Uganda diaries: George Oringa
This is part of a special IRIN series
George Oringa is a human rights activist and youth worker
December 2009
“I can’t believe I am no longer living in an IDP camp in Pabbo although the bad memories are still there. It is a different life now where people are living freely in their villages. All my brothers and other relatives have moved back home to Techome and Teturu and are working in their gardens. I visit them but I can’t move to the village with my family. I am still volunteering as a paralegal with the Justice and Peace Commission in Pabbo; the work is okay but not so intensive as in the previous years when the people were living in IDP camps and there was still war.
Whenever cases of abuse arise, I register and advise the victims and make referrals to human rights agencies and to the sub-county authorities. Following up cases has become challenging because most people are no longer living in IDP camps, they have gone back to their villages and reaching them has become very difficult because of the bad roads.
I monitor and report issues of gender-based violence that is very common among the returning IDPs.
I have had the opportunity to undertake a human rights training course, and have obtained my certificate at Gulu University in Secretarial and Information Management. I passed the training well with a second class, upper division. I am working with Norwegian refugee agencies implementing a youth education programme.
These war-affected youths are being trained in carpentry, tailoring, brick-laying, designing clothing, business skills and other life skills. I am teaching them English, mathematics, physical education, peace and human rights. It’s a two-year contract and the work ends this year.
I have been selected as a member of Child Protection Committee in Pabbo; we are supposed to help the community ensure the rights of children are protected and children are taught their responsibilities. The programme is being supported by [the UN Children’s Fund] UNICEF through Concern Parents, an agency working in Amuru district.
My family is doing well with the exception of my younger daughter who is suffering from sickle cell anaemia. I can’t return to the village because of my child’s health; I need to stay near a health centre. I have also decided to remain at Pabbo because in my village there is no school.
I am being accommodated on mission land in Pabbo centre. There is a primary school and health centre nearby. I am trying to work hard to acquire my own land in the centre but it has been very difficult because I have to spend my savings treating my daughter.
Plans
I want to continue with my education, I want to enrol for computer science at Gulu University. It’s a good area of study because it’s marketable. The only challenge is paying the tuition fee, it’s very costly. I am encouraging my brothers and other relatives to educate their children so that they can learn how best to put to use the available resources they have in the village.
Dealing with trauma
The hardest times were living in the camp where cases of human rights abuse were so high. Some of the cases were so frightening and horrible, at one point my life was threatened if I continued reporting abuse but I decided never to give up.
Last year I lost a newborn; that death still hits my mind and my wife is struggling to recover from it.”
May 2008
I am still working as a paralegal in Pabbo internally displaced people's camp in Amuru, northern Uganda. This is my eighth year working as a paralegal, helping to refer cases of abuse to human rights agencies in Gulu. We have registered close to 100 cases, such as domestic violence, child abuse, and land conflicts resulting in violence. Fortunately no one has been killed but the situation is alarming, especially with the return of displaced people to their villages.
As paralegals, we are sensitizing the community to the need to respect human rights. A lot of people visit me for counselling. The level of trauma is still high. The conflict inflicted a lot of damage on the minds of people in northern Uganda and it will take time for people to heal.
I am also teaching war-affected and formerly abducted children at Pabbo youth education learning centre. We teach them skills in carpentry and joinery, brick-laying and building, tailoring and agriculture. The programme is supported by the Norwegian Refugee Council and we have enrolled 100 students for this year’s programme. We are teaching them to read, write and do simple arithmetic. All these students were abducted by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels and they missed out on a formal education. It is a catch-up programme to impart skills to these war-affected children so that they are able to earn a living and live a sustainable life.
We teach them modern agriculture and farming to improve their food productivity and food security as they resettle in their homes. The students are also taught environmental conservation and the need to plant more trees.
We need to conserve our environment and plant more trees for fuel in the future.
Life in the camp
I am still staying in Pabbo main camp. Life in the camp is difficult because of poor living conditions and poor sanitation. So many people have returned to their villages. Three-quarters of the camp is empty and most people are heading back to their homes while others are still moving to the transit camps nearer to their homes.
I always visit my home in Teturu village 2.5km from Pabbo main IDP camp. I have cultivated millet and ground nuts there. I have about 2ha of crops. The food will help feed my family. I have built a small hut in the village to help us provide shelter when we work in the garden.
