| 7 The 'over-socialized concept of man' Explaining the inexplicable I did not set out to collect data to demonstrate that African refugees present symptoms of mental illness, and actually resisted facing the possibility that African refugees might share such problems with other refugees about whom I had read. I had an unrealistic and naive faith in the power of the family system to buffer individuals undergoing stress. What I had failed to anticipate was both the extent to which the demands of individual survival undermined social values, and the time that it takes for new supportive social units to establish themselves in the absence of kinsfolk. The real and apparent lack of support for each other, the refusal to co-operate under circumstances where co-operation appears advantageous, and the prevalence of destructive and anti-social behaviour puzzles and frustrates aid workers and researchers alike. These behaviour characteristics are often referred to as the 'dependency syndrome', a blanket term used for all the undesirable social behaviour found in the settlements. However, like all blanket terms, it can hide more than it reveals, and in the case of the Sudan, this way of categorising refugee behaviour leads to wrong diagnoses of its cause and thus inevitably, wrongly aimed aid projects. Two brief examples may clarify what I mean by the behaviour which is too easily characterised as irresponsible or dependent by observers. Both incidents were ones which I found difficult to accept, let alone explain. However explanations must be found if aid programmes are to be effective and, later in the chapter, I shall detail some of the basic economic and political characteristics of the refugee experience which produce and encourage these behaviours. The first example occurred in 1982 at a late-night meeting of block leaders in Limbe. They reported the death of a woman who had recently given birth, and told the programme officer that he must find an orphanage for this infant. Weary from the long and hectic day, we did not spare their feelings. We reminded them that even had there been an orphanage, which there was not, this baby was the Ugandans' responsibility, not ours. They were the ones who had to find a substitute mother for the baby. A second incident occurred in Kala settlement. The chairman pointed towards a house where a woman had given birth only a few hours earlier that morning. I asked to visit her and I found the mother attempting to chop firewood. The morning was bitterly cold. Inside the house the newborn baby lay uncovered on the damp earth; crouching beside it were two other shivering, half-naked children, staring up at me through the uncovered doorway. I was furious. 'Why,' I asked, 'is this woman chopping her own firewood?' The chairman explained that she had no relatives. 'Who gives a--?' I asked, 'where are the neighbours?' By this time the neighbours were in evidence, curious to know what had upset me. No one moved, so I took the axe in my own hands. The new mother immediately retired to her hut to lie down. To my humiliation, I was not strong enough to cut the wood with the dull axe! Finally a member of the committee took the axe from me and chopped the wood. As it turned out, he was one of the neighbours! In this case, the chairman tried to cool my rage by explaining that 'In Uganda it is one's kinsmen who help, not one's neighbours. 'But,' I said, 'this is NOT Uganda! You must re-define social responsibility.' But both the programme officer and I had the impression that all such admonitions usually fell on deaf ears.' Why is it then, that refugees behave in this way? To begin to answer this question, we need to pay more attention to the psychological state of the refugees.
Does the mind matter? Recently Ron Baker (1984) observed that in his research on the psychological needs of African refugees, he could find 'neither systematic analysis nor acknowledgement of psychosocial issues', either at the theoretical or practical level. He found most documents concerned with African refugees dominated by the 'demographic and practical'. He asks 'Why? Do refugees in Africa not have intense emotional reactions to being uprooted? How is mental illness perceived and dealt with among African refugee populations?' And he asks whether 'policy makers, planners, managers, researchers, and writers [are] so steeped in a developmental social engineering approach ... that they are in the grip of an over-socialized concept of man... ?' By an 'over-socialized' concept of man, Baker refers to the way in which some social scientists consider human behaviour to be the result of social and cultural processes, to such a degree that individual psychology and individual responses are greatly under-valued. In the refugee situation, the individual and the individual's needs are submerged in the rush to deal with the multitude. I have already referred to situations in which the failure of aid policies to deal with specific, local, individual, situations led not only to the failure of programmes to meet refugee needs, but also to the creation of new problems and difficulties. In this chapter, I describe the ways in which the failure of the aid programme to recognize individual psychological needs, and the failure to acknowledge the likely effect of the stresses of the refugee situation on individuals, leads directly to increasing numbers of psychologically disturbed individuals and may trigger psychosis. But the 'over-socialized' view of man may also be applied to views of group processes. In group situations, the 'over-socialized view of man' assumes that once people are together, man's 'social nature' will quickly develop a social structure which will ensure the equitable and acceptable distribution of resources, no matter how limited those resources may be. And it also implicitly assumes that people will continue to be able to create social support systems, establish norms and act as responsible, autonomous individuals, unaffected by circumstances, no matter how destructive and debilitating those circumstances may be. Both assumptions may be unreasonable. Humanitarian aid programmes, as Baker observed, do not take account of the need for psychological services for African refugees. In Khartoum UNHCR supported a counselling centre for urban refugees. It employed seven social workers and one highly qualified Sudanese psychiatric social worker, and in 1981-1984, the UNHCR staff member in charge of the centre was a qualified clinical psychologist. But it was most concerned with helping refugees with immediate practical problems of living in Khartoum and in organising income-generating projects. Moreover, as this centre was thought to focus too narrowly on individual cases, in 1985 its phasing-out began. In southern Sudan there was no provision for IC, the UNHCR code for individual cases, beyond a counsellor in Juba who was not trained or expected to deal with psychological problems. As Baker rightly observed, the emphasis was on programmes. This was not for lack of evidence of individual cases of the psychologically disturbed. No one could deny there were individuals who were clearly psychotic; perhaps because agency personnel had little or no previous experience in Africa, there was a tendency for them to view the bizarre behaviour of some Ugandans as simply a manifestation of the cultural trappings which all of them carried into the Sudan, along with their school certificates. Although there is a growing body of literature on the psychology of African societies, still,
The first School of Psychiatry in East Africa was established at Makerere University. Professor German, who headed this school at the time, described a 'queue of mentally sick folk whose numbers might astonish the armchair theorists descended from Rousseau. Psychiatric problems in Uganda are not over the hill of 50 years hence, but are standing now at the clinic gate.' (ibid.) When this was written Uganda was still relatively prosperous and reasonably stable; how much longer might that queue be today? In southern Sudan one was faced with evidence which suggests that few refugees escape the psychological scars of flight and exile. Even some of the most apparently stable will confide that they regularly dream of war, violence, and death. I persist in looking for the most economical explanations for the abnormal social behaviour which I observed and resist the notion that the solution, except for the minority of cases, lies in psychiatric medicine or counselling therapy. However, the data that I collected, and the further exploratory and preliminary work done by the Oxford team, suggest that serious attention to these matters is long overdue.
Indirect evidence for psychological stress In Limbe, one child (a budding artist) presented me with a picture of his house in the settlement. Later in Limuru, I found children drawing lorries and figures in the dirt, part of their kindergarten assignment under the trees. Always on the look out for new ways to collect expressions of culture, I sponsored a drawing contest. Teachers were asked only to instruct children to draw impressions of 'refugee life'. Prizes were set at £S15, £S10, £S5, with 20 £S1 'honourable mentions'. Although not all settlements responded in time, before I left I had collected over 200 drawings. Refugee life, as interpreted by the vast majority of these young artists is not as I had expected - lorries delivering food, compounds and houses cheek by jowl, schools under trees. They saw 'refugee life' in terms of violence. Some representative examples of their work appear in Appendix VI. The children drew pictures of soldiers shooting their mothers, infants lying bleeding to death, houses burning. They drew pictures of men tied to trees, decapitations, dogs eating human corpses. They drew groups of children and adults, crouching in the forest, ribs jutting or bellies swollen with starvation. The word 'refugee' itself seems to be associated in the minds of children with their experiences of violence, death, and starvation. I was concerned that the content of these pictures might have been influenced by the teachers who announced the instructions for the contest. To test the validity of the initial results, in 1984 I asked the Oxford team to supervise the collection of more drawings, and to ensure the delivery of a 'neutral' introduction to the competition. Even though one year had passed since the earlier drawings and one might have assumed that time would erase the memory of some of these experiences, the team found that the children continued to draw 'disturbing and realistic pictures of massacres, lootings and gunfights, almost always based on first-hand experience, so that the characters (dead or alive) could be named.' (de Waal 1985, in Wilson et al. 1985.) Perhaps more disturbing than the pictures were my interviews with very young children who all too frequently responded to questions about their future aspirations with statements about how they would return to Uganda to kill 'the Acholi'. [2] Another source of data on individuals' feelings about their situation, one unfortunately I did not tap systematically, was the songs composed in exile. The themes of those translated for me during performances showed a preoccupation with death, suffering, hunger, and violent revenge. Those which were sung with greatest enthusiasm promised Obote and his 'Acholi' the justice they deserved.3 Many songs are dirges. According to my assistants, these songs are now performed as part of social events much more frequently than they were in Uganda.
Indirect evidence of clinical levels of depression and anxiety Prompted by indirect indications that refugees were suffering psychological stress, and by observations made during the research, it was decided that one of the members of the Oxford team should attempt to do further work on this topic. He decided to use a cross-culturally validated test (Wing et al. 1974) which had also been used in Uganda. (Orley and Wing 1979.) It was administered to a random sample of adults in one settlement and to a number of self-settled refugees and Sudanese at Panyume. The instrument used in the interview, the Present State Examination, was modified to examine neuroses, primarily depression and anxiety. The scale was administered in 1984 by Alex de Waal and Alula Pankhurst together with three Ugandan colleagues. Given the inexperience of the interviewers and the very limited number of cases, one must entertain serious reservations regarding the validity of the results. (Eyton and Neuwirth 1984.) There is, however, a strong justification for presenting these results in order to stimulate further work. The results of 57 interviews were independently diagnosed by clinical psychologists in Oxford. Only 13 were found to have no psychiatric problems. Seven were diagnosed as suffering anxiety, 6 suffered anxiety together with depressive features, 19 suffered depression and 11 suffered depression with anxiety features. Three-quarters of this very small sample suffered an 'appreciable psychiatric disorder'. In Uganda, Orley and Wing (1979) found that only 25 per cent of the population of two villages had such 'disorders "above threshold level", including 5 per cent with "definite" disorders'.
It is believed that any person who met these criteria would be seriously affected by depression. The depressives in the Limbe sample presented primarily somatic symptoms in contrast to the conventional symptoms of the typical European depressive, who is more likely to display feelings of guilt and depression. In Limbe, people complained of headaches, bodies which ached even when they did no work, constant exhaustion, anergia and retardation, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and loss of libido.
Three people in the sample were contemplating suicide and one had seriously attempted it. Marital status - where spouses were present - appeared to be related to mental health: 'Only 17 out of 39 married people were depressed.' Similarly the absence of members of an individual's close relatives other than the spouse, seemed to distinguish cases suffering depression: 'Of the 28 with family members in the settlement, only 11 were primarily depressed.' (ibid.) Commonsense, as well as a body of psychological literature (e.g. Golan 1978), support de Waal's statements that
A close link was found between depression and the scale of an individual's losses,
Twenty-four persons in the sample suffered clinical levels of anxiety (i.e. they were unable to function normally) and 34 suffered panic attacks at least once a month. These attacks involve the sudden onset of disabling fear accompanied by trembling, sweating, heart beating fast, dizziness, palpitations, dry-mouth, choking etc. which may last for a few minutes or up to an hour or more.
