ON THE STREETS TO SURVIVE

Longoli Simon Peter
Kampala

They could not come to me at first thinking that I was a council official or a policeman. They kept a distance and it took time before they came near me. They talked with me while beckoning the passersby to help them with at least a 100 shillings coin. It would be a coin that would make a difference in their lives, at least for that day.

I met Teko on one of the dusty pavements opposite Shoprite supermarket and adjacent the Hindu Temple. She talked to me at first at a safe distance and she told me later that she had to keep the distance because she thought I was a Council Official.
She was one of the many Karamojong women and numerous children dotted on the busy walkway and begging from passersby. I asked her about her age. She could not manage to tell me because she did not know her birth day.
Her story did not stun me because she was just one of the many Karamojongs I had met before.
About a meter or two from where we talked, children sat on the same pavement, kept their arms up, open and begged from the people who kept walking by. I later learnt that one of them was her own (Loiki), with another in a camp at Kapiringisa.
A little girl that I estimated to be around four years old came and asked me a hundred shillings. When I gave it to her, she took it to her mother who carried a child about four meters away.
Like many others, Teko had come to Kampala in search of a better life. I asked her why specifically she left came to Kampala.
“Life is very hard at home. There is a lot of hunger there and it is very hard to make it. I better stay here and beg. It is better than having to steal.”
Teko had come to Kampala a month ago and stayed at Kisenyi, a Kampala suburb. This is where she and many others stay. She got a job –working for a woman she did not name.
“She pays me 1000 shillings daily. I work for her all day and part of night. The work is heavy yet the pay is less. But I have nothing else to do.”
She had at this time come to see her daughter in the street.
I asked her how she managed to stay in the city, given the high cost of everything and her 1000 Shillings daily wage with her children.
On a good day, her daughter gets about 700 shillings. Part of this is used for buying ‘something to eat’. She has to pay for a place they both sleep in -300 shillings per person per night.
“We survive somehow. I use my earnings for buying food and things we need.”
For Teko and her daughter, a light meal of posho and beans in the evening is all they can afford. They have this in one of the shacks in Kisenyi. On a bad day, She and her daughter even go without a meal.


No going home soon
What if, I asked Teko, some one offered to take her back home?
She shook her head.
There is no going home for her any time soon.
“I will stay in this place because I have only come to the city recently. Let those who were here earlier going home first.
“I can not stay in the village. I better stay here and eat whatever we find with my children”
I told her that this was not her home and her right home was in Karamoja. She would die here of hunger and disease and besides; it was not good for her children. She then accepted on condition that some one would give her some money for some business and build her a hut.

Lokongo and Loiki
The story was not very different for Lokongo and her son Loli. They were in a small distance and begged. Lokongo, a middle aged woman and her son who she said was making one year asked the members of the public for a coin or two.
She carried her son on her laps as he looked up, with a dry mouth and tongue. He was heavily infested with scabies, emaciated and half naked. They both reeked urine, dirt and sweat. Lokongo told me, like Teko did earlier that they had come to Kampala in search of a better life.
Unlike Teko, she had no where else to get money from. She had to depend on what they got from begging. The condition of her child is worse. The scabies looked set to finish him off any time, and then the hunger.
Like the rest of the Karamojongs, they would have to pay 300 shillings per night to sleep in a room in Kisenyi. And they have to feed.

We call this home.
I had to hurdle over open drains and jump over heaps of garbage before I finally reached Kisenyi. It was not hard getting there. I only had to ask any one if they knew where the Karamojongs stay in Kisenyi.
Teko, Lokongo, their children and others stay in numerous hovels in the heart of Kisenyi suburb. The small, crudely built wooden cabins measure about nine by six feet. I thought the run-down shacks were deserted by owners but the occupants pay a fortune.
An overpowering smell strikes at the entrance. Strips of boxes and light decrepit bed sheets hung on the wooden walls of the room. The bare ground is rough, and dusty. Outside, the half naked children call for a ‘kikumi’ from passersby.
“Close to thirty of us sleep in here” says Namilo, a middle-aged woman from Matany, Moroto district. “Each adult pays the owner 300 shillings and 200 shillings for every child per night. Many of us are children.”
It is evening and the hearth is cold. Whether the children and women will come home with something for supper and rent is not known.
Meanwhile, Loli, Loiki and other young children of their age have to get used to the inhumane conditions, disease and abuse. They might face a future without basics such as education.