KAMPALA, Uganda
The suffering and pain in
Karamoja, Uganda’s north-eastern pastoralist region, needs no hyperbole.
It is visible in massive crop
failures as a result of a long dry spell. The scorched gardens and pasture mean
limited or no food for both humans and their animals. Yet, cattle keeping
provides main livelihood.
The strong heat wave has
terminated torrents of water that gurgled from Mt Moroto, turning the valley of
life it coursed through into a shallow sand bed and killer of aquatic life. And
crops in gardens are sterile when sorghum should be fast-maturing this
season.
Eight in every ten households
here are either critically food-insecure or simply food-insecure, according to
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) and government
of Uganda statistics, meaning they have no food to eat or limited stock, barely
lasting a month to three.
Dr Paul Lokubal, a Chevening
alumnus and current doctoral student of population health at the University of
Oxford, hails from Karamoja and on July 14 set up a GoFundMe account to raise
Pounds20,000 (Shs96m) to feed afford “4,000 people one meal a day for a month”.
“[Many] people have died of
hunger in the last two weeks alone”, he wrote, “Another 23,000 children face
severe acute malnutrition and could die in the following days if they do not
receive emergency help.”
By 7:36pm, 88 donors had
raised £4,203 (Shs20m) in support of the online campaign.
Back in Dr Lokubal’s Karamaoja
birth place, multiple leaders, citing compilations by local governments and the
domestic spy agency, ISO, said over 900 Karimojong, mainly children and
elderly, have succumbed to hunger-related diseases since February, this year.
The death toll is rising, but
help, including the government’s 790 metric tonnes of maize flour and beans
trucked to the famine hotspot last week, have been slow to reach the most in
need and too small a handout.
Among the most at risk are
underfed HIV and Tuberculosis (TB) patients on strong daily drugs, but lack
proper dieting, let alone food to eat in sufficient quantities.
But there is another layer of
trouble, a recurrent one --- cattle rustling.
Insecurity caused by these raids blamed on local warriors prompted a
counter-operation by UPDF, Uganda’s army, which says it has taken 400 suspects
into custody since May 16.
Many of these are energetic
youth whose vibrancy powers Karamoja, meaning their arrests spell additional
doom for families where they were bread winners.
“It is hard to explain our
situation to outsiders until they visit our settlements,” says Mr John Robert
Adupa, the chairperson of Lotisan Sub-county.
Mr Adupa told this publication
on Tuesday that in Lotisan alone, 22 people have died due hunger-related
diseases.
“There is barely anything to
harvest, crops have withered, people need food from the government, but it’s
yet to come. Now some have resorted to boiling skins and hides of goats, cows
as food,” he explained, sounding distraught.
Kotido, Kaabong, Moroto,
Napak, and Amudat are districts in Karamoja. Their leaders last Thursday that
each of the districts had received 100 tons and 50 tons of posho (maize flour)
and beans, respectively, out of the government donation.
In Atedeoi village, Lotisan
Sub-county, Moroto District, children with distended bellies, which health
professionals attribute to malnutrition, gaze at passerby with inquisitiveness.
They talk nothing, only blank stares.
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