A young family in Iyama Village, Alebtong Parish, Aloi Sub-county, Alebtong District, is facing unimaginable challenges. The family is headed by a 15-year-old girl, Rachel Acen, who is responsible for her five siblings, aged between 13 and three years.
The children’s lives turned upside down after the death of their father, Nelson Ongora, on June 3, 2021. Their mother, Janet Akello, seemingly overwhelmed with the thought of raising six children on her own, fled the home six months ago.
‘Immediately after our father died, I dropped out of school. I was in Primary Three at Iyama Primary School. I do not know why our mother abandoned us. We heard that she is in Lira City. We lack food, clothing, bedding, and bathroom facilities. When nature calls, we go to the bush,’ Acen says.
At 4 p.m. when this reporter visited the family, they had not eaten anything since morning. There is neither a matchbox nor food in the leaking grass-thatched hut. One of the children, feeling unwell, sits outside the hut.
‘Her temperature is rising, and she is moody. When my siblings fall ill, we walk to Alebtong Health Centre IV, which is four kilometres away. But I have been busy in the garden. I did not know that she was feeling unwell,’ Acen adds.
The children have planted cassava in a half-acre garden behind their hut, and sesame in another half-acre field in the neighbouring village.
A Good Samaritan, Rev Boniface Ongora, the overseer of New Jerusalem Christian Church, offers to take the sick child to a nearby clinic for treatment.
The children sleep on one torn polythene sheet and cover themselves with one bedsheet. Two of them study in the nearby Blessed Hope Nursery and Primary School under a scholarship program. However, after Primary Seven, they will drop out to help their siblings in the gardens.
Questionable well-wishers
Olivia Auma also heads a young family in Apado Cell, Apado Ward, Alebtong Town Council. The 17-year-old girl takes care of her two siblings, one of whom is 13 years old and the other 15 years old. Their mother, Sarah Akao, died in 2012, while their father, Samuel Ewich, disappeared in 2014.
Sadly, in 2018, while thatching the roof of their hut, Auma fell off. The accident left her disabled, unable to walk properly. Currently, she digs and performs other household chores while on her knees.
‘I am paralysed from the waist down. Our huts now leak when it rains, and we only eat one meal a day. We have a bathroom, but we have to use a neighbour’s pit latrine because we do not have the money to hire someone to sink one for us,’ she explains.
Last year, a stranger adopted one of her brothers and took him to Apac District. Since then, the siblings have not had contact with him. Although Auma does not know his whereabouts, she believes he is in safe hands.
In the neighbouring Ipale Cell, 17-year-old Dolly Apio has been facing similar circumstances ever since her parents, Jimmy Acuma and Miriam Amolo, fled the home, leaving her to shoulder the responsibility of caring for her two siblings. ‘I am in Primary Six at Alebtong Primary School, but I have not reported to school since the Second Term due to a lack of school fees. Our mother was the first to leave after a fight with our father in 2022. Our father abandoned us early this year,’ Apio laments.
She adds that villagers informed them that their mother is living in Lira City, although they do not know what she is doing there. Word has it that their father lives in the nearby Omoro Sub-county.
‘The world has abandoned us. We have no one to turn to. On a lucky day, we eat one meal, but on some days, we go to bed with empty stomachs. Today, we are going to boil beans and eat them with fresh cassava. We do not have clothes and beddings,’ Apio adds.
Lack of leadership
Due to poverty and HIV-related illnesses, several children have been left as orphans in northern Uganda, with nobody to take care of them. Most of these vulnerable children are left with poor grandparents, while some are homeless.
David Kennedy Odongo, the LC5 chairperson of Alebtong District, says the vulnerable members of society continue to suffer because the district does not have adequate resources to support them.
‘The central government provides for 98 percent of our budget. The remaining two percent comes from the collection of local revenue, which is inadequate. It is challenging for the district to budget and plan for its vulnerable residents. Some of them are living a demeaning,’ he explains.
Odongo adds that the plight of child-headed households should be an eye-opener to both local and central governments.
‘The Parliament must allocate special funds to rural districts because we cannot leave these households to go on suffering. They need necessities like food, clothing, and proper housing, which the districts are too constrained to provide,’ he says.
Some of the children in these child-headed families cannot exploit their talents because they do not have the opportunity to go to school. This is detrimental to the country’s priority of human resource development as a key driver to the middle-income status.
‘Thousands of vulnerable children could be suffering within communities because some civil servants are sleeping on the job. In every village, we have an LC1 chairperson who reports to the LC2 chairperson. The LC2 chairperson reports to the LC3 chairperson, who reports to the district. We have parish chiefs. These are community workers who should identify these cases and forward them to our attention,’ Odongo says.
The LC5 chairperson appeals to development partners, well-wishers, and churches to step in and support child-headed households.
Rev. Juliet Angora, a teacher and leader of the New Jerusalem Christian Church, says once in a while, the church distributes five kilograms of maize flour to the neediest child-headed households.
‘If the number of orphans increases, it will most likely increase the number of children ending up on the streets as beggars and thieves,’ she says.
There are concerns that the rise in the proportion of child-headed households and child labourers means a rise in percentages of illiteracy, teenage pregnancy, and HIV prevalence rates.
Sidebar
A 2016 study titled, Child-headed households in Rakai District, Uganda: a mixed-methods study, published in Paediatrics and International Child Health, an international forum, indicates that child-headed households (CHH) are the result of a rational and conscious decision by children to maintain the surviving family unit. The eldest child had taken on either a maternal or paternal role to support the family.
‘These child carers reported being faced by complex scenarios that demanded decisions: which sibling would attend school? For which sibling could they seek malaria treatment? Some were forced to consider prostitution as the only viable option in order to feed the family. Issues of property and emotional attachment to the family land often informed the very foundation for the establishment of the CHH,’ the report reads in part.
Education
A significant number of respondents (37.5 percent) had received no education. For those who were in primary school, 18 percent indicated a system whereby they were forced to alternate between time at home and at school, and 30 percent were regularly sent home for not having the appropriate clothing or equipment.
All respondents expressed a desire to attend school. Activities and demands of the home had resulted in a high drop-out rate. Sometimes the eldest sibling reported passing over the opportunity to attend school in favour of a younger sibling.
Living conditions
The mean number of occupants per household was four, but there were as many as seven in one house. Forty-five percent of respondents resided in houses described as ‘semi-permanent brick or mud’, 27 percent lived in a ‘mud house without iron sheets’ and seven percent had housing identified as a ‘temporary grass hut’.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents did not have a mattress. Toilet facilities were minimal: 35 percent of respondents had no lavatory in the home and used the bush, 45 percent shared a lavatory with neighbours and 53 percent used a pit latrine.
Health
In terms of where they attended for illness, 50 percent identified a government clinic, 27.5 percent traditional methods, and 22.5 percent said they had nowhere to go for medical attention. Of the 50 percent who did have access to a government health clinic, 25 percent claimed that the clinic frequently had no medication.
In principle, health centres are accessible to all, but stigmatisation and a lack of money and transport prevent many from receiving treatment. One child recalled being arrested by police officers because of his inability to pay for the medication that he had received for his sick grandmother.
Security and fear
Fear was a major theme: 50 percent expressed fear of their possessions being taken from the house while they attended school, 48 percent reported fear in having to travel to a well to fetch water, and 38 percent were afraid of ‘violence’. Of the 16 girls interviewed, five stated that they had been raped, and another reported attempted rape.
In environments of conflict, disease, and natural disasters, children can be scattered and the traditional family unit fragmented or destroyed. As the number of orphaned children multiplies, it is likely that CHHs will become less transient and more common.