WHERE IS HOME?
A tall slender man, with jet-black skin, sits on the parched dusty ground in front his new home. One knee of his long legs points up into the clear blue sky and the other languidly lazes to the side. There is nothing for this father to do but wait for his wife and children to come. They are expected in a few days with the rest of the group as they trudge the final stretch of desert from Mogadishu in Somalia to Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya.
He has already registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, scrounged plastic, cardboard and sacks and made his new home ready for his wife and five children. They will be able to rest when they arrive. He looks around at the sea of round, rough shelters that make up this new city. Here, the family can sleep without the fear of soldiers shooting, pillaging, raping, burning, and abducting their sons as recruits. He is doing his best to love and protect his most precious possessions: his family. This is the fall of 2022.
I watched this news clip on the evening news before Christmas. It has remained imprinted on my mind and memories flood back to me. As I looked at the pictures on the news in the fall of 2022, I was amazed to see pictures so similar to the ones I took with my Kodak camera in 1992.
Thirty years ago I visited Dadaab in northeast Kenya. The Refugee Camp in Dadaab was new. War and famine was driving families out of their homeland in neighbouring Somalia. They found refuge at this new camp. Little children, eyes large in their emaciated bodies sat in rows on blue groundsheets in a tent, sipping specially mixed nutritious milk. Another tent had cots for those too weak to walk. Some survived with the extra care as their anxious mothers looked on. One mother stood outside the tent door, privately grieving for her baby son who had just passed from this life.
Since that February day in 1992, children have been born in Dadaab Refugee Camp. They have attended school in one of the makeshift shelters. They played football, went to school and had children of their own. Life goes on, wherever you are situated.
The Kenyan Government gave refuge to needy people, but has not allowed integration into Kenyan society. This was to be a temporary solution to a crisis situation. But the incessant conflict has continued over the decades and is now erupting in intensity again. It has led to the destruction of the country’s agriculture and consequently to nationwide famine again.
The Kenyan government has announced Dadaab Refugee Camp is to be closed in June 2023. I wonder about the dramtic life changes that will result.
Some young adult Somalis who were born and raised in Dadaab Refugee Camp have already relocated in Somalia. You cannot say they “returned” since they never “came”. Some are saying they received a good education at the camp and are happily settled into their country of heritage, though not birth. There are dangers in Somalia, but they decided to face the high risks and live there.
Other young adult Somalis, who are still living at Dadaab Refugee Camp, do not want to repatriate to their homeland. In Somalia, extremists are funding their armies with the sale of charcoal. The landscape is denuded of trees for this industry. Drought is causing the death of animals and people again. Soldiers terrify, attack, rob and rape. They kill and abduct boys to train as killers. In the refugee camp, these young adults have been spared the traumatic experiences their parents endured. They want to earn a living, marry, have a family and live peaceably.
It seems it is time to resettle the residents of Dadaab Refugee Camp. For each person the move will be an upheaval. It is my hope and prayer that each individual will have some choices. Some will have the adventurous spirit and the guts to face the worst that man can do to man. Others will not. Hopefully, regulations will allow some to join family members already established in more peaceful areas and some to be welcomed where their skills and desire to live a peaceful life will be appreciated.
Yes, it is time to close down this temporary measures accommodation for those fleeing terror and violence. How are we going to do this so that the humanitarian crisis of thirty years ago does not escalate the humanitarian crisis that already exists in the Horn of Africa?
The Somali girl in the picture is happily holding a Canadian postcard picture of a black bear cub I gave her. My little daughter, back home with her family in Ontario was about the same age. Thirty years later my daughter has a daughter of her own. I wonder where this Somali woman is living now. Is she still in the refugee camp at Dadaab with children of her own?
by Andrea Kidd