My brothers are coming home next year when we build more huts and when the crops are harvested to help the family.
They are also preparing shelters for goats and chickens at home so that they are safe. The only fear is armed robbers and unexploded ordnance that might harm people in their fields.
People are busy digging to harvest more food. The food prices are so high at Pabbo IDP camp. People from Juba, Magwi and Nimule in Southern Sudan are flooding Pabbo and other places in northern Uganda to buy food. Food is scarce in Southern Sudan and they depend on supplies from IDP farmers in the region and other places like Kampala.
A kilo of rice in Pabbo costs 2,000 shillings [about US$1.50] and 1kg of beans costs 1,500 [about $1]. The demand for food is high and prices are increasing. The high demand is good for IDP farmers; they are planting a lot of crops. People are going to harvest a lot of crops and this will increase food security.
Two children diagnosed with sickle cell
I cannot go home because two of my children - Sharon Lapica, 6, and Abalo Teddy, five months - were last week diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia. Both of them at times develop swelling in their joints and Sharon cries so much, complaining of pain all over her body when she is sick.
The doctor says we should take care of the children so that they do not fall sick with malaria. We are giving them quinine and folic acid tablets every three days.
I cannot risk going back home where there are no health services because my children will die. The doctors at Pabbo St Mary's hospital say we should be near a health unit in case the children fall sick.
These four children are enough for me and my wife and I agreed not to have any more.
December 2007
We have been seeing a lot of changes here in Pabbo. In October and November people really started to move back. The dry season was coming up and that meant it was possible to build huts because the grass would be ready.
People are building one or two huts so they can store food and sleep in them even if they haven’t properly moved back. The only people staying in the camp are those who have land very nearby and the elderly and disabled.
People are trying to get the grass before it is burnt. I think probably about half the people have gone now. But many of those will still be keeping a house and have some of their relatives staying here.
Over the last two or three months people have started to worry about the peace talks because of the rumours that [Joseph] Kony [LRA leader] has killed [Vincent] Otti [deputy LRA leader]. People are saying this Kony is not serious.
People from Pabbo went to the peace talks in November and they said they’d forgive Kony if he was sincere.
But he must show real sincerity and people are worried that he is now just joking. They’d like to hear him tell the truth about what he’s done to Otti - not just tell the truth but show it, invite journalists up to Garamba so that our faith is restored.
Then in the talks he needs to be clear and open and say honestly what he wants. At the moment he just seems to be complicating things, moving the goal posts, and that isn’t helping anybody.
So hopefully if Kony is sincere next Christmas we will not only be eating food from the land but celebrating on the land.
Human rights
Earlier in December Pabbo was chosen to hold the district’s Human Rights Day event. It was a very deliberate choice.
For a number of years Pabbo was notorious for human rights violations. Local government officials would harass and bully those who disagreed with them. They would accuse you of being a rebel collaborator, have people beaten or taken away to the barracks. They had a network of spies.
These days things are getting better, the civilian police are around and so the thugs can’t go too far.
When they held the celebrations the district authorities said that all the intimidation had to be a thing of the past.
Booming business
The road up to Sudan has been trouble. When the rain came many lorries got stuck - there were over 40, bumper to bumper.
The road was a complete mess; in some sections the road had sunk so deep cars weren’t visible, in other areas it had tripled in width as people tried to avoid the mud. The road was effectively closed and so we lost all of our business to the other route up via Arua.
Now we are in the dry season the road is at least passable and so the business people are back.
And people in Pabbo are earning.
The business people are stopping and buying rice and maize.
We have a lot more shops than before. They have moved from the inside of the camp to the main road as the camp shrinks and the business comes from the travellers passing through.
Pabbo is changing from being a camp to a trading centre. We now have about 15 shops on the road.
They have started building some big buildings, including a couple of warehouses and hotels. One is even called the White House because it looks so smart.
Malaria threat
Our youngest son Kizito caught malaria and started having convulsions, so we took him to a branch of Lacor, the local missionary hospital, here in Pabbo. But they said he would need to go to the main hospital, so I’ve been spending a lot of time there. One of our family usually goes down with malaria every two or three months.
