Word: moruongor
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Dates: during 2008-2008
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...total operating budget. But today's food and fuel shortages don't just mean higher costs; they also introduce new elements of unpredictability to getting aid to those who need it. The day after distributing to Lokali parish, WFP officers in Karamoja are out again in nearby Moruongor. But the food trucks only trundle up to the distribution point at noon, three hours after recipients began gathering along the side of the dirt road. The reason for the delay: the weekend's diesel delivery never arrived from Kampala. "We spent most of the morning getting the little bit of fuel...
...vital to what WFP workers call the "exit strategy" - getting to a point where food aid is unnecessary. But as food prices rise and budgets become less predictable, programs like these are also the first to be slashed. Martin Devenish, an Irish priest who runs a technical college near Moruongor parish, is proud to be teaching trades that could bring industry to Karamoja: carpentry, tailoring and bricklaying. Today dozens of adult students sit at benches, eating their midday meal, mostly corn provided by WFP. But each time the priest turns on the radio and hears about possible food-aid cuts...
...Back in Moruongor, as the day gets to its hottest, two men shout that the hand-outs have gone all wrong. "The ones who need food most can't fight for it," says one, Losike John D'Porox. "Widows, orphans, they should be fed first." Then everyone else, he asserts, should be enrolled in food-for-work programs, improving the roads, digging water ponds and farming. "That's what can help people," he says - and he may be right. Long-term, WFP's only way out of Karamoja will come when the region is self-sufficient once again. Getting there...
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