The New Year brings hardships to Gulu

2008 started with people in Gulu exchanging “Happy New Year” messages with their friends and relatives and expressing their happiness at having completed 2007. Indeed they were right to celebrate because for someone to complete a year in northern Uganda is worth celebrating, having spent over 20 years under absolute fear of losing their life, caused by the LRA insurgency.

However little did they know that the political violence in neighbouring Kenya, brought by irregularities in the recent presidential elections, could lead them to yet another hard life. Consequently fuel scarcity hit the whole of Uganda. Inability to do business and to move led to the suffering of many people, especially in upcountry towns. As fuel became scarcer, its price abnormally shot up, and even then it could only be found on the black market. For instance a litre of petrol rose by over 300%, bus fares from Kampala to Gulu increased by 50%, a bunch of bananas went up by 80% and cement by 45%. This current situation has greatly affected our budgets in SOS Children’s Village Gulu and the construction of the new village as the cost of materials has gone up. Although fuel is now available, its price is still high.

Concerning the weather, we are now in the dry season. The green cover is disappearing slowly by slowly and many trees have completely lost their leaves. The mornings are characterised by cold and dry winds blowing up a lot of dust into the houses. Afternoons are really hot, above 36oC, leading to little output from many workers in northern Uganda because of the unbearable heat. And this is just the beginning; the worst of it is yet to be experienced in February and March when the ground will be left bare and water scarce as the dry season continues.

In SOS Children’s Village Gulu, the children are still on their long holidays, yet to return to school on 4th February. They have been involved in various holiday activities since the beginning of December 2007. We tried to limit their movement in the community for fear of the deadly contagious Ebola disease, which hit the districts of western Uganda. Yellow fever was also prevalent in the neighbouring district of Kitgum.