In conclusion, then, with even the limited amount of evidence available, it is likely that the incidence of psychiatric illness among refugees is relatively high. These data suggest the need for further research, and they also establish the need for humanitarian aid programmes to consider the mental health of refugees in Africa. In western societies, it is accepted that the levels of depression and anxiety suggested by our interviews would be 'seriously disabling'. If aid programmes could identify and alleviate some of the causes of anxiety and depression, then both the health and effectiveness of the refugees would improve. While the death and destruction that impelled the refugees' flight cannot be removed by the aid agencies, some of the other important causes of anxiety can be mitigated. The important factor that has not previously been recognized as significant, and one which has caused much distress in the settlements, is bereavement, and it is this that I now want to turn to.
Some psychological studies of refugees from other countries have drawn on theories developed out of studies of reactions to bereavement. Among Chilean refugees, Munoz (1984) found that:
That it is possible to generalize the experience of being uprooted is supported by studies of the illnesses of students studying abroad. (Zwingmann 1983.) The US government takes seriously the possibility that even the temporary loss of one's country and exposure to an alien culture can have adverse psychological effects upon members of its foreign service. The symptoms which diplomats are warned they may suffer include stress, 'common to any anxiety- producing situation, [which] may be severe or mild, may last several months, or appear only fleetingly.' Several associated physical and emotional symptoms are listed: sleepiness, apathy, depression, compulsive eating or drinking, homesickness, and exaggerated yearning for all things and friends 'American', insecurity of professional judgement, negative stereotyping of host nationals, fear of being cheated, decline in efficiency, recurrent minor illnesses, and obsession with cleanliness. Children may not escape such symptoms as regression in toilet training or social behaviour, interrupted sleep, skin eruptions, stomach disorders. Older children may manifest culture shock by finding it difficult to maintain academic competence, working out their anxiety in disruptive behaviour and sometimes even 'experimenting' with drugs, alcohol, sex.[4] It is usually argued that the culture and landscape of the countries in which most African refugees find asylum is more familiar to them than is the case for refugees elsewhere. However, for most Ugandans, the Sudan represents a wrenching change from the familiar. Only a minority in Yei River District shared a common mother-tongue with local Sudanese, and very few had crossed the border into the Sudan before 1979 - even those who lived just on the other side of the Kaya River. That many local Sudanese had also been refugees and some had lived in Uganda was a mixed blessing. Depending on their own experiences in exile in Uganda, they were more or less sympathetic with the new arrivals. The refugees in southern Sudan had not only lost home and country. As we have seen, those who suffered psychiatric disabilities (as measured by the PSE scale) had all lost immediate relatives. The Oxford team found evidence in their case studies of some of the 'components' of grief identified in studies of bereavement. (Parkes 1972.) These components of grief include:
A symptom which did not fit into these categories was the number of people (twenty) who expressed 'simple ideas of reference; they believed that other people were watching them, laughing at them or even trying to harm them. The most extreme example of this was a young man, N.A., who was suicidal, who thought that his neighbours were trying to kill him with axes.' (ibid.) It is clear then, that bereavement, especially when occurring so frequently, can itself cause temporary psychological dislocation and great distress. The situation is made more painful, however, by the way the refugee experience interacts with the mourning and burial rites that should be carried out. In normal situations, mourning rites are a crucial part of the process by which individuals accommodate bereavement.
Earlier in the book I referred to the general belief often expressed by outsiders that Africans do not suffer the same emotional feelings after bereavement as 'we' do. According to Baker (1984), an apparently stoic response to intense suffering may be an appropriate, though costly, initial defence system.
Later, in a camp, refugees are still in a highly vulnerable psychological state.
Refugees in Africa have not only experienced the loss of roots, geography, emotional support, and the culture and status they enjoyed before flight; the scale of death from military violence, illness, and malnutrition may actually be far greater than that experienced by most refugees who have been the subjects of psychological research. Earlier, I discussed the tendency of refugees to conceal the death of a relative. The inability to finance the ceremonies (and usually travel) that are associated with proper mourning may in part account for the severity of the panic attacks which were described to the interviewers in Limbe. Parkes (1972) in his section of atypical grief, discusses delayed grief reactions, and remarks that panic attacks are frequently associated with this form of grief. As de Waal observed, delayed grief reaction certainly seems an appropriate explanation for many of the cases of panic. During the civil war or flight, when often it was not even possible to bury the dead, the bereaved do not express normal grief, but an unhealthy numbness. Later, some relatively minor event acts as a trigger to release the pent-up mourning, which sometimes takes the form of frequent panic attacks. In all but two of the 34 cases reported to suffer panic attacks, it was possible to establish that some significantly adverse life event had occurred in the few days before the onset. These included the death of a relative, the day a person left Uganda during a military bombardment, when a relative was repatriated, when property was looted, and following the 'loss' of a relative through marriage. In the short term, the failure to observe mourning practices may be a necessary adaptive response; for instance during a battle or while fleeing one does not have time to mourn. But in the long term it is likely to be pathogenic. All societies recognize the need for mourning, if possible by the graveside. In instances where there is no grave, some societies have developed alternatives, such as war memorials, the tomb of the unknown soldier, etc. (de Waal op.cit.).[5] In this section, the significance of bereavement, and the importance of mourning rituals have been shown. It is a limitation of the over-socialized view of human nature that informs so many aid policies. Aid is not applied to maintaining social institutions. Refugees are expected to cope by being appropriately 'social', but they are denied the resources to reestablish the real bases of social life, the exchanges and rites which make a truly sociable and co-operative life possible. In fact aid workers often feel able to denigrate and devalue the 'customs' which might help people to survive with more dignity. The statistical data collected during our survey indicated the widespread disruption of family life that occurred among refugee populations. There are indications of marriage breakdowns, separation of partners inflight, loss of children and so on. The significance of these situations for personal wellbeing cannot be overestimated. There is, then, a case for suggesting that aid programmes should accommodate the need to re-establish as many as possible of the pre-existing social institutions of the refugees.
Maintaining customs Certainly one factor contributing to the insecurity of refugees is the impossibility of observing mandatory traditional customs - in other words normal social responsibilities. I have already mentioned that poverty usually prevents the transfer of an adequate amount of wealth to a bride's family to legalize the marriage contract. Except for some of the young men who were constantly appealing to UNHCR for funds to pay their dowries, the suggestion that perhaps the custom had outlived its usefulness did not strike a responsive chord. For fathers, the marriage of a daughter was one incontestable potential source of money. No refugee could afford to turn his back on the possibility of getting cash, even if he had to pursue his son-in-law from Yei to Aru (Zaire) and back. The worst things that can befall a young man who breaks the customary rules of marriage is to have to face his in-laws in court, or to have his wife reclaimed by her family. While the legal tangles following breaches of marriage rules are expensive and lengthy, at least those involved are only required to deal with the living. This is not the case when someone dies. The failure to perform burial rites according to custom is subject to supernatural sanctions. A proper burial is the most important act of respect which can be paid to the deceased. There is probably no greater disgrace to a family than to have failed to observe funeral customs. Many refugees are haunted with the memories of those relatives they left unburied in the bush while fleeing for their own lives. Some risked personal safety to return to dig graves, and one field commander told me that even after battle they bury the bodies of the enemies, as he put it, 'out of respect'. Even the children's drawings portrayed painful memories of the unburied dead. One child drew a picture of a dog feeding on a body and wrote the caption: 'We could not even bury our dead. Dogs ate the bodies of our family.' It is not enough simply to dig a hole and cover the corpse: it must be properly wrapped. Families would be willing to go to sleep hungry to find the money to buy cloth. As noted, the lack of funds for burial cloth explains the fate of so many UNHCR-supplied blankets. Refugees often painfully recalled how, when they were hiding in Uganda, they had to resort to banana leaves to wrap the dead. In settlements, the incentive to hide the fact that a relative has died (lest his name be struck off the ration list) only adds to the sense of guilt and betrayal. A decent burial is only the beginning. Deaths must be announced to all the family and this involved refugees in a considerable amount of movement between settlements and to the areas where their self-settled kinsfolk live. One announces the death of a spouse to one's in-laws with a gift - usually a goat. There are many other mandatory payments. One refugee told me why he was so deeply in debt. He had lost all but one son, when another relative died in his settlement household. He had to inform his in-laws. Believing as they all do that the failure to observe proper funeral procedures will cause further misfortune, illness and death in the family, and unwilling to risk his remaining son's life, he borrowed £S40 to buy a goat and travel to the border. Funerals involve the expense of feeding the family which gathers for the occasion. These ceremonies should be elaborate, involving drinking, special funeral dances, and plenty of food for visitors. When the settlement foremen were Ugandans, some held back sacks of grain in the store saying these were a supply upon which to draw for food for funerals. Always prone to impute the worst motives for any activity which deviated from the equal distribution of rations to all, these men were suspected of holding back food to sell for personal gain. Perhaps they were corrupt, but the need in settlements for such a reserve seems, on reflection, quite reasonable. For those deaths which are not reported, such gatherings are usually held away from the settlement in the compounds of self-settled relatives. One way of avoiding the misfortunes associated with the failure to bury properly those killed in Uganda is to observe such ceremonies later on. If a refugee manages to get any money, he is likely to use it first to fulfil these traditional obligations.
A hive of mourners Perhaps the best way to portray the force of customs and the crises which arise for refugees under conditions of extreme poverty is to reproduce excerpts from a description of Aluma Ponziano's wife's death in childbirth and her burial. Ponziano was a student at Moyo Senior Secondary School when the war broke out. He met and married Irine not long after they had settled in Kala. Shortly after marrying, Aluma was converted and he and his wife 'started to seek God and read the Bible.' A year later, on 18 December, Irine began her labour. He first called a grandmother who had experience as a traditional midwife. She was not home. 'The next nearest woman was Mrs Vuni so I moved to her.... she promised to come immediately.' Traditional methods used at delivery make things harder for the expecting mothers. Experience and beliefs controlled all things. It was believed that earlier misconduct such as marital unfaithfulness, theft, disobedience to mothers-in-law, grudges, oaths taken in anger, calling God to kill... done before or during pregnancy would surely cause complications... Aluma details many of the other taboos observed by pregnant women. Sitting outside the hut, he listens to the women interrogating his wife as her labour becomes seriously prolonged. Very late in the process, the midwife and medical assistant are called to help.
From Aluma's graphic description of his wife's death, which quickly followed, we may deduce this young woman simply haemorrhaged to death. Already informed of the fate of the baby, a crowd had gathered outside the hut. It fell to Aluma to inform them that:
Early the next morning Aluma was visited by another 'devout Christian' living in the settlement. He warned Aluma, 'These heathen relatives of yours will put you to hard testing by demanding that you conform to superstitions which they call the traditions of our ancestors. But be courageous and stand up for Jesus.'