But it is worse for a child because they don’t have the resistance, they are weaker. Apparently he had a very strong form of malaria and they kept him there for five days but he’s made a good recovery and is now smiling again.
I’m going to start making sure that the children sleep under mosquito nets. They use them but we are a little lax at making sure they are tucked in. That is going to change.
I’m also going to make sure that we don’t have any water near the house where mosquitoes can breed. And then I want to keep some medicine nearby for when this happens again.
July 2007
I work as a paralegal in Pabbo camp, the largest in northern Uganda, helping people by making them aware of their rights. Things are slowly getting better with the talks taking place in Juba but I don’t think I will be leaving here any time soon.
I was born two-and-a-half kilometres from Pabbo and so my land is in easy reach of my new hut here in the camp.
A lot of people here don’t want to return yet. It’s a big risk. Pabbo was a sub-county that suffered most in the war and now people really won’t believe they have seen the last of the fighting until they see the rebels come back from South Sudan.
People fear that rebels will be in the bush hiding up on the mountain near us or near the Nile and that there could be more trouble. There are worries about unexploded ordnance.
Most people in the camp are going to dig their own land anyway. What people are saying is that if they can reach their land from the camp, it’s a waste of time to go to a resettlement site which they see as just another camp. They’d prefer to wait and then go straight there.
That’s what I think - until then I’ll go and dig my own land from here.
I know in parts of the north people have started to go home but you have to understand what people have been through around here.
We moved from the village to the camp in October 1996.
They were terrible days. The rebels were crossing near our house and the government would fire mortars indiscriminately. The rebels would come and beat us. They would take the food but not us, thank God. We didn’t know where to turn.
One day we decided to leave and come to the camp but that didn’t mean we found any peace. The rebels would come into the camp - every night you’d hear shooting. People would be killed or taken away, never to be seen again.
Slowly, slowly we started building the huts but we couldn’t sleep in them. We’d all go and sleep in the main church, young and old alike. Everyone would take a basin for going to the loo, or if they couldn’t afford that, a tin. It would smell terrible but with the gunshots people knew what would be waiting and wouldn’t dare go outside in the night.
I can’t forget that place. It will always be there with me.
In 1999 it started to cool down a little bit. Government security got tighter. People could sleep at home. Some people would go and dig but you’d go late and come back early and sometimes you couldn’t go at all. Everyone was dependent on food aid.
Our culture has really been destroyed in the camps. When we were at home the elders would talk to us around the fire and teach children, telling them proverbs and stories.
The elders could keep an eye on their children. But in the camps there weren’t the open places. People are squeezed together in small spaces but then they are also separated from their family because there isn’t the space next door to build a hut when the family grows so they end up being scattered and yet living on top of each other at the same time. There was no use of prostitutes before the camps but now it’s commonplace.
When so many people couldn’t dig they just went to the bar to drink. They lost their dignity. And now some are finding those habits difficult to change.
But now Pabbo is much better than it was. It used to be 67,000 living here and now it’s about 42,000 - so 20,000 have gone to resettlement sites. They may still be like camps but people want to be where they can reach their land and, besides, they have more space. So now we have a little space to breathe.
When we had cholera in 2004, people were vomiting everywhere and had white diarrhoea. There were about 2,000 people who went down with it. It was hellish. Everywhere smelt very bad until Médecins Sans Frontières came with disinfectant for us to spray. After that we set up a health and sanitation committee and when you don’t have a clean hut it gets knocked down.
So now if we walk around today you will see spaces with the remains of huts - some which have fallen down because their owners have left and some that have been knocked down because these days we won’t risk uncleanliness.
I used to work in Pader as counsellor for the soldiers who had come back from the bush with Father Carlos, a well-respected Spanish missionary.
They needed a lot of reassurance. We had to be friends to them and talk to them very simply. They had lost hope, they were alienated, very demoralised and they needed to be persuaded that they could make a future.
Most of them thought they would be killed by the government or that they would go back and be punished by the community.
What was true of individuals in Pader is now true for all those soldiers in South Sudan. We don’t want them to feel cornered. If they are going to come out then they need to have trust.
And they have expectations. They will want food, pay and protection from the government and NGOs. We have to make sure they aren’t left disillusioned and that they re-integrate.
But there has to be a balance between meeting the expectations of the returnees and those of the general population. It’s difficult.
