The Tragedy of Kikigate

Huddling on a dusty flood plain just across the Kagera River fromTanzania is a small community of Ugandan refugees.  They live in mud huts and scrape the earth for food.  Some have tiny 3x3-foot plots of maize.  The kids have open sores.  Everyone is sick and filthy; teenage boys and men who are able hitchhike out of the camp to look for work and, if successful, never return.  Except for building an 8-stall latrine, the government has ignored them.

“These people were not poor,” I was told. “They are some of the ones who fled Uganda under Idi  Amin. They were given land inTanzania. They built schools and churches and houses and businesses and were thriving.  But three years ago, when they supported the loser in a political contest, the winner took revenge by burning their town and chasing them back across the river.  They lost everything.”

I was in Kikigate because a young boy in the Juna Amagara Children’s Home was dropped off as an infant by a kind missionary and we only recently learned the boy had family in this place.  We brought him to meet his relatives.  We didn’t stay long.

Some 20 miles away is a large UN-run refugee camp called Nakivale.  That is where refugees from Western Congo fleeing from rebel violence are being taken, several thousand per month.  That is where the Doctors Without Borders and International Medical Teams go.  That is where UNHCR operates. That is where cholera broke out last month.  The government is getting good marks for providing sanctuary for people in need in Nakivale but by comparison, Kikigate seems forgotten.  It breaks your heart.