UNICEF support saves grandmother made homeless by floods
Most of us were traumatized by the loss of our homes. I wanted to die by suicide but UNICEF and the district sent us parasocial workers who counselled us,” she reveals.
For most people, a house is the most important asset they will ever have. Owning a house is a dream like no other for many. It is considered the epitome of success. Many spend their adult life working to achieve this dream. Once achieved, many even start to think of retirement.
For 56-year-old Rehema Namale Aryema, owning a house wasn’t just a fancy dream. When her husband died in 2001, her in-laws chased her away from the family property. They claimed that she belonged to a different tribe and therefore could not inherit property in “their tribe.”
A mother of nine and grandmother of seven, Aryema looked for a job as a child care giver that gave her very little money but enough to afford to rent a room for her and the children. After paying the landlord, there wasn’t much left to cater for the children’s other needs. Her landlord argued that since Aryema’s children didn’t have enough clothing and other life basics, they should not play or be near his children and chased her away. “Because of the size of my family, landlords didn’t want me to rent their houses — the houses that my meagre pay could afford me,” she recalls.
She would soon become a volunteer at a Christian organization, a job that introduced her to different aspects of life. As a widow living with HIV/AIDS, Aryema became a member of an organization of women living with the disease. “We started attending workshops and supporting other women. The organizers would give us allowances which I used to buy goats and get involved in poultry, which I would sell for a profit” she reveals. “I managed to buy land outside Kasese town from the profits and savings from the allowances I was getting,” she adds.
Working with women living with HIV/AIDS introduced Aryema to many people in the community, prompting her to join politics in 2011 when she was elected a Kasese Local Government District Councilor. “I decided to retire in 2020 to settle down and look after myself, the children and grandchildren,” she reveals.
When she decided to retire from politics, she had her eyes on building her retirement home near Kasese town. She identified land in Kanyangeya, less than 5km from Kasese town. “I sold the land I had initially bought and purchased the land in Kanyangeya,” she reveals. “With the savings I had, I started constructing my dream retirement home,” she adds. “In April 2020, I started living in my house. It was a dream come true. From being chased away by in-laws and landlords to my own house. I couldn’t believe it,” Aryema says.
Soon, the district decided to relocate the people from the school to a temporary internally displaced people’s camp in Muhokya just outside Kasese town. “When we got here, UNICEF provided tarpaulins, mobile toilets, jerrycans, soap and other items. We have been able to put up temporary homes,” she says while pointing at her temporary shelter.
The Kasese rains contributed to the overflow of banks of the major rivers of Lhubiriha, Mubuku, Nyamwamba, and Nyamugasani whose origin is the Rwenzori Mountains causing mudslides, landslides, deep cracks in the earth surface of the sub counties in the high lands and flooding of low-lying areas like Kanyangeya.
“As UNICEF, we were able to provide life-saving services to more than 10,000 people in Kasese District,” explains Philip Limlim, Chief, UNICEF Mbarara Field Office. With support from UKaid and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), UNICEF provided mobile toilets, hand washing facilities, laundry soap, boxes of aqua tabs (water purification tablets), bottles of liquid soap, tarpaulins, jerricans, tents and text books for children affected by flooding.
“We also partnered with regional referral hospitals to ensure increased supplies of therapeutic feeds to prevent malnutrition following destruction of gardens and ensured parasocial workers provide psychosocial support to affected households,” Limlim adds.
Even though this has eased life a bit, for most of the residents at this camp in Muhokya, the events of May 2020 are still so fresh in their memories and life is still hard to bear. “We appeal to the government to relocate us permanently and provide the necessary support so that we can regain our lives. I would love to be able to rear goats again so that I can earn an income and maybe build a house again,” Aryema concludes.
