First thing on our first full day, we met with Haffa (malaria coordinator for ADEO), Gilbot (HIV coordinator for ADEO), and Pauline (director of ADEO here) to create our schedule for the week and convey our list of objectives for our project. Gilbot was amazingly helpful, telling us which NGO players would be great to interview, and even made the calls to schedule meetings. He’s been the one helping us get place to place, making sure we’re safe, and being a great resource for information about the camps.
At the top of our agenda was “courtesy call” meetings. Before anything gets done around here, you need to meet all the players to let them know who you are and why you’re here…and ask EVERYONE for their permission and blessing. Gilbot took us to the UNHCR offices within the compound to meet with Martin (senior public health officer for the UNHCR) where we bombarded him with questions about the history of the camps and UNHCRs role here. Before leaving, we asked Martin how he got involved in his current job here. He explained that he worked for the ICRC for many years, an organization based around neutrality and confidentiality, and wanted to experience something completely different by working with the UNHCR. We asked him why he got involved in humanitarian work in the first place, and the conversation abruptly got awkward when he responded “well that’s a very personal question,” and he didn’t seem eager to elaborate any further!
Our next stop was a meeting with the DC (district coordinator). The DC and DRA (director of refugee affairs) change every few months, sometimes it’s a short posting, sometimes people ask to leave and be posted elsewhere because this is a hard place to work, and sometimes people even intentionally screw up so that they’ll be reposted elsewhere. It seems inefficient, since it takes a while to get in the swing of things and get to know people around here, but that’s just how it works. We thought these would be quick meetings and we’d be on our way to the camp, and the meeting with the DC was in fact only about 3 minutes long, but the DRA was not quite as easy going. Although we already had permission from the UNHCR and the PMO for the northeastern province, the DRA insisted that we needed permission from the government – he kept referring to “the commissioner in Nairobi” – before we could enter the camp and do any filming. He told us to go home, type up an application (I asked if there was a formal application and he smiled and just told me to “just type one”…). Within an hour we had our “Official Application for Permission to Enter the Refugee Camps at Dadaab” typed, printed and submitted, and it was magically approved shortly thereafter. Ah how I love bureaucracy.
We finally headed out to the hospital in the Ifo camp. To give you an idea of how things are set up, there are 3 refugee camps here, about 250,000 people total. Each of the 3 camps has 5 health outposts (so there’s one outpost for anywhere from 15,000-23,000 people) which is where they get their outpatient care. From there, they can be referred to the hospital at their camp, so there are 3 total hospitals here, and each one is run by a different organization (Doctors w/o Borders, GTZ, and International Rescue Committee). The Ifo hospital has about 99 beds, and are building new isolation wards for TB, measles, and cholera. The doctors at Ifo were mostly Kenyan. One really cool part of the visit was also a little shocking. A man came up and stood right next to me, I assumed he had severe burn scars all over his face and eyes, but we later found out he has SEVERE ichthyosis (warning – if you google images of this disorder, be prepared because it can pretty shocking!). He’s a Somali refugee who, upon coming to the camp, frightened the children here and was frequently stoned because of his appearance. The hospital took him in and he now lives and works there, they wanted to show the people in the camps that they accept everyone, which I thought was pretty awesome.
One of the most moving parts of the day was when Preska (an outreach nurse in the camps) took us to the “blocks” (each camp is divided into ~9 sections, 1 section = 120 blocks, 1 block = 14-15 houses = 700-800 people). We were invited in to meet with a Congolese family that Preska has worked with over the last 6 months. Their current housing consisted of a large room with 4 walls, all made of large sticks and branches that are tied together with twine, and a roof also of sticks but with a large UNHCR tarp tied on top. The fact that the walls are so porous was so nice because it let a cool breeze through the room, but I can't imagine how this structure stays intact in any kind of significant storm. The refugees here are given the tarp and some large tree branches, but they are responsable for building their own "home." The floor was also a UNHCR tarp, kept very clean, and a large foam mattress was in the corner. Preska told us that all the different nationalities represented here at the camps have maintained their own separate identity in terms of how their houses are built, how they look inside and how tidy they're kept, how the people dress, and the food they prepare, and we hope to see what she means when we go back to visit with other families. Five years ago during the war in Congo, Marcel (the dad) got split up from his wife and children, he ended up in Kenya and they in Tanzania. Four years passed and they each figured the other was dead. Then one day, the wife completely randomly ran in to an old acquaintance who had heard that Marcel was in a camp in Kenya, so they were able to be reunited…….Is that not completely amazing??? His wife also had taken in the children of a friend of theirs who had been killed, so now they are a family of 8, struggling here. One of the children, a girl, her right shoulder is permanently dislocated from being severely beaten when she was in Congo during the war. To find some brighter side of all this tragedy, there are mental health services in the camp hospitals so people can get counseling and medication if needed.
