Vanishing Catholic hill tribe fights for survival in Uganda
Sept 5, 2005 (Kamion) — High in the remote, mist-shrouded and densely forested mountains of northeastern Uganda, the isolated Ik hill tribe is fighting for survival against disease, hunger and raids by warlike neighbors.
Cut off from the outside world without radio, television, telephones or electricity and accessible by only a single dirt track, the peaceful community of hunter-gatherers has lost a quarter of its population in the past 15 years.
Now numbering just 4,000 people, the Ik fear the extinction of their unique identity, culture, language and Catholic faith as they struggle against increasing hardships with little, if any, assistance, officials and elders say.
Having arrived more than 200 years ago from Ethiopia and settled around the game-rich Timu forest, some 700 kilometers (450 miles) northeast of present-day Kampala, the Ik once roamed and hunted freely through the game-rich Timu Forest.
But now under constant threat from nearby semi-nomadic warrior tribes — the Dodoth of Uganda and Turkana of Kenya — the Ik have been pushed further into the 3,000-meter (10,000-foot) hills where the borders of Uganda, Kenya and Sudan meet.
Fleeing frequent raids and Dodoth-Turkana clashes which have turned their traditional hunting grounds into a battlefield, the IK are now out of range of most government agencies and relief groups.
“We want to maintain our culture,” elder Tomas Chilla told reporters in Kamion, a tiny hamlet over looking the Rift Valley. “We want our children to be taught to write about our culture and maintain our language.”
“We need government protection,” said another elder, Paulina Ngoga. “We need government support in education.”
The community has just two primary schools and was only recently able to construct a clinic that eliminated at least some of the need for the long trek on foot to the nearest medical facility more than 30 kilometers (20 miles) away.
Diseases, particularly malaria, have taken a harsh toll on the Ik and in 1980 hundreds were killed in a cholera epidemic after which many able-bodied survivors left to seek jobs across the border in Kenya, elders said.
Only four Iks have ever attended high school and none of them is employed, according to community leaders who said they know of only one Ik in Uganda who now holds a paying job and he lives in Gulu about 170 kilometers (110 miles) away.
“The Ik people are the real case of deprivation and social injustice,” said one social worker. “No single social facility has ever been erected in the area by the authorities, making them the worst of the needy among the needy of Karamoja.”
With their fierce adherence to Catholicism and a language not understood by any surrounding tribes, the Ik are an anamoly in Uganda’s Karamoja region, a mainly semi-arid area recently beset by a vicious cycle of droughts and floods.
“Blessing the harvest and the seeds to grow well with the cross is exclusive to us and we dont want this diluted,” Chilla said, vowing to fight a perceived threat from proselytisers. “We want to maintain our Christian values.”
AFP/ST.