Two local Somalis lead a talk in Lewiston about life in Kenyan refugee camps.
By Lisa Chmelecki
Staff writer

LEWISTON – Families did not get their choice of housing. They were placed in a small iron hut or a tent.

No one had running water, electricity or mattresses – only a toilet and a blanket.

Each family was allowed 10 liters of water a day, and their bimonthly rations of wheat flour, oil, sugar and maize were hardly ever enough.

Tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition affected nearly every family.

Still, they were grateful to Kenya for giving them a place where they could live without worrying every day about getting shot.

“Somehow, living in the refugee camp was better than living in the chaotic cities of Somalia,” said Hussein Ahmed, a Somali immigrant who fled to a Kenyan refugee camp in 1993 and lived there for eight years before moving to Atlanta, then eventually to Lewiston.

Ahmed and Hani Mohamed, a Somali who also lives in Lewiston, spoke about their experiences at a workshop titled “What is life in a refugee camp really like?”

Organized by the Portland and Lewiston Refugee Collaborative, the talk was held at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center.

Although the two speakers were reluctant to talk about their own experiences of fleeing Somalia for Kenya, they spoke generally about the camps and the changes that have taken place at them over the years.

‘Making life over’

Organized and funded by the United Nations, most of the camps in Kenya are located 30 to 40 kilometers from the Somali border, they said.

Somali families started fleeing to the camps in 1981 when war broke out in their native land. They arrived by boat, car and foot, not knowing how long they would be there or where they would go next.

“All we got was food, shelter and medical,” Ahmed said. “But it was good. We could start making life over.”

Since most families couldn’t survive on the food provided by the United Nations, they created businesses and jobs within the camp. The women formed weaving and crafting clubs and got special permission to sell their goods in the capital city of Nairobi.

“Females were more productive than the males,” said Ahmed.

“That’s right,” said Mohamed, smiling shyly.

Problems

It didn’t take long for each camp to fill up with an average of 1,200 families, said Ahmed, who worked as a nurse at his camp.

As the camps became more crowded with people and businesses, other problems came up. Looting and car-jackings occurred daily, and diseases started to spread.

The toughest obstacle, said Ahmed, was to get people with tuberculosis to go to the hospital for help.

“Tuberculosis there was like AIDS in the United States,” Ahmed said. “People didn’t want to say they had it, so we went into the camps and looked for people with signs of the disease.”

The extra effort paid off. Eventually, Ahmed said, the cure rate for people with tuberculosis went from 40 percent to 70 percent.

Tall buildings

Although some refugees have decided to stay at the camps until the war in Somalia is over, most apply for resettlement. The process includes several interviews and months of waiting, the speakers said.

Most families are sent to the United States, Australia, Canada or Denmark. They have no say where they go, and the training they receive before they leave is minimal.

Before Mohamed left Kenya for New Mexico in 2001, she was told to say “hi” to people and warned not to stare at people kissing in the street.

Ahmed left his hut in Kenya dreaming about an apartment in a building tall enough to reach the clouds. During the 40-minute drive from the airport in Georgia to his new neighborhood, he stared out the window and waited. But the tall buildings never appeared.

“I said, ‘This must not be America. This must be somewhere else,'” he recalled.

lchmelecki@sunjournal.com

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