By Yoweri Kaguta
Kasese: This is Elizabeth Akiki, a resident of Kaghema village in Kyarumba sub-county in Bukonzo County East in Kasese district.
Akiki vividly saw what the May 2024 floods and landslides left to the lives of many families in the area in dire need for help. Akiki aged 48 years lost two houses to floods and landslides respectively.
“I’m grateful to God that my children survived the disaster, but our home and livelihoods were severely impacted. My eight-roomed house at Kasanga trading center was completely damaged and the three-roomed boys’ quarters were also destroyed”, Akiki said.
Apart from losing her two houses, Akiki said that the devastating loss extended to her crop gardens yet they were the lifeline for the entire family of 13 people. She added that currently the family is struggling to make ends meet.
“The devastating loss extends to our four-acre farm, where we grew coffee, mangoes, avocadoes, and other crops that helped me pay our children’s school fees. No, everything is gone”
Because of all these sufferings, Akiki found herself and other family members in a camp at Bwitho primary school, Kaghema parish in Kyarumba sub-county.
They joined more than 5000 people who had also been displaced from their homes because of the disaster and were severely affected. They seek refuge in more than eight temporary camps including Mughanza and Bwitho camps among others.
However, the temporary camps were later closed on the grounds that the Kasese district Local government was unable to sustain the affected people in these temporary camps.
“As a result, we are struggling to make ends meet, and our children have been forced to drop out of school. We are in dire need of support to rebuild our lives”, Akiki added.
Moreen Muhindo is another resident from the neighborhood of Kabughabugha village who was also affected by the disaster.
Muhindo told Daily Monitor that after leaving the Kiduku camp where she stayed for two months, she went back home and is currently staying with her grandmother.
Muhindo explained that a huge landslide struck a few meters away from their main and permanent house and feared that any time a similar incident could strike again and put her life and of her relatives at risk.
“We were left with no option other than going back to the same houses that were feared to stay in when the disaster struck our village”,
Muhindo added that the landslide destroyed their coffee, matooke and mango plantations which were the main source of income.
“This land was once our family’s lifeline, where our parents would grow and sell matooke to raise our school fees. Now, it’s a stark realty, we struggle to afford fees and food. Even when we can manage to get food, our meals are no longer as plentiful as they were before the devastating landslide” Said Muhindo.
The month of May has always been disastrous in Kasese since 2013. Now that the same month is two months ahead, Muhindo and Akiki are now worried that their life is in danger because they are currently staying in houses that were partly destroyed by either floods or landslides.
“Every time I sleep, I don’t always know whether I will make it to another day, because I am sleeping in a house that was also destroyed by a huge landslide”, Akiki said.
Asked whether Akiki knows the exact cause of these weather changes, she replied that it was resulting from climate change.
To reduce on the destructions caused by disaster, a total of 150 women in the areas of Bwitho, Kaghema, Kiduku and Kabughabugha and Nyambuko have joined efforts aimed at building the resilience (flexibility) of their communities towards addressing the effects of climate change.
These women who have already embarked on key interventions geared towards protecting the environment are drawn from Kyarumba and Ibanda-Kyanya Town councils under Bwitho Women Development and Nyambuko Development Group.
According to Nyesi Kabugho Kakuha, the team leader at Bwitho Women and Men Development Group, the members have so far planted bamboo trees along river Dubu as well as digging trenches in their gardens to purposely reduce the speed of water run-offs.
“We realized that when disasters strike in a village, they are women who suffer mostly, that is why we formed our group so that we can put a layer in protecting the environment through tree planting and rechanneling the rivers”, Kakuha said.
Specifically Kyarumba Town council, Kyarumba and Kyondo sub-counties where the group operates from were seriously hit by extreme floods and landslides leading to destruction of houses and gardens.
“The destruction further claimed the lives of at least seven people from three families in Kyarumba and Kyondo sub-counties. I personally saw how people died when we were hit by the disaster, many parents have been left without children and others have been orphaned because of disasters, something that should not happen again”, Kakuha said.
In union, the affected families are now requesting the government and other development partners to come to their rescue by supporting their climate adaptation and resilience initiatives so that they can still live a normal life.
It is against this background that early this week, the International Institute for Sustainable Development-IISD with funding from Canada came on board to support the climate adaptation and protection initiative by organized women. The institute was represented by Alec Crawford, the Director of Nature Resilience.
Locally, the project is implemented by Kiima Foods, a Kasese based organization that is partnering with World Wide Fund-WWF.
In the presence of Kasese district officials represented by the Principal Assistant Secretary in the office of Chief Administrative Officer, Mr. Mustafa Kikusa, the said women groups were financially supported so that their initiatives yielded tangible results.
Bwitho Women Development Group and Nyambuko Development Group were each given a dummy cheque of shillings 96,630,000 and 97,375,000 respectively.
Kyankwazi Bakyara Tukorerehamwe Bika Oguze group in Rubirizi district which is also implementing a similar project of environmental conservation pocketed shillings 106,920,000.
IN his remarks, Kikusa hailed the donors for the support and immediately urged the benefiting groups to optimally utilize the funds and ensure that they finance the targeted areas of conserving the environment.
“Our people are found of not owning projects instead they call them by the name of the funders, this time round, I am going to start monitoring these initiatives and see if you people are doing what you are telling this donor”, Mr. Kikusa said.
Annet Tumwine, the Project Officer, acknowledged that the project was just a drop in the ocean. She however reported that she was cognizant that the women would do a lot of work towards addressing the effects of climate change.
ENDS