IDP CAMP

This is an IDP camp...you have to look really close cause it's in the distance. you can see how smushed together each hut is. There is barely any room for the people living there. Although we only went here for one day, it was a very significant learning experience. IDP means internally displaced persons, and the camps are supposedly to keep the people safe…safe from the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army who invaded this district in 2004) and from the Karamajong cattle rustlers who share borders with this district (they have been raiding since 1950). Both these groups brought fear to these northern areas forcing them into camps. In the crowded camps with thousands of people, 10 people may live in one small hut together, there is no sanitation, no place for planting, starvation and diseases are rampant, yet if they had left during certain times, they would not be safe at all. Last year, many began moving back to the villages in order to start growing crops and starting life over again since the raids had become more scarce. We went to these areas of the village to ask questions and learn from these people. I can’t even begin to explain to you how much they have gone through, being beaten by the rebels, having their children taken (some were returned, some not), living in awful camp conditions, sneaking to the village for food in fear of their lives. Hearing and seeing these experiences myself was shocking, yet this is the way most Northern Ugandan’s live…in fear. We were taken in by a group called “Peace Promoters” who are Ugandans working to bring peace between this district and the Karamajong or LRA. They seek to help these people with in the camps and with those restarting their lives in the villages. But really, seeing all this so up-close and personal was pretty scary…I don’t have the answer, I don’t know why they go through so much heartache, and I hate being so helpless. I also felt so ridiculous just going in as a “learner.” Sometimes I feel like that’s just a disguise so that we do not think about the urge to give and help them. When else will I ever be so close to the actual heartache and need in order to give in a way that would make the most difference? Now, I will go back to the states and have to go through organizations that I’m not reeeeally sure where the money goes to. Man, it just amazes me how my thinking can be so skewed. I am even here in Uganda in the midst of heartache that I can help….I can give 50 cents to one family so they can buy some seeds to plant and help their family…yet that didn’t even cross my mind cause I had so trained myself to be a “learner.” Wow