After digesting the Ifo camp experience, and then digesting lunch (which everyday consists of rice, ugali, salty broth with tough meat, and cabbage/onion deliciousness), we had an interview with NCCK (National Council of Churches of Kenya). I have to admit, I tried to read about their organization the night before, and all I could find online (remember – I’m using a dial-up speed connection so I can only surf the web for short increments of time before I get ridiculously frustrated at how slow each page loads!) was info on their religious activities, so I walked in to this interview with my own stereotypes and preconceptions about what they were probably doing in the camps, and what their limitations were. Boy, was I totally wrong. We spent most of the interview talking about their harm-reduction model for safer sex practices among female sex workers in the camp, and their family-planning efforts among the families here. Of course they encourage sex workers to find other jobs (and they have job training available), but for women who want to stay in “the business,” they also provide “client negotiation skills training.” They’ve also managed to get condom dispensers put up around the camps, but are still struggling with willingness to get HIV tested because there have been many issues with confidentiality, or lack thereof. We didn’t have time to talk with them about it, but they also do peace education, and help with contruction within the camps. Overall I was sooo impressed with what they do, we all expected to hear about abstinence campaigns.
One of the most moving parts of the day was when Preska (an outreach nurse in the camps) took us to the “blocks” (each camp is divided into ~9 sections, 1 section = 120 blocks, 1 block = 14-15 houses = 700-800 people). We were invited in to meet with a Congolese family that Preska has worked with over the last 6 months. Their current housing consisted of a large room with 4 walls, all made of large sticks and branches that are tied together with twine, and a roof also of sticks but with a large UNHCR tarp tied on top. The fact that the walls are so porous was so nice because it let a cool breeze through the room, but I can't imagine how this structure stays intact in any kind of significant storm. The refugees here are given the tarp and some large tree branches, but they are responsable for building their own "home." The floor was also a UNHCR tarp, kept very clean, and a large foam mattress was in the corner. Preska told us that all the different nationalities represented here at the camps have maintained their own separate identity in terms of how their houses are built, how they look inside and how tidy they're kept, how the people dress, and the food they prepare, and we hope to see what she means when we go back to visit with other families. Five years ago during the war in Congo, Marcel (the dad) got split up from his wife and children, he ended up in Kenya and they in Tanzania. Four years passed and they each figured the other was dead. Then one day, the wife completely randomly ran in to an old acquaintance who had heard that Marcel was in a camp in Kenya, so they were able to be reunited…….Is that not completely amazing??? His wife also had taken in the children of a friend of theirs who had been killed, so now they are a family of 8, struggling here. One of the children, a girl, her right shoulder is permanently dislocated from being severely beaten when she was in Congo during the war. To find some brighter side of all this tragedy, there are mental health services in the camp hospitals so people can get counseling and medication if needed.
After digesting the Ifo camp experience, and then digesting lunch (which everyday consists of rice, ugali, salty broth with tough meat, and cabbage/onion deliciousness), we had an interview with NCCK (National Council of Churches of Kenya). I have to admit, I tried to read about their organization the night before, and all I could find online (remember – I’m using a dial-up speed connection so I can only surf the web for short increments of time before I get ridiculously frustrated at how slow each page loads!) was info on their religious activities, so I walked in to this interview with my own stereotypes and preconceptions about what they were probably doing in the camps, and what their limitations were. Boy, was I totally wrong. We spent most of the interview talking about their harm-reduction model for safer sex practices among female sex workers in the camp, and their family-planning efforts among the families here. Of course they encourage sex workers to find other jobs (and they have job training available), but for women who want to stay in “the business,” they also provide “client negotiation skills training.” They’ve also managed to get condom dispensers put up around the camps, but are still struggling with willingness to get HIV tested because there have been many issues with confidentiality, or lack thereof. We didn’t have time to talk with them about it, but they also do peace education, and help with contruction within the camps. Overall I was sooo impressed with what they do, we all expected to hear about abstinence campaigns.
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