Not What I Expected

We had an incredible and super short notice opportunity to drive up to Dadaab refugee camp in this our last week in Grssa!  We'd asked Jason, our supervisor, if he could arrange for us to visit sometime during our internship but it just never worked out until this week, when we realized it would be now or never for most of us.  So the eight of us plus Jason piled into his truck and drove the 100 kilometers (60 miles-ish) North towards the border...I'm guessing you can use your brains and figure out which border that would be without my spelling it out, I mean where else would Kenya be receiving refugees from? haha

So even though it's only 100 kilometers, the road can be quite a challenge when it rains, which thanks to some Bethany short term folks who prayed for rain when they came a few months ago, we've had a TON of recently!  Thankfully, the last few days have been dryer so although we could see the nasty tire marks and imagine what it would have been like if it were really wet, we made in through in a record 2 hours instead of the typical 4 or occasional 8 hours it takes after a rain.  

Dadaab was not at ALL what I was expecting.  In my mind, I was preparing myself for the worst-mass chaos, malnourished children everywhere, horrible smell, etc...those are the things I think of when I picture a refugee camp.  But in actuality, the issues and problems of the Dadaab camps are much more complex and harder to see as an outsider.

We helped plant some trees to counteract the deforestation issue in Dadaab

First of all, Dadaab actually isn't the refugee camp, it's the town that's about 10 kilometers away from each of the three camps-Dagahaley, Ifo, and Hagadera.  The town used to be a tiny village with a few hundred people, but then the camps were moved away from the border and further into Kenya for obvious safety reasons, and Dadaab became like a city of NGO's and laborers.  It was crazy to see so many UN vehicles in one place!  The camps began in 1991 when civil war sent massive groups of people across the border, and to this day, refugees continue to pour into Kenya.  Depending on the intensity of the fighting, anywhere from hundreds to thousands of new refugees still arrive daily, almost 20 years later.  

Each of the camps were constructed to serve about 30,000 people, and at the very lowest estimates they hold around 90,000 each.  It's hard to envision such vast numbers, but just imagine a stadium that should seat 30,000 being packed with three people per seat...not pleasant.  Now imagine what we would consider a modest three bedroom home, but instead of a family of 4, smash twelve in that living space.  Go a step further and picture one of those bedrooms that one child would usually have to himself and try to fit your entire family there.  Yeah, not pretty.  Especially on such a large scale, that much overcrowding is the source of all the problems in the camps, from sanitation difficulties to deforestation caused by so many foraging for firewood in such a small area.  There's just not enough space to adequately care for everyone as they should be.

Water distribution in Ifo (photo from unhcr.org)

However, for all the issues these camps have, they are way more organized and maintenanced than I expected.  Obviously, I only spent a day there and I don't see all that goes on behind closed doors, so I don't claim to have a perfect perspective.  But there were no barbed wire fences with starving children begging to escape the camp (in fact the only barbed wire was around the UNHCR compound to keep people out not in), the homes looked just about the same as the huts you see in the bush with varying degrees of permanence, there were elementary and high schools, there's a fully operational hospital, and just about any development project you could imagine has been adopted by one NGO or another.  There is an incredible inflow of money being funneled to the camps, and awareness has been raised about this decades old issue, so those aren't the main problems.  

Whether or not the money makes it to the refugees or community surrounding them is definitely an issue however, as well as the greater task of making a way for the refugees to go home.  That dream is all but lost for most people I've interacted with so far...so few even have the desire to return to their homeland let alone work to fix the problems that sent them away in the first place.  There is a whole generation of people called Somalis that have never even been to Somalia and have absolutely no intention of living there one day...how sad is that?  For us as Americans that might be a hard thing to connect with-that link to a place of ancestry, but when I talk to Kenyans one of the first things we talk about is the part of the country they are from and the things that make it 'their' place, like the fish on the coast or the mountain in central Kenya.  The land is part of the identity and culture, but for a whole generation who have grown up in a city of refugees, there is little connection to home.  I hope that one day someone with strong leadership and good character will rise up to lead these people home, away from killing and burning and back to family and rich heritage.  

I'm very glad I was able to personally see these camps, and I'm also glad to find that they aren't horrific, although I know life there is far from easy.  I'm sure ten or fifteen years ago, these camps would fit my initial picture of a refugee camp, complete with starvation, disease and chaos, but after so long they've become more like cities than camps and as such they have all the problems of caring for refugees along with the challenges of a city.  They may be better organized and have the supplies to care for the people, but as in any city there are those who get lost in the system and forgotten.  And more importantly, there are thousands and thousands of people there who are desperate and hungry for truth, like any other city with the added pressure of being refugees.

The road home was much more wet and slippery!

What a way to end huh?  Great experience...glad we left when we did because we took the rain with us!  The drive back was a bit more exciting...if Jason ever lives in the US again he's going to get so bored driving on smooth, straight, not-muddy and slippery roads!  Oh and there are no giraffes to stand right next to the road and get freaked out when he drives by and stumble off awkwardly, like also happened on the way back! haha!  Only in Kenya.