International Rescue Committee (IRC)
News, Photos & Videos › Blog › In a temporary home, health & a harvest to come / Uganda

VOICES FROM THE FIELDTHE IRC BLOG

In a temporary home, health & a harvest to come / Uganda


August 15, 2008
By Joanne Offer
Joanne Offer/The IRC IRC volunteer Yazid uses his hygenic tippy-tap. Behind, you can see a new crop of beans growing. Photo: Joanne Offer/The IRC
Joanne Offer is in Uganda, where the International Rescue Committee is working with Ugandan communities affected by conflict as well as refugees from neighboring Sudan. Read all her posts from Uganda here. Our next stop is Kiryandongo, where the IRC has been supporting Sudanese and Kenyan refugees who’ve fled to Uganda to escape violence in their countries. It’s totally different from Karamoja. The land here seems much more fertile, and all around I see immature crops of maize, beans and sweet potatoes.That’s because Kiryandongo is a refugee settlement, as opposed to a camp. Refugees here get 1 acre of land to farm and, although the rains came late this year, most seem to be growing a modest crop and should have some food for their families come the harvest. One Kenyan man called Yazid tells me he’s been in Kiryandongo since May. He fled the violence in Kenya that followed last December’s presidential election and has no intention of going back just yet. He says, “I come from Mount Elgon where things are still not calm. People are still arguing over land there, but here a few of us live together and so we feel safer.” Yazid is actually one of IRC’s environmental health volunteers who go around promoting good hygiene practices among the refugee community. His small area of the settlement is a brilliant example of how, even in the harshest of environments, ensuring good hygiene really makes a difference. Yazid tells me, “We still live in tents but with IRC’s help we’ve dug pit latrines, built a refuse pit, and put up a drying rack so our pots and pans don’t sit on the ground in the dirt. We also have a tippy-tap – that’s a tap for hand washing but you turn it on by using your feet. It means you keep clean without contaminating the water supply.” Yazid has also helped IRC to carry out hygiene campaigns throughout Kiryandongo. “I’ve talked about the benefits of a clean environment,” he explains, “because when we all live so close it’s easy for diseases like diarrhea to spread, so we mustn’t be careless.” There’s no doubt that newly-arrived Kenyan refugees like Yazid are still coming to terms with their displacement to Kiryandongo, but his efforts and IRC’s are definitely helping to make life here that little bit more comfortable.
Posted in , , , , | Tags: , , , , ,

No comments yet.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Type the characters you see in this picture. (verify using audio)
Type the characters you see in the picture above; if you can't read them, submit the form and a new image will be generated. Not case sensitive.

ABOUT THIS BLOG        COMMENT GUIDELINES        DONATE        ARCHIVE