Experiences from a Refugee Camp

Children at the Mutanda refugee camp just north of Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest.








One morning about two weeks ago Scott Kellermann walked into the guesthouse dining room and flipped my whole day upside down (as he so often does). He asked me if I was ready to visit the Congolese refugee camp about an hour and a half from here and test their water.

A little background on the refugees here: The war that has been raging in the Congo for the last ten years has seen some recent flare-ups. General Laurent Nkunda and his rebel group continue to attack the Congolese army and the Hutu militias that are holdouts from the Rwandan genocide. As is always the case war takes it’s greatest toll on the civilian population indigenous to the country. Both Nkunda’s forces as well as the Congolese army have been implicated in mass killings of civilians, raping, and looting in Eastern Congo. It is estimated that around 5 million people have died since 1998. For more information on the current crisis check out this link. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/16/congo)

At present, fighting from Goma all along the Uganda border up to Rutshuru has sent eight hundred thousand refugees into Uganda. Uganda probably has the most advanced and efficient system for accepting refugees as they have sheltered refugees from Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, and even Kenya during the recent election violence. Most of the refugees are being taken to well prepared camps at locations inside the borders of Uganda however some remain nearby to the south of us in Kisoro and to the north near the small town of Kihihi.

My answer to Scott was ‘let’s go check it out.’ Scott, Richard Magezi, Dan Skeen, and I piled into the truck and headed out. After driving for about an hour to the small bustling town of Kihihi we veered off the main road down a rugged dirt track. We knew that we were on the right track because of the steady stream of land cruisers with UN emblems rolled by us. The steep hills characteristic of Southwestern Uganda quickly gave way to the Savanna Forest and warm temperatures of the Great Rift Valley. Suddenly there it was, 3000 dome shaped huts sitting about five hundred yards away from us in a massive field. The huts looked strangely like igloos because of their white coloring and I only later realized that these were white tarps wrapped around wood structures to keep out rain and reflect the suns rays. A line of people extended from the huts towards the water taps that had been set up. It’s hard to describe the feeling of seeing so many displaced people removed from their homes not by choice but by necessity to protect their children and loved ones.

Refugees collecting water with a backdrop of huts made from collected wood covered by standard issue tarps.

As we came closer to the camps one sight that struck me was the huge presence of the UN and NGO’s at the camp. Brand new Land Cruisers and off-road Toyota SUV’s crawled all over the perimeter roads of the camp. Workers wore shirts with their various NGO names printed on their shirts and hats. Names like UNICEF, OXFAM, Save the Children, Medicins Sans Frontiers and others all advertising for attention while providing services to the refugees. Trumping all others was a massive red banner with Save the Children Printed across it in white 8ft tall letters. It gave the camp an almost amusement park feel, that is until you looked deeper. Sitting nearby was a mountain of jerry cans wrapped in plastic and waiting to be handed out. Several hundred women with children on their arm or wrapped against their backs waited to receive their jerry can, blanket, and tarp. This was standard issue for every family at the camp. Also on site were 55 gallon drums welded together in order to support latrine holes. The sandy soil in the area was susceptible to collapse.

A mountain of jerry cans passed out to families to collect water at the refugee camp.

We linked up with MSF (Medicins Sans Frontiers) and found them to be very receptive to us… after we explained ourselves. MSF is a group of medical volunteers in charge of running the medical clinic for the camp. Scott was able to find out what medicines that the clinic was lacking and we took off to check out water sources with a Congolese volunteer named Matau. Because of a lack of coordination among the NGO’s MSF was stuck in a position to provide the water to the camp as well as medical attention to the refugees. We actually found the OXFAM guys still writing their budget for pipes for delivering water to the camp. With the help of local villagers Matau had located the largest spring that I have seen yet in all of my assessments (6 liters per second) in the region. It was just dumb luck that the camp turned out to be located so close to this spring source as there had been no previous knowledge of the spring beforehand. The water was being pumped about 300 yards to two 15,000 liter bladders which looked like giant waterbeds. I had the inappropriate urge to get up and jump on the bladders and was surprised that more children from the camps had not been trying themselves.

Each time a bladder was filled it was treated with a single spoonful of chlorine powder. I was skeptical of this amount but my test results revealed that the water in the bladders had no evidence of fecal coliforms even though the source water had elevated levels. The source that the district had recommended was a cattle watering reservoir that was extremely contaminated (I later found out that this was the source of water for 300 local villagers). It was really impressive what Matau had put into place to provide water to the refugee camp and with what the MSF volunteers had accomplished in general. I think it says a lot that the volunteers getting paid a lowly stipend of several hundred dollars a month appeared to be getting more accomplished on the ground than any of the other paid NGO workers combined.

