Summer in Uganda

An Unexpected Trip to Kitgum

My trip to Northern Uganda was extended at the last minute. On Friday evening in Gulu we met with the UN OCHA officer for the Gulu sub-office (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) – a middle-aged British guy named Andrew Timpson. He was tan from the tropics and wearing silk lounging shirt with blue jeans. Despite looking like a total hippie, he’s the most on to it person I’ve met so far. Without any of the usual UN pretense, he explained the humanitarian aid situation in the area as struggling.

Despite 35 NGOs operating in the Gulu district, basic needs are still not being met. NGOs operating in accessible camps may depart around 9:30 am and return by 5 to travel during the safest hours of the day - for a camp that is far from urban centers, this allows a very short working day. There are more camps though that simply cannot or are not being accessed by humanitarian aid workers at all. In the neighboring district of Kitgum, more camps are inaccessible and even more in Pader. This becomes a running trend – whatever is the case in Gulu, you can just assume it’s worse in Kitgum and still worse in Pader, with services declining as insecurity increases.

Very few NGOs are having their staff stay in the camps overnight, which most seem to agree is the only way to really know the situation and increase protection levels for IDPs. In Kitgum there are around 10 NGOs operating, and maybe 4 or 5 are in Pader… almost all aid workers in Kitgum and Pader are traveling with UPDF escorts at all times outside of the urban centers. So, access is severely limited, and the numbers of NGOs are deceptive because operations target the camps easiest to access.

I am annoyed at some professors in Boston that asked me what the “value-added” would be for another NGO to operate in Northern Uganda – with such authority that I thought they knew what they were talking about. There is clearly a value-added that might be measured in wells dug if nothing else. There may be reason not to count some NGOs with offices in the area as relevant because they aren’t letting their staff go out into the field at all – if you discounted those and those doing little, you’d have far fewer than 35 NGOs counted as actively working in the area – and even if all 35 were active – we’re talking about 50 million IDPs in Gulu alone living in camps. Average staff for a large NGO in a region of the size is maybe 50 to 100 – mostly comprised of locals with a few expats. And they asked me what the “value-added” would be?

The problems are many – of primary concern is that there is not enough water. In Gulu district, they estimate that families (approx 6 individuals) are receiving 15 liters of water per day – and that is for everything: cooking, washing, drinking. There are places where they think it may be as low as 5 liters per day. The United States is the major provider of food – which is well-covered in Gulu, but not as well-covered in Kitgum and Pader. In Kitgum, a special unit was provided by the UPDF to escort the food distribution trucks because literally one ambush could cause the WFP (World Food Program) to pull out their workers and leave over a million IDPs with nothing.

The IDPs have little access to land for cultivation, and even the camps are often on privately owned land. IDPs are warned not to go beyond two kilometers of the camps at any time because of the rebels, and to farm any small plot of land within those boundaries, they must pay the landowners with money that they do not have the ability to earn. I watched women in a camp weigh out their daily rations of a powdered corn base, and I saw children with bellies swollen from hunger… even though hunger isn’t the worst problem in this place.

Protection may be the greatest need besides water – the fringes of the camps are subject to raids by LRA rebels, women are raped going to poorly lit latrines, children are defiled when left at home with no schools to attend. Less frequent, but terrible are massacres with large raids by the LRA where half of the huts in a camp may be burned and children are abducted in large numbers.

Among the IDPs, domestic abuse and AIDS are rampant. The most dangerous activities for an IDP are going out into the fields, collecting firewood and getting water, and some IDPs even store firewood during the dry season because they know that the grasses will grow in the rainy season giving rebels more places to hide and making their daily subsistence activities even more dangerous. In an AIDS awareness workshop, a woman working for Doctors without Borders asked a group of IDP women who should carry condoms. The answer she received from the group of IDPs was, “All women going to the field, so that when they are raped they can ask the man to at least use a condom.” That makes me sick to my stomach.

