A visit to a refugee camp 3.11

Suddenly Thursday night, Anne and I got the opportunity to go to a refugee camp we’ve been wanting to see. So we left early Friday morning with the bus, and we’re picked up in Mbarara for the next 2 hrs stretch. (The camp was only 60km from the border of Tanzania)

After passing through Isingaro Headquarter District, we were very close. “Everywhere from here is actually part of the camp”, we we’re told. Even after we entered the base camp, it was almost hard to believe (because it didn’t fit into my image of a refugee camp at all, from what I’ve seen on TV from home. The land they were scattered over was huge, so there was no chaos with tents and people everywhere, and there were no food ration ques…)

This is Nakiwaru, the biggest refugee camp in Uganda. There is living somewhere between 22 000- 30 000 refugees here. Most are from Rwanda and Sudan, but they also come from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia,
Tanzania and Kenya. What might also be special with this camp, besides the big size, is that most of the population has actually lived here for at least 10 years, so most of them are more or less settled.

Even local Ugandans are living in this area. Almost the only thing that differs them from the refugees, in terms of living, is that they are free to move out of this area if they want…

We we’re very privileged to be driven around in the camp by one of the camp leaders. So many interesting things he told, about the people, the different lifestyles in the camp etc.

There are only 4 primary schools in this whole camp. In one of the schools, there are more than 3 000 children. And the number of teachers in that school is only 14!!! Count how many pupils each teacher must have! (Not to mention all the languages the children in the classes would speak)

On this tour, we had a flat tire 3 times! The third time, we we’re stuck in a camp for the “newly arrivers” for very long. I enjoyed the time with children. Tried to teach them some Norwegian song with movements (almost didn’t matter if it was in Norwegian, there are too many languages here for everyone to understand anything anyway…) And then they sang. And sang, and sang, and sang…!

The children really were fascinated with this strange, white skin. I once counted about 10 different children hands touching just one of my arms. Ah, I still think a lot about this day in the camp. When we were there, a family from Congo had just arrived, and we brought them to the “arrivers’ camp”. Hm, you look at all the children and people in the camp and wonder, what have you gone through, what history brought you here… and what will the future bring...

One time when I was standing with a group of children around me, there was one very small baby, sitting bare on the ground, crying loud. I tried to pick it up, and some others tried the same. But it refused to be picked up, and just continued crying. I felt so helpless and starting looking around, asking: “Where is the mom, where is the mom!” The sad answers I got in return were; “No mom, there is no mom”…

(Photoes:
1. Anne sitting in the car, while the guys were fixing on it
2. From Isingiro District, on our way to the camp
3. Some of the settlements, from one small part of the camp)