Grinding stones around their necks Aluma describes some of the customary funeral practices. It should be noted that nearly all involve compensating ritual specialists and making other expenditures.
Could it be that under the conditions of exile, these refugees are more anxious to revive customs which were, as Aluma suggests, already forgotten by most people? In voluntary re-settlement situations, the concern of communities with maintaining cultural institutions has been widely observed. Migrant Greeks in Australia, for example, are so 'conservative' that young women who return to their village of origin report feeling 'liberated'! (Bottomley 1984.) The need to re-establish some symbols of 'normal' community life in refugee situations is likely to be much greater. When certain cultural practices are associated with payments, and when poverty and starvation are widespread, it is hardly surprising that mourning rites take on such importance.[6] Aluma, describing rituals associated with the burial of males and females, points out that 'Rites at funerals amongst the Madi were numerous indeed and if one wrote them all down it would make a very thick book. Some of these, which the people were now insisting he follow, were not only expensive, but offensive to his new-found faith as well. But when he attempted to stop the women from treating his wife in the prescribed manner, his father's brother pointed out that Aluma had failed to consider one significant fact: Aluma had not paid his in-laws' the bride price. If they wanted to, they could demand he pay now before allowing Irine's body to be buried! The reactions of the community which Aluma described, suggest it would not be a wholly unreasonable idea to set up a loan scheme which allowed people to borrow in such emergencies.
The women also joined the chorus of protest, one pointing out that the failure to observe custom now would endanger all women who might be pregnant in the future. Ultimately, despite his arguments, Aluma was defeated and the rituals were performed. Digging the grave produced a similar financial and social crisis. Money was needed for various relatives and Aluma, as husband of the deceased, was expected to undergo ceremonies and to spend time in seclusion. Aluma refused and 'people were thrown into a tumult. They came to me begging me not to refuse if all I hoped to be free from similar misfortunes. Convinced that I would never be safe without having to undergo all that tradition demanded, each of my relatives came to me pleading earnestly that I relent.' Among them was his maternal uncle, thought to have mystical power over nephews. The idea of refusing to follow his authority was unthinkable. As one relative put it, 'If he ignores an uncle I will know for certain that the many books he has read have made him lose his head.' One Christian pointed out that if Aluma thought he was committing a sin by following the rituals, he could always confess later. But another relative suggested that Aluma might be among those who pretend to be holy, but 'might be the very one to go to hell in the end.'
These included a fee for 'asking permission to bury the baby' and also it was necessary for Aluma to give some money towards the cost of his marriage. 'Under normal circumstances, i.e. had we not been destitute refugees, my in-laws would demand that I pay all the bride-price on my wife first before she could be buried.' As it was they settled for £S35 so long as Aluma agreed that he was now in debt and that he would pay his debt, once 'his economic situation improved'. He recalled that at an earlier funeral in Kala, when the husband could not pay these costs, the husband had gone for the police to force the in-laws to allow the burial to proceed. Aluma was saved by the generous contribution which the mourners made on this day. 'Some of the cost was met by "Vurra Funeral Association" which we had formed on realizing the need for such an association in our refugee settlement. I had to borrow money to add to what the mourners and the Association contributed. By around 5 p.m. Sudan local time the needed amount was paid and my wife and her son went into their graves.' Aluma's bed, which was made of bamboo, was used as the stretcher to carry the body to the grave. Normally this stretcher would have been thrown away, but Aluma could not afford to lose his bed and he further offended the community by retrieving it. Despite the ritual danger in which he is thought to place himself in by doing so, he says he still 'sleep[s] on it and breath[es].' About a month later his wife's father came to visit Kala from a settlement on the east bank of the Nile, Kit 4. When he was ready to return, he asked Aluma for money for transport. Aluma was advised it was against custom 'to escort a mourner on his return journey or give...him any transport or transport money.'
Aluma broke with yet another tradition and gave him £S7. It would be encouraging if all refugees were as amenable to change as Aluma appears to be.
Crisis and loss The significance of social custom in situations of stress should now be clear. But there are other factors which are important in determining a refugee's reaction to his situation. 'Crisis theory' explains the response of individuals to stress by focusing on the crisis situation which causes distress. A psychological crisis occurs when a person faces an obstacle to important goals, and one which cannot, for a time, be overcome by his customary methods of problem-solving. Stress, notes Baker (1984), should be differentiated from crisis, although both occur when normal coping methods do not lead to mastery of a particular problem. One may link crisis theory to refugee experience in the following way. Stress is an inevitable consequence of being uprooted. If the refugees' coping skills are good and if an environment (services, resources, etc.) is provided that ensures basic survival needs are met, [if] there is a real hope for a better future, the stress remains manageable. The person can plan with some optimism to build a new life and cope with culture shock, alienation, losses of varying kinds, loneliness, etc. If neither of these conditions exist, then the stress level can rise rapidly and the person shifts into a stats of unrelieved crisis. (ibid.) The symptoms associated with unrelieved crisis or stress include explosive, violent behaviour, profound depression, loss of personal identity, depersonalization, psychosomatic symptoms, and sometimes psychotic withdrawal. All these types of behaviour were observed among Ugandan refugees. People are said to experience crisis in three characteristic ways: as a threat, as a loss, or as a challenge. Each of these characteristic responses have different associated emotional components: threat leads to a heightened state of anxiety; loss is accompanied by feelings of sadness, depression, grief, and worthlessness; and challenge results in feelings of hope and the expectation that new situations have the potential for improving the person's life.
Baker draws three important conclusions which may help to suggest ways an assistance programme could give appropriate support to refugees.
What emerges is the importance of experiences in the early period of exile; interventions, if they are to have a positive effect, should occur in the first few weeks. In these terms alone, assistance programmes in Africa always arrive too late. Moreover, since most African refugees resist aid for as long as possible, the populations of settlements probably include many who have already passed the optimum period for recovery.[8]
Settlements versus independence From his experience, James Appe (1984), a Ugandan refugee, made many similar observations.
But, he admonishes, a programme should be:
His analysis of the relationship between aid and the refugees is full of insight and concludes:
As was discussed in the Introduction, for many Ugandans it was being forced to accept assistance by going to a settlement which marked the beginning of their status, refugee. And, as we have seen, most of them came to the settlement because of illness or hunger; the move involves acquiring a stigma: one can no longer look after oneself. Some people refer to it as 'giving up'. (de Waal op. cit.) But who is taking over? Almost everyone now appreciates that in principle food aid is a 'bad' thing. You should only give it when people are dying for want of food then you should stop, or, if you continue, make them work for it. There is the implicit assumption that one can only know when to stop if the people one is helping are under one's control or one is deciding on how they earn the food. Giving assistance on demand does not allow such control of distribution; SCC and the Catholics' manner of helping refugees was much more economical. While no empirical evidence was collected to support the hypothesis that unassisted refugees demonstrated fewer symptoms of psychological ill-health than did those in settlements, there was no doubt that they were at least spared the adverse effects of the near total loss of autonomy suffered by assisted refugees. My visits to the compounds of the self-settled often gave me the impression that some of these people even enjoyed a sense of well-being. Many expressed pride that despite everything they had managed to survive. I rarely came away with such an impression from a visit to settlements. My team of interviewers included unassisted refugees. The relative merits of life outside and inside the settlements were constantly and heatedly debated. The evidence, especially from the comparative study of schools, was disturbing to those who argued for settlements. In settlements there was no system of regular inspection such as teachers had been accustomed to in Uganda. Conduct and discipline had broken down to an alarming degree. The team member responsible for this study found:
At the same time, the 'self-help and integrated schools were found to be maintaining a superior standard of teaching and there is better discipline among both staff and pupils.' Although the teachers outside settlements received little or no pay, they were 'more conscious of their responsibility to society ... although most of them are not trained, they are more dedicated.' (ibid.)[9] The failures of teachers, medical or agricultural workers to maintain professional standards would appear to be less than excusable, since under the circumstances their skills were vitally needed by the community and most were able to continue their careers, even if under very difficult conditions. But the Ugandan community contained a wide range of professional skills which were, for the most part, unemployable in southern Sudan. One might be able to calculate the economic loss to Africa of the years of investment in the education of the many professionals who are now expected to farm for their livelihood, but one cannot calculate the psychological costs of the loss of status to the individuals concerned. As de Waal observed:
He describes this process as being 'almost like a ritual humiliation.'
It is certainly possible that not only the loss of professional status, but the loss of power and autonomy in the settlement programme may 'slow down or even reverse the process of gradual psychological recovery from the massive trauma of war'. (ibid). The failure to consult refugees concerning the kinds of assistance which they see as most beneficial accounts for many of the problems one observed.
Making the victims the villains Assistance programmes for African refugees aim to cater for the needs of the majority. The queues of people whose particular need has not been caught in that net are the bane of any agency office. Field staff are overworked and they are not trained to cope with most of the individual problems which present themselves. Budgets for feeding and housing individual cases, or ICs, are limited (or, as in Yei in 1982, non-existent). Sometimes, even if staff wish to help, they realize that to do so will require them to pay money out of their own pocket. Since there was no objective means for distinguishing genuine cases from charlatans, there was an unfortunate tendency for many field officers to approach all refugees as though they were in this latter category. The frustration of the field workers, which arises from a general sense of inadequacy, may account for the hostility which one so frequently observed in their relations with refugees. Even to be seen by a field officer, refugees must wait for extremely long periods. In Yei I observed one young man who had to wait literally seven days outside the office for an appointment. To hear his problem took exactly ten minutes. Some refugees decide to get attention by dramatizing their frustrations. In one notorious case, a refugee threatened to hang himself if not immediately allowed to talk about his problem with someone. The overworked official on duty, preoccupied with his accounts, advised him to 'proceed'. He did, and it was only at the very last moment, as he was about to step off his makeshift gallows before a spellbound audience of other waiting refugees, that the weary expatriate surrendered to this psychological pressure. Sometimes, almost ruefully, field workers joke about their way of dealing with individual cases. One tells the story of the time he shouted at a minister to get out of his office. He always left his office door open for ventilation. Whenever he felt the shadow of a refugee trying to get his attention about a problem, without raising his head from his papers, he would shout, 'GET OUT'. One day the shadow was the minister. The assistance programme itself encourages refugees to develop manipulative techniques to draw attention to their legitimate problems. But the individual cases which turn up at agency offices often represent the needs and problems of a large number of people,not to mention their personal trauma which require specialized treatment. For example, Moses Dafala, 34 years old, a victim of torture, was the head of a family of 14 living in Gumbari settlement. In the 1970s he had joined the air force. In 1979 he found himself at the front line. Disgusted by the undisciplined behaviour of the officers who, by this time, were mainly Sudanese (he saw them looting property and deserting the battlefield), he buried his own uniform and weapons, donned civilian clothes and was one of the first to present himself for surrender in Kampala. Sent to Tanzania as a prisoner-of-war, he was released during Binaisa's brief period in office. Re-arrested, he was sent to Luzira prison. He arrived in the Sudan as a refugee in late 1982 and began reporting for medical attention. On 23 November 1982, he was referred to Juba by the medical inspector at Yei hospital. The referral note describes his symptoms as '…suffering from chronic headache for 3 years, and he cannot hear well.' On 22 December 1982 Mr Dafala was seen at the Juba hospital where it was recommended he be referred to Khartoum for further tests. This advice was not followed, and he was ordered to return immediately to his settlement. He appealed to the UNHCR office in Juba.
