First Letter from Karamoja. – 18 April 2010
It is now three months since I left Canada for Karamoja (in
the northeastern section of Uganda).
Apologies for the long silence. But, once again, I confronted an
unrelenting bureaucracy which, on this occasion, kept me in Kampala for almost
two months. While I did some work while I was there – the first draft of a
report on the human rights implications of a UPDF military operation against
cattle raiders in Kacheri (about which more below), and an edit of a
long-overdue report on land rights issues in northern Uganda -- Acholiland, which the Lord’s Resistance
Army (LRA) had ravaged, displacing most of the population from the districts of
Gulu, Lira, Kitgum and Pader – sitting in a hotel/apartment in the capital was
not the assignment I had signed on for.
It is true that
Kampala (particularly the area, Kololo, where most of the UN agencies are
housed and where the foreign embassies are located) is very green and pleasant.
The city is built on 7 hills, a little like Rome. There are large villas and
gardens, the temperature is an ideal 75-80 F, because while Kampala is at the
equator, it is on a high plateau and on the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa’s
largest lake. Of course, there are excellent restaurants and supermarkets in
the capital, I was able to see “Alice in Wonderland” at the cinema (for the
cost of approx. $5), and I located an excellent book exchange where you can buy
any book they have for $3 and get $1.50 back if you return it. Nonetheless, I
was increasingly frustrated, even after I moved to a apartment with a swimming
pool and a small kitchen, so I didn’t need to rely on restaurant fare. As well,
I had purchased a whole household of goods, from sheets to towels, to pots,
pans, plates, cutlery, a stove, an iron….and boxes of tinned food and staples,
from spaghetti, to rice, to lentils, to oil, and spices. And, of course, wine. All
of that was done in the first week when I thought I was to deploy immediately
to the field, as I knew there would be little I could buy in Kotido. And then,
I had to move that repeatedly.
Finally, a month ago, I was able to travel first to Moroto
and then to Kotido, where I am now installed in a small pre-fab in the compound
of the World Food Program – a little house that serves as both my living
quarters and my office. There is only one other international among the UN or
NGO staff out here – but, as I have a
small kitchen and my own bathroom, and electricity when the generator is on – I
am quite happy the arrangement. I have three staff who work with me – a
National Human Rights Officer, who is a Karamajong and speaks the language, a
driver also a local, and an office assistant. While people warned me in advance
about the heat, it has been quite pleasant. Apparently, I brought the rains to
Karamoja, so I have been name “Nakiru” (she who brings the rain). In the
evenings, it is cool enough to need a blanket for sleeping. (I got two
wonderful hand women blanket at a coop in Kotido, which serve me well.)
My first major assignment – apart from getting to know the
players and the issues – has been to try and verify the information originally
collected in January about a major military operation by the Ugandan People’s
Defence Forces (UPDF) to try and recover several thousand head of cattle raided
by the Jie (the main Karamajong tribe in Kotido District) from the Dodoth (the
dominant tribal group in Kaabong – another Karamoja district to the north of Kotido).
This involved operations on both the 4th
and 5th of January, and on 22nd January – where the
military attacked kraals they believed contained the cattle stolen from the
Dodoth – operations which involved the use of both helicopter gunships and
infantry. Bombs dropped on the kraals
scattered both animals and people, and then the infantry came in to round up
the animals and disarm the warriors – though very few guns were recovered, and
only a fraction of the stolen cattle were impounded. The fact-finding that was done in the wake of
the operation led us to believe that more than 50 people had been killed and
many injured in these operations -- including children, women and elderly –
although the Government has acknowledged only five warriors killed and one
soldier wounded. But a lot of the information was vague. So – the past few
days, I have been out with my Human Rights Officer to the villages where we
initially got information, to get find out whether those presumed to have been
killed or injured in fact were killed or hurt, and to get names and dates. Now
that a substantial amount of time has past, people are more willing to talk –
less afraid that by passing on information the UPDF will visit their manyatta
to search for weapons or accuse them of having participated in the raids. And
what everyone confirms is that there were many children and elderly people in
the attacked kraals, because they can then access milk and blood – though the
government has been denying this fact.
