Documentary Review

“Life in Kampala”

Camera: Patrick Otim and Daniel Neumann

Presenter: Paulina Sylwia Wyrzykowski

Reviewed by Ali Balunywa

Life in Kampala is a documentary produced by the Refugee law project. The documentary begins with showing the poor in Kampala city. Hawkers, savedees, newspaper vendors, beggars and children are shown in different parts of the city. Their poor living conditions in the slums come alive on screen.

The documentary is one of the many activities of People’s space in Munyonyo near Kampala. Hurinet and Uganda Coalition for the International Criminal court organized it. It is one of the programmes organized alongside the ICC review conference May 31 to June 11 2010.

The objective of the documentary was to create awareness in government and NGOs about the plight of urban internally displaced refugees. The story of the refugees is distressing. First they are herded into camps by government troops in order to isolate Kony during the Northern Uganda conflict. The conditions in the camps are despairing. They lived in grass-thatched mud and wattle houses. Families squeezed in those small rooms!

The austere conditions forced many of these people to migrate to urban centres in Kampala, Jinja, Mbale and Masindi. Most of them walked those great distances others used trucks or buses. The conditions in the urban centres were not different from the camps. They found themselves in the slums were the urban poor live. The conditions here are as appalling as the camps they fled from. The place is dirty with no running water, proper sanitation and drainage and poor hygiene.

Jobs were difficult to find and to survive some vend bananas, others newspapers, but the majority work in stone quarries were they break up stones with simple hand held tools. Men, women and children - all engage in this strenuous work for survival. The government refused to accept responsibility for the urban refugees because they cannot be differentiated from the urban poor.

Most of these people idle away their lives by brewing local illicit alcohol, drinking and playing cards. Social problems that come with this are many and include domestic violence, high suicide rates and loss of culture, dignity and identity. These are the same problems that were rife in the camps they escaped from.

It is easy to discern that all these people had better lives before the war and if assisted, they would prefer to resettle back home. Most of them cannot afford fare back home, and are therefore bound to continue living their dog lives.

The message one gets from the documentary is that well as all internally displaced people (IDP) faced the same problems where ever they settled whether in the camps or in the urban areas, after the end of the war, governments and NGOs rushed to resettle only IDPs in camps, but have done nothing to help the urban IDPs. The documentary creates this awareness and begs government and NGOs to take the plight of IDPs seriously. They should be profiled and their needs identified. They don’t have to be returned but improve their lives wherever they are living.