From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERLIVING WITH RISKIt is hard to imagine a more precarious life than that of the Karimojongin northern Uganda. Semi-nomadic herders, or pastoralists, they livewithin fierce thorn stockades, scattered across a baked dusty plain.Visitors must crawl through tiny gaps to get through the defences,which have been set up against cattle raiders from other pastoralistgroups. Nearby, charred hut circles show where an army attack recentlyburned a number of elderly villagers to death, along with a womanwho was in the middle of giving birth. Drought is a constant threat,although today the earth smells hot and damp from the first rains,bringing out a horde of brilliant red beetles.However, the Karimojong are anything but victims, and constantlyseek ways to minimise the risks they face. Sitting on cowhides outsidetheir huts, members of a women’s group describe how they set up acommunal grain bank, and how they now buy sorghum when it ischeap at harvest time, store it in large wicker and mud granaries, andsell it back to the villagers during the hungry months. ‘It’s better towork as a group – it gives you strength,’ they say. ‘In a group you cannever be lazy, you get motivated.’ The benefits extend to controllingtheir husbands’ alcohol consumption: ‘If you have a family granary,it’s harder to say no to your husband or son when they come and askfor sorghum to make beer.’ Laughing, they add that they still keepa small stock at home just in case their husbands become tooinsistent.198