IN ONE FLASH, CONGOLESE LOSE THE GOOD OLD LIFE

BY RACHEAL NINSIIMA

When Margaret Tibasi, 21, heard sharp shrills of fleeing neighbours, she joined the flight to exile. She handed her three-year-old daughter to a friend, knelt on the dusty floor of their hut, strapped her father’s legs around her and carried him.

This happened on the night of July 11, when the DR Congo army, the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), allegedly clashed with the ADF rebels in Kamango town, in North Kivu.

Off they went, daughter and father, crossing streams, wading through irritating grass and stones, ravaged homesteads and finally entered Uganda through Busunga. They settled at Butogo primary school, about three kilometres off the Uganda-Congo border.

For a week now, they have slept in the open, using some of the fabric they managed to escape with as beddings. Access to food has been difficult.

“I have been forced to run back into Congo to get food because we hardly get what to eat here as we wait for the trucks to take us where the food is,” Tibasi lamented.

A refugee at Bubukwanga breastfeeds her twins

Three police trucks and two from the district, which can carry 300 people each, are being used to transport the refugees to Bubukwanga sub county, where a temporary settlement has been arranged. Dennis Namuwoza, Bundibugyo’s district police commander, said they were in the process of rescuing some of the displaced people as far as 35km inside Congo.

Some of the refugees get ready to board a truck to Bubukwanga where government has secured for them settlement

Bubukwanga, five kilometres outside Bundibugyo town, towards Fort Portal, can hold about 20,000 families. According to statistics from the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS), 65,000 refugees had been registered by press time. URCS has already established 13 community tents and over 500 family tents.

Looking across the windswept dusty land, mothers donned in threadbare clothes carrying suckling infants queue in the scorching sun to have their children immunised. At the other end, refugees struggle for water in three bowls, while at another, businessmen sell small fish, doughnuts and plastic sandals.

ONLY MEMORIES

Although majority of the refugees did not attend school while growing up, they say they are rich back home. Families had milk, fresh food to eat and choice clothes to wear. Many women talk of taking care of their children and helping their husbands till the fields from which they earn money. In fact, for their daughters not being able to wear powder, is a real setback because it is this what lures men to marry them.

By rural Congo standards, Thomas Musubawo is a rich man. He rears sheep, goats and chicken. However, he managed to escape with only five out of his 11 goats and only a handful of hens.

A man holds onto his only remaining wealth at Butogo Border

“I have been left with too little to do business and since I arrived in Uganda on July 11, I have been feeling sickly because I often think of how I am going to care for my wife and three children,” he said.

For the refugees settled at Bubukwanga, living the good life seems to include the means to do business, clothe themselves in the traditional bitenges and buy necessities for their families. Now with some going without a meal a day and complaining of chronic lack of basic necessities, their good old life is only a memory.

FEARING THE FUTURE;

Pascal Machurani bemoans the insurgences in Congo that have forced him to be a refugee in Uganda for the second time now. He scarcely recalls that in 1990 when he was a child, he and his family were forced to flee because of internal conflicts, only to return in 1997. Now 34, he has been forced to flee again. This life of fleeing violence has left him with little hope of ever living peacefully in his homeland.

“I worry about what will happen to me and my family in the future and the hardest part is starting a new life without the necessary resources because a lot of otherwise productive time is lost while in the camp,” he says.

Machurani, a resident of Mulopya village however vowed not to leave the border area because he wants to return as soon as possible.

For Patrika Mercia, 23, losing her family of 25 has left her hopeless. On the night of the attack, she was awoken by the sound of racing footsteps. In the nick of time, she hastily grabbed her clutch and three year old son, raised an alarm and off she fled.

Now, lying down in a flimsy makeshift tent covered with mosquito nets and the newly donated blankets, she is oblivious of where the rest of her family is. 

Shelter for survival

A perfect shade for us. Refugees relax after arriving at Bubukwanga

“When I think of my future, I am left quiet because I foresee a tough life ahead. I am just trying to be strong for my son,” she says.

BUNDIBUGYO UNDER STRAIN

Bundibugyo district has taken in refugees since the beginning of the uprising on July 11. Kamango town, where the ADF rebels and the Congolese army first clashed is barely eight kilometres from the Uganda-Congo border and shares familial tribal links with the Bagwisi, Bamba and Bakonjo of Bundibugyo district.  

