Tale of Congolese teenager as refugee in Uganda

Sixteen year old Brisma Venne has leaved in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in the western Ugandan district of Hoima for seven years. He does not know what became of his parents but all he remembers was he and his siblings were separated from their parents by one of the many brutal insurgencies in the east of the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). "We ran to the Ugandan border town of Butogota. That is where we were put on buses to here," said soft spoken Venne. Here at Kyangwali, one of the biggest refugee settlements in Uganda, Venne doubles as a school child, a petty worker as well as heading a family of four children. At his school, Kyangwali Primary School, as his peers took a refreshment break on the morning of Oct. 27, Venne was outside the school in a rather somber mood. He was heading to a nearby police post to seek protection from what he called a gruesome client whom he built a house but failed to impress. Besides this, Venne bares the burden of taking care of his siblings, a responsibility that has greatly affected his performance at school, according to the school authorities. "I always wake up at six to go and fetch water. I must tell my young children to wake up, wash plates and go to school and mine sometimes is to go school but I don't finish the whole day at school, I just use like half," he told Xinhua in an interview. "Sometimes I even escape like at 10 O'clock because I find there is no what to eat when the food has ended in the house," he added. Isaac Namanya is a teacher at Rwenyawawa Primary School, another school in the neighborhood of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement. His responsibilities among others include offering career guidance to children and painting a picture for them of a bright future. Ordinarily his primary three class would constitute of 83 pupils on full attendance but on the day Xinhua visited, there were less than half of the pupils attending class. Namanya attributed the low class attendance to the problem of child-headed families. "They come at school late; they don't do the real work because you find that at home they are supposed to dig. We try to encourage them; try to tell them the value of education, what the benefits are when you study," he said. Venne is not alone; there are other child-headed families that are going through the same agony each and every day. There are no readily available statistics of child-headed refugee families. Statistics by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office here indicate that there are about 156,500 refugees in Uganda. These are mainly from the DRC, Sudan, Rwanda, Somalia and other neighboring countries. The endless political insurgencies in neighboring countries have seen more people crossing into Uganda to seek refugee. the UNHCR attributes this to the relative political and economic stability in the country. Statistics by the refugee agency show that since this year started, over 1,000 refugees mostly women and children have crossed in to Uganda from the eastern DRC. The UN agency estimates that the number of refugees in Uganda is likely to increase despite efforts to repatriate the refugees back home and third-country resettlement. To reduce the burden the UNHCR faces as it fulfills its mandate of taking care of refugees, countries have continued to contribute funds to the organization. On Oct. 27, Japan pledged four million U.S. dollars to the agency's activities in the country next year. This was on top of four million dollars that the Asian country had pledged for this year. "Of course we have our own problems. Because of this, we now have a strong sense of sympathy to those people suffering from many natural calamities like for the case of refugees. That is the reason why we continue to extend our support to many countries including Uganda," said Kazuo Minagawa, Japanese ambassador to Uganda. The funding will support UNHCR activities in refugees' healthcare, education, psychosocial and trauma service and infrastructure development