As I’ve mentioned before, the protectors are also a problem - UPDF soldiers have too much power in the camps. How can there be any kind of justice when the judge is the soldier and rapist? Shocking to me is that the UPDF legally recruits children in the camps to make up “Local Defense Units.” Even worse, after enlisted these children are often sent to other camps as soldiers rather than being allowed to stay to protect their own camps. Mothers lose their children here in many ways.

The summary of Timpson’s assessment was that ARC is needed in Gulu, especially if we are able to access more camps and have staff onsite. ARC is even more needed in Kitgum, and there was a UN convoy going to Kitgum around 9 on Saturday morning. He strongly encouraged us to join – there were two extra seats in one of the vehicles. He said there would be other NGOs and donors there – everyone we’d need to speak with to find out the situation there and to find out what kind of operations would potentially be able to get funding. Such an opportunity is rare and you just have to jump to take advantage of it – we sent Shabnam back to Kampala the next day to attend a meeting, and Sanja and I agreed to go to Kitgum.

We had no idea at the time that we would be the only other two accompanying the UN officials, and I think Andrew purposely didn’t tell us or the head of OCHA Uganda, who was not comfortable with mere NGO employees mixing with her assessment tour. As it was, somehow Sanja and I ended up riding to Kitgum with the head of UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) IDP operations for Africa (Peter – who was just in from Liberia), a UN OCHA director visiting from New York (Steve, who wrote much of Columbia University’s curriculum for Humanitarian Aid in their CIPRA program), the new UN Field Security Coordination Officer for Northern Uganda (Mike – an Irish former military guy who had to come to Uganda 4 days after his wedding!), and the head of OCHA Uganda –a French woman who, as just mentioned, had the attitude to fit the stereotype (Eliane).

I liked Eliane, despite her displeasure - she was a smart lady with guts. She let down her guard a few times on the trip, because she liked us as well – she just didn’t like the idea of us being there. Peter, Steve and Mike didn’t have the chip on their shoulder, and it was clear that they enjoyed the entertainment of two apparently clueless girls who somehow crashed the party. It became the entertainment of the trip to watch them hand us the information that she was trying to keep us from getting – which the guys did more and more as they realized what was going on.

It was ridiculous to watch Eliane keep information from us. I suppose she didn’t want to show favor to an NGO, and I highly suspect that she didn’t want us to see the total failure of the OCHA office in Kitgum - which is pathetic in comparison to Andrew Timpson’s counterpart office in Gulu. But thanks to Mr. Timpson, we were along for the ride and she knew there was nothing she could about it. Sanja and I were laughing all the way back to Kampala over how crazy it was that we managed to get two seats in that convoy.

The road between the urban centers of Gulu and Kitgum is through land occupied by LRA rebels. Although the UN and the international community at large has not been targeted by the LRA, we had UPDF soldiers as escorts – twelve in total, riding before and behind our vehicles, all armed and baking in the sun on the back of pick up trucks. I had calmed my nerves about going to Gulu because everyone told me it was worse in Kitgum and Pader – so this was a lovely turn of events for my second week in Africa. Now it was just that Pader is the worst place to be, so Kitgum would be less-dangerous than Pader.

I seriously prayed about the decision to go – but I knew deep down from the moment they told us about the convoy that I was going. I basically just prayed for God to stop me from going if I would be put in harm’s way. But my gut feeling remained strong – I knew I should go, and I wasn’t afraid. I did feel like I was being carried there somehow – I mean, how do you just get a seat in a UN convoy with armed escorts to see a place considered inaccessible by most Ugandans only 10 days after arriving on the continent for the first time in your life?

Friday night (still in Gulu) Sanja briefed me on ARC operations so that I could sound like I knew what I was talking about on the trip the following day – and at 8:30 on Saturday morning we attended a security briefing where we were to meet up with the group. At the meeting, all recently reported attacks by the LRA over the past week were listed – I think it was then that I realized I was in a war zone for the first time in my life.

