Giving vulnerable people better housing
Dor Peter has been living in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda since 2001, after fleeing fighting in in Bentiu, Sudan (before cessation). He set up a temporary mud-walled and grass-thatched house soon afterward, and in 2005 with the support of friends he built another one.
Peter, 44, who is physically challenged, last year reported to the AAH Uganda office about the rickety state of his house as rainwater would seep into it through the walls and roof.
“I am glad that they listened to my plea and build for me a house in October 2014,” he says with a smile, adding that he was also assisted to plant maize and beans on a half an acre piece of land. He says the crops will make him food secure and he will sell the surplus.
The house is mud-walled and grass-thatched. It is sturdy (thick walls and grass layer), meant to last several years. Peter has spruced his house, including its entry.
Another beneficiary of a similar house, Petero Rimenya, 77, has been living in a ramshackle hut in for five years. Rimenya came to Kyangwali six years ago from Rumangabo, North Kivu Province, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He lost all his four children and wife, due to conflict.
He lives in Munsisa B Village. “It is a much better house. My former house had started leaning and was almost falling,” says the elderly man.
The chairman of Munsisa B Village, Lazarus Ndagijimana, 43, says many of the beneficiaries were living in houses whose walls and roofs had gaping holes. “Petero used to request us to assist him; there are days he would cry. We appreciate the well-built houses,” says Ndagijimana, who fled fighting in North Kivu in 2008.
Kampaya Mpaso, an official with AAH Uganda in the Community Services sector, says since 2013, they have built 150 mud-walled houses. AAH Uganda competitively secures a contractor to construct the houses. “We seek to assist the most vulnerable in the 22 villages of the settlement such as the elderly and physically disabled,” says Mpaso, adding that Munsisa B has a population of 1320 people.