Photo Credit: Refugees International
11/19/2006

As a result of the insecurity, some people maintain small dwellings in their fields where they hide out for days, weeks or even months. An aid worker explained that 60% of the affected population lacks adequate shelter to protect them from sun and rain. A group of people offered to show us how they were living. To get to their dwellings, we followed a dirt path about 500 meters through tall grass. The structures under which they had been living for the past ten months were unstable. One man stated, “There are all sorts of sicknesses. We eat what’s not edible. I have lost weight. But, we are obliged to sleep in the fields. We have no future. With everything that’s happened and the illnesses, we won’t have a future.”