The refugees come mainly from Mulopya village, seeking refuge with their extended families but as more keep flocking in everyday, their relatives here are struggling to cope with the numbers. 

A refugee in transit at Butogo border

Moses Magezi, a resident of Butogo town has already hosted about 30 of them. His one-roomed mud and wattle house has been turned into a property store. For lodging, Magezi, a father of four, erected a simple open hut beside his house where he and the refugees sleep.

“The spare rice and beans I have been keeping is all over because I have been feeding them and once, I had to rush one of the refugee children to hospital because it was seriously sick,” Magezi says.

Like Magezi, Bundibugyo district is struggling to cope. Six primary schools of Bubandi, Karela, Kisaru, Isonga, Busuru and Butogo were forced to close in order to accommodate the burgeoning number of refugees. Butogo primary school, once vibrant with 450 pupils is now desolate, littered with empty tot packs of Winners Vodka, empty bottles and plastic paper bags. John Barukuraha, the deputy head teacher of one of the schools fears that the school may not open today (Monday July 22) as earlier planned because three quarters of the school furniture was vandalised and whereas the three latrines stances are all full. This is the situation in most of the affected schools.

At Bubukwanga Health Centre III, patients sit anxiously, waiting to be attended to; some, especially children, can be seen sleeping on the floor. The maternity ward has only one bed and the drugs cabins are three quarters empty. Although two doctors from the Medical Teams International (MTI) are trying to make ends meet, the population is overwhelming. By press time, 1,180 children aged zero to five years had been vaccinated against polio.

Waiting for a doctor at Bubukwanga Health Centre III

Refugees walk away with relief items from URCS

“I urge government to establish a budget for emergencies so that whenever we are faced with such, there is proper contingency planning,” said Jolly Tibemanya, the Bundibugyo LC 5 chairman.

But so far, the Bundibugyo residents remain sympathetic to their ‘brothers and sisters.’

CONCERTED EFFORTS

Technical teams from the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), URCS, World Food Program (WFP), Lutheran World Federation (LWF), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNICEF among others started interventions within 24 hours of onset of the influx and are on ground working with the district authorities.

“We have managed to transport the refugees from five arrival sites and taken them to Bubukwanga where they are being provided with water, food and non food items such as blankets, cups and plates,” said Lucy Beck, the associate external relations officer for UNHCR. 

Refugees walk away with relief items from URCS

Efforts of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces in erecting tents have been solicited and WFP is actively engaged in providing food for the refugees.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reunited 28 children who were separated from their families and installed over 70 latrine stances.

New solutions of beefing up security, supporting health centres and establishment of additional temporary latrines are being sought to take the pressure off the districts resources.

“All stakeholders should mobilise the populace to make use of the latrines to prevent disease outbreaks and should also identify ways of screening refugees’ luggage to ensure that no one of ill intention is going to cause havoc,” Musa Echweru, the state minister for Relief and Disaster Preparedness, said while touring the camp last Thursday.

The refugee population will have to be moved to Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Hoima district within three weeks if the situation has not normalised.

Memoirs of a former drug and alcohol addict Drugs robbed me of my wealth

Peter Obenga, 32, a psycho educator and mentor spends his days travelling to different schools and rehabs, enlightening students on dangers of drug and alcohol addiction by telling his story.

He lets them read from his Living in Another Man’s Shadow, an autobiography that details the years he spent as an alcohol, marijuana and pethidine addict. 

His is quite a story; one of a remarkable turnaround.

It begins in his family where he learnt the art of sipping from the bottle, to hospital where pethidine became his next big addiction. He says his father was a staunch lover of alcohol and because of this, there was always alcohol at home. His father was later killed by the potent brew.

“The first time I tasted alcohol at a home party, I liked it because it gave me excitement. Many people knew me as a shy boy but I remember when I took it, I danced myself silly,” Obenga recollects.  

Alcohol became his companion all through his ‘O’ Level up to Makerere University where he pursued a bachelor’s degree in Development Studies.

While in ‘A’ level, Obenga often raided the chemistry laboratory to drink ethanol and once almost threw the school into crisis when there was no ethanol to be used in mock practical exams.

