Hoa and I are entering our fourth week working here in Dadaab. The weather in this semi-arid region has been cool, hovering at around 85 – 90 degrees, which all the locals say is cool. We are 10 kilometers from the equator.
Dadaab is a land of Islamic goat-herders, camel traders, dry brush and acacia trees, dust storms in the distance. To get to Dadaab we flew on a chartered UN plane, but most locals travel overland, on a rickety bus jammed to the hilt, over dusty rutted road. The nearest town is Garissa, about three hours southwest. We are 90 kilometers from the Somali border.
Dadaab is a tiny town which exists primarily to service three refugee camps. Homes are made of wood sticks and plastic sheeting, or mud baked walls and with tins roofs. It is a poor region – the people, the cattle, the goats: all stick thin. The recent rains have not made a dent in the ongoing drought, the worst in the last two decades.
The three refugee camps are called Ifo, Dagahaley, and Hagadera. They house a total of 150,000 Somali refugees, many of whom have been living here since the outbreak of war in 1991. Imagine that --- fifteen years in a camp, subsisting on World Food Programme rations, waiting and biding time. There is not much to be hopeful for.
Most of the refugees have survived violent attacks and seen their family members killed before their eyes. Somali society is structured along clan lines, which historically provided protection for the nomadic people. With the ouster of Siad Barre, the longstanding dictator in 1991, the country imploded in a flurry of warfare – clan fighting clan for control over scarce commodities, things like water access and control over the few existing river basins.
We are living in the UN compound, which is a world unto itself. Imagine a beach resort without the beach, and only some of the trappings of a resort. You get the picture – a few little bungalows scattered here and there, small concrete housing units, the local mess hall which is a thatch and wood bungalow with a nice breeze, and a little open air bar affectionately dubbed Club Pumzika or Club Relax in Swahili. Every Friday and Saturday night, staff from the UNHCR, CARE, GTZ, and WFP gather there to socialize and party. Last Saturday night we had a magnificent camel roast to honor the promotion of a colleague and the departure of another one. We danced to lingala music until 3 a.m.
Hoa and I are both getting into the rhythm of our jobs. I am conducting interview after interview, spending most of my days in one of the field offices of the various camps. Families that are lucky enough to get scheduled for resettlement interviews arrive, and I am the first person they talk to. I spend an hour with them, taking down their flight story, assessing whether or not they have strong protection needs, and then trying to figure out if their case can proceed. There is a lot of corruption in the Somali caseload, and people with resettlement interviews sometimes try to add people onto their families (at a price measured in the thousands of dollars), or make other fraudulent claims that are difficult to describe in this blog. My role is to find the good cases, the ones that the US and Canada and Australia will take. I then promote those cases, which then move on to a second round interview process, and eventually on to the US Resettlement Program.
Hoa has been conducting individual casework, in particular responding to the needs of unaccompanied, separated, and orphaned children. She will spend the morning interviewing or visiting children at one of the field offices, hospitals, schools, or even their homes. Typically crowds or long lines form where she goes, indicating the enormous unmet need in each camp. She will then try to follow-up on their case in the afternoon, linking them to various resources, whether it be healthcare provided by GTZ or education materials by CARE. Last week, she was able to find temporary housing for an orphaned child who had been sleeping out in the sandy street of one of the camps. He had been beaten repeatedly by other children and even adults. It was a minor victory in a place where victories are few and life is harsh.
On Saturday, we had the fortune of taking part in a Cultural Orientation program, conducted by IOM. We saw Somalis about to be resettled to the US receiving lessons about life in America. We answered questions about resettlement drawing from our professional and personal backgrounds. It was inspiring, incredible, and a bit terrifying to think that these people who have been housed in a desert camp and known very little else will soon be placed somewhere in middle America.
As we continue our work, it seems that the situation in Somalia has taken a downturn. Fighting has erupted in Mogadishu and new refugees are beginning to arrive, several hundred per day. If things get worse, we may face an influx, and suddenly our jobs will all change. We will need to follow UNHCR’s contingency plan and really just try to get people food and shelter. We all hope the situation in Somalia stabilizes.
