Today my class and I visited the Nakivale Refugee Settlement as part of our field trip to learn about NGOs and refugees in the Ugandan context. The drive to the settlement lead the van down a twisted dirt road filled with bumps, much like the rest of rural Uganda. It took about an hour to arrive there from Mbara. We drove to the middle of the camp to the central offices where we met the commandant of the camp, who looked around his mid thirties, young for the age I imagined in my head. We went through the usual routine of introducing our names and our majors. We told the commandant we were from British Columbia, and he started to list off our resources from when he studied them in school. The overlap sometimes astounds me. The commandant then shared the history of the settlement.
The Nakivale Refugee Settlement started (initially as a camp) in 1959 under the British Colonial government to host Tutsi refugees from Rwanda. Since then it has continued to accept refugees from 11 different countries including the Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Somalia, Burundi. As of the end of March the settlement hosts 67,988 refugees. Of these refugees 60% (around 42,000) are 18 years or younger. Some refugees arrived recently, and others whom have lived there for years. The settlement rests on just over 71 square miles of land allotted to the refugees by the Office of the Prime Minister. When the refugees register with the settlement the commandant and UNHCR provides each family with a small plot of land for them to cultivate on. The grounds host four health clinics, nine primary schools, and one senior school.
Similar to every other primary school in Uganda, children over crowd the classrooms. In the school we visited the students sat four to a long desk with four desks across the room and eight desks deep. One or two desks had more or less than four students so the total lingered around 128 students per classroom with one teacher to supervise. Overall the school employed 47 teachers for a population of over 1,000 students. Students from all over Africa, including some Ugandan nationals, crowded into the classrooms to be taught by the Ugandan education system regardless of where they came from.
Structurally, however, the school appeared more like an expensive private school than a government funded school under Musevini’s Universal Primary Education act. Teachers still plastered coloured papers with school schedules, teachers’ numbers, and teachers’ attendance on the walls of the head teacher’s office. Lessons were painted on the wall, and signs with positive messages could still be found in the yard of the school. The builders did not put glass in the windows, which left the classes susceptible to the weather. Positive messages such as “We will not forget,” and “We will not die a common man,” littered every empty space on the inside walls of the classroom. But, all of the underlying bricks remained hidden by the overlying plaster. The roofs did not shake, and the grounds looked well manicured. Few of the schools in Lyantonde appeared as neat and well maintained as this one. It gave everyone an errie feeling of abandonment for the people in Lyantonde and a feeling that could almost be labled envy for what our community lacked and the refugees had.
In fact, the whole of the settlement that we saw (granted this section may not be a full representative of the rest of the settlement) though still structures built of mud, were nicer than many of the structures even in Lyantonde town. Not all had tin roofs, but those that did not were covered by tarps provided by UNHCR and branches to keep out the weather. Many structures had tin doors comprised of cut and flattened food tins with USA written on them to ensure that they came from the American people. Even one of their health centers had a structure that resembled a hospital better than the one in Lyantonde. The health center did lack proper staff. They had one full doctor to service over 300 people a day, a few nurses, and three healthcare professionals. Unlike Lyantonde though, they were organized, and had proper equipment, once again to the thanks of USAID and the “American People” as well as another medical NGO. The Medical NGO also provided the nurses. The ability to see the NGO’s we discussed assist the refugees we discussed in class amazed me. They did so much work for so many people.
There are times in life when your brain can’t quite find the right words or questions for experiences. You can ask questions about how you feel about the refugee’s have nicer things than your community does. How fair you feel it is that the refugees get support from all of these NGO’s when your community does not have as much, why they should be left behind? Does my community even need these international NGOs (INGOs) or is Salama Shield a small grassroots organization enough? At the same time why should the refugees not get the support they do. They were forced to leave home and many have faced horrors we cannot imagine. Why should they not get at least a roof over their head? How do you feel about the over crowding? Are the refugees’ problems worse than anyone else’s? Or are they just the same as everyone else’s, but more publicised?
Questions over where the country and ex-pats fit into this scenario also come up. In Kampala we sat at a fancy gelato place and café in a mall that back home I would have felt inadequate to sit at. How can a place that feels so developed and calm exist in a place that 20 years ago less than 20 minuets away at the Mengo Palace political prisoners were thrown into electrocuted water? I know that the issues of privilege and poverty exist in the west as well. I have similar quandaries at home. Where do I fit in as a consumer? These places provide people possible even refugees with good paying jobs. If I have money to spend why should I stop providing jobs for these people?
Written down these questions do not sound as profound as they should. I know I am not a philosopher, or that I create ground breaking thoughts, but these questions do not sound as profound as they feel. These questions are feelings that reverberate from my core throughout my body. These words are how I can process the thoughts and attempt to identify them. I feel that I can never fully articulate the essence of or the implications of them my psyche.
