Working against disability

Elastina Abote
Memories of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency that claimed many lives in northern Uganda will perhaps forever live in the mind of Elastina Abote. Not only was her security at stake, but she would go without food for some days, in the internally displaced people’s camps (IDP) she lived in, in Lira District.
When Abote was two years old, her father recalls, she developed an illness that affected her legs. Though he visited many hospitals, the search for his daughter’s treatment was in vain. She became permanently disabled.
When I meet her in Agweng Sub-county, she is shelling maize seeds off the cobs into a saucepan under a mango tree, outside her grass-thatched house.
She welcomes us with a word of prayer. Because I do not understand Langi, I did not realise that she was praying until I saw everyone’s head was bowed down, with their eyes closed.
“During the LRA war, we fled our home and found ourselves in IDPs in Lira town. We spent 10 years in the camps. When peace finally returned to the region in the late 90s, able bodied people returned to their homes. I did not know where home was because my family had abandoned me in the camp. They never wanted me to claim a share of the family land.”
In her culture, a woman is not supposed to own land unless she has bought it using personal resources. To stop her from claiming some land, she was left in the camp.
Through Harriet Acen, chairperson of Odokoamidu Association for Disabled Women, Abote learned of Lira District Disabled Women’s Association (LIDDWA), a disabled women’s group that promotes their rights to own property, access education and good health.
“When I discovered that Abote was abandoned and homeless in the camp, I shared her story with LIDDWA,” Acen recalls. “We held negotiations between her and her father so that he could accept her back into his home.”
Abote says, “When I was finally allowed to return home, my father gave me two acres of land and we signed an agreement which was witnessed by the Agweng Local Council I and III chairpersons, LIDDWA chairperson, clan members, and members of the community.”
LIDDWA mobilised resources and materials from the village and built for the disabled woman a grass-thatched house.

Utilising the land
Holding a hoe that is almost four times taller than her, Abote tills her garden of pigeon peas, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and beans.
“We eat the food at home and sell off the surplus to pay school fees for the three grandchildren I take care of. My daughter abandoned them here and disappeared. My other daughter is mentally ill.”
She sells half a kilogram of beans between Shs500 – Shs800, using the profits to buy ingredients to make pancakes for sale.
“When the children fall sick, I borrow money from the village sacco to cater for their medical bills. With my savings from the sacco, I bought a goat at Shs 80,000,” she said.
A stone throw away from her grass thatched house, Abote is constructing, with the help of LIDDWA, a two-room permanent house. Currently, it has reached the ring beam. Most of the funds for the building came from her pancake business and the sale of her produce.