As I noted in my
letter in January, cattle raiding has gone on for years between the tribes, and
even between clans of the same tribe. But it was traditionally controlled by
the elders, and done by the “warriors” to get cattle for bride price, or to replenish
herds that had been decimated during hard times. With the introduction of
modern weapons, rustling (of cattle, but also of goats and sheep), the scale of
the raiding has changed dramatically and it has become highly destructive.
There is also a commercial side to the raiding which was not present before –
i.e., the cattle is sold for cash and trucked away, either to other parts of
the country or to Kenya. In some respects, raiding is now conducted by what
almost resembles criminal gangs. That goes on side by side with small scale
raids. For example, when I was at the police post in the village of Kokoria two
days ago, at 11.00 in the morning, we heard gunshots – and suddenly the police
were scurrying to grab weapons and get their boots on. A small party of Dodoth
warriors had raided cattle 2 to 3 kilometres from the police post. In that
particular raid, the animals were apparently recovered, the raiders escaped,
but no one was hurt. It doesn’t always turn out that way.
Because the police presence in Karamoja has been so weak –
both in staffing and in equipment – and because the area is so huge (the size
of Rwanda with a population of about a million) – the Government tasked the
army to deal with the raiding and with disarming the population. But rather
like the old west in the US, the Karamajong believe it is their right to carry
a gun to protect their herds. The policy of “protected kraals” – where villages
are told to bring their cattle to large holding areas that are supposedly
protected by UPDF detachments, has only been partially successful, as often
even the UPDF is overwhelmed by larger raiding parties of several hundred
warriors – and as it means that villagers cannot access their animals for food
(i.e., milk and blood).
So disarmament has become a forced disarmament carried out
by cordon and search operations, which often involves the UPDF arresting large
numbers of villagers and detaining them until family members produce a gun to
secure their release. The fact that the family member may have to sell a few
cows to illegally buy a gun to turn into the UPDF to get a father or husband or
brother released is somehow lost on the military. As well, the “suspects” are
often manhandled or beaten to get them to confess where they have hidden their
weapons.
Recently, more police are being deployed into Karamoja to
gradually take over more of the law enforcement from the military. Which is
theoretically a good thing. But those who have thus far been deployed are from
a newly created “Anti Stock-Theft Unit” (ASTU) – they are para-military
although technically report to the Police Commander, they have had very little
human rights training, and it appears that many are from tribes that had
previously been raided by tribes in Karamoja and, therefore, they see this as
an opportunity to get back at the Karamajong, and are proving to be quite
brutal.
One particularly nasty practice that has been manifested the
past months has been the police grabbing the “sukas” (the blankets) that all
the Karamajong wear. Often – especially with children – they have nothing
underneath their “suka” -- the one real possession of every Karamoja man and
woman. The police either keep the “suka” to sell or force the victim to pay to
get it back. A Karamajong will usually have only one “suka”which lasts them for
several years. It is their main item of clothing, also their blanket, and their
identity. Apparently, the Karamajong used to wear clothes made of tanned hides
from their cattle and goats. In 1972 or 1973, Idi Amin Dada outlawed their
wearing of hides, because he wanted to modernize all Ugandans. There were
several massacres that occurred where Karamajong were rounded up, asked if they
would give up their traditional dress, and those who refused were gunned down.
So – at that time – the Karamajong borrowed the practice of wearing a “suka’
made of cloth imported from Kenya. When the police have been asked why they are
taking the “sukas” from men in market places and trading centres, they say they
have been ordered to do so by the military, because the Karamajong hide guns
under their “sukas”. There have actually
been no reported cases of this happening since 2006 – so it appears like an
excuse. What exactly is behind the recent suka snatching is not clear. But it
is one of the issues we are looking into – and we will possibly hold a
roundtable discussion on it, with the police, elders, the magistrate.