Nevertheless he was sent back to Gumbari. He was seen in August 1983 by the Ugandan doctor who by then had joined the health service in Yei and who wrote:
Despite the lack of medical confirmation, the UNHCR Yei office simply referred him to Juba as a 'psychiatric case'. This time in Juba he found an even less enthusiastic welcome. After an interview at the GMT office, he reported the results to the UNHCR counsellor (a Sudanese) in a letter.
For the counsellor to override the decision of GMT required the authority of a more senior official in the sub-office. That his colleague in Yei had described Dafala's problem as 'psychiatric' (which for many expatriates equals 'nuisance'), may have influenced his reaction. Refusing to refer Dafala to Khartoum, he ordered him to return to Gumbari settlement. Dafala argued that he could not continue to face his economic responsibilities in a settlement where food rations were soon to be cut. His constant illness would not allow him to cultivate. He asked for a loan to start a tea shop, pointing out that he preferred to support his own family rather than depend on hand-outs. Reluctantly the UNHCR official agreed, provided Dafala would undertake in writing, never to return to the office again. With the signed document in his hand, he radioed Yei authorizing the programme officer to make the loan. Mr Dafala did start a tea shop, just outside the Yei UNHCR office; this being one of the busiest places in town, he began to make a profit. But his business caught the attention of the Sudanese authorities who threatened to close it down because he had no licence. The project manager, who believed that refugees should have at least two years without taxation, intervened on his behalf. Then the business was interrupted by the death of an unassisted relative. Dafala had to organize the funeral and travel to the border to collect yet more dependents. He returned to Yei to find that another refugee, who already had a job in the UNHCR office, had started another tea shop on his pitch. Given the attitude of the expatriate staff towards his case, it is not surprising that he concluded that there was a conspiracy between the other Ugandan and the programme officer to displace him. In 1984 Dafala was back in Gumbari. He had married, but this was no doubt a mixed blessing as the woman's family had turned up to demand an extortionate dowry. They threatened to take her away with them if he did not pay. Some people were said to have urged the family to consider his health and the general poverty associated with life in exile and it is not known whether or not they relented. It is unproductive to blame fieldworkers for their inhumane way of dealing with such individual cases. They are not trained. Within the agency bureaucracy they are not rewarded for involving themselves with individuals. In fact, fieldworkers are often warned against 'getting involved'. But it is alarming to observe that assistance programmes are dominated by an ethos in which the victims of mass exodus are treated as the villains.
Not a statue or a picture One of the highest priorities of the Ugandan refugees was education. This was demonstrated by the efforts they put into building schools in the self-settled areas, but building secondary schools without assistance was beyond their capacity.[10] The assistance programme for the settlements only aimed to provide primary education although the 'right' to an education is enshrined in the 1951 Convention. (Ramaga 1985.) According to our survey, 21.9 per cent of the settlement population was between the ages of 15 and 24, and 57.6 per cent of the men in this group, or 6,420, had been enrolled in school in Uganda before the war began in 1979. At that time in the West Nile alone there were at least 8,000 young people enrolled in post-primary educational institutions. Many of the refugees in Sudan had been studying elsewhere in Uganda, some at Makerere University as well as at other institutions of higher learning throughout the country. Almost the first question these young people asked on reaching a settlement was, 'Where is the school?' UNHCR was prepared to pay the fees of those who found places in Sudanese schools, but the south does not have enough places for its own young people. In addition, the failure to provide identity cards meant that even if funds to travel were available, it was difficult for refugees to 'find' those schools which might offer them a place. Some young Ugandans who had completed their 'O' or 'A' levels took up teaching. Unfortunately too many of these 'stranded students' formed the groups of listless, apathetic, angry, and sometimes even violent young people who were always so visible in settlements, and who hung about the UNHCR offices in Yei and Juba, and even in Khartoum. Every settlement had at least one psychotic and most of these were young men whose education had been abruptly terminated and who had been unable to cope with having had all their aspirations for the future so completely dashed. One such young psychiatric casualty was Jaago. Among his other literary accomplishments was a meticulously kept record of the names and places where people had died in Uganda and Sudan as a result of atrocities committed by the Ugandan army. He had already appealed for help to the UNHCR office and at some point it had at least been inferred to him that he was 'mad'. At that, he had insisted on being diagnosed and had caused sufficient trouble in the UNHCR office to be sent to the Yei hospital for examination. The doctor, in writing, declared him sane. With this evidence he went straight to the police, hoping to open a case against the programme officer and his Ugandan assistant. As he pointed out in his subsequent note to the project manager:
When I first met him, Jaago had just delivered a note to Nehemiah Iyega, the Yei project manager. He had given as a return address, 'Nowhere student, But Humanitarian in Nature, P.O. Box 100% Under God's Protection.'
Jaago then lists about 30 people whom he wishes the project manager to bring to Yei to affirm his sanity. He continues:
Jaago lists his demands and, not surprisingly, the first on the list of the Punishments' due to the UNHCR office is:
He continues by listing a new bicycle, a radio, food, 'five hundred pounds for my financial loss since 18th March 1983', and clothing. The list of clothing includes trousers, shirts, boots, slippers, spectacles, and two neckties. The reason he gives for his needing such finery is that:
When Jaago entered my office, he was able to converse normally. I gave him pen and paper and asked him to write his recent experiences. He wrote a sensible account of the events which brought him to the Sudan from his 'A' level course in Uganda. Many refugees appeared to get psychological relief from writing, but there was always a shortage of pens and papers. Once it was known, however, that I was a willing reader and would supply stationery, I received many useful documents including personal histories and analyses of the recent conflict in Uganda. These added greatly to my knowledge of events. The need for psychiatric treatment is not always so dramatically evidenced, but the lack of opportunity for continuing education appeared to be a very common trigger for individual breakdown. I briefly employed one refugee who had been interrupted in his training as an air traffic controller. On 11 September, after a few days of work, he wrote the following note, asking to resign.
No doubt it would be unrealistic to expect an assistance programme to finance the thousands of African refugees whose education has been interrupted by war. But the monies that are available for refugee education are 'discriminatory', that is, directed by the political interests of the donors. For example, there are funds for some refugees from South Africa and Namibia (Gerhardt 1984); Scandinavian countries and other sources fund scholarships for Eritrean refugees, but there were no special programmes to ensure the most able Ugandan refugees were able to continue their studies.
It would have been instructive for those who still believe that the psychosocial needs of African refugees can be ignored to have been present during one dramatic event at the Yei office during July 1982. I was alone in the office when it began. Josiah Matovu, the foreman from Roronyo, arrived by lorry with an entourage. I saw him helping an old woman out, her clothes soaked with blood, and with fresh blood seeping down her face from a deep skull wound. Josiah was exhausted. The night before, the old woman had been accused of being a poisoner and, to save her from certain death, he had locked her in the store. Her attackers (about 400) congregated in the office compound. Some even pelted rocks at him as he faced them, his back firmly against the door to discourage their breaking it down. He had stayed in that position all night. For Roronyo this was not the first such case of assault on innocent women. After treatment, this old woman slowly recovered in a tent pitched, for her safety, outside our bedroom door. Josiah had barely finished relating these events when another lorry ground its way through the muddy entrance. The programme officer leaped out, chasing after the agency doctor who had, by chance, also just driven in. In this lorry lay a 23 year old Omuganda woman who, having given birth only nine days earlier, had tried to commit suicide by swallowing glass. She was taken to Yei hospital where she gradually recovered. According to Orley (1970), suicide among the Baganda is very rare, and is so shameful that bodies are not even buried with other relatives. In this young woman's case, it might have been predicted that she would make such an attempt. Born into a wealthy family, her husband's high position in Uganda had maintained the protected life she had been accustomed to. She was an unwilling refugee, but as her husband came from the West Nile, they found it necessary to seek asylum. They went first to Zaire, but when their house was looted and burned by Zaireois soldiers, they fled to the Sudan and were sent to Goli. Accustomed to visiting Nairobi for any medical care, she insisted her baby be delivered in the hospital rather than in the settlement. Facilities in Yei hospital hardly met her expectations. Women in the maternity ward must usually share a bed and there is no linen. As her husband had to remain behind to care for their other child, she had no one to bring her food.The day she left the hospital, I observed her quietly waiting all day outside the office for the lorry to return her to Goli. It was not surprising to hear later that she was suffering from post-natal depression. One of the most serious and widespread symptoms of the psychosocial state of the Ugandan refugees was the frequency of assaults on, and even murders of, individuals who, in the atmosphere of sickness and sudden death, had been identified as 'poisoners'. Untold numbers of scapegoats, often whole families, were driven out of settlements. Others were murdered. In July 1982 the situation in Roronyo had become so serious that two policemen had to be sent to keep order. A note was sent round from the Yei UNHCR office to all the settlements informing Ugandans that the Sudan law did not tolerate such accusations. Those found guilty would be taken to the High Court for trial. Those who assaulted the accused would be charged with intent to kill.[14] Several very unpleasant cases have come to our attention from Roronyo and Mopoko. Let everyone take notice that the settlement foremen, having warned the entire community, are henceforth authorised to take into immediate custody anyone who accuses anyone of poisoning or witchcraft and that person will be taken directly to . .. Juba for trial. Anyone who does physical violence to anyone accused will be tried under the criminal code of the Sudan. It is understandable that when people are very weak from hunger and ill, some inevitably die. This is not, however, an occasion for hysteria. We strongly advise educated refugees to behave responsibly. A continuation of events such as those which have raged in Mopoko and Roronyo will not be tolerated. (7 July 1982.) But, on 21 September 1982, the foreman of Otogo (a settlement opened in late July) addressed the following message to the agency responsible for health, copy to UNHCR. Ref: Investigation into Causes of Sudden Death This is to bring to the attention of your office that we have been experiencing certain cases of sudden death for the last one and a half weeks... In our last month's report ... we had a death toll of over thirty people of whom most were women and children. Now since [the settlement opened] the death toll has reached over 55 people. In our report we stated that most of these deaths were caused by prolonged malnutrition and certain diseases originating from the borders. And indeed it is true that most of these people brought to the settlement in bad condition had hardly any chance of survival... The whole cause of writing to your office is something extraordinary. [In the first] half of this year, we have ... seen several deaths of suddenness. One of these deaths was witnessed by Dr Catherine when she came with the vaccination team. A boy of about ten or twelve years complained of pains in his joints and backbone, which was followed by a headache. The boy ... was treated for malaria. This boy came and collapsed nearby the office. He was helped by the Askari [guard] to the shade... The most confusing issue came in. The mother of the child rushed to the scene and stated her child might have been poisoned. She ... carried the child away into the blocks for local traditional treatment. . . The results of which was the death of the child after a few hours of that same day... Later in the following week, a young woman died in a sudden manner. Again a man took two of his children, a boy and a girl, to the dispensary suffering from pains... The boy was treated with some PPF injection and he is still alive but in bad condition ... the girl of this same man wasn't treated in the same manner due to the shortage of the PPF drug. Later that day, the girl died. We have about four of these cases. Now we are in a confused state of mind. For we Africans - sorry to state so - have still a very strong belief in traditional poisons... The foreman goes on to relate how he had tried to control the situation but, as he put it, 'The settlers still insisted on the presence of poisoners.' He explained that among his community were people of certain tribes who are known in Uganda for being poisoners (old stereotypes) and that some of these had already been driven from other settlements on this charge. But, as he explained, he was personally unconvinced of the competence of the dispensary personnel.
