On the weekend of April 28, 2007, two friends and I stayed in Koro-Abili IDP camp in northern Uganda, where a group of residents who benefit from Invisible Children’s Bracelet Campaign welcomed us. This is my response.It was in the ironies that we lived for three days at Koro IDP camp. Each step and turn found us overlooking new vistas of the paradoxes of displacement in northern Uganda, of the upended lives of its residents. And it is of the ironies that I write.
The first irony is apparent in any description of the displacement. The government, ostensibly in order to protect the population of peasant farmers, forced them from their farms into displacement camps and did not provide food, water, latrines, waste removal, healthcare, or any other basic service that governments are typically responsible for. The people being protected began to die at rates that shame words like “emergency.” The population was not pruned, it was uprooted and left to compost. The people were killed for their own safety.
Further into the ironies, the rebels from which the people were being protected were from the same peasant farming communities, and were supposedly fighting the government that now had their families trapped. And further still, their methods of liberating their people involved kidnapping them and committing heinous crimes against them, even as their government enemies did the same.
It was to one of these camps that my American friends Tiffany, Kerri and I walked last Friday morning. My backpack held only my camera, an extra memory card, a notebook, a pen, and enough money to buy clean water. My pockets were similarly empty – only a cell phone and my knife, which I use primarily to open bottles. The sun was already high when we set out and gave us a good burn before we reached Koro. When we were nearly there my phone rang. The people there expected us, and my friends Lanyero Benna and Opiro Martin came on a bicycle to escort us the rest of the way.
The families that hosted us are beneficiaries of Invisible Children’s Bracelet Campaign, which means that they are among the few in the camps who are making a living wage. Their position at the top of Koro’s socioeconomic pyramid, and my position as their boss, promised a strange dynamic, especially since I asked them to teach us how to live as the destitute displaced. “Bring nothing, completely,” they had told us.
When we arrived we sat down to make some bracelets with these friends, and were immediately served Cokes in glass bottles. “Do all camp residents get this treatment?” I asked accusingly. “Yes, you drink,” they lied. So we drank the warm soda, grateful for the sugar and caffeine.
Making bracelets is difficult, and soon into it I became aware of what would be one of the blindingly clear themes of our stay – our weakness and their strength. After tying only one of the two knots that make the bracelet, and tying it badly, my fingers were cramped and shaking. The bracelet makers tie over twenty knots per day, and they do it smiling, hardly watching their quick hands. After a round of laughter at my attempt, my fledgling bracelet was grabbed by a nearby man who quickly untied my knot and replaced it with two of his own, both far superior to mine.
As I watched I began shifting my weight. We sat on papyrus mats on the ground. The mats are hard, and for someone used to sitting in chairs, sitting on the floor for any length of time can be difficult. My Ugandan friends sat comfortably, joking with each other and tying bracelets.
Soon our hosts invited us into one of the thousands of mud huts at the camp and laid before us a meal of favorite local foods. Calo, a sticky bread made from millet, with a spinachesque green called boo (pronounced bow) scrambled with eggs. We tore pieces from the calo and used it to scoop the boo into our mouths. It is delicious. When I first came to Uganda I avoided calo. It is bland, sticky and often grainy. But now, a little over a year in, I prefer it.
After lunch it was time to fetch water, however in Acholi culture only women go to the wells. I walked with Tiffany and Kerri to the borehole, but instead of a plastic jug for water I brought my camera. The jugs, or jerry cans, hold 20 liters of water, which weighs in at about 50 pounds. Most women in the camps can carry two at a time, one on their head and one in their hands. Tiffany and Kerri were given one 10-liter jug each. It would prove to be enough.
The nearest well is about a quarter of a mile away, outside of the congested living area of the camp. As we walked through the camp we found children playing, women braiding each other’s hair, an old woman cooking, men sitting under a shade tree drinking.