I’ve been a paralegal since 2001 when there were some terrible things done by the UPDF - the Ugandan army - as well as the rebels. My role is to explain their rights to people and what they can do if they are violated.
We’ve had people beaten very severely by the soldiers, or by the local defence units. There were women raped by soldiers, sometimes even killed by them.
But the paralegals make these things known to the bosses and try to get them put right. Sometimes they take them seriously, sometimes not.
In March they started to introduce civilian police to the camp - before it was just military - and since then the situation has started to get better. I think crime has fallen since they arrived. People feel safer.
Pabbo is becoming a little more normal but we still have a lot of cases of domestic violence.
There was one little girl who had been taken out of school by her parents; she was being beaten regularly and then the father raped her. He is in prison now. That is very extreme but often children are beaten and abused.
I think that’s the next big human rights issue that we need to address here in northern Uganda.
Pabbo was famous before the war because the land is so very fertile. If you plant rice or ground-nuts here they just grow so fast - it was the food basket of northern Uganda.
People would come from miles around to buy food here.
When I was very young I did not even know how to use the money I made from the rice I grew. Now we have South Sudan opening up, so we Acholi need to use the land well.
We are hard-working people - we don’t want to be dependent on food aid - we’ve only taken it because there was no other way but it’s not nice or good for us.
In Acholi culture we eat so many greens; we like sim-sim [sesame] and ground nuts, smoked fish and meats - olal - and we eat millet, not the maize the World Food Programme gives us.
We are used to the millet bread and rice and it will be good to get back to them, especially for the young children. They are too used to free things but when we return they will quickly learn.
Some people have become lazy and drink rather than work because of the camps but the Acholi are not a jealous people and when the time comes to return we will look after each other and make sure that people can find their way back.
ed-ca/cw
[This is part of a special IRIN series: Uganda Diaries, in which a selection of ordinary people in northern Uganda talk about their lives in their own words. The "diaries" were gathered over several interviews in Uganda starting from July 2007. Each individual's diary will be updated from time to time over the coming weeks.
Visit Living with the LRA - IRIN's rolling in-depth coverage of the stuation in northern Uganda and southern Sudan.]
This is part of a special IRIN series
George Oringa is a human rights activist and youth worker
|
“I can’t believe I am no longer living in an IDP camp in Pabbo although the bad memories are still there. It is a different life now where people are living freely in their villages. All my brothers and other relatives have moved back home to Techome and Teturu and are working in their gardens. I visit them but I can’t move to the village with my family. I am still volunteering as a paralegal with the Justice and Peace Commission in Pabbo; the work is okay but not so intensive as in the previous years when the people were living in IDP camps and there was still war.
Whenever cases of abuse arise, I register and advise the victims and make referrals to human rights agencies and to the sub-county authorities. Following up cases has become challenging because most people are no longer living in IDP camps, they have gone back to their villages and reaching them has become very difficult because of the bad roads.
I monitor and report issues of gender-based violence that is very common among the returning IDPs.
I have had the opportunity to undertake a human rights training course, and have obtained my certificate at Gulu University in Secretarial and Information Management. I passed the training well with a second class, upper division. I am working with Norwegian refugee agencies implementing a youth education programme.
These war-affected youths are being trained in carpentry, tailoring, brick-laying, designing clothing, business skills and other life skills. I am teaching them English, mathematics, physical education, peace and human rights. It’s a two-year contract and the work ends this year.
I have been selected as a member of Child Protection Committee in Pabbo; we are supposed to help the community ensure the rights of children are protected and children are taught their responsibilities. The programme is being supported by [the UN Children’s Fund] UNICEF through Concern Parents, an agency working in Amuru district.
My family is doing well with the exception of my younger daughter who is suffering from sickle cell anaemia. I can’t return to the village because of my child’s health; I need to stay near a health centre. I have also decided to remain at Pabbo because in my village there is no school.
I am being accommodated on mission land in Pabbo centre. There is a primary school and health centre nearby. I am trying to work hard to acquire my own land in the centre but it has been very difficult because I have to spend my savings treating my daughter.
Plans
I want to continue with my education, I want to enrol for computer science at Gulu University. It’s a good area of study because it’s marketable. The only challenge is paying the tuition fee, it’s very costly. I am encouraging my brothers and other relatives to educate their children so that they can learn how best to put to use the available resources they have in the village.