He again reminds the agency that he has already watched 58 people being buried in his settlement and that many others are lying ill with similar symptoms. He asks them to send someone to investigate and to ensure that the clinic is properly supplied with medicines. In 1983, with the problem still raging in Otogo, the foreman asked the local chief to take an accused man into custody for his own protection. The Ugandan was mentally retarded and completely incapable of answering any charges. Two days later, children found his body; he had been murdered and left lying in a field. In some societies, death and illness, except when they strike the elderly, are not regarded as normal events, but are xplained as resulting from interpersonal malevolence. Methods to discover the guilty and their punishment and the cures which have been devised for the afflicted vary from society to society. There is a considerable body of evidence which supports the view that the frequency of accusations of sorcery or witchcraft increases when a society is undergoing an accelerated rate of change, or when its people are suffering extreme economic deprivation. (Harrell-Bond 1978.) There is also evidence that people rely more heavily on supernatural explanations when they believe their community to be under the threat of physical or cultural extinction. (Harrell- Bond and Machin 1971.) In fact, one scholar, Cheikh Ante Diop of Senegal, suggests that the experience of imperialism in Africa had the effect of crystallising and institutionalising practices like witchcraft, sorcery, and cannibalism as a defence against the annihilation of the indigenous social systems.[15] Some social effects of settlement composition There were many factors which contributed to the extreme insecurity of refugees in settlements and which were so frequently expressed in the cry 'poisoner'. Some of the factors which led to accusations of poisoning were the direct result of the assistance programme. It is for this reason that we can say that at least some of these problems were actually imposed by the programme of assistance. Ugandan refugees saw the Obote government's continued attacks against the civilians of the West Nile as the implementation of his alleged genocidal threat to turn the area into a game park. The continued economic insecurity of life in the Sudan enhanced the Ugandans' fear of physical extinction. The high death rate resulting from the failure of the assistance programme to supply rations regularly to the settlements, together with the absence of an adequate medical service, ensured that these fears were perpetuated. The composition of the settlement communities forced people to live in social conditions radically different from those to which they were accustomed. Unassisted refugees could choose their neighbours, at least to some extent, as well as the distances between compounds. In settlements, however, each household was assigned a plot 25 metres (later 50 metres) square and told where to build their house, where to dig the latrine. As noted earlier, few had the opportunity to choose their neighbours: plots were assigned in the order people arrived at the settlement.[16] Most of the settlement populations were dominated either by the Madi or the Lugbara, but some, as Figure III. I in Appendix III shows, were equally divided between the two groups. The 'others' included fourteen different ethnic groups originating from all over Uganda. Some of these were members of groups now believed to be loyal to Obote's government. As one of my team pointed out, living in a settlement was like living in Kampala in the sense of being forced to adjust to people of different backgrounds. It is possible that this forced 'urbanisation of the West Nilers might, in the long run, have a positive effect. As one professional pointed out, 'It is the first time we have had the opportunity to get to know about each other, to learn how different groups behave and think.' In the short term, however, it has led to considerable conflict and exacerbated refugees' paranoia. Religious affiliation has long been a basis for political divisions within Ugandan society. Obote is a Protestant. Although the majority of Ugandans are probably Catholic, in certain regions Islam is the dominant religion and is associated with the Nubi community and those Lugbara-speakers who live in Aringa County. As noted earlier, during the Amin regime, there were advantages in converting to Islam. Father Peter, the resident Catholic priest in Yei who had been a refugee in Uganda, told me with some amusement the dates and places of the Catholic baptisms of certain prominent Ugandans who are now Muslims. Mustapha Idrissi, the ex-vice president, was one of these. On the other hand, it should be recalled that many Muslim families who allowed their children to go to school found that conversion to Catholicism was part of the syllabus.[17] The assistance programme did not provide support for religious organisations. However, the willingness of refugees to build churches and mosques demonstrated the priority of re- establishing those familiar institutions. Although most Sudanese were Protestant, it was the local Catholic church which was most involved in supporting the efforts of the refugees to re-establish their religious life. Only 2 per cent of the assisted refugees said they worshipped with the locals in their own churches, and most of these were Catholic. I often suggested that, instead of building another chapel in the settlement, it would be wiser to plan a permanent building that could also be used by the locals, who usually worshipped under grass roofs. With only a small amount of encouragement and support, religious leaders could play an enormously important role in bringing stability to refugee communities. I recorded sermons in chapels in the unassisted areas: many preachers spoke about the breakdown of social values and the need to live peacefully together. Some lay preachers ran active training programmes for the young. In many settlements, the Muslims had started a madrassa (a Koranic school). Had some of these religious leaders been consulted on priorities for the assistance programme and had they been encouraged to exercise their accepted authority within the community, many social problems might have been alleviated. It was not unusual for the Sudan to receive defectors from the Ugandan National Liberation Army. Sending these men to settlements inevitably created problems, as the other refugees were convinced they were spies sent to watch them. When three Alur soliders defected with the intention of moving through Kenya to join Museveni's guerrilla fighters, they first had to be protected from the other refugees, and when they left, it was taken as evidence that they had returned to the UNLA and the worst fears of the refugees were realized. There were refugees who had been members of the UPC, the present ruling party; their present loyalties, motives for being in the Sudan, and intentions for the future were always doubted by the others.[18] That as many as three different groups were sometimes waging guerrilla warfare in Uganda further contributed to the social unrest in settlements. While most refugees were totally disillusioned with all of them, the differing loyalties of those who still believed that the armed forces would resolve the trouble in Uganda contributed to factionalism. Some guerrilla fighters were as undisciplined as the present UNLA and civilians had suffered greatly at their hands; a few of these men were living in the settlements, having opted out of the struggle. It is not surprising that social relations in settlements were marked by extreme distrust, suspicion, and fear, and that violence on a massive scale could so easily be triggered off. Tensions were running particularly high in Koya transit camp in July 1983. Most of its residents were unwilling recipients of aid, having been either driven from the self-settled areas struck by the drought, or forced out of Zaire, where they had been taking care of themselves. Long delays in finding sites for more settlements left thousands of people with little more to do than wait. Troublemakers had a field day in Koya, as one of my team- Johnson Oreyama discovered when he decided to inspect the situation.
Ever since the Tanzanian tanks first rumbled across the border ... Uganda has been an isolated land of mystery and misery... thousand[s] of Ugandans... are in exile, most of them in the Sudan. But little is known of the conditions they left behind. While in Kampala the conditions are uncertain, in Koya, a refugee transit camp [of] about 9,000 people ... launched a bitter protest against what was called 'poisoners'. An acrid haze drifted through the pathways of Koya Block 17 last week as demonstrators burned makeshift barricades and fought pitched battles with the relatives of the so-called poisoners. I spent 24 hours in the strife-ridden camp. My report: Along the bustling commercial pathway of Block 17, middle-class women darkened their tents and stood on their balconies to stage a one-hour 'cacerolozo [sic]'- a rhythmic thumping of pots and pans. In Block 16, the Teregos, a Lugbara group from Arura, blew their horns and demonstrators hurled wild fruits into a gigantic block jam [of people] that extended for some three blocks. The poisoners, outnumbered, retaliated with bows and arrows. Similar scenes occurred throughout Koya about three months ago, when a peaceful day suddenly turned ugly. Tens of thousands of refugees took to the camp office to express their unhappiness with the regime of the former foreman The camp foreman cracked down amid scenes of violence that were to be the worst in almost 12 months. When it was over, one poisoner was dead. The protest was not the first of its kind. In May, Koyans engaged in a similar demonstration that left two people badly beaten. But last week's outbreak was far bigger and confirmed a growing, broad-based impatience with poisoners. The demonstrators demanded an end to deaths by poisoning. Spearheaded by Abdul, a member of Block 17, who claims that a certain woman in the next block poisoned his child, the protest movement has attracted support from a broad range of Koyan opinions: Block leaders, secretaries, and mukungu [block chiefs]. Its leading figure is Augustino Amolu, a 29 year old ex-cashier with the Ugandan Army. Said he, 'We are pacifists in attitude and active in behaviour. If they poison us, we shall endure for a while, BUT!!!...' A police team sent from Yei... denounced the demonstration as a selfish plot and vowed not to tolerate further claims and accusations. As a first push and clean up, Abdul, the father of the dead child, was arrested and jailed for jeopardising camp security. Settlers threatened to stage another strike to protest Abdul's arrest. The whole story is that within the camps there are certain groups of people who are believed to be wizards poisoning fellow settlers. This is a fact hard to deny or accept. A woman accused of killing the child, confessed at the time of beating that she had in the past killed two people using traditional poison made out of roasted snakes and frogs. In my next investigation I will try to find out how they go about this. While settlers have vowed to continue beating such people, the woman is now living on the UNHCR compound in Yei, southern Sudan, because of fear [and] shows no signs of giving up her malpractices. So the contest of wills in Kova is far from over. (Johnson, reporting from Koya this morning, 8.30 a.m. 8/7/83.)
