I Left My Broken Heart in Agula IDP Camp

Yesterday, after a three hour dusty van ride through the bush into Odek sub-county, we arrived in Corner Agula IDP camp.  Corner Agula, which is located near the childhood home of Joseph Kony, was the former home of over 6,000 internally displaced persons from at-risk villages in Northern Uganda.

Today, after a large push by the Ugandan government in the last two years to relocate residents to their original land, roughly 200 people remain in the camp.  Many of the people that remain in the camp are EVIs, or "extremely vulnerable individuals" - the elderly, orphans, child-headed families, and the disabled, who are unable to return home.

Others still in the camp have encountered land disputes when they attempted to return home.  As more and more people were forced into the camps, land lay dormant all over Northern Uganda, and others took up residence upon it.  There is little in the way of formal land holdings in Uganda, and problem formerly inconsequential that currently results in massive conflict.  As people moved out of the camps, they found strangers living on their land and had both no way to prove it and no where else to go.  There and thousands of people that remain in the camps for this reason and are awaiting the resolution of these conflicts, which likely will never be resolved.

Corner Agula

We sat with the camp leaders and elders and discussed the issues the camps are facing, which included alcoholism, domestic violence, lack of employment, land disputes, and their remote location.  One of the biggest problems is the future of children raised in the camp.  Because IDP camps were cesspools of alcoholism, promiscuity, and thievery, many of these children have grown up with no moral background and little knowledge of their Acholi culture.  Many of these children also cannot afford school fees, and are therefore left with no education and no marketable skills to speak of.

The heartbreaking thing about it?  Their school fees are equivalent to between two and twenty American dollars per year.

As we talked with the elders, the children of the camp crowded around our group.  One little girl spent the entire time playing with my hair.  They were so excited for us to take their picture, and they reveled in seeing the images.  Unfortunately, we could not stay to play with them... we had much more to learn.

These kids broke our hearts.  And knowing we were there only for our own knowledge, instead of to help them, made it that much more difficult.  These people, refugees in their own country, or the ones that are forgotten.  There is no news coverage of their situation or articles written on their behalf.  They live in a forgotten corner... but Corner Agula is one I will never forget.