From ethanol, he started drinking ‘Kasese’ alias ‘kay’ – a local potent gin – which he and his friends tanked before hitting the bar. The essence was to get drunk first, as beers in the bar were too expensive for them.

While in his S.6 vacation, he scooped a government job paying more than Shs 300,000 a month, an amount he says was juicy for a school leaver. Oblivious of how to use or invest the money, he hit the bar.

Work to the bar became a trend and while at university, his room in Lumumba hall was always well-stocked with alcohol which he used to kill hangovers.

Owing to this lifestyle, Obenga dodged lectures and choked on retakes.

Experimenting with marijuana;

While in senior two, he succumbed to peer pressure and started smoking cigarettes in the toilets where teachers could not catch them. These friends, whom he now calls crazy, also turned him into a ganja boy by his S.4.

“One day I followed the clique and reached a place where they used to smoke from. Instead of pulling out cigars, they pulled out marijuana sticks. I did not want to feel left out, so I smoked it,” he said.

The first time he tried it, he became restless, walked the entire school for about eight hours and nursed a sore throat. Nonetheless, he began main-lining marijuana and eventually became addicted to it in addition to alcohol. After more than four years of being almost permanently high, he started suffering from tactile, auditory and visual hallucinations. His mind was at the brink of insanity.

Once, after finishing an exam, he and his friends went to the rooftop of a bar in Wandegeya (a popular hangout town for university students) where they smoked ganja in order to relax.

After this, he started to climb over the balcony because he was seeing a slope where he could walk instead of open air.

Luckily, his friends held him back and led him to his room. But even then, he tried to break free from their strong grip because he wanted to walk on his own. He started walking into the cars’ direction because it was where his high mind saw a free path.

Once at Lumumba hall, the hallucinations got worse.

“A friend of mine persuaded me to take a shower [to cool it off] and instead of seeing water coming out, I was seeing snakes so I did not shower. Since then, I have never smoked again,” Obenga said.

This was in his third year at university in 2003.

Operation to remember

Although he stopped smoking, alcohol was still reigning and because of it, he was diagnosed with multiple infections in his weak and sickly body. He needed an operation that sentenced him to a life free of alcohol, according to the doctor’s orders.

During the operation, he was shot with a pethidine dose, medicine used to relieve pain.

For him, the euphoria the drug produced in his body did not end on the operation table. It followed him three years later to his job.

Even his early efforts to stop boozing didn't last long, even though they eventually became mundane and unpleasurable. Obenga resorted to taking squadron, a 55 per cent alcohol potent drink to overcome the feeling of being ‘dry-drunk’. With less alcohol in his life, he tried finding solace in religion.

“I tried religion in 2004 after watching Watoto Church’s Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames. I started singing in the choir and I thought life was getting better,” he says.

Nevertheless, he ventured into car importation and real estate business and slowly began absconding church owing to his busy schedule. As he started to get more consignments, and work stress getting to his head, he resorted to hanging out at bars – not to drink, but to cool off stress.

Finding a ‘haven’

Sooner than later, he got reintroduced to pethidine as he had found someone who could get it for him on the black market, at Shs 50,000. Pethidine became his source of problem alleviation, so much so that, when he would get a stressing phone call from work, he would take a shot.

After three months of self-medication, one shot was not enough. Pethidine is supposed to take only 45 minutes in one’s system but his was taking less than 10 minutes because he wanted more euphoria.

Soon, he started purchasing it at Shs 30,000 because his suppliers doubled. By then, his work had started going down the drain.

“I would leave at 8am and by 10am, I was back home to get shots. I was not meeting my clients’ expectations and was using the drug as an escape haven,” he recalls.

Obenga says he knew there had to be more to life than getting high, but he felt powerless to give up the use of the drug. In 2008, he acknowledged he had a problem and this propelled him to go to a physician friend at Mulago hospital.  The physician detoxified him for three weeks but it was the most horrifying experience because he started shaking violently, became so paranoid and began to hallucinate again. He became a manic parody of himself.

He recounts: “I kept in my bed for over five days and could not turn to see what was happening around me. I was hearing voices and one of them was of the police. I started to hallucinate that police dogs were sniffing me out and I could not eat. I was hearing as if my friends were gossiping about me to the police and heard people banging my door.”

