Uganda: Seven-year-old twins become breadwinners

Bare-chested with their potbellies greeting the eyes of any visitor who enters the grass-thatched hut they call home, seven-year-old Aaron Opio and Doreen Acen are not merely children but breadwinners for themselves.
What they call their place of abode, has the power to invite tears, it is a doorless house with barely any beddings.
This is where the twins find comfort to rest when dusk falls, they say, most often on empty stomachs.
A tattered piece of dirty bedsheet, half piece of parched mattress and a broken green basin is all they own, in Acyekitoyo Village, Kaga Parish, Ochero Sub-county.
Opio and Acen were sired by an unknown father with their mother, who is mentally ill, and identified as Christine Asege.
Their mother’s daily way of life is that of giggling around Akampala Landing Site in Ochero Sub-county on the shores of Lake Kyoga.
The twins also have a nine-year-old brother, Denis Eriku, whose father is unknown.
To make ends meet, Eriku runs errands around the village; at times herding animals for a day’s pay of Shs1,000. That is the money Opio and Acen patiently wait for at the end of the day to have a meal,
“Since yesterday, we have not had any meal, we have been looking at the footpath that leads back to the house we call home, for our brother to bring something but in vain. Perhaps he has gone herding. I am hungry, and the nights can be cold on an empty stomach,” Acen says in Kumam, her mother tongue.
The little twin girl (Acen) says at times they take days without seeing their mother.  “She was here five days ago with a piece of fish, perhaps from the landing site,” she says, as she stares at the narrow road for a possible return of their brother Eriku.
Ms Joyce Alao, who lives about two kilometres away from the home of these children, says all of Ms Asege’s immediate relatives are dead, so her children find themselves in ‘solitary confinement’ with no close folks to turn to apart from well-wishers.
On a good day, when there are leftovers from the meal served at the nearby community school, the custodians usher the children in for a day’s bite. That gesture is, however, rare.
“As a village mate, I don’t know when I last saw their mother. I no longer hear her giggle, because that is the sign that signals her presence,” Ms Alao says.
The 60-year-old Alao says the village has many destitute children, whose biological parents are unknown. 
“People come here from different parts of Teso to fish. With the nature and character of people, they sire children who are left to the fate of nature,” she explains.
Ms Alao says the situation has worsened due to economic hardship.
“As a village, we have longed to know the father of these children but it has not been possible, nor does the mother know. We believe someone slept with her in the dead of the night, left her pregnant, and the resultant effect are the suffering children,” she told this publication.
According to Opio, some well-wishers had enrolled them to school for Primary One but they opted out due to lack of food.
“At the time when people were busy harvesting potatoes, we would move to homes to help peel, then they would give us a basin full of fresh potatoes,” Opio adds.
“Mummy is not there for us”, Opio says, as he laughs at a lake bird flapping its wings over their mud and wattle grass-thatched hut.  “We don’t have clothes, all we have is what we are currently putting on,” he adds.
Leaders say
Mr Victor Rex Ekesu, the chairperson for Kaberamaido District local government, says the matter of child-headed families has become a common trajectory in Ngora and Soroti because of different circumstances, including death of parents and economic conditions.
As result, in such situations, the elder child takes responsibility of the other siblings.
Mr Ekesu says leaders have tried to talk to relatives to take responsibility, through the social support system which exists within the clan system.
“The proportion of such child-headed families within the district, ranges between, one to two percent. You find a girl of 16 years being the breadwinner, and helping the other little siblings sail through the difficulties of life,”  he adds.
Mr Ekesu adds that at district level, the community based service have interventions, and once in a while they have helped children mitigate the social challenges.