With many children to feed, Gorety Acan doesn’t know how long her flour will last. As she pours a bowl of it into a pot of boiling water to make bread for one of the day’s two meals for her family, she worries about their food supply for the coming days and weeks.
Lutheran World Federation-Uganda and the Church of Uganda, members of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, have provided flour and other food and household items for Gorety and families like hers who are living in camps scattered around northern Uganda. Up to two million people have been driven from their homes by attacks from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in a conflict that has dragged on for the past 19 years. Earlier this year, the United Nations’ top emergency relief official declared the complex emergency the world’s largest neglected emergency.
Many of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) have made their way into camps where they can find safety in numbers from LRA soldiers but where they cannot escape extreme poverty. Residents of these camps struggle to meet their basic needs of food, shelter and clothing, while they worry about their children losing out on crucial years of education. Some IDPs have found relatives to stay with or other villages who are willing to host IDPs, but many families are on their own in camps and are dependent on humanitarian aid organizations to provide some of their basic supplies, such as food staples, kitchen utensils and access to clean water and sanitation facilities.
Gorety lives in Acowa camp and is originally from the village of Kasilo, about three miles away. On June 16, 2003, Gorety says, LRA soldiers came on foot with guns and attacked her village, killing five people and abducting children, some of whom are still missing. Among those who were killed was her husband. Gorety fled with her children to Acowa and was forced to flee again when LRA soldiers later came through the area. She was able to return to the camp a year ago.
With seven children ranging in age from 18 years old to four months, Gorety struggles to care for her family. “There is no way to look after the children myself,” she says, but adds that the older children help with cooking and bathing the younger children.
Gorety is able to earn a small income by working in a garden adjacent to the camp. The little money she earns pays for school fees, uniforms and supplies for the three children who are in school.
She says her biggest problem, first and foremost, is hunger. “Some of us have started eating wild cats,” she says, something that the Ugandan culture discourages. Her next biggest challenge is the lack of household supplies, such as cooking utensils. Most of the family’s possessions were destroyed when LRA soldiers burned all of the village’s huts in their raid. Cooking a meal with the few pots and pans they have is difficult, and families must often share supplies.
“The food has helped,” she said, referring to the flour Lutheran World Federation-Uganda distributed on June 16. Meant to last her family for a month, their supply had already quickly dwindled by early July. Gorety is able to supplement her family’s diet with sorghum that she grows in a small plot in the camp.
In Adjumani, the district in the northwestern Uganda, hunger does not seem as imminent, yet life is still a struggle for people living in a crowded camp for IDPs within sight of the Nile River. The LWF- Uganda field office for the district distributed food as part of its regular distributions in early July.
Like Gorety, Felicitia Bunia is a mother who is trying to meet the daily needs of her family. When LRA soldiers attacked her village five miles from the camp in April 2005, they abducted her along with 35 other women, men and children, forcing them to carry their own belongings and those of their neighbors and bringing the villagers into the bush. All of the villagers were eventually rescued by Ugandan soldiers. Felicitia and her six children, ranging in age from 15 to 4 years old, found their way to the camp near Maasa Primary school in Ciforo Sub-county.
“Life here is very difficult – no proper house, no food,” says Felicitia. The seven family members sleep together in a ramshackle shelter made of thatch the size of a small tent. When it rains, Felicitia says, the water runs right through the shelter’s roof and walls.
Every morning, Felicitia prepares a breakfast of porridge for her children. For lunch and dinner the family eats bread made from flour given by LWF-Uganda and beans. She is able to supplement some meals with a few greens she manages to grow in a small plot.
Conditions in the camp are harsh. Each family’s shelter sits only a meter or two from the next. Like Gorety, Felicitia finds it hard to prepare meals with few cooking implements.
Beyond their daily food supply, Felicitia says her family needs a better shelter, such as a tent, and mosquito nets, especially for the children. Many of the camp’s children also need clothing.
Life is a daily struggle for these women and their families and for hundreds of thousands like them who have found themselves caught in this prolonged conflict and underlying cycle of poverty. Most IDPs living in camps say they feel safe from the LRA for the most part, but hunger, lack of proper shelter, lack of health services, and other deficiencies are still constant threats to their lives.
