Refugee Camps in Northern Uganda,
​An Unpublicized Problem
Charles Clarke, M. D.
Old Guard Member, Part-time Director of Continuing Medical Education at University Hospital of Princeton
Minutes of the 18th Meeting of the 64th Year
President Haynes called the 18th meeting of the 64th year to order at the Friend Centre at 10.15 AM, following a hospitality hour; about ninety members attended. John Marks presented the invocation. Harvey Rothberg read the minutes of the preceeding meeting with his usual scrupulous attention to detail and the sudden interruption of lighting at the five-minute point was not construed as having significance.
Ben Wright was called on to introduce his guest, Jim Hastings, and four visitors were presented: Aline Haynes by her husband Bill, Cindy Clark by her husband Charlie, Jackie Meisel by her husband Sy and Margee Harper by her husband John.
Don Dickason congratulated Winthrop Pike on attaining emeritus status. and then introduced the new members who had been elected the preceeding week. The President announced that a pair of spectacles and a pointer had been left behind last week but no one claimed either item. Charlie Jaffin called our attention to Bill Selden's book
Dick Armstrong introduced fellow-member Charles Griffith Clark, a distinguished gastroenterologist. Despite the advantage that would accrue to the speaker (according to last week's address), Dick could not lay claim to being the speaker's father. The speaker was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Franklin and Marshall and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Regarding him as the Jimmy Carter of the medical profession, he cited his volunteer work in India, time with the Himalayan Rescue Association, and in Uganda. He has also run in fifty-eight marathons
At 10:40 AM, Dr Clark was allowed to begin. He quickly established himself as an alert and compassionate observer of Ugandan issues, and an indefatigable worker in providing what relief and assistance he could in what he agreed was "the forgotten crisis" in northern Uganda. Using a combination of powerpoint and voice, he located on a map the town of Lira, in northern Uganda, as defined by the Nile river between Lake Victoria and Lake Albert. He gave a thumbnail sketch of Ugandan history to provide a context for his work from 2001 to 2003 for Health Volunteers Overseas: teaching medical staff in the country's main teaching hospital. If he had not seen patients then, he made up for it by a month's work in the refugee camps at Lira, in 2005. Having 22 million people, Uganda is the size of Great Britain or Oregon and lies on the equator.
In the 1840s, Arab and, later, European traders began to open up communication with the territory and awareness of the country grew with the search for the origin of the Nile. Egyptian traders, interested in anything to do with the Nile, came down from Khartoum for the ivory trade, and introduced guns. Missionary work soon followed in earnest and Europeans tended to favor the Buganda tribe, centred on Kampala on the trade route from Zanzibar farther south, which had a more inviting climate. This left northern Uganda, and the twenty-nine other language-groups of the country, at a disadvantage, able only to supply migrant labourers and soldiers. In 1894, Uganda became a British protectorate and the Buganda benefitted even more.
In 1962, Uganda became an independent Commonwealth country. Obote, a northern leader, joined forces with the Buganda but he took over in 1966. I remember two English parishioners of mine, who had taught for years in Uganda, saying that they at first regarded Obote as a saviour. But he was succeeded in 1971 by Idi Amin who killed half-a-million people and chased the 75,000 economically significant Asians out of the country - some of whom I had the pleasure of teaching in England - and continued discrimination in favour of the northerners and soon became a synonym for barbarity. After eight years, Amin fled to find refuge in Q'addafi' s Libya and Obote returned to wreak havoc. In 1986. a rebel leader from the south, Museveni, arose to take over, increasingly resisted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the north. If Amin killed 500,000, Obote killed 300,000 while the LRA managed about 100,000. The result is that 80 percent of the north, or two million people, are in refugee camps.
They are safe in daylight but to sleep at home is to invite death and they spend nights in camp, protected by Ugandan soldiers. In the north, 20,000 children have been stolen and many boys forced to join the LRA after killing friends or relatives to demonstrate their military credentials while the girls are sold into sexual slavery. Dr Clark described his work in the camps, on behalf of the Northwest Medical Team of Oregon who send out three people a month. He felt the work was well organized and, though helped by U.S. government money, that enterprise is marred by Washington's refusal to provide condoms in the struggle against AIDs/HIV. However he said that in the decade after 1991, the incidence of HIV decreased from fifteen to five percent.
A fifteen-minute question period followed covering wide aspects of life in Uganda and the speaker's medical experiences. As he had said, he felt able to make a difference in certain respects and that it was well worth his efforts, especially given the brightness and resourcefulness of many of his associates there. We all left after the talk with the feeling that we had heard from someone both knowledgeable and skillful in making some difference, a respect due him equalled only by the further awareness of his modesty.
​John Frederick