Dealing with trauma
The hardest times were living in the camp where cases of human rights abuse were so high. Some of the cases were so frightening and horrible, at one point my life was threatened if I continued reporting abuse but I decided never to give up.
Last year I lost a newborn; that death still hits my mind and my wife is struggling to recover from it.”
May 2008
I am still working as a paralegal in Pabbo internally displaced people's camp in Amuru, northern Uganda. This is my eighth year working as a paralegal, helping to refer cases of abuse to human rights agencies in Gulu. We have registered close to 100 cases, such as domestic violence, child abuse, and land conflicts resulting in violence. Fortunately no one has been killed but the situation is alarming, especially with the return of displaced people to their villages.
As paralegals, we are sensitizing the community to the need to respect human rights. A lot of people visit me for counselling. The level of trauma is still high. The conflict inflicted a lot of damage on the minds of people in northern Uganda and it will take time for people to heal.
I am also teaching war-affected and formerly abducted children at Pabbo youth education learning centre. We teach them skills in carpentry and joinery, brick-laying and building, tailoring and agriculture. The programme is supported by the Norwegian Refugee Council and we have enrolled 100 students for this year’s programme. We are teaching them to read, write and do simple arithmetic. All these students were abducted by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels and they missed out on a formal education. It is a catch-up programme to impart skills to these war-affected children so that they are able to earn a living and live a sustainable life.
We teach them modern agriculture and farming to improve their food productivity and food security as they resettle in their homes. The students are also taught environmental conservation and the need to plant more trees.
We need to conserve our environment and plant more trees for fuel in the future.
Life in the camp
I am still staying in Pabbo main camp. Life in the camp is difficult because of poor living conditions and poor sanitation. So many people have returned to their villages. Three-quarters of the camp is empty and most people are heading back to their homes while others are still moving to the transit camps nearer to their homes.
I always visit my home in Teturu village 2.5km from Pabbo main IDP camp. I have cultivated millet and ground nuts there. I have about 2ha of crops. The food will help feed my family. I have built a small hut in the village to help us provide shelter when we work in the garden.
My brothers are coming home next year when we build more huts and when the crops are harvested to help the family.
They are also preparing shelters for goats and chickens at home so that they are safe. The only fear is armed robbers and unexploded ordnance that might harm people in their fields.
People are busy digging to harvest more food. The food prices are so high at Pabbo IDP camp. People from Juba, Magwi and Nimule in Southern Sudan are flooding Pabbo and other places in northern Uganda to buy food. Food is scarce in Southern Sudan and they depend on supplies from IDP farmers in the region and other places like Kampala.
A kilo of rice in Pabbo costs 2,000 shillings [about US$1.50] and 1kg of beans costs 1,500 [about $1]. The demand for food is high and prices are increasing. The high demand is good for IDP farmers; they are planting a lot of crops. People are going to harvest a lot of crops and this will increase food security.
Two children diagnosed with sickle cell
I cannot go home because two of my children - Sharon Lapica, 6, and Abalo Teddy, five months - were last week diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia. Both of them at times develop swelling in their joints and Sharon cries so much, complaining of pain all over her body when she is sick.
The doctor says we should take care of the children so that they do not fall sick with malaria. We are giving them quinine and folic acid tablets every three days.
I cannot risk going back home where there are no health services because my children will die. The doctors at Pabbo St Mary's hospital say we should be near a health unit in case the children fall sick.
These four children are enough for me and my wife and I agreed not to have any more.
December 2007
We have been seeing a lot of changes here in Pabbo. In October and November people really started to move back. The dry season was coming up and that meant it was possible to build huts because the grass would be ready.
People are building one or two huts so they can store food and sleep in them even if they haven’t properly moved back. The only people staying in the camp are those who have land very nearby and the elderly and disabled.
People are trying to get the grass before it is burnt. I think probably about half the people have gone now. But many of those will still be keeping a house and have some of their relatives staying here.
Over the last two or three months people have started to worry about the peace talks because of the rumours that [Joseph] Kony [LRA leader] has killed [Vincent] Otti [deputy LRA leader]. People are saying this Kony is not serious.
