The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. -------------------------------------
" The most dangerous individual is he/she who has nothing else to loss in the world" so a philosopher once stated. Museveni's NRM military dictatorship has created many many generations of Citizens, who have nothing else to loss..for they have lost it all!. The job, a very insurmountable one for that matter, ishow to deal with this problem? the Next Unity government will have to tackle this issue head on!!
Matek
Kampala Children Visit IDP Camps
|
| ||||||||||
New Vision (Kampala)
COLUMN
September 12, 2005
Posted to the web September 12, 2005
Harriette Onyalla
Kampala
VEHICLES speed past the sea of tiny grass thatched shacks with mud and wattle walls by the Gulu-Kampala highway. The sun is blazing. Branches of the tree under which the children sit are too sparse to provide shade. But gallantly, they clap and sing joyfully or is it?
The stench of disease and despair hangs about like a guardian angel. Yet open their young mouths wide they do. They have probably never used toothpaste in their short lives, but that is of no consequence. Their haunting voices echo in the distance. Their eyes glint in awe as they peer at their peers from Kampala.
Save the Children - Uganda has facilitated children from City Parents School, Green Hill Academy, Buganda Road primary school, Naalya Secondary School, Merryland High School and Makerere University to come and show solidarity with these children whose entire lives have been tormented by 19 years of war. Sweet innocence knows no shame.
Despite their destitution, the children in Bobi Internally Displaced People's (IDP) camp, Gulu, edge forward to shake hands with the visitors. As each child, in dirty tattered clothes, shoves their hand forward, the contrast is sharp, painfully so.
Unlike the visitors' soft smooth skin, theirs is matted with dirt that has accumulated because of bathing without soap. Their faces are pale from years of having no smearing oil. Their bellies are distended from malnutrition. Their tightly coiled hair looks like the flies hovering about them.
Dressed in a torn yellow T-shirt and a reddish purple short without a zipper, eight-year-old Lehman Odur stomps up to Martha Kobusingye from City Parents School and says in luo, "Write this one, her name is Adong."
Adong is probably three. She stares blankly, as if in a daze. Asked what her other name is, Odur looks around unsurely, "I have forgotten but let me remember," he says before hurriedly adding, "Yes, her name is Adong, Adong Hellen."
When Kobusingye calls her Hellen, Adong's face softens. She smiles, shyly. Odur has all indications of a bright boy but doesn't go to school. He probably never will.
Kobusingye looks on as he pulls his sister's hand. "Let's now go home," he says dominatingly. Emotions dance on her face. In a twinkle of an eye, she is surprised, shocked, staggered, sympathetic, but lastly she smiles, sadly. He is brave.
Statistics show that Northern Uganda has the lowest school enrolment rate in Uganda, yet its school drop out rate is three times that of the rest of the country. Like Odur, hundreds of thousands of children don't get the opportunity to start school despite Universal Primary Education (UPE), which is a success in other parts of Uganda.
Why? Hope. Churchill Lacere Olanya, the head master of Pabbo Secondary School, says hope is the biggest determinant of whether parents send their children to school or not. Many parents, Lacere says think the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency may never end.
Lacere's school is several miles away in Pabbo IDP camp. With 46,000 people, this is the biggest camp in northern Uganda but only about 400 children go to secondary school with an annual drop out rate of 20%. "They see no way of their children succeeding in this situation. Parents say education here is for children to learn to read and write but not for getting jobs in the future like children elsewhere. To them, reading and writing is of no use," he says.
Lacere says parents also fear that at school, the risk of children being abducted is higher that when they are scattered in camps. "School gatherings are a major target for rebels. This is where they can abduct children without the hustles of having to collect them from door to door," he says. Aid groups estimate that since the war begun, LRA rebels have abducted 20,000 children from Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts.
Despite the fact that UPDF detaches are sometimes near the school, there is mistrust of the army in the community. Parents especially those whose children were previously abducted from school, are reluctant to send their children to the same 'trap'.
But also, the makeshift schools don't have proper environs to attract children to school. In over 80% of the schools in IDP camps, children attend class under trees or makeshift grass-thatched structures. Classes therefore keep rotating in search for shade as the sun moves on its journey around the earth.
There are a few classrooms blocks, but primary seven pupils occupy these. Children here study in learning centres that have four or more schools using the same facilities. The other thousands of pupils of primary one to six study outside.
But for hundreds of children, ill health doesn't allow them to attend school. Joyce Lamunu lies on a straw mat in her mother's hut. In one corner of the hut, is a heap of firewood while a hen sits on her eggs in another corner.
Just like Kobusingye, Lamunu is in primary six. But at 16 years, she is six years older than Kobusingye.
She goes to Bobi Foundation Primary School. Lamunu, whom teachers describe as bright, missed the end of term exams due to ill health. Lucky enough, her school got holidays three weeks before the Ministry of Education calendar. Studies usually picks up weeks into supposed opening day.
It is now months since she got her first bout of malaria. Due to lack of proper medication, Lamunu has been ill 'on and off'. Her parents cannot afford to travel to Gulu town to buy medicine. The camp's health centre doesn't have drugs. Yet, searching for herbs in bushes is risky, very risky.
Starvation is rampant in the IDP camps. People depend on 'hand outs' from relief agencies especially World Food Programme. But many times they still stay hungry. Children can not go to school hungry.
Lacere says there are no teachers in these settings. Trained teachers have all gone to more peaceful areas leaving head teachers with no option but to employ school dropouts as teachers. But government does not recognise these arrangements.
Head teachers therefore have to depend on contributions from parents to pay the 'teachers'. Northern Uganda remained the poorest region in the country with 75% of the population living below the poverty line.
"There are those whom we tolerate because they are very bright but in the end, we have to send them home because we need money for our teachers," Lacere says. He says school fees are the main reason for the 20% drop out rate in his school.
However, Mary Lanyero, a mother of seven says, "UPE helps but we still pay PTA money for unlicensed teachers. But getting sh100 here is very difficult, so they always send the children back home. It is not easy especially if you add the cost of books, pens and uniform."
But even the school dropouts who have reached secondary school and are therefore able to teach are few. So children spend time roaming the school compound. The over worked 'teachers' just ignore them. The average pupil-teacher ratio is 800:1.
On days when relief items are distributed, there is no school because teachers and pupils alike go to line for food. In 2004, over 4000 children returned from rebel captivity. After going through rehabilitation centres, they were reintegrated into the community.
Because of their experiences, these children cannot attend conventional schools. There are no schools to cater for the unique educational needs of traumatised children.
Even then, there are no role models in IDP camps. The most privileged people who interact with children here are UPDF soldiers. The children know that you don't need educational papers to join the army, to become a hero.
Dressed in pink quarter pants and a white sleeveless blouse, Kobusingye addresses the children of Bobi on behalf of the 21 children from Kampala. She stares at her shoes. As she speaks, a slight trembling creeps into her voice. "We are really sorry that you are suffering. We have come to tell you that we are praying for you, that God rescues you from this suffering," she says.
That is probably the prayer of every child here. To see their affliction end so that they can go to schools that offer some quality of education. But isn't prayer hope? Certainly. Hope never runs dry.
Yahoo! for Good
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
