EARTHWARD
Meet Peter Okello*
Turn your vision earthward –
'Tis we must lend a hand.
Samuel P. Putnam
I am a refugee living in Kenya with my wife, Elizabeth*, my daughters, Celine* (15), Alicia* (11), Amy* (7), and my sons, Edmond* (13) and Mick* (4). We fled Uganda and arrived in Kenya four years ago. The main reason for us fleeing Uganda was an attack by the LRA ... LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY on our village in Otwal, Northern Uganda. In that attack, in September 1999, we lost my late brother, Joseph*, and Anna*, daughter of my sister, Sarah*, who were abducted by the LRA. Nothing is known of Anna's* fate. Joseph's* body was found in a potatoe plantation, two weeks after the LRA invasion, totally decomposed. The three of us, Joseph*, Sarah* and I, had grown up surviving as orphans. I do not know where Sarah* is right now, but I think she is alive and possibly in one of the camps the Uganda government set up to protect people from LRA attacks. The rebels have in the past, according to press reports reaching us here in Kenya, attacked and killed many right within these camps! The LRA is still very operative in the region.
Unfortunately, our application to register as refugees was not successful in Kenya. This resulted in the UN office in Nairobi counting us out of any assistance they otherwise could have extended to us! I was sentenced to two years in prison, for working and living in Kenya illegally. The jailing was instigated by a powerful Christian lady, from a highly influential famlily in a Christian ministry, connected to the present Vice President of Kenya. I served 16 months before being released in September 2002.
We now live on the fifth floor of a six-story building which also houses about 120 other people. Our survival has been due to good friends from the Luo tribe, which is a major tribe in Kenya. They are very social and kind. They have provided food and sometimes rent money. I have also done some odd simple jobs, such as cleaning, guarding and gardening. I also sometimes drove. Yet we hunger, live in fear and great lack. We have no food, and the water we use is not safe, in fact many times the impure unsafe water mixes with sewage waste water! We have not paid a rent amount coming up to 14,800 kenya shillings; as the new month comes we have no direction on this. My malaria symptoms do not seem too bad at the moment, but I do think that I still need a medical examination to be sure I am okay. Malaria, typhoid, coughs and T.B. are very common here.
What has been done to help the Okello* family? Please click here.
* To protect the privacy of the family concerned, fictitious names are used throughout this website, in reference to all members of that family.
| Imagine Meet Peter* What's Done? What's Next? Hell on Earth |