Waking up in your dream; facing reality

What happens when you wake up in your dream? I realized this on Monday, as I was spitting out my toothpaste after brushing my teeth and watching it fall on the ground, splattering across the chicken feathers on the dirt. I had just crawled out of my mosquito net dome, and was eager to see the sky, knowing it would be full of sun by this point. I was surrounded by huts, and children and mothers were lining up at the water point to fill their jerry cans. Here I was in the middle of this IDP camp, with the Acholi people; assisting with a program that I really believe in. A place I had yearned to be; and yearned to be contributing to something meaningful to assist this situation; and there I was; I had arrived; I was at the place I had been dreaming about.

We drove for a while down a dirt path and arrived at the camp where our meeting was going to be held for the next 3 days. As people were mingling and trickling into the camp, I began talking with a man named Bosco: ‘Yes, we left early this morning to come here today.’ Curious as to what his journey was like, I asked a few more questions, such as: How did he get here?

Bosco replied ‘We walked a long ways, then we came to the river, we then tie our clothes on our head, and swim across, then walk some more distance to arrive here.’
‘Aren’t there creatures in the water you are fearful of' I asked.
‘Small crocodiles and snakes, yes Madam’, speaking confidently.
"Why did you decide to come today?"
‘We have no clean water in our camp, no latrines, and we need assistance with hygiene, so maybe we will see if Medair can help us’ Bosco replied.

Thinking about what the people go through to get to what must seem like only a glimmer of hope for some locations that are lacking basic facilities, I decided to walk around this camp. It was my first visit to this particular camp. I set out and begin curving through the maze of huts and am immediately crowded by any child in sight, now walking with about 30 behind; I sit down on a log to say a proper hello to them. Giggles, handshakes, and some photos. Later I continued walking and met an older gentlemen who was insistent I meet his wife and see his home. He spoke some English, so we communicated a bit as we walked to his home, passing families along the way. Seeing the clusters of families made me miss my own. We arrived at his hut, and there was his wife, with a shaved head, beautiful beads, a glowing smile and holding her straw broom for sweeping the dirt. Eager to have her picture taken, she motioned me to wait a moment while she changed into her nice dress; she reappeared in a brilliant yellow one; click, snap, digitally recorded. More women came over and were simultaneously pulling on my hair, not believing it was my real hair and not extensions. Politely asked if I would give them my hair, I politely refused and we all laughed. Walking back past many huts, I was about to meet with my team again, not realizing my perception of what was happening inside the huts would soon change.

I approached one of my team members who was having a conversation with a man from this camp; it seemed his brother was very sick and needed to get to a hospital. This happens quite a bit with people approaching us for assistance; some valid, some not, but we need to find out. Since our vehicle is not an ambulance, and we don’t have medical staff with us; I wasn’t sure what we could do, or even what was going on. The village man showed me his notebook which had a referral from a doctor written the week before; they just didn’t have the means to get to the hospital. I asked if I could see his brother; to evaluate how sick he was and to see if it was a problem that we could assist with in some way. I followed him to his hut on the same snake-like path I had just been on; wondering if I had just walked past their hut a few minutes ago; and realizing that I had had no idea that there was an extremely sick man just on the other side of a mud wall.

As we crawled through the doorway, there was just enough light in the round hut to see that there were about 9 other people inside and 4 children. On the right side was the 30 year old brother, curled up on his side, gasping for air. The second I saw him I knew that it was serious. He was extremely frail, and unable to move, eat, speak or drink. In fact, I had never seen someone this ill; except perhaps in documentary photos of the Ethiopia famine. As I was sitting on the floor with the family, talking with the help of a translator, the hut grew quiet and we prayed with the family, as it was clear they were in distress over the state of their son. I put my hand on their son, he felt very hot and I felt tears building up, but tried to hold them back for reasons I’m unsure of. After making some calls to the local authorities, and with no local resources pulling through; we realized that our vehicle was the only way to get this man closer to a hospital. Walking back to the meeting place of the community; down that path for the second time, I wondered how many other huts were experiencing the same grief inside? Was this the only one, or were they all filled with similar situations? My previous walk seemed to only reveal what was right in front of me and my lens. Finishing up our meeting in the community, we drove to the hut and picked up the family in the back of our Landcruiser and drove them to the next large camp that was set alongside a major road. It was a bumpy and quiet ride.