Appeals to Sudan law, even posting police in settlements, had little effect on the frequency of accusations of poisoning. At every settlement meeting the subject was brought up. Ugandans strongly resented the government's attempt to move the legal definition of the crime from accused to accuser. There were few who did not share the belief that people were actually being poisoned. My anthropological explanations only amused them. How could I know anything about this? 'You are not an African.' They knew these people from back in Uganda. A report, dated 10 August 1982, arrived on the UNHCR desk from Limuru: Subject: Ruzeta Yeivo The above mentioned woman is a refugee... She has been brought in front of me for the case of poisoning a certain pupil... She was caught pulling both the fingers and toes of the corpse (traditionally strictly prohibited)... (i) She sat on the front part of the corpse which is traditionally a place for the relatives - that was also a sign. (ii) She covered the mouth of the corpse with her palm. This was also a sign. There have been different stories about the acts of this woman right from Uganda and all these statements were agreed by her [as] true.. I also believe that she might have done this thing.. . However, with the help of the Block Leader we have tried to prevent the community from beating her. The foreman referred to the bulletin sent to the settlements instructing them how to deal with such accusations. Since he was convinced of her guilt, he had asked the woman to sign a confession. Most important, as he emphasised in his letter, the refugees would no longer allow her to live in the settlement. Shortly after this message was delivered, the foreman, his officers, the accused (now accompanied by her 9 year old grand-daughter), and one of her accusers, arrived in Yei. I interviewed the woman to discover her side of the story. It was decided that an Eritrean, and temporarily a consultant for UNHCR, Berhane Woldemichael, and myself, should accompany them back to Limuru. We asked the foreman to precede us to call a meeting of the entire settlement. Not having experienced mass hysteria before, we drove cheerfully to Limuru. It took two hours and threats that the next month's food would be withheld, to get most of the 3,000 plus people to congregate. We sat in the middle, facing the adults, the children were sitting on the ground behind us. I had given the woman a dress, and sitting together with her granddaughter in the row with the settlement officers, she looked clean and respectable. The woman who had accused her and one young man who had assaulted her sat in front of us on the ground. The consultant and I both knew how cases are 'talked' in Africa. We took turns. Berhane began by citing the laws of Sudan and informing the settlers what was about to happen to the two before us. When it was my turn, I dramatised the sad story which had led to the violence. A child had died of malaria at the clinic. The mother tied the body on her back and returned to her block. Everyone was wailing. Ruzeta Yeivo, the accused, a friend of the bereaved mother, helped her untie the dead child and began to prepare it for burial. Rigor mortis had set in; the legs had to be pushed together, the hands placed under the head as a pillow. As she was about to begin to wrap the body for the grave, this wicked woman [the accuser] sitting before us, came on to the scene and began screaming 'poisoner, poisoner'. Suddenly, the crowd forgot they were mourning and began to beat this poor old woman. The people listened in hushed silence to my story being slowly translated sentence by sentence. My performance finished, believing that I had won their hearts, I asked 'Now, is there anyone in Limuru who would still call this woman a poisoner?' To our astonishment, the whole crowd went wild, fists in the air, screaming 'poisoner, poisoner, poisoner'. Before I thought of the obvious danger in which we had placed ourselves - to say nothing of the poor woman and her granddaughter - I was making a quick calculation of just how many lorries we would need to make good the threat of taking all 3,000 accusers to court! It was Berhane's turn. We still disagree on the exact words he used and my tape recorder had temporarily failed, but we both remember how he berated them. Such ignorance, such stupidity was beyond imagination. 'No wonder Africans have never made it to the moon!' They quietened down. He asked if now, having had time to think, was there any wise person among them who has something to say?' But, one by one, men and women stood up, only to point their fingers at Mrs Yeivo and asking such pointed questions as 'Where is your husband?' - intended to let us know that even her husband refused to live with her because she was a poisoner. The headmaster of the primary school joined these 'unwise' speakers and we learned how the granddaughter had been implicated. A few days after the first incident, two youngsters had had an argument and slapped each other. The headmaster identified one as the 'poisoner's granddaughter'. Another riot had broken out and the little child needed to be rescued. Mrs Yeivo had a grown-up daughter living in another block in the settlement. People had been throwing stones at their house and the husband was threatening to divorce his wife because of this family association with an alleged poisoner. Things had clearly gone too far for Berhane: hearing the headmaster confess to having flogged the small girl, he sacked him on the spot.[19] As he pointed out to the mob, 'No one who believes in poisoners should be allowed to teach children.' The mood changed: if someone's means of livelihood could be taken away just like that, we were obviously serious. A deep bass voice spoke from the back of the crowd, it trembled as the man spoke. We came here because of fear. We ran from Uganda because of fear. We came here so we would not have to be afraid. But now there are people who want us to remain in fear. Now it arises that there are certain elements, there are a number of people in the camp who are trying to make other people feel unsafe. Example number one. There are some people who undress themselves naked at night and then go and dance at your door and throw certain objects which cause fright. For instance, certain grains are thrown over the roof. You try to come out: they run so fast. If I organized a hunt within my block and if we arrested such a person naked and we brought him in - on what shall we accuse him?... In a few cases ... those people were hunted, but because they come at the wrong time of night, it is difficult. What would we do in case we arrest such a person? Berhane encouraged the man: 'Yes, such a person should be arrested. But why can't you catch them?' He then reminded him of dreams and explained hallucinations and their possible causes. Miraculously, the message got through; the man understood. Then another 'wise' man called for a compromise. We sent the crowd away - or at least we tried to. They had been so reluctant to congregate, but now we could hardly get them to leave. Hundreds of them walked slowly past the woman, shouting abuse at her and waving their arms threateningly. Alone with the block leaders, the discussion continued. Although the teachers among them were frightened, they insisted on arguing that poisoning exists.[20] Suddenly, however, the accuser confessed to having been wrong all along. The boy who had beaten the old woman apologized. He admitted he had been too upset to think properly - it was his relative who had died. I asked them to beg the woman's forgiveness.[21] I handed over the money to buy a goat, and instructed the accuser to cook a meal for the accused and other members of both families. 'Since you are so good at gossiping in this settlement, now let the block leaders gossip to all that these two families eat together.'[22] With more than a few qualms concerning the safety of the woman and the child, we returned to Yei. I continued to check to see what was happening in Limuru. More than a year later the woman was still living peacefully in the settlement. She said a few people refused to greet her, but otherwise life was as it had been before. I know of only one other case where a victim accused of poisoning, having survived the initial attack, is still living in the same settlement. This was a woman who lived in the office compound with her small son, under the constant protection of the settlement officer. She had no family anywhere, was afraid to stay in her own house in the block, was unable to cultivate, and was ostracised by all. While Berhane's and my intervention at Limuru might be judged successful, this solution could obviously not be generally recommended. It is doubtful whether either of us would knowingly have undertaken such a risk again. In the long term, it is only an assistance programme which is flexible which allows people to retain their sense of autonomy, and which provides basic food and medical security which can alleviate some of the conditions of insecurity which give rise to these events.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the frequency of accusations of poisoning has abated. Why? I discovered that beliefs in poisoning were being actively encouraged by some herbalists who made their living out of diagnosing and treating the ill. While there is a growing appreciation in medical circles of the value of traditional folk medicine, little attention has been paid to the social roles of herbalists in modern Africa. Ugandan communities, like people everywhere in the world, have developed their own explanations and treatments for illness. There are only a few modern African states which have, as a policy, sought to incorporate these folk systems into their modern medical services. Uganda was not among these few. In those African countries which have officially rejected traditional medicine, herbalists are often unable to practise openly without fear of arrest. There is no doubt that many do provide psychological comfort and that some of the medicines they prescribe contain therapeutic chemicals. The problem is that, in addition to prescribing herbs, these practitioners also involve themselves in divining (which, at times, may also have psychological value), administering oaths, and often indulging in black magic as well. As Professor German put it: Witchdoctors and bewitchments, the occult and the sadistic, are not the peculiar heritage of the African. They are rather the unsurprising accompaniment of poor social conditions, of fear, of ignorance and despair, and as such they are found, even today, in every civilization on earth. The witchdoctor is certainly an integral part of African cultures: he stands between man and spirits; he offers, and sometimes provides peace of mind to the distraught and anxious; he is regarded as an expert in matters cultural and spiritual and sometimes in health; sometimes he is sincere, often a quack. He may be unhygienic, unskilled and avaricious - so is the back street abortionist... If we could be less Europe-centred ... attention to such comparisons might well be a rewarded line of research ... more valuable perhaps than the heuristically sterile exercise so frequently indulged in of exclaiming at the witchdoctor ... as if such individuals comprise a separate, shabbily colourful dead end in human social evolution (in Orley 1970.) While hiding in the bush inside Uganda or living as self-settled inside the Sudan, most refugees were forced to survive without adequate medical services. By the end of 1983, the situation in settlements had only marginally improved. In desperation, people turned to anyone claiming to know how to cure diseases, and thus provided a ready market for the services of herbalists and encouraged the expansion of the profession. Among the unassisted refugees interviewed, 57 per cent said they relied upon local herbs when they were ill. Under these conditions, herbalists had gained enormous prominence. It is difficult to interview herbalists or 'witchdoctors' as Professor German terms them.[23] They guard their knowledge, usually passing it on to only one apprentice. Their dubious position vis-a-vis the law and modern medicine makes them particularly reticent about discussing their practices. As their treatments involve as much contact with the supernatural as it does the use of different herbs, they are loath to subject their beliefs to logical analysis. In 1982, settlement foremen were asked to collect lists of the names of herbalists and the diseases they believed they could treat. In one settlement alone there were 93 such practitioners! It is especially important to note that it is believed that if someone can cure you of poisoning, he will also know the secret of making poison. This is generally the case in Africa, but see Orley (1970) for evidence from Uganda. The availability of even the limited medical services in settlements poses a threat to their own income, and for probably all of these reasons herbalists among the Ugandans were reluctant to be interviewed.[24] The Oxford team found 14 practising herbalists in Limbe, 12 of whom were Lugbara (the minority group in Limbe). Five of the herbalists were interviewed, four of them had been trained and the range of diseases they treated included jaundice, gonorrhea, swelling, headaches, childbirth difficulties and mental disorders. One had discovered that a certain tree bark cured his leg swelling and now only used this in his practice. All of the herbalists said they prayed before working, but only one claimed to having spiritual 'power'. The team purchased 22 different herbs, most of which were allegedly cures for poisoning.
