Well, for some families living in the Namuwongo slum in which I work it has not been a very merry season. A large section of the slum in an area dubbed 'Soweto' has been marked for bulldozing to make way for a factory to be built. This means that many of the homes of the families we work with will be destroyed and the families will be forced out. Many of the people that live in the slum have already been displaced from conflict areas like northern Uganda, DRC, Sudan, and Rwanda. They do not own their homes or the land around them, they are in crude terms 'squatters', and thus have very little if any rights when it comes to the sale of the land on which they live. It is very hard to describe the helpless feeling when families come and knock on our office door crying and pleading with us to help them. I spoke with the local councellor to inquire about what rights if any the people had...his response was that they have none. When I pleaded with him that it was Christmas and surely it wasn't right to evict people at Christmas, his response was that 'business doesn't celebrate Christmas'. The picture is of one of the many houses marked for destruction. Unfortunately the organization that I'm with doesn't have the funds to help all these people find a new place to live....I'll keep you posted...
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