We offered to pay their way to the hospital; as we couldn’t make it there and back in the day; and the family was planning to leave in the morning. Today I called to check on their status; and apparently the family had thought he had died that evening, so borrowing a wheelbarrow they all made their way back to their home to have the burial the next day. Upon arrival at the camp, however, they discovered that their son had begun breathing again. But they realize he is very close to death, and would like him to pass with them in their home now.

So, the dream of being here is real. Real with having the life to be here, and facing the death and sorrow that’s a reality as well.

A different look at the same Country

So there we were; on the back of the motorcycle 'boda boda', a mountain rainforest breeze flowing through the air, coasting down the hills that divide the SW of Uganda and the DR Congo. Crater lakes were on both sides of us, reaching 400 m in depth, surrounded by banana trees and hills that appeared to have a patchwork quilt thrown over them. Spending some days in another part of the country gave me more of an understanding of the devastation that the war has inflicted on the people in the north. The boda boda led us on a winding dirt road up to the top of a sharp hill next to a crater lake. There we found an orphanage: it was a community project, with funds from our payment for a nightly hut rental benefiting the 150 orphans that the project was supporting.

When I woke up in the cool misty morning, crawling out of my mosquito net, opening up the hut door and sipping on my coffee while observing these children, I wondered what looked so different to my eyes. As they ran around the yard, laughing, tossing balls, playing hopscotch and imaginary games, I realized that these children are well-fed, nourished, clothed, and have the behaviours of normal developing children. The children that it has become normal for me to see in the IDP camps are mostly naked, or have the same torn clothing on every day, have bloated bellies that are a result of malnourishment, are usually covered in dirt, with runny noses and flies, and don't have the opportunity to develop as those that live in a healthy environment; and yes, they have smiles, as you've seen; but they are in a state of life they didn't have a choice of growing up in. So as I sat there I thought, well, this does seem like an obvious point that one would make, even before seeing these places, but there is something different about experiencing it with your own eyes and ears. It seems to drive me even more to work with these people for this cause.

Smiles

Children always brightening a walk with their smiles.
It's been 4 weeks in Patongo IDP camp; and I feel I'm finally getting a bigger grasp of the programs being implemented here through Medair; the needs and the response to them. It feels like home now; walking through the camp every day, seeing the same familiar faces, the beautiful mother sitting with her daughter under her thatched roof, the men sanding wood in the shade of a mango tree, the excited children that give 'high 5's' on the walk home now, the same three cows tied near the burning rubbish pit, the pregnant pig that's always snorting in the mud, the mother with baby Rosie who always welcomes me to cuddle the baby on my way home from work. I'm enjoying being here with the Acholi people, and with the team we are working and living with.

Visiting the smaller settlements of displaced people outside of Patongo, we are meeting with communities to listen to their assessment of the public health issues they are facing. Most of the time they prioritize the issues as not having a place to go the bathroom--resulting in faeces out in the open--increasing the spread of diarrhoeal diseases, lack of bathing shelters, no hand washing facilities in the community, no access to clean drinking water, schools that 1,500 students and have no bathrooms or handwashing facilities. We are helping support action plans to address these in about 40 different camps in the area through the Water Sanitation portion of our program. I'm managing part of that sector, with a team of 5 national Ugandan staff. There is also a psycho-social program to support the vulnerable children who are orphans, returned LRA rebels, people with disabilities, and cases of abuse. As you may have seen in the news, there have been recent talks between the LRA rebel leaders and the Ugandan President; which has created some anticipation for the Acholi who are displaced and living in cramped, unnatural ways in the camps. The result of the peace talks may encourage or discourage people to move back 'home'. Our Medair team has a 1 week break currently and are resting and relaxing currently; and I'll have the chance to see different areas of the country. Already the difference of the 'war' region and the rest of the country is starkly obvious.