northern Archives - Jake Lyell

Post Tagged with: "northern"

Recovering from Kony

May 25, 2013

It’s hard to believe that as much hoopla as this guy has stirred up, as much attention as he’s garnered in the media, that the problems he caused are still not yet fixed. Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army plundered Northern Uganda for over a decade. The rebels killed tens of thousands of Ugandan civilians, displaced millions, and turned the peaceful farms across the region into heaps of ashes. The war against Kony’s LRA ended in Uganda in 2006. It’s still ongoing, albeit on a smaller scale, in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the rebellion most families in Northern Uganda were forced to flee their homesteads and livelihoods for the security of crowded refugee camps. Still largely dependent on handouts from government and relief organizations, they’ve returned to their land with nothing. Economic and psychological recovery has yet to be realized. When you’re[…]

One stop shopping

November 2, 2010

Take five minutes to explore Obalanga’s weekly market, the largest in NE Uganda’s Amuria District. Here people come from surrounding towns and districts to buy and trade, make repairs, catch up with friends, and hear from politicians and itinerant preachers. The predominant language heard here is Ateso.

(desperate for) Water Aid

October 2, 2010

It’s been ten years since world leaders came together to form what became the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to tackle world poverty. Heads of state recently met again for a summit at UN headquarters in New York to discuss progress made in the last decade. My most recent assignment with Water Aid UK was not to document progress that the NGO has made in communities where it works. Instead I was commissioned to visit areas where there is still much work left to be done. Unfortunately, it’s not too hard to find schools, hospitals and communities that lack clean water sources or proper toilets and sanitation facilities here in NE Uganda, which is the poorest and least developed area of the country. Water Aid has used these stories for awareness campaigns that led up to the summit. They’ve also shared them with the decision makers themselves. They hope to[…]

Braving the Swarm: Malaria in Uganda’s Amuria District

June 2, 2010

Amuria Health Centre has been packed beyond capacity in recent weeks, with more people occupying the floors than hospital beds. As the rains continue to fall, more and more people here contract malaria. During the rainy season, when streams rise and lowland areas become flooded, mosquitoes breed in greater numbers. This health centre’s resources (Amuria has no official hospital) are stretched thin even outside the rainy season. The entire district of over 300,000 shares just one doctor for all its public health centres. He travels around from village to village and is rarely in one place for more than a day. When medicine and supplies are available, the cost is picked up by the government. When they run out, which is all too often, the only option for patients is to pay cash for drips, drugs, and needles from the local pharmacy and bring them to the hospital. “Most of[…]