It is 7AM. The bells of the church next door call the people to come for morning prayers. I drink my tea on the veranda, watching the mist slowly disappear from the mountains at the Sudanese border. It’s only a few miles from here. A scenic view now, but only a few years ago this is where the LRA rebels would come from. Based behind the mountains, crossing to Uganda to loot and abduct people on the way back. The house where I am staying was surrounded by thousands of huts that comprised the IDP camp. People started to move back home only in 2008 and the camp huts were demolished, while some remained here.

I go back to my notes; in half an hour the former camp commandant of the IDP camp of this sub-county will come for a visit. He agreed to do series of biographic interviews about his position in the community since his childhood and later on as a camp leader from 1998-2008. We meet 3 or 4 times a week, usually after he has attended morning prayers.

When the IDP camps started in Kitgum district the humanitarian agencies preferred to work with new leadership structures that were to be elected by the camp residents themselves. The agencies feared that formal local government structures could be biased and use humanitarian relief for political ends, but also the system itself was weakened by so many years of war. By electing camp leaders on different levels the political bias should be diminished.

The camp commandants headed the camp, followed by zone leaders, block leaders or parish leaders and village leaders. I am intrigued by the camp leadership that functioned during the camp time. They were not government, not NGO like, not military. But they performed tasks linked to each of them. What gave them a lot of power was their control over food distribution and household registration on the food list. During the field work I heard many stories about how helpful such a leader could be when a name was missing from the food list. However, also how this power was abused in terms of getting food or money from people, else your name would be crossed of the list.

Interestingly, all camp leaders I interviewed had a history in political leadership in one way or another. Many had been Local Council chair persons at various levels or civil servants like Parish Chiefs. One camp commandant I met had even been a soldier, first under Obote, then a ‘rebel’ fighting Museveni’s regime in the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) in the late 1980, and he finally crossed over to the National Resistance Army (NRA) of the current government. In his case, his history in the military influenced his relationship with the people he was leading in the camp. People have a particular form of respect, mixed with fear and obedience, for military leaders. They would not dare to protest when he used his powers to get more food from the agencies.

Electing camp leaders can help establishing their legitimacy, but we cannot ignore that they themselves have their particular histories. In many cases of camp leaders I came across, these histories were very much political. Perhaps they are not as neutral as the aid agencies sometimes assume. Then, it is also interesting to follow how these leaders continue after the IDP camps started phasing out in 2008.

The camp commandant I interviewed this month went back to teaching, but will compete in next year’s elections for sub-county chair person of the council (LC3). Everybody knows him and he seems to be still very popular. Though his function is officially over people still address him as ‘commandant’. One of the village leaders, the lowest level of camp leadership, told me about the skills he learnt in the 10 years he served his people; talking in public, administrating household numbers, settling minor disputes. Now that he has returned home to his village of origin, he uses these skills as chair person of the School Management Committee of the primary school, chair person of a saving group of 20 members, and chair person of the care taker committee of the borehole. As bad as conditions were in the camp, in his case the camp situation was an opportunity to develop himself.

So, the camp situation may have a moment defined for its start and phase out -more or less, but the people that lived there it is different. They arrived there with their histories and left again, carrying their various camp experiences home. I hope to find out next which experiences they still use!