Sorghum, split yellow peas and vegetable oil, anyone?

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For the last week, I took a break from volunteering for one organization to volunteer for another organization. This latter organization will remain nameless, as per the request of my enormous, intergovernmental agency employer. I spent the week with several other volunteers at Rhino Camp and Imvepi Refugee settlements, about two hours from Arua. The "settlements" are in fact a series of refugee villages receiving the same social services and protection, all spread out on a low valley along the western bank of the Nile. 

For six days, I ticked names and totaled kilos of sorghum, all the while fending off some very angry Sudanese refugees who have become very accustomed to receiving free food every month. The heat was dizzying and the sun was, well, equatorial. Most afternoons around 2pm, I was ready to dig a hole in the dirt with my bare hands to escape the withering heat. The work itself sometimes went smoothly, at least when the food arrived on the truck on time and it was enough and the people were orderly and helpful in off-loading and measuring the food, which was rare. The entire refugee camp is divided into a dozen or so food distribution points where refugees are assigned to receive their monthly ration. It is a complicated, unpleasant procedure double checking several lists to make sure that someone can, in fact, pick up food this month (often for people who are not in the camp, but rather, are in the hospital, at school or visiting family elsewhere, all trips that must be registered with an authority and marked). Each food point involved getting food to between 30 and 200 "households" ranging in size from 1 to 15 people each. Every food point ended with at least a few irate refugees who were convinced that (1) they had been shorted some vegetable oil, (2) they had not actually received the food we had given them, (3) we were going to take the remaining food for ourselves when they were the ones who deserved it, or (4) we were corrupt. There were more precious, memorable moments, but for sake of anonymity, I'll keep them out of the blog.  

It was a strange experience for a few reasons. For one, the image I have of a refugee camp is filled with dirty tents, all crammed together and the mud streets are thronging with desperate, starving people. Not so here at Rhino and Imvepi camp where the mostly Sudanese, though occasionally Congolese and Central African Republican, live in spread out villages of thatch-roofed brick huts, indistinguishable from the rest of the West Nile Region. Many of them have been at the "camps" for years, if not decades. Most children under 15 were born in a refugee camp. Refugees are encouraged to grow their own food, but usually receive monthly rations from the nameless intergovernmental agency for which I was working. Also strangely, the 15,000 or so refugees receive a wealth of social services - medicine, counseling, education - that at least seems far greater than services extended to most villagers in this poor end of Uganda. There is, admittedly, something much more dramatically appealing to international donors about the plight of the refugee than, say, the plight of the local cassava farmer. I can speak from my own experience that the malnutrition, sickness and general living conditions for children in Yumbe appears worse than it is in these well-established refugee camps. Ugandans are aware of the disparity and it is the source of some bitterness.