Keyo IDP Camp: I thought I'd seen it all.......

While in Gulu we took a large amount of supplies including health and education kits that we assembled to Keyo IDP (Internally Displaced People). Why are these people there? Years ago the government forced the people in northern Uganda to move into these government protected camps. They gave them 48 hours to get things together and promised them protection. It did not work. People were not protected and children were concentrated in one area where the rebels soon began to abduct children from the camps. Children would walk miles and miles alone at night, unaccompanied to larger towns where they would sleep under the verandas of police stations and hospitals because they were more safe in the towns. They would then walk back in the morning and go to school, if they were lucky. Now, the war is over and the people have lived in the camps for so long that they have no where to return to. Squatters have moved onto family lands and while the government claims it is trying to resettle the people, it is happening slowly, too slowly. We were greeted by the camp leaders and were taken on a tour of the camp. I have seen these camps and even visited one last year, but I have never walked through the deep parts and seen the suffering the way I did in Keyo. We came across a very old women, blind from cataracs crawling on all fours in her soiled dress. She had no bed, no running water, no toilet, no chair. Instead, she was alone crawling on the ground. We were so stunned by her suffering and one of the sweet girls in the group immediately lowered herself to the ground and tried to let her know she was there. I also came across as sweet mother whose little baby has a massive growth on his head about the size of a baseball. She was taking to me and mid-sentence the baby picked up her breast and began to nurse. I have never seen so many dried out breasts in my life! Their couldn't have been much milk for any of the children as their mothers were hardly eating themselves. That was heartbreak. After our walk through the camp the whole village gathered together and we made a presentation of the goods. We left everything in a pile on the ground for the elders to sort through. There is a good chance that fights broke out as the air was tense when we left. We quietly left on our bus before anything happened. The people need so much and if you don't have enough for everyone you can actually do more harm then good. I did not see joy in the IDP camp. Everywhere else, amidst the poverty you could still feel the joy, not here. As I am back now, 4 weeks home I am slowly adjusting back to life at home. How do you forget though? At times I feel myself slipping back into my old life. I don't want that life. I can't forget.