Kitgum: IDP Camps
7th November 2006
Some people flee their home countries to become refugees in a foreign
land. Such is the plight of many Liberian people. I had the opportunity
to spend a couple of months with them on the Buduburum
Refugee Camp in Ghana.
Some people flee from their isolated villages to internal camps in
their own country. Such is the plight of many Northern
Ugandans. The camps they flee to are called Internally Displaced
People Camps, or IDP camps.
I had the opportunity to visit an IDP camp
along with some volunteer buddies as
part of my visit to Kitgum in Northern Uganda.
IDP Camp
The IDP camp we visited was a long walk from the center of town,
and by this stage of the trip we were feeling like our own special kind
of Night Commuter. So we hired a
pickup truck for $US20 for two hours to cart us around.
We were greeted warmly by camp officials as we
arrived who gave us a basic run down of the 20,000 person camp.
The World Food Program
Every month, a UN sponsored World Food Program (WFP) truck rolls
into the camp bearing essential food and supplies for the people.
Every registered person gets access to a parcel.
The registration process seemed pretty dumb to
me. I met a lady in Kitgum itself who fails to receive a parcel
from the WFP because she was unable to register on the one day
that the WFP designated. She failed to register because she was
taking care of a very sick sister. Seems pretty arbitrary to me.
USAID 
The other notable aid agency I saw there was USAID. The packages
the USAID supplied arrive in are often converted
into doors for the mud-brick huts. I met one USAID worker
there called Matt. Matt liked the doors because he felt they made
for good advertising for the U.S. Seemed liked an odd sort of
comment to make.
Matt himself seemed like an odd sort of a
character. He is based in the U.S. and was only in Kitgum for two
weeks to set up links between his home church and NGOs in Kitgum, which
is cool. He seemed very quiet and reserved, which is most unlike
the missionary types I know. I invited him out to dinner one night
and he checked with the hotel staff (?!) to see if it was okay for him
to go. His heart was in the right place though, so good for him.
Missing the Basics
With all this aid flowing in you'd think people here would be well
fed and nourished, but judging by the distended
bellies we saw, this was plainly not the case.
Some of the parents could not even afford
clothes for their children. We saw many kids wandering around as
naked as they day they were born.
The camp did have a really cool gravity
fed water system with many outlets around
camp. It was hard to say whether or not is was supplying enough
water for the residents.
One thing the camp did not seem to be lacking
was this bizarre home brew made from fermented
oranges. Maybe ladies make a living from making the home
brew. Most of the volunteers tried some and the general consensus
was, "Not bad".
People on camp
Unlike the Night Shelters, we did
get the opportunity to chat to some of the people on camp.
This lady was
kind enough to invite us into her house. With Amos
translating, she explained how she shared the house with eight of her
sisters. The brothers lived in another hut. She makes a
living by combining the supplies she receives from the UN with oranges
to make the aforementioned homebrew. She hopes to return to her
village one day.
We almost met this lady.
She was returning home from a funeral of a loved one when her group was
ambushed by the LRA (Lord's Resistance
Army). She was shot in the forearm, but managed to
escape. The bullet is still in her arm, despite being shot over
three months ago. She hopes to travel to Gulu soon to have the
bullet removed. She has no strength in her right hand and cannot
form a fist.
This gentleman was
attending (yet another) funeral service for a fifteen month child that
had died of malaria. He showed us his form that proved he was
legally considered blind. A couple of volunteers gave him a couple
thousand shillings ($NZ 1.66).
A Rant
And as a complete aside, here is an uncomfortable non politically
correct thing to say about HIV and malaria.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently
spent $US1 billion on anti-retroviral (ARV) medication for three million
AIDS patients. This is expected to raise their life expectancy by
one year, which is great. That means three millions years worth of
life saved.
If the WHO chose instead to spend that money on
preventable and curable diseases such as malaria and diarrhea, they
wouldn't reach three million people, they'd reach fifteen million
people. The life expectancy wouldn't go up by one year, it would
go up between seven and sixty years depending on when the treatment was
given.
So by spending the money on thing like malaria
and diarrhea, the money will add between 105 million and 900 million
years worth of life. Compare that to the three million you get for
focusing on AIDS*.
So why are we spending such a disproportionate
amount on AIDS?
The other IDP camp
Some of the other volunteers chose to visit another IDP camp the next
day. I chose not to go. I was too emotionally drained from the
interviews I had done with the ladies for
GrassRootsUganda.com. I had already had too much misery for one
day.
The second visit did not go well. The chairman
of the camp was not welcoming. He apparently stormed out in a
drunken state and demanded to see some paperwork. Paper
work? What the fuck?! They obviously didn't have any.
He then attempted to grab Gigi's camera
and screamed, "No Photos! No Photos!".
Git.
He reminds me of the infamous Semeh
Roberts of Buduburum Refugee Camp fame that I had a shouting
match with. Both are doing their own people no favors
whatsoever. Semeh Roberts is in fact profiting from the misery of
his own people. I suspect the chairman of the camp is doing the
same.
Safety at the Camps
Safety is a relative word in Kitgum. Certain places - like the
IDP camps - are more safe than others, but to call them "safe"
would be wrong.
A politician gave a speech at one of the IDP
camps. He spoke out against the LRA and the people cheered.
The LRA spies in the camps passed word about the cheering onto the LRA
itself.
The LRA raided the IDP camp. They started
by killing the fifty soldiers protecting the camp and then moved onto
kill 200 residents. Many of the mud-brick huts were burnt to the
ground.
Wrap Up
We only spent about three hours on the camp but it gave us all an
insight into how much the people are suffering. Like the Buduburum
Refugee Camp, it was a very hard place to be.
This is a part of a series of pieces on
Kitgum. To see a list of other entries, click here.
* William Easterly - The White Man's
Burden
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