Weary Ugandans forced to flee by Floods

Mary Akiteng has spent half her life fleeing wars and cattle raids. Now she is being chased across Uganda by flood water.

For the last fortnight, the 24-year-old mother-of-two has sheltered in a windowless classroom at Amaseniko Primary school where her son John was supposed to be getting an education.

The school is one of dozens of makeshift camps that have sprung up across northern and eastern Uganda. Amaseniko itself is cut off from the rest of its district by floods that have affected more than 1 million people in 17 African countries.

"We are just the way you see us here, no home, no food and no clothing," she says, breast-feeding her six-month-old baby.

"Why doesn't the government come to our rescue?"

Her plea is echoed across the continent in countries that are rarely equipped to deal with a disaster on this scale. The floods have killed at least 200 people, aid workers say.

For Ugandans like Mary, life in a squalid camp is depressingly familiar.

Amaseniko is in Amuria district which borders Uganda's poorest region, Karamoja. Livestock raids there often spill over into neighbouring areas and rebels from northern Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) also invaded Amuria in 2003, using Amaseniko as a temporary base.

LRA leaders are wanted by international prosecutors for massacring civilians and abducting thousands of children as sex slaves and soldiers.

"These people were terrorised (by the rebels) and forced to stay in camps, where they have lived ever since," said Uganda's minister of state for disaster preparedness, Musa Ecweru.

Ecweru, who comes from the area, formed and commanded a militia -- the Arrow Boys -- who fought off the LRA incursion.


"PREPARE FOR CATASTROPHE"

Since July, northern Uganda's heaviest rainfall for 35 years has triggered floods that killed 18 people, affected 300,000 and swept away more than 30 bridges, hampering aid efforts.

When two helicopters carrying U.N. and government officials land at Amaseniko, residents throng around the aircraft hoping for handouts.

Conditions are dire in the ragged camp that has formed around the primary school. Almost all the pit latrines have collapsed, infecting the rising waters with faecal matter.

"There is no water to drink and we are already being overwhelmed by people with cases of diarrhoea and malaria," Asege Florence, a local medical worker, tells Reuters.

Two children died from malaria last week, residents say. Many locals accuse government officials of being too slow to realise the threat posed by the downpours.

"When we saw the rains becoming severe we sent a warning to the government to prepare for a catastrophe," says John Ekongot, a senior local administrator in Katakwi, east of Amuria.

"But you can see the response, it has been very slow."

The government and aid organisations in Uganda have turned to international donors for help.

On Wednesday, the U.N. World Food Programme called for $65 million to feed 1.7 million people -- many of them already displaced by the war in the north. On Friday, other U.N. agencies in Uganda launched a $43 million floods appeal.

As the relief efforts gain momentum, a senior army officer says there could be more trouble on the horizon.

"When it rains, the water flows from Karamoja to these places here and the warriors come down here for water for their animals and to rustle," Brigadier Julius Oketch told Reuters.