Refugee Crisis, Part 1: Kyangwali Refugee Camp (Original post February 2, 2018)

On this last trip to Uganda, I was able to extend my stay and spend some time visiting the Kyangwali refugee camp in Western Uganda. The resettlement camp holds about forty thousand people, but most suggest the number is as much as twice that because many have not been interviewed and recorded. Some of the refugees come from South Sudan and Rwanda, but the great majority come from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the DRC, there is war. The army is fighting rebels. When the army sees someone who is not in uniform, they assume he or she is a rebel and they shoot. When a rebel sees someone not in uniform, they assume he or she is a sympathizer and they shoot. There are four large tribes who see the country in disarray, they want to protect their land and seize more, so they shoot. As a result, people flee. Believe it or not, running to Uganda, empty-handed is better than staying home.

So, these people walk for days, even weeks to get to Kyangwali. When they arrive, they get a tarp and a blanket for their family, courtesy of the United Nations. They receive a tiny plot of land and a bag of seeds to start farming, courtesy of the Ugandan government. So you arrive, maybe with your family to lay down under your blanket, inside your tarp and you go to sleep with the prospect of having food in a few months, if the rains come. Of course, the rains that you need for food to grow are the same rains that will flow under your tarp and soak everyone and everything you own. They are the same rains that will promote mosquitoes which carry malaria. They are the same rains that carry diseases across the ground because there is not a single toilet within walking distance.

Somehow, for the citizens of DRC, there is more hope here than home.

Conditions are hard in the camp. We saw children with distended stomachs suffering from malnutrition. Their bellies are swollen with parasitic worms that steal the nutrients from what little food they get. The condition can be deadly, which is why, at home, we spend a few bucks to eliminate this condition in our pets. That medicine is not available in the camp.

We met a mother holding her infant. Her pregnancy was the result of rape by a gang of rebels. Most of her family and her village were slaughtered. She is sixteen years old, a single mother, raising her baby under a tarp.

Another mother tried to give us her baby as we were leaving.

There was a lady, sitting in front of her shelter, all alone. Rebels had killed her husband and children. She told us, "First I was angry. Now I am envious of my husband."

This is gut-wrenching. The need is overwhelming. What do we do? Where do we start? This will take some thought and planning. One thing we know, Jesus is hope for the hopeless. God is Father to the fatherless.

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 14:18

We did church under a tree. We shared the Gospel. We shared the hope we have in Jesus. Thirty-two people committed their lives to Christ in that place. This is where we start.