After pumping the water from deep within the earth the girls hefted the jugs to their heads, where they had placed colorful rolled cloths to cushion and balance them. As we began to walk back they learned to balance the jugs, using their hands to make sure the water didn’t fall. Their necks were flexed, their postures stiff and responsive, their steps tentative. Behind them walked Harriet, an Acholi friend. She carried one of the large jerry cans on her head and walked as if down a city street for coffee.
When we returned our Ugandan hosts prepared for us to bathe. This meant pouring well water into a basin and placing it into a bathing “room.” The bathing rooms have no roof and four walls, some of which are made from papyrus, some wood, but the bracelet makers have a concrete bathing room that I built for them last summer, the nicest one I’ve seen. Some of the rooms’ walls only come to the shoulders, the bracelet makers’ to the top of my head.
Bathing in the camp was the experience that was perhaps most different from what I knew. The bathing rooms are not secluded. They are scattered at random in the dense camp. They are surrounded at all times but huts and people. Even in the relatively private bathing room of the bracelet makers the lack of privacy was startling. Voices would pass by closely, the tops of heads bobbing in and out of view. The nearest home was so close I could almost touch the thatched roof. But the camp residents don’t mind about it. And once I became used to it, bathing under the sun, in a drizzle, in the wind, under the stars, was very refreshing.
The bathing room was also unique in its solitude. Other than the latrines, whose smell is loud enough to sully the quiet, the bathing rooms are the only place in the camps where you are alone. Otherwise there is not enough space. People are everywhere.
After bathing the girls went into the nearest cooking hut, where the thatch ceiling is stained black, to begin preparing dinner. They picked greens from stems and ground sesame into a paste.
As a man I was free to spend my time in leisure. I sat with them, then with the bracelet makers, then began to understand the boredom of a displaced life, the utter lack of opportunity. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do. There is no money for books or a hobby. There are only the voices of the same people and the sigh of time as it passes.
After dinner I was invited to play football (read: soccer) with the local club team. But they we far too good and I in my khakis decided to head back to camp. I met the girls there and with some Acholi friends we strolled around the local elementary school. A short rain fell and we watched local children practice traditional dances. When we returned it was almost dark.
Martin, who had offered to let me sleep in his home, invited the three of us to come and see where he lived. I brought my backpack and we walked to the far end of the camp. After his family’s huts had burned down a couple months ago, Martin began renting a small room in a brick building.
We sat in the low chairs stuffed into the space and Martin’s wife Susan brought in a second dinner. She kneeled before us, poured water over our hands and passed around the utensils. This is the standard practice for a woman at any meal. We thanked her and Martin and ate until we were quite full. Then we returned to the other side of the camp, where the bracelet making center lies.
There they were preparing for a nightly ritual. A radio was produced and chairs set in a rough circle around it. Each night they come together at 9:00 to listen to a summary of the day’s newspapers. In front of our dinners was placed a table, and on that table dinner number three. We politely crammed what little we could stomach into our mouths and I gave clear instructions that “tomorrow, we should not eat so much.”
After the news I followed Martin back to his place. There his wife had prepared warm water for me to bathe, again. It was set inside of the common urinal/bathing area of the building. I’ll spare you the details. Once back in his room Martin pulled aside a curtain that divides most of the one room homes or huts between sitting and sleeping area. Behind it was a mattress, his mattress that he usually shares with his wife, though it’s only made for one.
“You will sleep here,” he said. I was going to protest. Not a chance would I allow my presence to displace his family further. I was going to fight it. He continued: “With me, we will sleep together.” He was beaming. I still wanted to fight. Looking in his eyes I felt that this was a great compliment, a gesture or true trust and friendship. I could not say no. That night I slept on a one-foot strip of mattress between a concrete wall and a 180-pound Acholi man.
And so here we come to our last ironies of day one – a hospitality so generous it is imposing, from a people so poor they are dying.
To be continued.Labels: IDP, IDP Camp, Invisible Children, Koro-Abili, Uganda
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