MORUNGOLE (Uganda): After Betty Lokol’s two-year-old son died of hunger, she was ready to do whatever the village witch-doctor said. He advised the 25-year-old Ugandan mother to smear ochre mud on her forehead and on her three surviving children. Everyone in the village was told to do the same.
Drought has struck Uganda’s Karamoja region repeatedly in recent years and the witch-doctor said the mud would ward off the cholera that has preyed on those weakened by hunger.
“This is for protection,” said Lokol as she waited at a food distribution centre on the slopes of Morungole Hill for the first aid delivery in five months. Since the last delivery ran out, people had been surviving on grass and leaves, she said.
Karamoja, around 750km northeast of the capital Kampala or at least a 12-hour drive along rutted roads, is the most marginalized corner of Uganda, with the country’s worst levels of health and education.
Aid workers say more than half a million people are dependent on food aid and droughts are becoming more regular, now striking every other year. Eighteen per cent of children under five years of age are malnourished.
The humanitarian workers say the crisis in Karamoja needs just as much global attention as better known disasters like the hunger and violence in Sudan’s Darfur and the insurgency in northern Uganda by rebels.
“Karamoja’s malnutrition and mortality indicators put it about where Darfur was on those terms a year ago,” said Ken Davies, Uganda director for the World Food Programme (WFP).
“Darfur has since improved because of massive world attention. That is exactly the same attention Karamoja needs. We can’t keep going to the international community every other year for drought relief funds.”
Aid workers say health rates are even lower in Karamoja than in the vast refugee camps for the 1.5 million people uprooted by the neighbouring conflict.
Sitting outside a hut on Morungole Hill surrounded by young men wearing silver earrings and women adorned with heavy necklaces of multi-coloured beads, the local chief says he thinks about 40 people have died of hunger in recent weeks.
Making a dire situation worse, the harsh conditions in this scrub-dotted, dry, mountainous land near the borders of Sudan and Kenya also fuel violence as armed tribal warriors fight for water and pasture for their huge herds of cows.
They frequently launch deadly raids against other Karamoja tribes and rivals in Kenya and Sudan.
Uganda’s army launched a new disarmament exercise last year aimed at seizing more than 40,000 illegal firearms thought to be in the hands of Karamojong warriors.
But many of the fighters have vowed to keep their guns, saying that without them they will be attacked by other clans.
The insecurity has hampered efforts to help the needy.
Some aid staff pull on bullet-proof jackets and helmets before setting off on the rough dirt roads, and all routinely are escorted by pick-up trucks packed with soldiers.—Reuters
