Our final ascent on the winding, narrow and slippery road brought chills. The truck leading our mini convoy of three belched smoke. Any slight loss of control by the driver would have sent the vehicle crashing down the valley that lay deep beneath on both sides.

A horde of locals, however, seemed oblivious to the danger of slipping off the road into the valley as they trudged along the cars. Their energy seemed to increase as the scatter of buildings that lay ahead came to sight.

We had reached Bukalasi Sub-county, the headquarters/trading centre, in Bududa, some 40km from Mbale Town, where we had set off. Bukalasi Centre had become the staging point for rescue and emergency support to survivors, following the mudslide days earlier, on March 1, 2010, that buried villages a few hills away, killing an estimated 400 people.

A group of people were gathered at Bukalasi Health Centre just by the road side to the left from Mbale. No one was laughing. Ahead of the health centre, larger groups of people chatted at various points on both sides of the road. What must have been a sleepy, chilly valley hamlet was now a beehive of activity. An open clearing to the right told the whole story. Small military tents were neatly seat up in rows. Vehicles with the world known signs of a red cross were parked opposite the tents. Red Cross workers in their red and white uniform mingled with local people in rundown clothing, and military personnel in camouflage. Between the military tents and the Red Cross vehicles, a variety of items; jerry cans, metallic plates, and cups, prison-like blankets and bars of washing soap were laid out in rows on the ground. Red Cross personnel, police and local leaders were at pains to separate chaff from grain, as they tried to register genuine victims of the mudslide. Soon, some of those who were given white paper cards identifying them as mudslide survivors, lined up to receive items from the Red Cross.

Murmurs of disapproval could be heard as some of those picking items walked away from the camp with smiles and chuckles, betraying their status as victim imposters. The genuine victims were there too, just nearby but seemingly out muscled. They were crammed in the classrooms of Bukalasi Secondary School adjacent to the military tents. Men, women and children walked from one side of the school to another. Restlessness and sheer apathy hang in the air, as I waded through the maze of curious onlookers. I sat around a small group of women and children. The stench was overwhelming. Children cried as mothers sat looking helpless. "Mwetse khu lini mbo pawo mutu unafuna buyambi tta," yelled a man in an old brown polyester jacket, his boots covered in caked mud. James Walimbwa, a local councillor of Nametsi Village was calling on all the survivors to get themselves registered by the Red Cross. Nametsi was one of the villages flattened by the mudslide. Survivors scampered for safety and some were now here. Bukalasi Secondary School offered two halls to accommodate women and children. Mr Robert Wanzusi, the Deputy head teacher at the school, conducted me around the two rooms they had surrendered to the displaced people. The rooms were congested. Women and children squeezed themselves in two of the allocated classrooms. "At least they have doors and windows that lock," he said. "The men sleep in the open classrooms and vacate the premises in the morning when students report for class," he added. Mary Habuye, 20, a mother of two sat lost in sorrow. "We were sleeping at about 8.30p.m. when we heard an unusual thunderous sound," she told me through an interpreter. "My husband had just staggered into the house drunk. I peeped outside because it had been raining. I tried to wake him and my small child to no avail. I just ran with only a sheet covering my baby," she narrated amid sobs.

Today, Habuye is a young widow with her baby girl. Robert Mutinye, 24, said he lived with his elderly mother, sister and brother's family at their ancestral home. They were nine in their home. His brother, Wambede had four children and they have all been buried in the mud. "Our cattle, banana plantation and home have all gone. I cannot see anyone from my family yet we tried to wake each one up when we heard people screaming and saying

"Run, run for your life." "I didn't see any of my people among the dead," he said in tears. Mutinye specially mourned his sister Robina Namahongye, who he said had come home from Mbale where she was working as a house help, to help take care of his ailing mother. "If sunshine grew crops, I would ask God to take away rain. Look what it's caused us?" cried Nuriat Nandutu, a survivor of the mudslide.

The Bible says death comes like a thief, and that the world will one day end. The world literally and metaphorically ended for a majority of Namesti residents that day.