“The place with the picture of maize will feed you”

Agnes Tabu adopted five children because she could not stand to see them suffer after they lost their parents during the South Sudanese war. She gave them a home and protected them. But when fresh fighting broke out in 2016, her life and that of her children were in too much danger. When she told them that they had to leave, they asked:

“But mom, where are we going?”

She told them that they were going on a long journey that would lead them to a place of safety.

“No matter what happens on this journey, know that you can always go to a place with the picture of hands. Those hands are a sign of protection. If you do not see the hands, go to a place where there is a picture of maize and they will feed you. Those pictures are for the UN. They will always give you what you need even though I am not with you,” she told them, referring to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the United Nations World Food Programme emblems. 

With over 1.5 million refugees, Uganda is one of the largest refugee hosting countries in the world. WFP gives food assistance to 1.3 million refugees based in rural areas.

Tabu and her children joined their neighbours on a five-day journey to Uganda, where they had to hide in bushes to avoid being seen. Then she realized her five children had disappeared.

“Somewhere along the road they separated from me. It was like a dislocation. Like when a part of you breaks and disappears.”

But Tabu was certain her children were alive because she had trained them well – exactly for this kind of situation where they might have to survive without her. So, when she arrived in Bidi Bidi she combed the 250 square kilometres that make up the settlement and found out that her children could have settled in Rhino Camp, 100 kilometres way. Tabu scraped together money for her second journey and, six months later, she was in Rhino.

It was August, a rainy month, and, as was now their routine, her five children were waiting at the reception centre for new arrivals.

“They told me that every day they would wake up and come straight to the centre to wait for me. This was their life every day of the six months we were apart,” Tabu says.

With every arrival that was not their mother, hope dimmed. She could have disappeared like many others. Maybe someone would bring the news about how she was slaughtered on the way... This August afternoon was threatening to be yet another day of listless waiting and uncertainty when they heard the voice of their mother – not from the new arrivals as they had anticipated but from among the people already in the settlement.

The world stopped. They ran to her. Tears mixed with the rain as they hugged and tried to cover themselves with a small piece of UNHCR blue tarpaulin.

“They told me, ‘Mother, we followed the UN signs. The UN saved us.’”