For the last decade, Silus Musasizi has lived on a wetland on the shores of Lake Victoria. For most of that time, Uganda’s government has been trying to chase him away.
Now, it is the water itself that has driven him from his small house on the edge of Entebbe, a Ugandan town that juts into Africa’s largest lake.
Thousands have been displaced from their homes along the shoreline by the worst flooding since records began more than a century ago. Musasizi, who works as a truck driver, is renting a room on higher ground until the waters recede.
“Homes have been destroyed,” said Musasizi, whose family came here originally seeking cheap land. “My friends are now on the streets.”
The Ugandan government has said people like Musasizi are partly to blame for the floods, and wants them to leave the wetlands for good.
It plans to start evicting people without compensation this month – in the middle of a coronavirus lockdown that has hit the poor hardest. Read more…
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