Eve Mashoo
7 April 2008
opinion
Nairobi — AMUGE ROSELYN IS 14 YEARS OLD AND married. But unlike the fairy tale in which she would have lived "happily ever after," her marriage signalled the beginning of a long nightmare.
Originally from Lapainat village in Gulu District, Uganda, Amuge has only known the life of a refugee. After rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army killed her mother in 2001, she fled to a camp for internally displaced people.
The oldest in a family of eight children, she helped her unemployed and alcoholic father to raise her siblings. But now that the war is over, her father has found another use for her - he recently forced her to marry a 40-year-old man in exchange for money to feed the family.
But Amuge's story is not unique to her family. It is all too common in war-scarred northern Uganda where the conflict has left more than a million people displaced and created a generation of child mothers.
Their lives are defined by social decay, insecurity, poverty and lack of public services. According to World Vision, the number of child-mothers in the region is estimated at about 4,000.
Their hopes of living normal lives ended when they went to the IDP camps, where promiscuity was rampant. Girls were frequently raped or forced into prostitution; a family planning survey revealed that almost four out of every 10 girls reported that they were raped by soldiers or rebels, neighbours or camp leaders. The average age of the first sexual experience was 13.4 years for girls and 13.9 years for boys, compared with the national average of 17 years.
Even when they weren't compelled to give their bodies to older men, young people routinely changed sex partners, and the majority failed to practices safe sex; only 43 per cent used condoms, either because they weren't available or because the children did not know how to use them.
Now that the war is over, this pattern of camp life is proving slow to change, even among people who finally are returning home.
For many girls like Amuge, the new reality is much like the old one - forced sex or marriage to soldiers and other older men, often because of pressure from their families who are seeking material benefits.
According to the Uganda Family Planning Association's Gulu branch, four out of 10 teenage girls in Gulu are pregnant while one in 10 teenagers is HIV-positive. Only 12 per cent of teenagers use contraceptives.
AMUGE AND HER SIBLINGS were forced out of their original home in Gulu to TeTugu internally displaced camp in 2003, where they have been ever since. They barely have enough food to survive, often having to one meal a day.
Amuge finds menial jobs in her neighbours' gardens, earning less than half a dollar a day, or sometimes being paid in food. The family still has to rely on food aid donated by humanitarian organisations like United States Agency for International Development (USAid).
That is not enough, and so Amuge and four of her sisters sell their bodies to buy food and other basic necessities for their families.
Peace in the region has brought a glimmer of hope for the IDPs. Previously, Amuge had no hope of ever going back to school, but with support from USAid she can get basic primary education. Or she could have, until her father forced her into marriage with an older man.
However, even girls with more caring parents find it hard to stay in school. Aciro Mary Filder, a teacher at Lapaint Primary School in TeTugu, says the dropout rate is alarmingly high, especially among girls, partly because many get pregnant before they can complete their studies.
In Lapainat, enrolment was especially low between 2003 and 2007 when the war was still at its peak. This year, peace has brought a more promising enrolment rate, but it is being eroded by the high rate of forced marriages among girls aged 13-15, often to older men aged between 20 and 35.
The community has tried to curb this problem through sensitisation, counselling and provision of basic needs to the young girls. "About 210 parents turned up for a recent awareness meeting, which was overwhelming," Ms Filder told The EastAfrican.
"In fact the parents are now working together with the local leaders to find the culprits."
She was dismayed when the school reopened on its original site in 2005 to find many soldiers camping in the area. Soon, the soldiers started running off with young girls, "blindfolding" the girls' parents by paying them half of their salaries to take the girls away.
Since 2006, the situation has improved. Local elected leaders have addressed the problem by getting the area commander of the Uganda People's Defence Forces to rein in his fighters.
As a result, the number of schoolgirl pregnancies has declined and sensitisation of the community has been stepped up. In fact, in 2005, they reported five cases, six in 2006, seven in 2007 and just two so far this year.
Although humanitarian bodies are trying to help the local people get back to their normal lives, the IDPs are not content with the help and interventions that have been pushed through.
Traumatised girls still live in fear and misery, constantly reliving their maltreatment.
Early pregnancy remains the biggest problem. While intensive counselling has persuaded many girls to go back to school, various obstacles make it difficult for them to stay on. For example, lack of basic necessities like sanitary towels lead many to drop out.
Senior women teachers have tried to encourage these girls to stay in school, but there are other challenges. In many places, roads have all but disappeared, hampering movement from one community to another.
Although a peace deal between the LRA and the government is likely to be signed, the majority of people in the area remain anxious as many rebel fighters still roam the region.
Apart from the trauma and psychological problems arising from the atrocities the rebels inflicted on their communities, the girls have also lost confidence and self-esteem, and now find it hard to integrate in their communities. They also feel that their own communities and relatives will reject and ostracise them.
Inadequate infrastructure, especially health centres and schools, is also a major challenge.
THE GULU DISTRICT INSPECtor of schools, Robinson Obot, says officials are trying to address some of these challenges by recruiting more qualified teachers, and partnering with UN agencies and other development partners to increase support.
He says the district needs 60 more teachers, and 20 head teachers.
Currently, Gulu has 1,195 teachers, a small number given the growing number of schoolgoing children who were previously out of school. Fixing these problems is going to take some time, says Mr Obot.
The young girls and women also are benefiting from USAid programmes. The agency has helped the people in Gulu rebuild their lives slowly, providing training in seed multiplication, environmental awareness - planting trees for fruits and timber - and tackling malnutrition.
USAid director for foreign assistance Henrietta Fore recently visited the region to assess the success of the programmes supported by President George W Bush's malaria initiative and his President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief.
She said the US government's funding for recovery and development initiatives to assist northern Ugandans in the transition from camp life to economic self-sufficiency was increased by $116 million last year.
Margot Ellis, the mission director of USAid, says the US is now moving away from providing humanitarian assistance and emphasising development and recovery initiatives designed to enable the people of northern Uganda to get back to their normal lives.
The agency had come up with new programmes like Northern Uganda Malaria, Aids and Tuberculosis - a $30 million, five-year programme that began in August 2006.
Its goal is to expand access to and utilisation of services for HIV, TB and malaria in the nine districts of Lango and Acholi sub-regions of Northern Uganda.
But the transition from emergency support to recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction will require a lot of flexibility.
The road back to normal lives will not be smooth. People still need a lot of support, especially from government.
As for Roselyn Amuge, nobody can return her lost childhood, and she is almost certain to be scarred permanently by the sexual abuse she has endured.
The sad thing is that no one knows whether she and thousands like her will ever realise their dreams.
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