By Nabusayi L. Wamboka
Nov 26 - Dec 2, 2003
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STARCH FACTORY, Lira – On the compound of this abandoned factory stand two motor vehicle skeletons. One is clearly a Leyland truck.
Beside one of the wrecks, Ms Clara Atim is folded up like a ball on the floor. In that position, she looked like a girl of 14 years. In fact, Atim is a mother of six. She lost her husband during a rebel incursion in August last year. Today she suffers from tuberculosis. “They told me it is contagious and I’m worried I will infect these people around me,” Atim said. “But I have nowhere to go.” By this time, I have broken into a sweat realising I am in close company with a possibly untreated TB patient! She notices my unease and adds that she has been on treatment for three weeks. She had to leave the hospital because she had children to take care of. She said, “I decided to come home. My children are all young and my mother is very old. It is better to be here with them.” Home? The asbestos roof of the old factory building is covered with thick black cobwebs making for a rather eerie look. There are many hungry-looking kids who seem to be infected with some strain of cough or something else. One little girl sat wailing by the fireplace. There was no point asking what the problem was; in front of her sat an empty cooking pot. Welcome to Starch Factory; one of several camps for the Internally Displaced People who are becoming a common feature in Lira district today. According to Mr Dennis Ojok, the chairman of the co-ordinating committee for the IDPs in Lira, the district authorities were initially reluctant to introduce camps and encouraged people fleeing the rebels of the Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army to go and live with friends and relatives. However, following the attack of Acol Pii Camp by the rebels two years ago, the district was forced to establish three camps first – at Starch Factory, Railway Camp and at Cultural Centre. “However, one and a half months ago when the attacks increased in the areas of Otuke, Erute North, Moroto and Dokolo counties there was a crisis,” Ojok said. This followed claims by government that they had killed Kony’s henchman, Tabuley, and that the rebel leader had ordered his men to find his body and take it back to him in Sudan. “Residents feared the repercussions. There were rumours that the rebels claimed they would punish the Langi for killing Tabuley,” Ojok said. Lira district has 25 sub-counties and 15 of these are facing disruption due to the war. Currently the district has 16 IDP camps with over 159,000 people. The backyard of Starch Factory Camp is littered with fireplaces and cooking pots. Little children are huddled around some pots, eagerly watching what is cooking. He said, “We have no food and beddings. In such weather most children fall sick.” Okello however is also concerned about something else; the lack of burial sites in the camps which are plagued by daily deaths from disease and possibly starvation. “Sometimes we borrow space from people who have land so that at a later time, we can take our relatives for a more decent burial,” he said. But such favours, he added, “are quickly drying up because the dead are many.” Ojok said that the camps have experienced outbreaks of malaria or cholera. “These camps are congested and the hygiene conditions are outrageous. There are times when there are two or three people dying in one day. Some relatives risk taking back the bodies for burial and end up killed. Others plead with people here to lend them burial space,” he said. But there is more to the chaotic situation in the camp. Residents say it is not unusual for fights to break out in the night when drunken men return and demand their conjugal rights from their wives in this dormitory-like environment. “It is very embarrassing. I have never seen anything like this before,” said Ms Lilly Elit, a women’s leader in the camp. “In a full hall like this in the middle of the night the men want to sleep on their wives and there are children everywhere and old people.” Elit confessed that she has not got over the shock of seeing her son have sex with his wife in the hall. But the scandalised women are co-operating in finding a way around this issue. Said Elit: “We have tried to sort this out with the women. We advise them to fetch water and, as soon as it gets dark, ask their husbands to go take a bath. Then they follow them there and have sex away from the crowd.” While it has been easier to decide where to have sex, the pregnant women face an even more embarrassing situation. Elit said that the women have to endure giving birth in full view of the residents, men and children. “In our villages, we would take the woman in a private hut and help her deliver. Here it is just done in the open; all the children want to see and the men just look on,” she said. There have been efforts to sensitise the people about some of these challenges. But like Ms Molly Akello, a peer educator under the Programme for the Enhancement of Adolescent Reproductive Life project said, this is an uphill task. “These people are from rural areas. Many have not heard about HIV/Aids. The girls especially don’t know how to take care of themselves during their menstruation,” Akello said. Upon starting their periods, the girls have to closet themselves in one corner of the hall for most of the morning until other residents have left the camp to go in search of food. Then the demonstration begins. “We tell them to use old clothes as pads. But they don’t have clothes and the water for bathing is scarce. Most are merely confined until the periods are over,” Akello said. Akello herself has experienced some personal challenges from the hazardous camp situation. She was hit by small pox and her whole body is covered with ugly spots that do not seem to be going anywhere. Like Atim with her TB, Akello says she has received treatment but in these kinds of situations, you reckon it is easier to greet Akello without shaking hands. Yet you still face the risks brought on by the strong winds that regularly sweep through the camp, stirring the sand and blowing it – and more – into your nose and eyes. Yet it is not lost on the sad and desperate faces like that of Clara Atim, that they fled one danger only to settle squarely into another. But they continue to live in the hope of returning to a peaceful existence. For hope is all they have.
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© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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