I began to explore this problem by learning about the 'cure' for those who had been 'poisoned'. In Uganda, I was told, herbalists applied used motor oil! The patient is 'washed' in the open air, a powdered root is mixed with the oil and the herbalist rubs the entire body until the herb produces a foam, 'evidence' that the poison is 'coming out'. We discovered we could predict that a settlement would suffer a spate of poisoning events when the WFP food allocation included solid, not liquid edible fat. The solid vegetable oil was used in place of old motor oil. Apparently herbalists could not pull off the same effect with liquid vegetable oil. Victims are warned that their treatment does not 'mix' with 'western' medicines, thus discouraging the exposure of the herbalists' malpractices, or further competition from the trained medical workers. Their patients thus often died of untreated malaria orpneumonia. Herbalists actively seek out patients. In Limbe, I found the midwife lying ill, having been treated for poisoning. I took her aside and asked how she, a trained person, could subject herself to such treatment which included small incisions in the neck, made with an unsterilised blade? She admitted that, as a Christian in Uganda, she had never consulted such people, but in the bush they had been forced to rely on herbs. Recently she fell ill and, thinking it was a malaria attack, she had taken medicine. She continued working but became worse Three herbalists from the nearby Koya transit camp came (uninvited) to offer their services. Her mother was frightened because each of them said her daughter had been poisoned. The midwife was finally persuaded to subject herself to their treatment. She admitted that any improvement was more likely due to the bed rest than to the treatment. People pay heavily for the herbalist's treatment, both financially and in the number of lives which are unnecessarily lost. I came across one such 'washing' in Otogo. The herbalist had heard that morning that a man was ill and had rushed to tell him he had been poisoned in his sleep; some malevolent person had entered the compound and thrown the poison at the house. The victim had a high fever and pulse rate, and was shivering in the cold wind. I stopped the entire performance and forced the family to take him to the clinic. I warned the herbalist that if he was ever caught washing another patient, he would be arrested, and then suggested he warn his colleagues that the same fate would befall them. The difficulty was that neither I nor anyone else had authority to back up such threats. Such charlatans diagnose any and every illness as 'poisoning'. People dying from pneumonia are stripped naked for the 'washing' whatever the weather. And, of course, usually those guilty of the malevolent act must be 'found' and punished, whether or not the victim dies of the poison. A colleague anthropologist, Dr Jeanne Brown, informed me that one agency had employed a 'chief' herbalist for their settlements. Her colleague had given this herbalist a test in African curative herbs and found he lacked even a basic knowledge of standard medicinal plants. When our survey was conducted in Wundurubu, this 'chief herbalist' declined to attend the medical meeting. But his 'colleagues' from the clinic informed me that not only was he being paid a salary, he also charged everyone he treated. Worse still, they had to compete with his new status, accorded by the expatriates, with many patients now preferring his services to theirs. The situation was compounded by their own lack of medical supplies and the fact that the most senior member of staff at the clinic was a Sudanese who had less training than the Ugandan staff. This made it easier for the herbalist to compare the 'western' treatment negatively with his own. They complained that residents in the settlement were unwilling to co-operate with the preventive programme, as the herbalist had other solutions for their complaints. Recent reports from the field indicate that the herbalist's practice is thriving under the blessing of the agency.[25] A report submitted to UNHCR was apparently accepted without a murmur. A native 'medicine man' has been formally [employed] in Wunduruba settlement. His major treatments are for hepatitis, dysentery, and poisonings. He is working under the direction of the medical assistant [untrue] in the area. .. I took the decision to place him in Wundurubu (soon in Dororolili also) because of the constant movement of settlers (suffering from assorted diseases) to find one elsewhere. The results appear satisfactory. More precise recordings are being taken to give a more accurate picture of this activity. (30 June 1983.)
Since the beginning of 1984, some herbalists have devised a new method of exploiting the poor and insecure Ugandan refugees. According to reports, it began in the Kaya area, this time among the unassisted refugees. The order for their removal to settlements, noted earlier, had, no doubt, made them more insecure. A herbalist divined that a particular member of one clan - now living in Zaire - had entered into a contract with another herbalist to make himself rich. To get rich, according to this method, one must write down a long list of the names of relatives and assign each one a number. Over an unspecified period of time, the herbalist arranges for each of these members of the family to die. Just before death, the victim will see his 'number' appearing somewhere on his body, usually the back. When all the relatives have died, the person who has paid heavily for these services will simply wake up rich. The Kaya herbalist supported his allegations with a convincing story describing one of the clan members; this information had been unwittingly divulged to him in the first consultation with one member of this family. He then rattled off a long list of the potential victims, citing names so common that he could be sure that some at least would be among the group. People became hysterical. The herbalist reassured them: if they paid enough, he could arrange a ritual which would protect them. The price, however, was high: some two hundred Sudanese pounds, cloth, meat, sugar, soap, etc. - all the things which every refugee lacks. Almost overnight the frightened family managed to get these things together and all met in the herbalist's compound for the protective ritual. People were relieved but they left the compound cursing the relative in Zaire, saying that he must certainly die for the crime he attempted to commit against them. Now all over Yei River District people began seeing numbers appearing on their bodies. In Wudabi settlement, the Ugandan doctor was asked to examine a woman who was ill; her husband reported having seen a number. As the hysteria has spread, the prices for protection have risen. The problem of witchcraft and sorcery in association with refugee populations may be more general in Africa. In a recent report, Richard Hall discusses the efforts of the Zambian government to halt a wave of ritual murders. The area affected is Kalabo where 'Life ... has been disturbed by refugees fleeing across the border from the civil war in Angola. The influence of refugees is blamed for the resurgence of traditional beliefs.' (Observer, 26 August 1984.)
Meeting the psychosocial needs of African refugees Very early on, when Ugandans began arriving in the Sudan, a psychiatrist from Juba hospital visited the UNHCR offices to point out that the refugees would be likely to present special problems. But his offer to survey the situation was declined. There is a need for general recognition that African refugees, like those elsewhere, are often psychologically disturbed by their experiences. No doubt special services should be provided, ideally from within the community itself. Psychiatric medicine should be available for those who need it. At present, the usual approach is to prescribe Valium indiscriminately. Policy-makers cannot afford to be ignorant of the traditions and customs of the refugee communities for whom they are planning programmes of assistance. If expatriate personnel continue to dominate implementation of assistance, then they must be adequately instructed. As we have seen, naivety concerning traditional African society has led at least one agency to raise the status of the herbalists who are cleverly exploiting and exacerbating the insecurity of refugee communities. This mistake could have been prevented by consultation with the Sudanese themselves. The settlement officer now in charge of Wudabi discovered the scandalous activities of herbalists in his own settlement. He told me he watched one man move from market to market with his bag of medicines, supplying herbs and potions to practitioners in settlements. He hoped to organise the arrest of this supplier. The World Food Programme might even have been asked to supply liquid oil in the rations since only the solid fat was used to 'cure' the poisoned. But none of these 'solutions' actually tackle the root problems which give rise to both individual psychoses and to the general insecurity of the whole population which results even in mass hysteria. The data have revealed problems which could quite clearly be alleviated by a different approach to assistance. The most fundamental change required is to permit the community as a whole to determine its own priorities. For Ugandans, one of the first priorities was to start up schools and places of worship. Supporting the development of these two institutions with which people are familiar and which bring the reassurance associated with order and discipline might have reduced the feeling of insecurity, and, perhaps, given rise to some hope for the future. The need for an adequate health service is obvious.
However, there is perhaps a more fundamental cause of the psychological disturbances and anti-social behaviour observed among the Ugandans to which neither anthropologists nor psychologists have given sufficient attention, namely the growing body of evidence linking certain behavioural patterns with sub- nutritional diets. The problems of food supply for the refugees in southern Sudan have already been discussed in some detail. It has also been shown that the standard of health for many refugees actually declined after entering the aid system. The lack of a balanced diet may, in fact, lie at the root of many of the psychosocial problems which we observed. Some evidence from another Ugandan community deserves to be considered in this context. In 1972, Colin Turnbull published a study of the Ik, a community of hunters and gatherers living in the mountains bordering Kenya, Uganda, and the Sudan. It should be emphasised that there are no historical ties between the Ik and the Ugandan refugees now in southern Sudan to explain the parallels in their behaviours. Turnbull is most famous for his studies of the Mbuti pygmies, the 'forest people', and if any criticism could be made of his earlier work, it would perhaps be that he over-romanticized this African society. His study of the 'mountain people' (Turnbull 1972) shocked the anthropological world. Communities which live by hunting and gathering require huge areas of land. The Ik had depended for their living, to some extent at least, on hunting and gathering. (Heine 1985). During the colonial period they had lost access to a great deal of their territory and those whom Turnbull studied were subsisting through agriculture. There was then a drought which gradually led to the famine conditions in the Karamoja. When Turnbull first arrived, he did not fully appreciate that an entire community was beginning literally to starve to death before his eyes. He warns his readers in the preface: In what follows there will be much to shock, and the reader will be tempted to say 'how primitive ... how savage ... how disgusting' and above all, 'how inhuman'. In living the experience I said all those things over and over again. The first judgements are typical of the ethno- and ego-centricism from which we can never quite escape, however much we try, and are little more than reaffirmation of standards that are different in circumstances that are different. But the latter judgement, 'how inhuman', is of a different order, and supposes that there are certain standards common to all humanity itself, from which the people described in this book seem to depart in a most drastic manner. In living the experience, however, and perhaps in reading it, one finds that it is oneself one is looking at and questioning; it is a voyage in quest of the basic human and a discovery of his potential for inhumanity, a potential that lies within us all. Many of us are unlikely to admit readily that we can sink as low as the Ik, but many of us do, and with far less cause. (Turnbull 1972.) Among the Ik the family was the first institution to collapse. While they still insisted on living in villages.
The publication of Turnbull's book created a storm, as the subsequent debate in Current Anthropology showed.[26] His indignant colleagues accused him of irresponsibility, falsifying his data, unbridled subjectivity, exaggeration, excess emotionalism, incompetence, and even lying. But the guns fell strangely silent when James Knight's 'On the Ik and Anthropology: A Further Note' appeared in the same journal. In quiet academic language, he pointed out a simple truth:
He went on to explain that human starvation is actually most often 'semi-starvation' as food intake is usually reduced rather than completely stopped. He cites the 'standard reference' for the study of the effects of starvation which was 'assembled over a quarter of a century ago by Keys et al.' (1950).27 These authors exhaustively examined the psychological and physiological effects of 'natural semi- starvation'; and they reported the results of the 'Minnesota Experiment', a well-controlled experiment undertaken during World War Two (significantly) in order to obtain data in anticipation of the need to plan relief operations in Europe. The effects observed in both natural and experimental situations were similar. But as Knight goes on to say,
(ibid.) Ramgasami (1985) describes the process of famine which, from her research and reading of other studies, she says can be broken up into three phases, each with its own distinct pattern of social behaviour. Famine, as she points out, has been known over the ages as a period of violation of normal human ties, during which cannibalism, necrophagia, and such other practices have been reported. Famine studies have concentrated on the social behaviour of a community in its 'death throes' and have ignored the 'long march, the anxiety and the distress' that precedes it. To ignore the earlier phases of famine is to 'ignore famine itself'. Earlier, Turnbull had referred to the Ik as 'fun-loving people' who 'thrive on work' and 'love to help one another' and 'are a great family people'. Their transformation into a people ...as unfriendly, uncharitable, inhospitable, and generally mean as any people can be...indifferent to their own plight and that of others, so preoccupied with food that it became their very word for 'goodness' was clearly a highly predictable result of famine. In view of the frequency of patterns of flight and societal collapse documented by Keys et al. and the more recent disruptions generated by famine observed in West Africa, the most remarkable aspect of the Ik may well be the cohesiveness of their social network under such stress...the Ik are clearly not the enigma Turnbull considers them. (ibid.) The decline in standards of sanitation in the settlements as compared with the self- settled has been noted. I am reminded of a talk with Dr Allison Umar, when he visited Yei in 1982. We walked the 5 kilometres from Yei to the transit centre to see 300 fresh arrivals sitting there amidst filth and rubble. The foreman reported that several dangerous snakes had come into the clearing. I advised him to hand out pangas and get the people to clear away the bush from the perimeters. No one moved. I shrugged and said something to the effect that it would not be my funeral.
