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Abstract
Looking at the internally displaced people (IDP) camp in Pabbo, northern Uganda, the article focuses on aspects of displacement less frequently discussed. People in Pabbo were not only victimised by violence from the side of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels on one side and the Ugandan government on the other. They also felt threatened by the experience of a moral crisis in the IDP camp. At the centre of this crisis was the family, the place where people were supposed to care for each other and control each other's behaviour. The setting of the IDP camp was experienced as making this ideal model of mutuality and accountability impossible. The ways in which threats of witchcraft, HIV/AIDS and antisocial behaviour were discussed reflected this crisis of the family. In an effort to restore what was expressed as collectively acceptable moral values, people in Pabbo resorted to measures which to outsiders may appear violent. This led to the somewhat contradictory situation in which aid agencies, working in the region, informed people's understanding of the moral crisis (mostly through HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns) but found it impossible to reconcile their human rights-based approach with the local measures of social control aimed at restoring moral values. The people of Pabbo, this case study suggests, were far from being passive victims of powerful outside actors. Rather, they had clear ideas of the threats they experienced and found ways of acting against them. They exercised agency, but mostly within their own terms of reference.
Notes
1. Such perspectives have been summarised in Finnström, “An African Hell of Colonial Imagination?,” 74–5.
2. Most notably: Finnström, Living with Bad Surroundings, 99–130; Finnström, “An African Hell of Colonial Imagination?,” 74–89.
3. For example see Dolan, “Understanding War and its Continuation”; Finnström, Living with Bad Surroundings; Allen, Trial Justice, 53–60.
4. The argument is based on participant observation, informal talks and interviews conducted during three main periods of fieldwork between 2005 and 2010. Unless indicated otherwise, quotes were translated from Acholi into English.
5. This information was given to me by the LC3 of Pabbo as well as various UN officials. See also Jaramogi, “Uganda: 10,000 Leave Pabbo Camp.”
6. See, for example, Girling, The Acholi of Uganda, 7.
7. It is interesting to note that the LRA rebels are usually referred to as “people from the bush”. In my work on former LRA soldiers I suggest that for them, life “in the bush” was experienced as a totally different world from life at home as a civilian. Mergelsberg, “Between Two Worlds,” 156–76.
8. One time, I found a type of mint in the bush and brought it home to try to make tea with it. Min Atat just shook her head and refused the children to try any of it. Joseph only drank the tea after some hesitation. The behaviour did not only relate to their fear the herb might be poisonous – Min Atat commented that I was now “like a wizard” bringing unknown herbs from the bush and cooking them.
9. Author's interview, April 25, 2005.
10. Author's interview, April 25, 2005.
11. Author's interview, April 25, 2005.
12. For example p'Bitek, Religion of the Central Luo; Girling, The Acholi of Uganda; Abrahams, “A Modern Witch-hunt among the Lango of Uganda.”
13. p'Bitek, Religion of the Central Luo.
14. See Allen, “AIDS and Evidence”; Lowicki-Zucca, Spiegel, and Ciantia, “AIDS, Conflict and the Media in Africa”; Ciantia, “HIV Seroprevalence in Northern Uganda.”
15. Allen, “Witchcraft, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS among the Azande of Sudan.”
16. Heald, “Is the Sharia of the Doctors Killing the People?”
17. Awareness campaigns were usually framed in the concept of ABC prevention. This refers to a joint effort to encourage abstinence, partner reduction and condom use. Figures about condom use are notoriously difficult to obtain, so nothing conclusive can be said about the rates of condom use. In any case, awareness campaigns as well as informal discussions among people usually focused on abstinence and partner reduction as the main ways of fighting HIV/AIDS.
18. p'Bitek, “Acholi Love.”
19. Author's interview, July 31, 2008.
20. Joseph, my host, for example lived with his wife and children like in a family, but only managed to complete the ceremony many years later, when the most difficult years of displacement had passed.
21. Author's interview, July 31, 2008.
22. Author's interview, August 27, 2008.
23. Author's interview, August 27, 2008
24. Heald, Manhood and Morality, 76.
25. Allen, “The Violence of Healing.”
26. Allen, “The Violence of Healing.”
27. Author's interview, August 8, 2008. All conversations with the LC3 took place in English and are reproduced verbatim.
28. Author's interview, August 2, 2008.
29. Author's interview, August 8, 2008.
30. This is very obvious in the debate about the intervention of the International Criminal Court and alternatives for justice and reconciliation in northern Uganda. See Allen, Trial Justice.
31. This is very obvious in the debate about the intervention of the International Criminal Court and alternatives for justice and reconciliation in northern Uganda. See Allen, Trial Justice
32. A few hundred Congolese women and their children used to live in Pabbo. Most of them were in stable relationships with one of the government soldiers stationed there. When the security situation relaxed and the soldiers were transferred away from Pabbo, the majority left towards Juba or Gulu. Some few who no longer had husbands in the military were brought back to Congo by UNHCR and IOM.
33. Author's interview, August 23, 2008.
34. Author's interview, August 15, 2008.
35. This refers to abstinence and partner reduction.
36. Author's interview, July 19, 2008.
37. Author's interview, August 7, 2008.
38. Author's interview, July 31, 2008.
39. Author's interview, January 16, 2010.
40. Author's interview, January 17, 2010.
41. Author's Interview, January 24, 2010.
42. Author's interview, January 15, 2010.
43. Author's interview, August 8, 2008.
44. Author's interview, January 17, 2010.
45. Authors interview, January 22, 2010.
46. Author's interview, January 24, 2010.
47. Author's interview, January 24, 2010.