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“They come in the darkness of night, using machetes, so that you don’t hear them until they’re under your roof”. That answered my question about why huts in this displacement camp were so close together—for security. I was witnessing the reality of life as a refugee in one’s own country. I naively thought that people felt safer now; after all, the rebels were on the run, why weren’t they going back to their villages? One man confessed that he feared their return: Vengeance would be terrible—like the time they forced villagers to cook their own butchered family members. | ||
-Yannick |
wooo…that’s horrible Janie…did he really told you that? what is their daily lifestyle in this camp..?
This “incident” actually happened in a village, not in this specific camp, and it was just one part of a horrible reprisal by the rebels. I don’t even want to describe the other inconceivable atrocities the rebels did over there. Lifestyle in the camps are pretty dire as you can imagine, with no running water, no sanitation infrastructure, no electricity, cramped huts, and I could go on. NGOs and the government are now actively helping people move back into their villages (what’s left of them), but after the trauma most of them have lived through, it’s not an easy task.
Are the NGO’s doing something about the sanitation infrastuctures or they just putting them back in undecent life condition?
It’s a good question, and the situation is actually pretty complicated, as the government is now trying to get people to move back to their original villages, since they have supposedly pushed the rebels out of the country. This also means that the NGOs focused on humanitarian aid are actually starting to pull out, the UN World Food program will very soon discontinue their aid. Yet even for the people who are not scared to move back to their original villages, there’s nothing there to move back to. A whole generation has grown up in these camps, they don’t know anything else…But to answer your question, yes, NGOs which are focused on development are trying to rebuild infrastructure and develop economic opportunities for the displaced people.