Nabusayi L. Wamboka
20 August 2002
analysis
Under the grey light of another dusk, Consilar Lawino tried to smile through blood-caked lips.
She held out a hand to the stranger in her home, then quickly withdrew it.
When she turned to her mother's breast, her eyes showed pain, hunger and helplessness.
Lawino, according to her mother Akidi Agnes, developed sores around her mouth that later affected the whole of her elementary canal.
Akidi and her husband Oloya Abara don't know what their daughter is suffering from, but they are treating it with herbs that have mushroomed at the side of the urine-drenched drain close to their shelter.
"We don't have money for the hospital. So we use the herbs," the father says.
Without food and decent shelter, Lawino is headed for a pneumonia attack.
Four weeks ago, when suspected rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army attacked Labongo Gale Camp, the mother Akidi's epilepsy worsened.
"This is our home, 30 people live here. I'm the head of this room and I make sure each person rolls up their mat when they go out in the morning," Abara said.
"We have just managed to dig another drain here so that rain water doesn't flow in. It still comes in from the top, but what can we do?"
Abara is one of the few men allowed to sleep with their wives in the camp, because she is ill.
In the neighbouring shelter, a big white canvas with one door houses 100 women and children, with just enough leg room to turn.
They have been separated from their husbands to limit sexual activity.
Nearby, Filda Akumu stares at her five children - all stunted, two of them sick.
They fled from Wiyanono displaced people's camp in Lamogi sub county, Kilak, at 2 a.m. and walked for two days to the hospital.
"We have nothing," she said, and stared in silence.
Her immediate neighbour Regieta Achieng, a widow, doesn't remember when her husband died, nor her children's or even her own age. She doesn't even know what month it is.
"We are starving," she says. "Sometimes I weed people's gardens for Shs 500 a day, but it is not easy to find work," says Achieng, who fled Wiyanono after her three huts were burnt.
"When the rebels attacked, they started from one corner. There were lots of bullets. I thought of the children. I threw the young one on my back, grabbed the other two and shouted for the rest to run to the bush," she said.
The following morning the entire camp was in ashes and the children where numb with cold and hunger.
"We came straight here and left our ripe millet field. Now we have no food," she said.
Like the displaced people here, her most prized possession is a tent and papyrus shelter constructed by Samaritan's Purse, an international relief agency.
In a corner of a similar tent, we chanced upon Achero Grace, aged five, folded up like a ball to fit in a piece of blanket that had been torn up and divided among several children.
If it was not for the shivering, she could pass for a bundle waiting for its owner.
"She has malaria. But it is the cold and hunger that have worsened her situation," one of her neighbours said.
Next to her Akello Jennifer, another little girl, was munching on maize seeds.
"My friend gave me some maize. I had eaten nothing since morning," she said.
In the backyard of Lacor Hospital, a large field has been cleared to accommodate the increasing number of displaced people.
"We are stressed. 40,000 people are simply too many. It is not sustainable for us to even offer basic necessities. But we can't close the gates in their faces," said Dr. Cyprian Opira, the Hospital Superintendent.
According to Dr. Opira, every evening hospital security has to count all displaced people in the hospital compound, and the numbers grow daily.
"Children are more vulnerable. There is fear that the rebels are more interested in the children, so they send them here first. Now we fear an epidemic," he said.
"There are not enough toilets and the cold and hunger are too much. Many children are sick. We admit about 2,000 per day and we can only afford 15 litres of blood. There are too many mosquitoes. 60 percent of the children suffer from pneumonia."
Army Spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said the army couldn't tell people to go back to their homes, because it is not safe yet.
"Right now Lacor is the only alternative," he said, assuring people that he thought the attacks would stop soon.
"Their historical method of attack is to kick off with a week of mayhem, but the steam quickly dies down. A new division has been sent to the whole of Acholi land to beef up security," he said.
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