He dropped use of the drug for a week after he left hospital but he soon relapsed, hoping he could control it.

This time, he administered 10 shots, ran into debts and started getting loans from loan sharks with hope of restoring his business. However, he used the loans to buy pethidine. To sustain his addiction, he sold all his property and started sleeping on the floor of his rental. 

Finding and losing his new job

After leaving hospital, he had scooped another job but could not sustain it. Every after 30 minutes, Obenga would hide in the bathroom and inject himself, behaviour that angered his boss.

“One day I came to work and he told me I was fired, arguing that I was spending more time out than on his business,” he remembers.

He hustled for another job, this time in Kayunga district.

However, the prophetic adage of ‘old habits die hard’ came to pass because even then, Obenga would commute to Kampala daily to get pethidine shots. He gave up this job and returned to Kampala.

He also became paranoid of leaving home because of debts and hired the services of a boda boda man to bring the drug for him.

Depression sets in

With continuous use, he started to hate the drug, dealers and himself. He took an over dose of the drug and kept an intravenous cannula attached to his arm for a month; every vein in his body was pierced and collapsed.

Once, his sister came and found him crammed in a corner and immediately took him to hospital. Unknown to him, however, he was partly crippled.

“When the physician checked my body, he confirmed that there was a lot of infection in my body and warned me that if I did not stop what I was doing, I would die,” Obenga says.  

Turning point

With the death threat, he sought help from his family. He was taken to Serenity rehab in Bwebajja and it is here that he started to pen his book.  He completed it in 2011, the year he left rehab.

In 2012, he married the love of his life and together they have a daughter.

Today, Obega spends his time helping addicts find their own paths to sobriety and this has come at the price of constant vigilance, because addiction is irrational and stubborn.

Philips provides life-saving ultrasound technology for women in rural areas

Royal Philips, a Netherlands based health company focused on improving people's lives through meaningful innovation last week showcased how cost-effective ultrasound technology can reduce maternal mortality in rural areas in Uganda. This was during the unveiling of the ClearVue Ultrasound technology, a diagnostic tool for early detection of breast cancer allowing for timely treatment.

The ClearVue machines are going to be used for scanning pregnant women. During scanning, the acquired images are transmitted digitally via a cell phone modem to a remote internet server where they can then be accessed by a credentialed reviewer, either in-country or abroad, for interpretation. An abbreviated report of the findings is sent via SMS to the nurse midwife with the full report sent by email enabling mid-level healthcare workers to provide high quality care.

This model, incorporating low-power ultrasound machines, has been successfully developed and tested in rural Uganda with implementation at 11 different healthcare facilities. 

Philips Trainer in Ultrasound Victoria Koi shows how ClearVue works at Mulago Hospital on June 28

A study by Imaging the World (ITW) shows that through early detection of complications, women at-risk can be referred to appropriate care centers in time. According to the Philips Fabric of Africa trends report, women in Africa are at significant risk of premature death, with particular high mortality rates recorded in pregnancy. In Uganda, complications during pregnancy and childbirth contribute to 358,000 maternal deaths annually.

“People in rural areas often die due to preventable complications as they have no advance warning of critical conditions. Many of these deaths can be diagnosed with basic imaging technology,” JJ van Dongen, the Senior Vice President and CEO of Philips Africa said.

In addition to introducing new technology, Philips provided two days of clinical trainings for 125 local healthcare professionals at Mulago Hospital.

Breast-screening project

Beside maternal screening ITW is also using Philips technology to detect breast cancer.

ITW has developed an innovative way to detect breast cancer using Philips ultrasound technology, instead of the more traditional x-ray mammography. This technique enables Ugandan healthcare workers to diagnose breast cancer in women who live in rural, resource-limited settings and have no access to mammography.

“This life-saving and innovative approach to breast cancer detection in resource limited-areas might serve as a blue-print for the future of diagnosis breast cancer in Africa,” Dongen said.

To further drive this agenda, Philips has also launched the collaborative ‘Fabric of Africa’ campaign to drive public-private partnerships and to improve healthcare access across the continent.

With clinical education and training programs for African healthcare professionals and through large scale healthcare revitalization projects, Philips helps to improve standards of care in Africa and contribute towards the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 aimed at reducing maternal and infant mortality respectively.