Landslide survivors: Women in Bulambuli face loss, uncertainty

Tears of despair ran down Sarah Lunyolo’s face as she walks around the area where her house once stood. She is trying to find the remains of some of her family members, although it is now over a week since landslides swept Masugu village in Buluganya sub-county, Bulambuli District. 

"I cannot find my son. He had just completed his Senior Four examinations and he was swept away by the floods. I cannot find my granddaughter, either. She had come to spend the Christmas holidays with me," she says, her face pale from days spent crying. 

The 50-year-old discloses that her in-law is also missing. Lunyolo’s son was a student of St. Joseph Senior Secondary School Buyaga. The landslide, which occurred on November 27, was triggered by heavy rainfall and has affected a number of villages in Bulambuli District. Over 120 people are still missing in the rubble, with only 30 bodies retrieved so far. A number of homesteads were destroyed. 

When Monitor, visited the landslide scene over the weekend, we found a number of women searching for missing family members. While some of them wailed, others just sat on the ground, a bewildered look on their faces. The women told this reporter that while they spent their nights in the homes of relatives who were lucky not to lose their property, their days were spent searching for signs of life in their former homesteads.

Lost livelihoods

Before disaster struck, Lunyolo was a successful businesswoman. She was a coffee farmer and also had three cows, which she milked twice a day. “In a season, I would be assured of earning between Shs10m - Shs15m from my coffee harvest. Everyday, though, I would sell 35 liters of milk at Istsema trading centre. I saved Shs30,000 per day,” she says. 

This is the income she was using to educate her ten children. Now, the coffee farm is gone. The cows were swept away by the floods. 

However, Lunyolo is not the only one staring in the abyss. By nature, women are involved in the productive roles in society so most of them have lost inputs, seeds, capital, and government funding gotten from poverty alleviation schemes such as the Parish Development Model (PDM). Antonina Neumbe, another resident of Masugu village, was dealing in foodstuff before the landslide. 

Besides dealing in the matooke (bananas), she was also a vegetable seller. “I had a farm of onions, tomatoes, and cabbage. I also had a matooke plantation. Both were destroyed. I do not have a home, either. I do not have the capital to start all over again. I am now a beggar; when I see that someone has cooked some food, I go there and beg her for something to eat,” she laments. 

In Sisiyi sub-county, Agnes Nambuya is counting her losses. She had a small makeshift restaurant in Kibanda trading centre, where she sold local food and engaged in wholesale trade in matooke. She has since closed it and relocated to Bunambutye Resettlement Camp. “I had a good life before coming here. I could afford to buy everything my family needed. 

Now, I am not well. The living conditions are not good here and we do not have security. The police come here during the day but they go away at night,” Nambuya reveals. She adds that she has used up all her capital and savings to cater for her family’s basic needs in the Camp. “I have eaten all the money. most of my property was destroyed when my house was crushed by the landslide,” she says. 

Richard Namukono, the LCIII chairperson for Buluganya sub-county, says that whenever disasters occur, women are the most affected because they are the ones who tend to gardens and carry out small businesses in the community. 

“In most cases, the men work outside the community and only return after one or two months to check on their families for a few days. These women have been the ones charged with the day-to-day care of their children and homes, and now they have lost everything. You will find that the majority of the people in the Camp are women and children,” he says. 

Christine Nam, the district community development officer, says the already existing poverty levels could have been worsened by the landslide.

“These women are still traumatised and need a lot of counseling to start life again. However, right now their concentration is on survival. For families which lost everything, the poverty levels will be high,” she says. 

Life in the Camp

Currently, Lunyolo lives with relatives. She has also sent her children to live with different relatives. She is worried about them, saying without her authority to guide them, they may go astray. “There is no way of knowing the behaviour of the people who have been kind enough to accept my teenage children. At that age, they can do anything to survive. Unfortunately, with all of us looking for survival, we cannot live together,” she says. 

With many of the homeless girls in their adolescence, the fear of teenage pregnancy and early marriages is tangible among the women this publication spoke to. 

“Every family knew how to deal with its daughters. Now, the girls move freely, without control of parents, who are either scavenging for food or looking for the remains of their loved ones. We fear that our daughters will easily be lured by boys and men, and will contract diseases or get impregnated,” Neumbe says. 

The water and sanitation situation in the Camp is also wanting, with many drawing water from contaminated sources, putting them at risk of waterborne diseases. 

“We are spending money on buying water to boil and drink and a number of people have developed diarrhea and vomiting. This is a bushy area and already, people have been bitten by snakes,” Nambuya says. 

Although the government has set up public sanitary facilities in the Camp, Namwu says there is much more that needs to be done to support the women. 

“Women need special attention in terms of privacy to carry out their personal hygiene. The bathrooms are like kraals and not everybody is going to take care to ensure that they are clean. We have partners who have supported the women and girls with menstrual kits and soap, but it is not nearly half of what they need,” she says. 

Namukono calls on the government to provide safe drinking water and other social amenities to the internally displaced persons. He says most people are drinking water from contaminated sources. In the areas that were flooded, the pit latrines were swept away leading to fear of waterborne diseases. 

“My fear is that those affected may experience hunger in the near future. The girls who have lost their parents and relatives do not have Good Samaritans to help them. They will be forced to work as child laborers in other people’s homes to survive. This could lead to early marriages,” he says. 

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