Last night, I had a conversation with Charity, one of the people who works at the guest house where I am staying. She told me that she has asthma, and that the dust and trash fires in town tend to induce asthma attacks. Then she told me how, during the LRA insurgency, she would get asthma attacks while sleeping out in the bush, hiding from the LRA soldiers at night. People sleeping next to her would force her to stuff a bed sheet into her mouth in order to muffle her coughs, otherwise the LRA troops walking by might find them and abduct or murder them. She told me about how at night, the streets right outside the place where I am staying would be full of children sleeping, attempting to escape the threat of abduction and murder in the surrounding villages.

Also, guess what? The rainy season in the area is not happening as expected, and for the past few years, rain has been erratic. Some people blame this on Global Warming, others see it as part of a longer cycle of drought years every decade or so. In any case, if there is no rain, or if people misjudge when to plant their crops due to unpredictable rain cycles, there will famine.

The pic below is from a Gulu MSF (Doctors without Borders) shelter circa 2006?