MSF volunteer Matau looks on as a Unicef worker checks the chlorine levels int the water. If the chlorine is too low it can be contaminated by bacteria and if too high people won't drink it because of the taste.

After testing the water we went out to the water taps to take photos and hang out with the children and women collecting water. When we approached, the refugees were reserved at first but soon the children were laughing and smiling and demanding to see the digital images on our camera view screens. At one point Dan Skeen was absolutely mobbed with children and I was concerned that they were going to pull the tattoos off his shoulders. Even at refugee camps kids are still kids. I have found no better example of people experiencing joy and happiness under difficult and transient living conditions.

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December has brought many interesting developments. Our recent focus has been on coordinating the building of latrines in four Batwa settlements. In previous meetings the Batwa have agreed that the latrines are necessary in their communities. In order to make the projects cost effective and to involve the community we asked the Batwa to provide the labor for digging the pits and for providing roofing thatch (speargrass or banana leaves). One thing that you quickly notice walking around the communities here are brick making operations utilizing the high clay content of the soils here. In cases where households want more permanent latrines the people are going to make bricks for building the walls of the latrines. Labor intensive but requiring only a moderate level of skill, making bricks is a great opportunity to get the community involved in providing sanitation for their families. Where households do not know how to make bricks we are providing that instruction with the assistance from local brick-makers.

During the initial meetings with the four Batwa settlements we had no takers for permanent latrines due to the increased level of commitment that those latrines required. Slowly by slowly over the last two weeks households are deciding to commit to the longer lasting latrines and as of last week nearly a third of households have upgraded to permanent latrines. However, the Batwa are still vehemently against the idea of composting latrines. The composting latrine is the most sustainable choice because wastes are removed from them every 6 months and then they are refilled. The pit latrines deposit wastes deep in the ground and have the potential to contaminate local springs as well as the shallow aquifer. If maintained properly, pathogens are eliminated by allowing the feces to biologically breakdown over a 6 month period before they are removed.

I can’t necessarily blame them for not wanting to remove their own feces from the chamber because I myself would bock if I was asked to do the same thing. Despite this roadblock I am greatly encouraged by the community support in these latrines and feel like we are making solid headway.

Coordinating perfectly with the latrine projects has been the arrival of my lifelong friend and contractor extraordinaire Tor Erickson. His skills as a builder and manager of construction projects have had an immediate impact on the projects. Together we have begun to come up with the designs for latrines that are cost feasible and built to last. Being able to consult Tor with his experience with concrete and his skill at estimating costs are providing a key consultant where without him I would be inquiring from local contractors who may or may not be trustworthy. Local contractors will be a necessary element in these projects as we are slated to build over 100 latrines and protect 40 springs but determining initial costs and designs will set the stage for this future work.

Tor with some new Bakiga friends in the field testing water sources.

I want to wish everyone a merry Christmas and to let my friends and family know that I miss you all very much. It feels so strange here that Christmas is just around the corner and I’m still getting sunburned on a daily basis. The celebration for Christmas here is a goat roast that is held on Christmas eve followed by a 4 to 5 hour church service on Christmas day. Not exactly the usual turkey dinner with present opening and conversation with my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Well, wish you all a happy holiday and will be posting more adventures in the new year! Dan and I standing with Congolese children chased out of the Congo two weeks prior.A Chameleon hanging out on a fencepost. Bizarre creatures!A waterfall seen from a stroll through Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.Goat roasting party at my new Banda. I've got so much going on I didn't even describe the big move. It was rather uneventful but I did get to slaughter the goat. Which was...pretty disgusting.

Visiting the Batwa (and Murchison Falls)