There I was, sitting at the table with people who knew the names of the LRA commanders and who actively tracked their whereabouts on a daily basis. There were also the aid workers - those daring people willing to work in conflict conditions. They were writing down the stats - hoping they could trust the local sources to give truthful and thorough security reports, because it is on the basis of these reports that they plan their operations. It is scary, because it is impossible to tell who is LRA and who supports the LRA in the Acholi areas. Nothing is simple, but Mike told us he’s seen worse - in East Timor people realized it made them happy to report attacks, so when they had none to report they would just make up stories!

The question was raised as to how they could expect the security situation to change if arrest warrants are issued by the ICC in the coming weeks. There are rumors that this could happen as soon as Monday, and there is much ambiguity as to whose names would be included on a list. There is wide-spread consensus that issuing these warrants would cause the end of peace negotiations currently going on in Uganda, which are backed by the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Norway (I believe), and so the group was trying to predict whether the response of rebels would be to desert the movement or to increase the violence as the peace talks fail.

The initial answer was absolute uncertainty – no one could predict. But then a man reminded everyone that they’d been trying to catch Kony for 18 years and he’s managed to live free in the bush for that long – why should some arrest warrant be seen as a real threat? The warrants could even cause some to return to the bush when they realize they could be arrested under international law despite national amnesty.

I spoke with an Acholi man who works for an advocacy group of local NGOs in Gulu district – he said he doesn’t want the arrest warrants issued for Kony to be tried in The Hague. He said that any western jail the ICC would provide would not be punishment for Kony – after living in the bush for 18 years, why should he live knowing his life is secure and with the luxurious accommodation of western high security prisons with swimming pools and exercise rooms? He would prefer Kony to have to remain in Northern Uganda and witness the destruction he has caused, and to feel shunned by his own people.

I personally don’t know enough to have a firm opinion about the warrants – I don’t see that the peace process here is doing much from the little I’ve seen, and I think Kony is a madman – it may not be that prison would punish him enough – but maybe this nation needs him locked away so that they are protected from his manipulation.

What is most disturbing to me came from a conversation I had with Mike, the UN Security Coordination Officer, who told me that he has personally tracked Kony recently – he tracked him entering Uganda from Southern Sudan, he knew he was with 40 men and they knew when he broke with the group with 5 men, and he knew he was traveling to Gulu to participate in an annual festival in his home town.

If one UN guy who just arrived in Northern Uganda this year can get that kind of information, then the army certainly can – and they do – yet they still haven’t caught him. The IDPs think the government allows this war to continue – and it appears to me that they are right. There is something missing in this story – and I don’t know what it is – but I know that somebody is benefiting from the suffering of these people and that is why Kony is still in the bush.

So the war continues, and although I don’t think I could have been much safer traveling from Gulu to Kitgum than in the UN convoy – it still shook me to realize that lying in the tall grass along the roads could be rebels watching us pass. Some of them would be children – some even born in the bush, knowing no other life than a life of violence. And yet people walk this road every day – often in groups for some protection… literally staying by the roads because those are at least guarded by UPDF soldiers that I could see sitting under trees every so often for the entire stretch of road.

But that even the soldiers can’t be seen as safe is scary – and that some former LRA rebels that have surrendered have been recruited into the army is the reality. Their brutality cannot simply fall away, and the culture here almost is so accustomed to this that rape can be perceived as normal even by women. Often these soldiers patrol all night, do not even receive a hot meal, and are then recruited as escorts for the day – it’s no wonder they cause their own share of problems.

The trip to Kitgum from Gulu takes about two hours, and we chatted with Peter (the UNHCR guy) the whole way there about everything from IDP camp comparison, to struggling Balkan authors, to my interest in West African oil, to the role of optimism in aid work, to the role of UNHCR in working with IDPs. The conversation made the time pass quickly. We arrived with a sigh of relief and checked into the hotel (which Andrew had also arranged – much to Eliane’s delight, I’m sure.) : ) You should have seen her face when she realized we had no other schedule but to follow them around for the entire day. It was apparent that Andrew had failed to mention that when he put us in the cars that morning.

