Karamajong on the streets

Today as I joined Dwelling Places once again for the Medical Outreach at Reytrak, it was mostly ladies with health issues. As each lady came in, some only knowing Swahili, others only knowing only Karamajong, we had others translate. It was heart-breaking as they told of their sick children that were not with them. When asking where they were, they replied that someone had taken them, meaning they were on the streets begging for anything one would give them.

In certain areas of Kampala, the Karamajong beg those walking by as well as at car windows as your are stopped by a red light. Often it’s mothers or young children carrying infant babies. It’s nothing new in Kampala, and I’ve seen it more times than I can count, even having these toddlers come up to me with open palm stretched out. Only knowing that if I place a coin in their hand it will be taken by the mothers.

These Karamajong spend each day at the streets begging, in the scorching sun, averaging about 35 degrees Celcius daily, with only the food and water people give them. It’s not a wonder they are sick and their children as well. They are all malnourished, in extreme weather conditions trying to get their daily bread.

In a few weeks I might be going to Karamoja with Dwelling Places, and really see what their home up north is like, and what would make them come to Kampala.

So many come to the city in search and hopes of a better life, only to find it’s harder. If they had stayed in their villages, and been in the fields digging, it would have been better for them; they’d have enough food, be cared for by family, as it’s a community setting and be living a better life. But once they come to Kampala, they most often can’t afford to return to the villages and are forced to be in the streets begging.

They along with the street children and anyone living on the streets and in the slums are scorned, looked down on and most often treated very badly.

Since partnering with Dwelling Places, God has used them to touch my heart to the Karamajong, not really having known anything about them previously. It’s so sad to see such a lifestyle. We go to the slum to get them for the Medical Outreach, and naked toddlers are running around cooking fires, exposed to everything you can imagine and what you can’t even imagine.

Please be keeping the Karamajong in Kampala in your prayers as we reach out to them, praying their lives are changed by the love of Christ.