When we returned to the Across compund after visiting a Refuge camp, I sat down and had a cup of tea with some people who work at Across. They asked me what I thougth of the camps, and I told them that I thought they were amazing - that they tore down my preconceived ideas of refugee camps and that I felt in some ways they were model African villages.
That is when this comment emerged - refugees just aren't what they used to be.
Both of these men are survivors of the civil unrest in Sudan decades ago. They fled their villages when the fighting came and joined the exudus into Uganda/Congo. These are the days before the UNHCR (United Nations High Commision for Refugees). Refugees were dropped in a field with a machette and a hoe. In the rainy season they might get a tarp. They had to build their lives from scratch, finding a way to work in the surrounding villages for food and seeds. They had to find ways to make a shelter, but this was often impossible. The lucky children would find a school run by the Catholic church and get their school fees waived. While they could go to school, they had to learn the local language and adapt into the system.
They stopped their stories there, but implied thing which they could not telling me. With no rights in the community, no protection from wild animals, no medical assistance, no food assistance, no organisation fighting for them, they did whatever it took to survive but witnessed horrible events. In spite of this, both men went on to go to university, find jobs, raise families, and now work for Across in their newly independent country.
Times have changed. In the internationally supported refugee camps there are schools for children in their local languages, free clinics, medical supplies, food, training on how to grow food, seeds, community education, sanitation and building materials for houses. There is constant assesment and re-assesment of the refugees, and several organisations monitering the situation both in the camps and back in their home countries.
And yet the complaints from people in the camps come flooding in if any of the programs do not work. The constant demand for more and more to be given to them is difficult for organisations to manage. There are also growning concerns with 'dependency syndrome' of the refugees, their motivation/ability to integrate into society, and their desire make the effort to create their own futures for their families.
I appreciate the challenge that this raises from the people of the older generation, the ones who survived and thrived with such little support and now manage these camps. I can also appreciate that times have changed, refugees are a major international issue, and the world is no longer standing by and letting displaced people suffer without supporting their basic needs.
After this conversation I was left with the feeling I get so many times here - what is the solution?! I walked away as I usually do having the sense that solution are not what I can uncover, but rather an appreciation for the complexity.
