Another world

Last week we went to Northern Uganda, more specifically to Gulu and Arua. It was a mixture of a much needed holiday and work. Let’s call it a working holiday.

First we went to see blogger Rev. Willy Akena in Gulu. He works for The Diocese of Northern Uganda, and his work consists of improving the lives of people in IDP-camps and to inform about the situation in these camps. Amongst other things he uses his blog to do this. His primary target group are donors but also people who could be interested in the work of The Diocese.

Our reason for visiting Willy was to get a feeling of the situation in the North. Until then we had only been in Kampala with the other bloggers and they helped show an interesting and unexpected side of Uganda – at least from our point of view. But the question remaining was – would it be right only to show that particular side when knowing that the situation in the North is quite different? We decided no.

There is no doubt that the Kampala bloggers are privileged and only to show their side would be naïve, just like it would be wrong only to show the people in IDP-camps as the whole picture of Uganda.

The Diocese works in the Gulu and Amuru districts which have 450.000 inhabitants. Two thirds of these people live in IDP-camps. In all there are 1.6 million displaced people in Uganda.
Willy took us to the Amuru camp which has a population of 51.330 people. When we drove to the camp we could see an endless number of mud huts in the distance. On our way we passed a lot of people who waved at us with broad smiles on their faces. We wondered whether they were happy to see us or if they just thought that we looked funny.

When we stepped out of the car inside the camp we were immediately surrounded, mostly by children. We were four white girls carrying a video camera. It must have been really exciting or maybe just very strange.
We have never experienced this kind of hunger or poverty and to stand in the midst of it all felt surreal. The children reaching to try and touch our white skin, some of them getting scared. It was a collision of two very different worlds. Willy showed us around and a lot of the people spoke to us but our conversations turned out to be in two completely different languages but we felt welcome and a lot seemed happy to be filmed.

Even though there is peace now a lot of the people in the camps don’t have anywhere to go. Many have been born in the camps or have lived there for over twenty years. They are used to getting help from donors so it must be difficult if they are to return to society one day and make their own living. Who is to solve this problem? Is it up to the government and Ugandan society or should the donors be more involved than they are now?

We had a discussion about donor money with Willy. Aid is certainly needed and people are used to it. Now people in the camps get enough help to stay alive. It would take more money and help to create decent lives for themselves but if they were to get more help isn’t there a risk that people somehow could be pacified?

The experience was definitely interesting in many ways but also sad and tough. None of us really knew if we had understood what we had just seen, in some ways it felt unreal - that there are actually people living in mud huts under the worst possible conditions while we get to go home to our own safe lives.