Budalang'i flood victims appeal for help, decry living in camps

Other makeshift camps in the area housing flood victims include Bunyala, which has 30 occupants, MMUST, which has 27, Budala, which has 45, Rukala, which has 39, and Khadundu, which has 32. Igigo and Runyu have 38 and 22 families, respectively.

They say life at the makeshift camp is intolerable. "You can see for yourself that we have children as young as seven months old in this camp; they require medical care, food, and education, but we as parents are unable to provide all of that," Membe says.

Membe, like other families in the isolated camps, spends cold nights with her children in their tiny tent, but she must cook outside to avoid a fire accident inside the small tent.

Furthermore, there is no privacy in the tents, and parents find it difficult to conduct private business in the presence of their children.

The residents say teen boys and girls are given separate tents from their parents and families. Living alone exposes them to early sex, unwanted pregnancies, and even sexually transmitted diseases.

These families have been living in deplorable conditions for three years and have petitioned both the national and Busia county governments to assist them.

Fredrick Kudira. He says life at the makeshift camp is intolerable. [Benjamin Sakwa, Standard]

"My firstborn is 16 years old, and my lastborn is five years old, but I am having difficulty providing for them," he said.

"We used to cultivate crops and raise goats, sheep, chicken, and cattle, but the floods destroyed everything and left us homeless, but as a parent, I must provide for my family even in the most difficult circumstances," Dadira said.

He is recovering from malaria, a disease that is making lives in the camp a living nightmare.

Fredrick Kudira, who returned from a local primary school where he had been housed after the floods, appears frail.
"I've been sick; cholera and malaria have become common diseases around here, but we can't get immediate medical attention because hospitals are far away," Kudira says.

"I was displaced due to flooding in 2019, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to return home because the area was submerged."

His sentiments are shared by Robert Muganda, who has expressed a desire to leave the camp.

"We had nothing to rejoice about during Christmas. We don't have food and our children are sick, so we have nothing to cheer us up," Muganda says.

He stopped fishing because the lake was unable to produce fish due to overfishing and other factors that caused fish to disappear.