This gives you a little idea of what my last month has been
like. I have been very moved by the situation of the Karamajong. They are
enormously proud people, and enormously poor. Their personal pride is expressed
in the beads that both women and men wear, and that they decorate their
children with. (I will attach a few photos.) They also have scarification
patterns on their faces that denotes their various tribes or clans. And – for
beauty, they remove the two bottom front teeth. The men wear these wonderful
hats, sometimes with feathers, but always colorful. And, everyone is poor. They
may have a lot of cattle or goats, but that only means they may get more milk
or blood to drink. Little else. The poverty is visible in every aspect of their
being. They are tall, long-legged and erect without an ounce of fat on their
bodies. The old men will have two or three possessions, their “suka”, a small
stool that is carved which they use both to sit on and as a pillow, and
sometimes a walking stick or a spear. The young girls wear wonderful skirts out
of a woven wool cloth (introduced at the same time as the wearing of the
“sukas”) – which are knee-length, heavily pleated, in Scottish type plaids,
sometimes with seven or eight panels of different plaids, and they swing their
hips so the skirts bounce in a most provocative manner. But they will have only
one skirt, one or maybe two t-shirts, and a suka.
The face of the poverty is, of course, most clearly etched in
the faces of the children – with runny noses and infected eyes -- who go about
either naked or in rags -- not
second-hand clothes, but literally rags --
torn bits of t-shirts, filthy old and torn party dresses that have been
through several incarnations. Yesterday, I saw two little girls, two or three,
with bowls in which they had collected a dozen or so “white ants” – which are eaten
roasted or sometimes raw. I saw other children picking up a few sunflower seeds
from the dirt to eat. The food – one
meal a day is normal, in the evening. Usually poshe (a cornmeal) or sorghum
(often fermented) and beans. Milk and blood from the cattle or goats if their
animals are in the village with them. On very very occasions do they eat meat –
and that is usually goat rather than beef.
Sadly, very few children are going to school, and the
quality of education of those who do is not very high. Noone wants to go to
Karamoja to teach. What does attract them to school is a lunch school feeding
program. Food – not education – is the attraction.
When I was taking part in an inspection of the prison in
Kotido a few weeks ago, just shortly after I arrived here, I listened with amazement
(though I said nothing) as the prison warden told us that the food situation in
the prison was fine. The prisoners got porridge in the morning and poshe and
beans at lunch time and dinner time. My reaction – unvoiced – was “My God! You
are in prison for five years, and this is what you eat every day!” Then, I
learned, that this is actually the same diet that the prison wardens eat, or
the police, and most of the people in Karamoja
In the market in Kotido, you can find some tomatoes, small
egg plants, small green peppers, onions, potatoes (what they call Irish),
cabbage, avocados, some sad oranges, and of course bananas. But that is about
it. Occasionally a few pineapples come up from the south. I have not been able
to get lemons. No carrots here. No peas. No lettuce. Certainly nothing like
brocholi or cauliflower. I haven’t seen greens, except dried ones, though I’m
told you can find them here. And you can get eggs. And you can buy a chicken
(if you are prepared to kill and pluck it). I have neither bought chicken nor
meat (After I have seen them hacking it up in the market, I have become a
temporary vegetarian).
The staple drink here
is fermented sorghum called “ebutia” – the dregs of which are fed to children.
It is thought to be nutritious. Often, it is the only food a child will have to
eat. Alcoholism is quite rife here and the source of a great deal of domestic
abuse, and child abuse, including the rape (here called defilement) of very
young children (frequently, from a year to five years of age). Another very sad
chapter, which I will not go into now.
Well – enough for the moment, though I must add the footnote
that I spent a wonder Easter vacation in Merchison Falls and took some great
photos of a male and female lion having
a domestic dispute. She said she had a headache – he was insistent. Those of you who wish to can see some of the
photos on Facebook. I am also looking forward to a trip one day to Kidepo Valley
National Park in Kaabong, on the Sudanese border. I have not yet been to
Kaabong, but I am told it is quite beautiful and I look forward to it. Though,
I must admit, that travelling wearing a flak jacket and a helmet, and a
military escort is not my favourite way of travelling. However, that is for another letter or I will put you
to sleep.
I love to hear from you. So drop a note if time permits.
I belated happy Passover and happy Easter. As ever.
Laurie
