Distribution Lines and Being Lost in an IDP Camp

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) team from UNICEF has been racing around all week to meet with all the major organizations working in the area to coordinate a joint proposal for emergency cluster funding for the hepatitis epidemic. I have joined them on most of their visits with Irene, UNICEFs Monitoring and Evaluation manager in Kitgum. Monitoring and data collection varies dramatically from agency to agency. We felt it would be a good idea to learn more about other agency methods to see how best we can improve our own system, while trying to get the key indicators and monitoring components for the emergency proposal as harmonized as possible. This is an incredibly difficult task, as organizations have vastly different mandates and objectives (MSF, for example, only works in emergency settings while IRC integrates development focused components into their work).

On Thursday, I joined the WASH team from UNICEF for a field visit to a Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) distribution line in Potika B, an IDP camp an hour and a half from Kitgum. Hepatitis is viral disease transmitted through fecal-oral route. In the IDP camps, some with tens of thousands of people crammed into an area the size of a couple of football fields, hepatitis is starting to spread like wild fire. Proper sanitation and access to clean water is the primary problem, as traditional clay pots can not be effectively cleaned, water points are contaminated, waste disposal (ie latrines) are either inadequate or not being used, soap is unavailable or too expensive and hand washing is not consistent.

When we arrived, MSF was midway through a jerry can distribution. These are meant to replace the clay pots, while chlorination stations are being set up around the water points to ensure that the water is uncontaminated and that the jerry cans are regularly cleaned… It sounds easy in practice, but in the field it rarely goes according to plan. Aid distributions are notoriously unpredictable, as riots can break out over something as small as a bar of soap. This was not a problem here. The MSF coordinator had put together a very orderly and organized operation. There were hundreds of people massed around the gates of the MSF camp, while guards were letting in a few people at a time to pick up their jerry cans, given one to each household. Once the jerry can was collected, MSF workers checked off previously issued household distribution cards to ensure nobody was double dipping.

After a surprisingly congeal and productive meeting with MSF, who are renowned as being very wary with having anything to do with the UN system, we headed to the Agoro IDP camp. The MSF field coordinator indicated that the conditions there were abysmal and would be worth assessing. Agoro is past the last checkpoint into Sudan, only accessible on a military access road. Nestled in an impressive mountain range where former Sudanese SPLA leader John Garang’s plane crashed a few years back, the IDP camp is located in a stunning area. It is estimated that about 12,000 people live in here.

After meeting with the village chief, we toured the area. The huts in the IDP camps are packed incredibly close together, and it can be very disorientating to navigate. As we made our way to the outskirts of the camp to assess the latrines which were currently being constructed by the Ugandan Red Cross, we somehow managed to lose Brett, our Water and Sanitation expert from Britain. Brett called my mobile, and pleaded “Help, I am lost in the camp!”

I tried to keep myself from laughing at the situation. I looked around, looking for any sort of landmark that I could direct him towards. He indicated that he was surrounded by hundreds of kids, pointing in all directions! The only thing I could think of using was the sun. I told him to keep the sun at 10 o’clock and walk straight, until he popped out of the camp. A few minutes later, he found us. After completing our assessment, we headed back to Kitgum.