Small mercies

The Oure Cassoni camp was spared, alhamdulillah, but it is clear to UNHCR that they can’t wait any longer – the camp will have to be moved away from the border, deeper into Chad.

The logistics of the operation will be nightmarish. Aside from convincing 26,000 people to leave what little stability they have known behind, every tent will have to be struck and erected all over again, every well and latrine dug anew, every hand pump re-installed, every vaccine transported with electric generators to keep them cold. It will cost millions, and probably take months. What is worse, while the move will succeed in enlarging the buffer zone between the refugees and the fighting in Darfur, it will do little to distance them from the fighting in Chad itself. Here in the Sahara, it hardly matters if you’re in the frying pan or the fire – it’s damn hot all the same.

I have some sense of how monumental the task will be, having just visited the Gaga refugee camp over the weekend. Gaga is home to more than 14,000 people, and is one of the “nicer” camps in the country. The vast majority of its inhabitants are Darfuri, though there are some Chadians mixed in as well, those who managed to slip through the UNHCR screening process and register as refugees, despite being in their own country. It’s not a situation HCR likes to talk about, since they don’t want to be accused of creating a “pull factor” for Chadians, who have very little access to basic services and might find the humanitarian aid provided in refugee camps to be irresistibly tempting. The fact is, however, that these people have almost certainly fled the same bloodshed, the same looting and burning of villages, as their neighbours across the border. Ethnicity doesn’t respect international boundaries, and the Janjaweed don’t care whether you’re Chadian or Sudanese -- what matters is that you’re Dadjo, or whatever.

It so happened that our visit to the camp coincided with the World Food Programme (WFP)’s monthly distribution of food. The system is really interesting, and clearly the product of many years of painful trial and error. Newcomers to the camp must first register, and their situation is assessed by WFP to determine their level of “vulnerability” – that is, whether they are female-headed, how many children they have, if any are malnourished. Those who have registered recline under a tarp and wait for their names to be called, whereupon they leave the holding area and proceed along a system of tables, where local staff of Africare, the camp manager, distribute iodized salt, sugar, corn-soya blend, beans and wheat in carefully pre-determined amounts. The refugees (generally women – a deliberate policy to ensure equal distribution to children and women) bundle the foodstuffs into black plastic bags and carry them off on their heads.

Here are some pictures of the process. I will add more photos in the days to come. Apologies for their quality, though – the bright sun is playing havoc with my new point-and-shoot.