This has become normal. They cannot even remember another way.' And, as James Knight explained to his colleagues: 'Significantly, in the present context of the debate over the Ik, these behaviours do not quickly disappear after relief from food deprivation, but perisist for several months even if an unlimited good diet is available.' (ibid.) The stark fact is that refugees in Yei River District did not have access to an adequate diet, even under the assistance programme. The aid programme has not alleviated hunger. While policy-makers search for clever techniques to engage the co-operation of refugees in a process which will lead them towards economic independence through agriculture, they have failed to recognize that these efforts can never be successful until the basic food problem is solved. The shortage of nutritious food may itself be the basis for many of the psychosocial problems, and the behaviours associated with the so-called 'dependency syndrome'. During my fieldwork in 1984 I asked refugees to describe how they behaved when they had been deprived of food for a prolonged time, and some wrote essays on this topic. As you know, food is the most vital fundamental factor of life. Without food we behave strangely. You can easily grow angry. You do not have any interest to converse with your friends. You think only of food. You can easily become a thief. You always look sick and gloomy. You always hate people talking to you. You can easily sell all your property and begin to beg from others. You always stay sick, fainting, and as well die. (Akuti Simon, Limuru, 7 September 1983.) Anything when asked from anybody...made another annoyed, brutal and [one] would [be] unable to answer a question. [In the settlement] when lacking food again [we] become rude automatically. That is how me and my fellows behaved when deprived of food for a long period...all of us would lose their proper behaviour. (Amedou Pauline, Limuru, 8 May, 1983.) Another writer, who remains unidentified, first describes how he was driven to steal in the market. Then, without a place to sleep and extremely hungry, he '...went to one of the watchmen of the hospital. When I reached to him, I was very hungry again.I introduced myself to him in such a polite way and well-disciplined. One of the easiest tricks which I spoke out to him was, I introduced myself as the son of a famous man. As he was an old man, he simply accepted my word. After which I was given a great deal of food to eat.' Another essay - unsigned - reports: One evening, uncle's wife prepared us a meal. The amount was not sufficient. Having noticed that, I grew annoyed. The hunger was so terrible that I could not bear....Small children were my enemy when I had nothing in my stomach. I put some scratches on their heads, so I was feared by them. The constant starvation led to theft, which I thought by that time was a good activity, but it is not. Anyway, it saved me during that time. As this writer explains, it was his having been beaten after being caught stealing cassava in the field of a local Sudanese which 'made me flee to the camp'. Maku Olokoko describes his reactions to conditions which finally forced him out of Uganda.
Maku goes on to say that later, when rains began and they could work for the locals, 'It was [also] high time for girls and women to go for prostitution which helped a lot in feeding us (of course, those who had sisters...). We very well knew it was wrong, but it was beyond human control.' It is interesting to note that this writer credits a local Sudanese official for having stopped the prostitution by taking the girls and women to Kala settlement. It is unfortunate that instead of recognizing that the inadequacies of the assistance programme contribute to the anti-social behaviour with which they are often confronted, fieldworkers are prone to blame the victims. So often, one sees refugees being treated like erring children. Alula Pankhurst discussed the mechanisms used by fieldworkers to insulate themselves from the suffering around them which, in turn, leads them to stereotype refugees as 'either sheep (dependent, unthinking) needing a shepherd, or wolves (greedy, lying, calculating, mercenary) needing a hunter.' (Personal communication.) Much energy is devoted to working out the latest techniques that the refugees might have invented to cheat and manipulate 'our' systems. Presumably it is believed to be in the interest of the donors that surprise censuses (one was even done in the night), are carried out in settlements to prove just how many people really are there. Then, because of inefficiency or the failure to plan, as so frequently happened in Yei River District, when there is no food at all to distribute, instead of spreading the alarm, fieldworkers feel obliged to conspire within the hierarchy of the agency community to protect its humanitarian image. A UNHCR official from Geneva told me, that once when no food was getting through to refugees in Zaire because of the war in Uganda, he learned about it not from his own field officer, but from the International Herald Tribune.
____________________ [1] It appears that the programme officer has also come to accept the futility of outsiders trying to Impose social responsibility. As he puts it in a letter, 'Perhaps it is good nor to design very fixed social structures for refugees in settlements and to accept that they make their own - also unjust society. UNHCR, a government or a volag [voluntary agency] will never be able to influence continuously and profoundly a refugee community and perhaps I should say should not want to do this. I believe more in a functioning "disorder'' than a hypocritical ''order"'. [2] It is disturbing to consider that a generation of children have not only endured the traumas represented in their art, but are growing up in conditions of continued economic and social insecurity. [3] For example, I am dead [4] Foreign Service Assignment Notebook, (October 1978). This handbook includes an essay entitled 'Exploring New Cultures' which suggests, as preventative therapy, a list of questions which people arriving at a new posting may use as a guide to learn about the new culture.This list might be a useful guide for refugees! [5] Recall the request of the women at Ligate - for cement to mark graves. [6] See page 312, for Cheik Ante Diop's explanation for certain entrenched practices in Africa. [7] It may be that the insecurity and poverty of refugee life re-validate the knowledge of the old men. knowledge which was formerly challenged and devalued If this is so. it may bc that a gerontocracy is beginning to emerge but one which is relatively free of the checks and balances found in more settled situations. The restriction of refugee education programmes to the primary level will reduce the challenge to other forms of knowledge and the emphasis on the subsistence agriculture minimizes the economic independence of younger men Aluma s conversion to christianity may be part of a broader struggle in which power relationships are being fought out along religious lines The rigidity of the aid programme may contribute to greater conservatism. [8] Perhaps the relatively small amount of assistance that came from local people, the few hoes, medicines, and the small amount of used clothing distributed by SCC and Sudanaid in those early days of the influx, was the key to the psychological health of many refugees. Many recall with overwhelming gratitude the small acts of charity they experienced during the first days after arrival. [9] Their requests for assistance made during the course of this research were also realistic. They asked for textbooks, stationery for children, etc; rarely did anyone mention the lack of a salary Responding to such initiatives would not only be less expensive, it would allow refugees to set their own priorities and perhaps to maintain their own self-respect. [10] But in 1983, out of desperation, one of my team, Tom Dradria Andima, got the idea that refugees could build their own secondary school. Thirteen months later the Lutaya Senior Secondary School opened for 180 students and already the building of four new classrooms is underway. This was not accomplished without a lot of help from the Sudanese (the Catholic mission gave twenty acres and church members supplied some food); the project manager (who helped in many ways, but especially with transport of building materials from settlements, advice, and moral support); the agencies (who were first reluctant, but later gave materials and UNHCR agreed to pay scholarship costs); the full-time commitment of Tom and Adile Sakio Bornfree who lived on the site for one year cajoling, motivating and administering the building programme, for which labour was supplied almost entirely by them and other interrupted students; and a Jesuit priest, Victor Mathias, who was the intermediary between all of the interested (and disinterested) parties. Money and a lot of moral support was given by Oxford University students. [11] Jaago remembered and adapted these lines from one of the books set for his O' level literature course, a play by Imbuga (1979). [12]I apologise to Jaago if his extremely small handwriting, or my lack of vocabulary, have led me to make errors in reproducing his thoughts. [13] Some refugees did not understand my aims. One, living in Europe, wrote a letter to certain refugees in southern Sudan informing them that I was a British spy supporting Obote. I am not quite sure of the logic, but he sent a copy to the Secretary of State, Whitehall, London as well as to the High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva. [14] In the Sudan and also in Uganda, as in most former British territories, witchcraft accusations were made illegal. (Harrell-Bond 1975.) [15] Personal communication. It was his view that rising standards of living in Europe have led to the general dissipation of witchcraft beliefs and the practice of so-called black magic. Clinging to these beliefs and even institutionalising them, according to him, served as a psychological mechanism which preserved Africans' identity. Unrelieved poverty has contributed to their continued influence and fossilisation. [16] The overall ethnic composition of the settlement as compared with the unassisted households interviewed was shown in Table 1.1, p.50 (Chapter One) [see Figure III.1(Appendix III) for the ethnic composition of each settlement]. [17] All settlements contained both Christians and Muslims, with either Catholics or Muslims forming the majority. Figure 111.2, Appendix 111, shows the religious composition of each settlement. The overall representation of the three religions among the assisted population was: 48.8 per cent Muslim; 46.7 per cent Catholic; and 3.8 per cent Protestant. Among the unassisted households interviewed, there were slightly metre Protestants - 6.8 per cent: while 31.4 per cent were Catholic and 36.5 per cent were Muslim. taut the data were missing for 966 interviews, or 25. a per cent and at least one refugee explicitly expressed disapproval of including this question in the interview. [18] I received a note in one settlement from a refugee who was a UPC supporter, explaining that he had been caught up by the war and unwillingly driven out. He was enquiring about repatriation and had set the date (after the harvest) when he would return. Also it would be interesting to know just how he would return, and just how many of those who have been officially repatriated were those who had no objection to Obote's rule. The number of those officially repatriated (to the end Of 1984) was less than l,000 in all. [19]The headmaster was an excellent teacher; in order to regain his job, he was asked to write an essay entitled 'Anyone who believes in poisoning, poisons the minds of children.' Hopefully this had a therapeutic effect and he gave much service in the camps. It should also be noted that hysteria is not a permanent state of mind. [20] Willis(1978) argues that 'It is obvious that, alone in the whole body of sorcery beliefs, "poison" corresponds to an ideain current and accepted western belief since it has a putatively empirical basis. This fact, it may be suggested, gives it a heightened validity under the pressure of western influences and accounts for its vogue among the Fipa, especially those in Cosest contact with the centres of modernisation.' But, see also Harrell-Bond ( 1978) for a discussion of the functions of such beliefs among the elite in Sierra Leone. [21] To 'beg', in West Africa at least, is to put oneself literally at the feet of the person to whom a request is being made and denotes total humility and inferior status. There, it is irresistible, and requests made must be granted. I had hoped that Ugandans would react similarly. [22] Eating together in Africa symbolizes many things, but most important, mutual trust. See Harrell-Bond (1978) [23] Because of the importance of the role of herbalists working as diviners and administering oaths in courts. I have interviewed dozens of them in several West African countries. It is always difficult to gain their confidence. My strategy was to consult them about real personal problems. I often paid for medicines to ensure my children passed their exams, and once my small son was used as the 'voice' of a friend living in Britain. One I consulted in Sierra Leone was a ventriloquist, his stone 'spoke'. He only saw people before full daylight or in the evening so his secret was not revealed. [24] I must admit that after learning about their practices, I did not make a great effort to interview them. Once I stumbled on a man making his 'medicines' and asked him what he could cure. He assured me he had nothing to do with poison. [25] At one time there was talk of setting up a laboratory for the study of traditional herbs, apparently without understanding the enormous expense of such an undertaking and the scientific expertise such pharmaceutical studies require. [26] Vol 15. No 1, March through to Vol 17, No 4. Nov - Dec 1976 The storm continues until 1985 See Heine (1985). And see Dirk (1980), for an overview of studies of behavioural responses to famine.
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