People from Pabbo went to the peace talks in November and they said they’d forgive Kony if he was sincere.
But he must show real sincerity and people are worried that he is now just joking. They’d like to hear him tell the truth about what he’s done to Otti - not just tell the truth but show it, invite journalists up to Garamba so that our faith is restored.
Then in the talks he needs to be clear and open and say honestly what he wants. At the moment he just seems to be complicating things, moving the goal posts, and that isn’t helping anybody.
So hopefully if Kony is sincere next Christmas we will not only be eating food from the land but celebrating on the land.
Human rights
Earlier in December Pabbo was chosen to hold the district’s Human Rights Day event. It was a very deliberate choice.
For a number of years Pabbo was notorious for human rights violations. Local government officials would harass and bully those who disagreed with them. They would accuse you of being a rebel collaborator, have people beaten or taken away to the barracks. They had a network of spies.
These days things are getting better, the civilian police are around and so the thugs can’t go too far.
When they held the celebrations the district authorities said that all the intimidation had to be a thing of the past.
Booming business
The road up to Sudan has been trouble. When the rain came many lorries got stuck - there were over 40, bumper to bumper.
The road was a complete mess; in some sections the road had sunk so deep cars weren’t visible, in other areas it had tripled in width as people tried to avoid the mud. The road was effectively closed and so we lost all of our business to the other route up via Arua.
Now we are in the dry season the road is at least passable and so the business people are back.
And people in Pabbo are earning.
The business people are stopping and buying rice and maize.
We have a lot more shops than before. They have moved from the inside of the camp to the main road as the camp shrinks and the business comes from the travellers passing through.
Pabbo is changing from being a camp to a trading centre. We now have about 15 shops on the road.
They have started building some big buildings, including a couple of warehouses and hotels. One is even called the White House because it looks so smart.
Malaria threat
Our youngest son Kizito caught malaria and started having convulsions, so we took him to a branch of Lacor, the local missionary hospital, here in Pabbo. But they said he would need to go to the main hospital, so I’ve been spending a lot of time there. One of our family usually goes down with malaria every two or three months.
But it is worse for a child because they don’t have the resistance, they are weaker. Apparently he had a very strong form of malaria and they kept him there for five days but he’s made a good recovery and is now smiling again.
I’m going to start making sure that the children sleep under mosquito nets. They use them but we are a little lax at making sure they are tucked in. That is going to change.
I’m also going to make sure that we don’t have any water near the house where mosquitoes can breed. And then I want to keep some medicine nearby for when this happens again.
July 2007
I work as a paralegal in Pabbo camp, the largest in northern Uganda, helping people by making them aware of their rights. Things are slowly getting better with the talks taking place in Juba but I don’t think I will be leaving here any time soon.
I was born two-and-a-half kilometres from Pabbo and so my land is in easy reach of my new hut here in the camp.
A lot of people here don’t want to return yet. It’s a big risk. Pabbo was a sub-county that suffered most in the war and now people really won’t believe they have seen the last of the fighting until they see the rebels come back from South Sudan.
People fear that rebels will be in the bush hiding up on the mountain near us or near the Nile and that there could be more trouble. There are worries about unexploded ordnance.
Most people in the camp are going to dig their own land anyway. What people are saying is that if they can reach their land from the camp, it’s a waste of time to go to a resettlement site which they see as just another camp. They’d prefer to wait and then go straight there.
That’s what I think - until then I’ll go and dig my own land from here.
I know in parts of the north people have started to go home but you have to understand what people have been through around here.
We moved from the village to the camp in October 1996.
They were terrible days. The rebels were crossing near our house and the government would fire mortars indiscriminately. The rebels would come and beat us. They would take the food but not us, thank God. We didn’t know where to turn.
One day we decided to leave and come to the camp but that didn’t mean we found any peace. The rebels would come into the camp - every night you’d hear shooting. People would be killed or taken away, never to be seen again.
Slowly, slowly we started building the huts but we couldn’t sleep in them. We’d all go and sleep in the main church, young and old alike. Everyone would take a basin for going to the loo, or if they couldn’t afford that, a tin. It would smell terrible but with the gunshots people knew what would be waiting and wouldn’t dare go outside in the night.
I can’t forget that place. It will always be there with me.