The first thing I noticed about Kitgum was how quiet it is – I didn’t realize it but there is always some noise in Kampala or even in Gulu – but Kitgum felt like a forgotten place. It felt like a ghost town – the buildings were crumbling, the roads were empty and some of the schools were literally UNICEF tents flapping in the breeze. The town was smaller than Gulu and the people I met were very kind – it is hard to imagine during the day that every night 16,000 people enter the city from the IDP camps to sleep in reception centers.

Our first stop was to sit in on a meeting with the District Regional Commander of the UPDF based in Kitgum. He was everything I thought an African district commander would be – from his large stature, to his brazen and bigoted personality, to his dim office with portraits of Museveni and red velveteen chairs lining the walls up to his desk, centered to emphasize his importance. Eliane was a pro at talking with this type of African male – and the meeting was informative but frustrating. The commander said his forces were spread too thin – and that the LRA had taken advantage of this – knowing that the UPDF wouldn’t be able to send reinforcements to back up their troops. Now he said they’d readjusted to maintain a reinforcement battalion in Kitgum, and they have reduced their area of coverage, choosing to focus on strategic areas. They said they were glad the IDPs were cultivating near the roads because it does the dual job of making them more secure and keeping the brush low so that the rebels have less cover near the roads.

I am wondering at this point why this is the conversation going on after 18 years of low-intensity conflict. There were murmurs by the group afterwards to the effect of, “Why aren’t there enough UPDF soldiers? – could it be that they are in Somalia, despite the denial of the Ugandan government?” Comments like that make me realize how complicated these wars are in East Africa – all of the conflicts relate to each other and feed each other in ways I do not yet understand. The DRC had also denied the presence of SPLA troops from South Sudan coming down for supplies, but we heard from others that they are obviously there as well.

The DRC mentioned sympathizers who leave food in abandoned houses for the LRA. He said there are three types of these individuals – there are those who know their children have been abducted, there are some who support their rebellion, and finally there are some that are approached by LRA rebels and told they have to supply them with food or else their family will be killed. It is impossible for the UPDF to determine who is of what type.

Finally he complained that all of the events and NGOs and UN employees needing escorts stretch their manpower too thin – he wants to reduce the usage of soldiers for those purposes, which is what the higher offices of the military in Kampala also say – they see assisting internationals as secondary to the war. I won’t argue with the fact that security is the first thing these IDPs need – but after 18 years, you can’t expect the UPDF to suddenly be successful if they just put their mind to it. I don’t know enough about the military to have more than that basic opinion about what the DRC had to say.

After leaving the district commander’s office we visited the LC V – a local government official in Kitgum who complained that the IDPs are not getting enough food, and that they blame the government for the war. He also worried about the fights that are bound to occur over land once they leave the camps, and about the lack of UPDF soldiers. He wasn’t very helpful – but his permission was required to go and visit one of the IDP camps, which was our next destination. It was my first time to visit such a place.

It was a smaller camp with about 11,000 IDPs living there. There was one clinic that might have had two rooms, and one children’s ward that could hold maybe twenty children. The children’s ward was run by the government, but the building had been constructed by an NGO. Before I knew it I was surrounded by about thirty children staring at me. I began to play with them, each one waiting to shake my hand and curtsy – they followed me around the camp wherever I went… at first shy, then creeping closer and closer until they could touch my arm, and then jump back giggling. One baby started crying, and Sanja explained that he had probably never seen a white person before.

We met with a group of elderly IDPs and spoke with them, and listened to what they had to say. Much of my emotional response is captured elsewhere, so I’ll try to avoid going into that too much here. We asked if they were registered to vote, and they are – but they are required to vote, with little or no access to information about Kampala or candidates. They said that when their Parliamentary leaders visit they speak, but they do not allow for the IDPs to voice their concerns. They leave without listening, and they rarely come. Others said they have no other parties to choose from anyway.

Much of what they demanded should be provided by their own government, but they feel powerless to change the government. A few IDPs have radios, and that is basically their only source of information about the outside world. It feels like the entire Acholi population is being kept isolated and uneducated in camps – I keep looking for motives. I’m sure it runs deeper than votes, but the Acholi tribe supported the opposition to Museveni and his National Resistance Army.

