Relief Assessment in Kaberamaido

By Sara:

As Geoff mentioned in his post, we had the unfortunate but interesting opportunity to be part of a small disaster assessment in Kaberamaido.  It is a long story, but there was a murder in one of the villages and a mob from the murdered woman's clan came and caused havoc and destruction in the community she had married into.  The good news is that most people were not at home during the time that the mob was active, but two people did get killed and some were injured.  More than thirty households had their homes burned, ransacked, and robbed.  If you want, you can read more about it here.

As representatives of World Renew, we visited the community with our Ugandan partner organization, KMDP (who already work in that district).  We went to see the damage in order to figure out how KMDP and World Renew can help with the situation.

Many people have been sleeping at one of the local churches (a grass-thatched building) and at the home of someone who has a house with a metal roof that didn't get burned.

A nice part of this tragedy is that some young people are helping to put a roof back on a widow's house (see below):

Everything that was inside peoples' homes got either burned or stolen or broken.  This included mattresses, clothes, cooking utensils, ox ploughs, children's notebooks for school, etc.

Along with material possessions, much of the grain that people had just harvested and put into granaries as food for the coming months, got burned (see below).

Some people even lost animals, which the mob killed and ate outside.

The KMDP staff and local government interviewed a representative from all the households to find out what they lost and how they have been doing since the time of the tragedy.

Many people have been afraid to go back home because of concern about continued reprisals.  There is also a risk of people from this clan going to take revenge on the people who did this.  Pray for the people who have been affected and the families from both sides who are hurting emotionally. 

The most immediate need was for food, since most peoples' food stores were burned.  But they will also eventually need seeds for re-planting next year since the stored grain was both for eating and planting.  In the end, World Renew did not need to give assistance because the Ugandan government and TEAR Australia were able to meet most of the needs.  The local church is also helping to bring reconciliation and build peace between the two clans and has been giving some immediate assistance.  Even the PAG church in Soroti collected clothes to replace the ones that were burned.