In 1999 it started to cool down a little bit. Government security got tighter. People could sleep at home. Some people would go and dig but you’d go late and come back early and sometimes you couldn’t go at all. Everyone was dependent on food aid.
Our culture has really been destroyed in the camps. When we were at home the elders would talk to us around the fire and teach children, telling them proverbs and stories.
The elders could keep an eye on their children. But in the camps there weren’t the open places. People are squeezed together in small spaces but then they are also separated from their family because there isn’t the space next door to build a hut when the family grows so they end up being scattered and yet living on top of each other at the same time. There was no use of prostitutes before the camps but now it’s commonplace.
When so many people couldn’t dig they just went to the bar to drink. They lost their dignity. And now some are finding those habits difficult to change.
But now Pabbo is much better than it was. It used to be 67,000 living here and now it’s about 42,000 - so 20,000 have gone to resettlement sites. They may still be like camps but people want to be where they can reach their land and, besides, they have more space. So now we have a little space to breathe.
When we had cholera in 2004, people were vomiting everywhere and had white diarrhoea. There were about 2,000 people who went down with it. It was hellish. Everywhere smelt very bad until Médecins Sans Frontières came with disinfectant for us to spray. After that we set up a health and sanitation committee and when you don’t have a clean hut it gets knocked down.
So now if we walk around today you will see spaces with the remains of huts - some which have fallen down because their owners have left and some that have been knocked down because these days we won’t risk uncleanliness.
I used to work in Pader as counsellor for the soldiers who had come back from the bush with Father Carlos, a well-respected Spanish missionary.
They needed a lot of reassurance. We had to be friends to them and talk to them very simply. They had lost hope, they were alienated, very demoralised and they needed to be persuaded that they could make a future.
Most of them thought they would be killed by the government or that they would go back and be punished by the community.
What was true of individuals in Pader is now true for all those soldiers in South Sudan. We don’t want them to feel cornered. If they are going to come out then they need to have trust.
And they have expectations. They will want food, pay and protection from the government and NGOs. We have to make sure they aren’t left disillusioned and that they re-integrate.
But there has to be a balance between meeting the expectations of the returnees and those of the general population. It’s difficult.
I’ve been a paralegal since 2001 when there were some terrible things done by the UPDF - the Ugandan army - as well as the rebels. My role is to explain their rights to people and what they can do if they are violated.
We’ve had people beaten very severely by the soldiers, or by the local defence units. There were women raped by soldiers, sometimes even killed by them.
But the paralegals make these things known to the bosses and try to get them put right. Sometimes they take them seriously, sometimes not.
In March they started to introduce civilian police to the camp - before it was just military - and since then the situation has started to get better. I think crime has fallen since they arrived. People feel safer.
Pabbo is becoming a little more normal but we still have a lot of cases of domestic violence.
There was one little girl who had been taken out of school by her parents; she was being beaten regularly and then the father raped her. He is in prison now. That is very extreme but often children are beaten and abused.
I think that’s the next big human rights issue that we need to address here in northern Uganda.
Pabbo was famous before the war because the land is so very fertile. If you plant rice or ground-nuts here they just grow so fast - it was the food basket of northern Uganda.
People would come from miles around to buy food here.
When I was very young I did not even know how to use the money I made from the rice I grew. Now we have South Sudan opening up, so we Acholi need to use the land well.
We are hard-working people - we don’t want to be dependent on food aid - we’ve only taken it because there was no other way but it’s not nice or good for us.
In Acholi culture we eat so many greens; we like sim-sim [sesame] and ground nuts, smoked fish and meats - olal - and we eat millet, not the maize the World Food Programme gives us.
We are used to the millet bread and rice and it will be good to get back to them, especially for the young children. They are too used to free things but when we return they will quickly learn.
Some people have become lazy and drink rather than work because of the camps but the Acholi are not a jealous people and when the time comes to return we will look after each other and make sure that people can find their way back.
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[This is part of a special IRIN series: Uganda Diaries, in which a selection of ordinary people in northern Uganda talk about their lives in their own words. The "diaries" were gathered over several interviews in Uganda starting from July 2007. Each individual's diary will be updated from time to time over the coming weeks.
Visit Living with the LRA - IRIN's rolling in-depth coverage of the stuation in northern Uganda and southern Sudan.]
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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