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“Waiting for the long grass to grow” / Uganda

Posted by Joanne Offer on August 20th, 2008

Joanne Offer/The IRC
Ajok stands in front of Labuje mother camp, where thousands of people fled to escape the Lord’s Resistance Army. Photo: Joanne Offer/The IRC
Joanne Offer is in Uganda, where the International Rescue Committee is working with Ugandan communities affected by conflict as well as refugees from neighboring Sudan. Read all her posts from Uganda here.

It’s all the K’s in Uganda – after Karamoja and Kiryandongo, we move next to Kitgum district. The IRC has been working in camps here since 1998 to help thousands of Ugandan people displaced by atrocities carried out by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, (LRA).

Since a peace agreement was struck in 2006, people have gradually been moving back home to their original villages, although many still live in small transit camps while they rebuild their dilapidated houses. To ensure these people have the basic services they need, the IRC is also moving with them. For example we’re fixing village boreholes to improve water sources, we’re building essential sanitation in schools, and we’re setting up support centers to reduce incidences of gender-based violence as people return.

An IRC health officer examines a young girl at a special outreach clinic for people now living in transit camps.

An IRC health officer examines a young girl at a special outreach clinic for people now living in transit camps.

We’re also supporting the government’s local health centers to fight a serious outbreak of hepatitis E, a disease that’s killed more than 100 people in Kitgum this year. Our health teams go daily into the field and we’ve set up a special team on the Sudan border – the point of origin for the outbreak –  to diagnose the diseases and offer advice.

As more and more people return home, the IRC is beginning to phase out some of its services. For example, we used to run an adult literacy program in Labuje mother camp. This helped young women like Ajok Irene Innocent, 19, who fled to Labuje about 4 years ago when the LRA attacked her parish of Pagen.

Ajok says, “I dropped out of school when I was 17 to have a baby. I couldn’t stay in school, but IRC’s literacy classes helped me to keep up with my exams and I now go to secondary school like everyone else. It’s definitely helped me while I’ve been in the camps.”

Like many others, Ajok’s family are now getting ready to return to their home village. “We’re just waiting for the long grass to grow so we can use it for the roof of our new house,” she explains. “I want to go home. Here we are too crowded and we have no land.  It will be better at home.”
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Posted in Africa, education, health, peace, refugees | No Comments »

Changes from the ground up / Ethiopia

Posted by Emily Holland on August 11th, 2008

Emily catches up with a group of children around an IRC-built tap stand.
Emily catches up with a group of children around an IRC-built tap stand. Photo: The IRC
International Rescue Committee communications officer Emily Holland and IRC intern and Princeton University student Daniella Raveh are visiting Ethiopia where they will be blogging about the lives and struggles of refugees and young girls and women.  See all their posts here.West Hararghe, Ethiopia When the IRC began building tap stands in peasant villages in West Hararghe, Ethiopia, staff were confident that health would improve for the thousands of residents who live there.  What IRC didn’t foresee was how much life in general would improve—and for women, especially.
 
Kedija, a 30-year-old mother of nine, used to walk four hours every day—two hours each way—to collect water for her husband and children.  Not only did this chore consume most of Kedija’s day, the water she brought back was often undrinkable.
 
Now, Kedija frequents an IRC tap stand that yields clean water just ten minutes from her home.  Her family no longer suffers from water-borne diseases.  Kedija’s family can drink water whenever they choose and bathe and wash their clothes more frequently.  Best of all:  with more time on her hands, Kedija is catching up on the education she cut short to marry and raise a family.
 
Commented Daniella:  “The way that people spoke about life before the tap stand made it seem like a very long time ago.  It’s obvious that this is a new time.  Accessible water is moving their village forward and, when it comes to challenging gender roles, breaking tradition with the past.  Usually, we think of big change coming from the top down.  Here, this tap stand is changing things from the ground up.”
 

Daniella and a friend give the GPS device a try.

Daniella gives the GPS device a try.

And also from the sky…since 2003, the IRC has been using satellite images, digitized maps, and aerial photographs collected in the field using GPS technology to pinpoint areas that lack potable water and identify new water sources.  With the information collected, we’re able to monitor each tap stand, covered spring, and latrine the IRC has constructed in Ethiopian communities.  We’re also able to put this technology to work to analyze other problems:  why are children in this community dropping out of school?  Could it be that water sources are located too far from their schools?  Or from their homes, requiring them to walk miles each day to collect water for their families, precluding school altogether?
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