Life in a Refugee Camp
Somali Bantus fled to the refugee camps in northeastern Kenya in 1991. The UNHCR supports the refugee camps, which are located near the borders with Somalia and Sudan. Refugees are confined to their camps because they are not legally allowed to enter other parts of Kenya.
• Refugee families live in housing units such as huts or tents, which are in close proximity.
• The major source of livelihood is limited to relief food supplies donated by the international community through the UNHCR and World Food Program (WFP).
• Refugees are not legally allowed by asylum countries to travel freely from the camps to nearby cities.
• Refugees living in camps have limited access to official work permits in the asylum countries. They lack self-sufficiency and means for an income.
• Health care services in most camps are very limited.
• Quality of education offered to refugee children is inadequate and sub-standard to one offered to the native children of the host country.
• Host communities perceive refugees as a burden on local economies. Sometimes the UNHCR allocates part of its funds for the development of host communities to lessen hostility toward the refugees.
• Refugee girls and women suffer from additional abuses such as rape. This kind of abuse routinely takes place in camps located in insecure areas, such as the Somali refugee camps in northeastern Kenya.
• Refugee children who are born in camps and live in them for extended periods of time lose their traditional indigenous culture.
• When refugees from different countries and cultures live together in the same camps, limited social interaction takes place amount them and tensions increase. Tensions also arise in camps among refugees who are from different clan/ethnic/cultural backgrounds and nationalities.
• The typical daily schedule in a refugee camp includes boredom and waiting in lines for: food, water, health care, paper work, medical care, and more.
Taken from: “The Bantu in Our Midst: A Resource for ELT Classrooms” by the Spring Institute
Extension of Violence to Refugee Camps
Despite the fact that Somali Bantus have been safe from the large-scale level of hostilities they faced in Somalia before their flight to Kenya, violence against them became an ever-present phenomenon in the refugee camps in Dadaab, Kenya. Before a U.S.-sponsored firewood collection program was established, refugee women were particularly vulnerable to rape while collecting firewood in the surrounding bush. Rape was often committed by men from one clan against women from a different clan. In some cases, refugees who were raped claimed that their attackers first asked them what clan they belonged to. Although sexual violence in the refuge camps has been common to all refugee women, the Somali Bantu women were more vulnerable because of their ethnic minority status.
The social discrimination against Somali Bantus was carried over from Somalia to Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya. Other non-Bantu Somalis continued to despise and treat them as second citizens. Addressing to a UNHCR official in Dadaab, one Bantu refugee elder reflected the continuation of their plight in the camps and said, “This is a bad place. It is dangerous. Even if we cannot go the United States, get us out of here.” (UNHCR REFUGEES Magazine, Issue Number 128, 2002. Page 18)
Each refugee family in the Dadaab camps is issued a large canvas tent, basic cooking utensils, and a jerry can for collecting potable water from spigots located throughout the camps. Cooking of UNHCR-supplied wheat, beans, salt, sugar, and oil (which are distributed once every two weeks), along with various produce and canned food available in the refugee camp markets, is usually done over an open fire. Refugees dig their own latrines with UNHCR-supplied building materials and supervision. Doctors Without Borders runs the hospitals and many health posts that are located in each refugee camp. They, along with CARE International social workers, provide various forms of outreach to the refugees.
Although they made up only 10% of the refugee population at Dadaab, the Somali Bantu held over 90% of the heavy labor, construction, cooking, cleaning, and other manual labor jobs. As a community, the Somali Bantu have gained a reputation for being both industrious and adaptable.
UNHCR reported that the hatred of other Somalis toward the Somali Bantus increased in the camps after the U. S. Government accepted their resettlement to the United States in 1999. In the summer 2002, the 12,000 Somali Bantus approved for resettlement to the United States were moved to another refugee camp (called Kakuma) in northwestern Kenya near the border with Sudan.