I want to apologize first off for not writing for so long. In the past month since the last blog post Kristen and I have been incredibly busy testing water sources and beginning sensitization of communities for the water, sanitation, and nutrition projects for the Rotary International 3H Grant. When we have not been busy we have been seeing some of the incredible wildlife and landscapes that Uganda has to offer. Many interesting and exciting plot twists have occurred since the last blog post, foremost among these are our new vehicles purchased through the Rotary 3H Grant! Rotary member Stephen (Blackie) Gonsalves went through great pains to purchase one gray double cab 1990 Toyota pickup truck and two brand spanking new Suzuki 125 cc motorcycles in Kampala. Purchasing vehicles in Uganda as a Mzungu is just asking for a tooth and nail battle to come to a price that even approaches market value. Blackie did an admirable job and increased our mobility by orders of magnitude overnight. Our original plan was to buy a new Toyota Land Rover but soon realized the reality of our situation here which is that the dollar has been shrinking and fuel prices have skyrocketed to $6.50 per gallon. Thus we decided a used pickup and two boda bodas (motorcycles) was the cost effective way to go and to use the leftover funds for transportation costs. This suits me fine because I've come to love Toyota pickups from learning to drive in my father's 1994 Toyota pickup. As for the motorcycles, though deathly frightened of having an accident on one, I have to admit I can now better understand how people become so fanatical about riding them after my first couple training sessions. It is such a relief to have transportation now so that we can widen our assessment to areas outside of the Mukono Parish (primarily to Batwa settlements).

Our first line of action with our new wheels was to visit Byumba, a Batwa settlement about 15 kilometers away. Behind the wheel for the first time in over two months I greatly enjoyed driving the rutted and stony road leading up to Byumba. Battered by the road we arrived on a high hilltop that looked down onto the Batwa settlement that extended from the top of the hill down into a verdant green valley so commonly found Southwestern Uganda. Moving down into the settlement we passed houses and cook stations built with mud and waddle or in some cases the built using banana fibers supported by eucalyptus logs. Our water team of Paul Mawhezi, Kristin Whitcomb, and I as well as members from the newly formed NGO, the Batwa Development Projects, greeted the Batwa and were graciously welcomed. The Batwa are the indigenous forest people of Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo. In 1994 the Batwa were removed from the Bwindi Impenetrable forest National Park in order to protect the gorilla populations in the forest. The people were given no compensation by the governmnet and have been suffering ever since. They are the primary reason Scott Kellermann began the hospital here in the first place. Batwa women tend to wear extremely colorful cloth wrapped around their bodies and head and more often than not with a child strapped to their backs. The men were wearing beat up second hand clothes often with rips and tears and no shoes. Some shirts you could see more skin than shirt and begs the question why wear a shirt at all.

Paul, Kristen, and I were led to the two water sources that provide water to the 15 home settlement. The first was a gravity fed water system that originates from a spring further up on the hillside and is piped down to a concrete box that collects the water and delivers it through a six inch length of pipe. Lifting the top off the spring box to examine the source I found that the water was cloudy suggesting that it was full of fine particulate matter. This is often a bad sign suggesting that the water is contaminated because bacteria are often associated with fine particulate matter. Indeed our test results of 36 cfu/100mL indicated that the source was contaminated. Now we will need to do a follow up investigation to determine where the water is becoming contaminated. Is it at the waters source further up the hillside, is it picking up bacteria in the pipe on the way down, or is it getting contaminated in the spring box. All information that will have to be gathered before a decision can be made on remediation. The other spring was an unprotected source that emerged from the hillside then flowed through an old hollowed out log. Results for fecal coliforms were 120 cfu/100ml also indicating contamination. Photos of Batwa women weaving baskets and men at a water and sanitation meeting.

Unlike the spread out communities of the Bakiga people that we have tested the Batwa have fewer people and live in tight knit communal settlements. Because of this we were able to gather together almost the entire Byumba settlement for a meeting to describe the projects and services that the Rotary 3H grant can provide. This was a much more effective means for communicating our message to everyone and was also an opportunity for individuals to have their questions answered and their concerns addressed in a group setting so that no one would be left out. One woman asked if one of the goats provided by the grant could be killed and eaten in celebration of Christmas as is customary for most major holidays. This question addressed previous incidences where NGO's havd provided goats to the Batwa for rearing for economic development and to the donors dismay finding out shortly thereafter that all of the goats had been eaten. Our answer was that the goats could not be eaten in the first couple years until they were established and had increased their goat populations through effective animal husbandry. Another woman asked about the sanitation projects and wanted to know if, since she didn't have a home could she possibly live in her latrine. And her follow up question when we told her that that was probably not a possibility was why do I need a latrine if I don't even have a house. That was a very difficult question to answer and reminded me that the Batwa are truly the poorest of the poor here. My answer was that without a latrine, with or without a home, you can still contaminate your water sources and spread water borne illnesses through fly dispersal. I think that one fell on deaf ears. Photos of Batwa children below.