One of the UN officials thinks that perhaps it is easier to “forget about the North” – to extend a weak effort to appear like they are trying to fight the rebels because it is easier than trying to deal with the difficulties that will follow. Once the war ends, there is no longer an excuse for having an entire segment of the population uneducated and living in terrible poverty. Where will they get the money to invest in developing the North, after 18 year of war with IDP camps and cemeteries has ravaged the countryside?

The group of elderly people I spoke with was mostly widows, and many had lost children. They looked so worn down – at least seventy pairs of tired eyes were staring at me, and I felt so powerless. Why were they sitting around me on the ground while I sat on a bench? Why were they clapping when we said that additional rations would be coming soon to the most vulnerable of the population – why weren’t they screaming with rage? I think years ago they must have screamed until they could scream no longer – they looked dejected and they sat patiently. I wondered how it was possible for these people to be so polite to us, and to behave so respectfully. I wonder how I would react in those circumstances. We are there to help – but that seems so small in comparison to the injustice that they have to be there at all.

Following the IDP camp we met with reps from all of the NGOs working in Kitgum currently, and the hot topic at the meeting was the military escorts. Apparently the NGOs have to go themselves to the barracks every morning to recruit escorts – which really conflicts with the humanitarian aid principle of separation from military operations. The guards often get drunk during the day, and it is impossible to tell when they are getting actual UPDF soldiers, and when it is local defense units which are less-trained and more likely to desert them in case of an ambush. They give them biscuits and water, but if one NGO were to start paying the guards it would ruin it for all of them, so they have to work together on that. Still there have been incidents where the guards threw the biscuits and water back in the faces of the NGOs saying to take it back and that others are being paid. They don’t know who is breaking the system.

The NGOs were most frustrated with the UN OCHA office for not coordinating security information – and there was definitely a bitterness among those working in Kitgum.. they know they are in a forgotten part of the world and the resent the arrival of UN officials that they consider to be too little, too late. They’ve been managing fine without UN OCHA for years, why should they clap because they decide to show up? It wasn’t very productive – and it certainly made Eliane angry. The best news for these local NGOs is that Mike, the new security officer for Northern Uganda, will be setting up a security office in Kitgum soon. I think that is the best thing, but they really need their own officer.. Mike can’t be in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader at the same time, and they all agree that security information more than a day old is useless. The rebels can walk 40 kilometers per day.

The small world aspect was that I knew one of the guys working for International Rescue Council (IRC) in Kitgum – in this tiny, war torn place I recognized him and he recognized me – but neither of us can remember how we know each other. He was at Columbia when I was at NYU – but I can’t place him otherwise. Anyway, it was great to see someone that was familiar, and his NGO is sort of the “rival NGO” of ARC – so it was great that he invited me to their office and told me about their operations.

That evening Peter, Mike, Steve, Eliane, Leith, and a few other of the NGO reps all sat around the hotel having dinner and drinks – talking until late in the evening. From across the street some kind of classical music started playing and it was beautiful and serene – then the rain began to pour and we watched the deluge from the veranda. It’s hard to explain the atmosphere of Kitgum – it feels so isolated, so detached from the world – and yet even still at times you forget that war is going on around you.

I fell asleep that night to a symphony of frogs outside of my window, and we returned to Kampala the following day – seven hours on the road later – after seeing more baboons and beautiful landscapes. Everyone has been congratulating us for being the first to brave the road trip to Kitgum, and Sanja and I are bonded now – hurrah! My first real friend here. Sadly, she is supposed to go back to Serbia this week – but her ticket hasn’t come through, so she may be staying longer.

We did get some great information – we have about three new donor options to apply for, and I have several contacts with local NGOs to follow up on. But for me this trip was so much more, it was my first time to experience this type of place, and to see the camps and how people are living. The trip was a rollercoaster ride of moments - it was exciting, it was horrible, it was beautiful – I don’t even know how else to describe it.

posted by Suzanna @ 2:57 AM