The UN’s reduction in emergency rations has hit many in Uganda’s Bidi Bidi settlement hard, but those who have food share with neighbours to keep the festive spirit alive
There is no tinsel to be seen when walking past the 270,000 homes in Bidi Bidi. The neighbouring towns are lit up by Christmas lights but not Africa’s largest refugee settlement, in north-western Uganda, where the huts and shelters sprawl across over 250 square km (96.5 sq miles) of grassland and trees.
This Christmas Eve, residents wash clothes by the spring that slithers out of the bushes and spills across the rocky roads. Some of the huts have had a fresh coat of paint. The smell of freshly slashed grass mixes with that of butchered cows as those families who are able to buy meat in time to smoke and preserve it for Christmas.
