"We are living a baboon life, Rwamutonga refugees speak out"

The current situation for the over 200 indigenous families (1500 people) formerly evicted from Rwamutonga, Hoima District, is characterized by major problems, and it has been thus, since their return on their land in February this year...A recent visit by a team from ActionAid Uganda found a suffering hungry humanity, sleeping under tattered shelter made of tarpaulin, and crying babies who appeared malnourished while many seemed to have gone hungry for days In August 2014, families were evicted from their land of over 485 hectares on which they had lived as squatters for years, hence becoming owners...

Mothers carry their babies on the back whole day and move home to home in search of food...“The major issues at the moment concerns lack of food, no water, or medicine,” Gladys Ougyumoti...[said] in early March, “We are like wild animals, we just move from place to place in search of food.” Worse still, they are just getting back to their gardens (which have turned into bushes in the last two years) to plough, but the fruits are far from reach since the ploughing just started...

Mr Rashid Amora shared this opinion when asked what the major issues are: “We are drinking water with the baboons. We are living a baboon live.” And the health of everyone does not brighten up the day either. Almost everyone is coughing, and mosquitoes do not spare them either. Malaria has become a part of them; the infants are testimony to this...Reports show that an effort to access treatment from the health centres has been in vain as they are chased away by medical workers: “They look at us like dirty (filthy) people who are homeless. They tell us not to disturb them when we ask for medicine,” Ms Lucy Alungat said. “We are living like how we lived in the camps. In fact, the camps were better because people would send us food, bags of posho and beans. But here, we do not receive free food anymore.