Shortly after our visit to Byumba Kristen and I set off on the ten hour bus journey back to Kampala to pick up Dan Skeen, our second intrepid Rotaract volunteer! We found Dan at backpackers making himself at home in the chaos of Kampala. The day after he arrived he had already walked several miles to downtown checked out some of the local eateries and had been granted a personal tour by the Mu-azhin (the man who calls everyone to prayer five times a day) at the great mosque that overlooks downtown Kampala. Dan’s curiosity about his surroundings and his willingness to jump into a new culture with both feet immediately made him a welcome companion and an asset to our small water and sanitation team. Both Kristen and Dan had never traveled outside Canada and Mexico before this trip to Uganda kind, which is the exact same situation I was in when I first arrived in East Africa in 2006. Together we hoped on a bus and made our way up to the heart of Uganda to visit Murchison Falls National Park. Below is a photo of Kristen, Dan, and me at the top of Murchison falls. A spot where the Nile is constricted into a 7 meter channel and then drops 145 ft. Talk about power!

The trip to Murchison was absolutely incredible. We really rode this trip on a shoestring and luckily the trip just fell into place. Our need to be frugal was fully expressed when we decided to hire our taxi driver to take us on a game drive in his Toyota Corolla. We picked up a guide for around 20 bucks and we were off. We kept bottoming the car out on the rough game drive routes but managed to see quite a bit of the wildlife without scaring too much of it away. We saw tons of antelope primarily African Kob but also the slender Oribi, the Hartebeast, and the majestic long haired Waterbuck. It's always interesting to me that all of the wildlife you see here in the national parks seem to be as interested in you as you are in them. At one point we drove into a group of about 60 Cape Buffalo all rolling in the mud to cool off. Immediately they stood up and began making a semi circle around the vehicle. Apparently they don't see well so they just kept lifting their heads to catch our scent and angling their ears to hear what we were up to. They continued to get closer until I really started to feel uncomfortable. Could a buffalo really hurt us in the vehicle especially in a Corolla? What about 60 of them? The Buffalo kill more people on land than any other animal in Africa with their counterpart the hippo in the water. At one point early during the game drive our guide stopped the driver so that we could get out and view a Bushbuck which is a nondescript but rare species of antelope. Just about to open the door our guide exclaims “wait!” On the other side of the car was standing a mud-caked buffalo. The muddy visage made the hulking beast seem murderous. So we happily stayed in the car, and I clicked the following photo and we moved on.

By far the highlight of our trip was taking a boat ride down the Nile to the delta formed with Lake Albert. The 1km wide Nile gives way to a maze of papyrus lined channels that weave and interconnect. The banks where the papyrus was absent teemed with wildlife. The bird life was incredible with several types of heron and egret, huge quantities of shorebirds, fish eagles, and massive storks including the Saddle Bill and even the almost extinct Shoe Bill. On the shore we watched lions lethargically chase warthogs with antelope carefully looking on and large populations of Buffalo feeding and rolling in the mud. In the water hippos could be counted in the hundreds making their low guttural calls and blowing water out of their nostrils. Although the hippo kills more people that any other African animal they are extremely shy creatures that appear deathly afraid of being caught out of the water. When we surprised them on the banks the 2500 kg behemoths will run full tilt parting a massive wake with its chest before torpedoing into deeper water. It’s almost as if they are embarrassed by their naked bulbous pink-purple flesh.

For me the wildlife wasn’t the most wonderful aspect of the boat trip but just the overall pristine quality of the delta. Sitting out on the boat it felt as if it was a system un-fouled by human presence and a place that could have been the 20^th century or the 1^st century without the clues to tell the difference. It made me sorry for our poor San Joaquin/Sacramento Bay Delta back home on the verge of an ecosystem collapse. Although, no natural system can truly be without some human influence, I could not ignore the patches of invasive water hyacinth growing among the papyrus.

Well I suppose that’s all for now. The assessment is moving along very strongly and I’m looking forward to getting the projects off the ground here in December. As I’ve said earlier we are struggling to meet our transportation cost needs and I predict that it will continue to be a struggle throughout the 4 year grant period. I estimate that by the time all is said and done we will need another $7000 to $10,000. If you are feeling generous please donate to the Kellermann Foundation and write in the memo ‘Water Projects.’ Thanks everyone for your continued interest and support in these projects.

Kellermann Foundation
PO BOX 1901
Penn Valley, CA 95946

Photo of Murchison Falls from the side view. This is one of two massive water falls that the Nile flows over. The other one is out of the picture to the left.

Photo of Kristen hanging out with her new warthog buddy at Red Chili Rest Camp. Persistent little guys that don't take no for an answer if you've got food on you.
Hippos hanging out in the Nile.
An elephant seen from our boat journey down the Nile.