African Hope

“Your next project’s in a refugee camp.” My boss’s voice is faint down the long distance line. Surely I must have misheard. “Refugee camp?” “Yes, I’ll send the details.”

Of course I’d seen them on the news. White tents, flies and starving, dependant, hopeless people as far as the eye could see. During the 1500 kilometre journey it’s these visions that vie for my attention with those before my eyes: vibrant, chaotic Zambian towns and isolated villages amidst the seemingly unending wilderness.

Finally I arrive, my mind full of media images, my body shaken by potholes but my curiosity wide awake. “Meheba Refugee Settlement” the concrete slab announces.

I travel down narrow terracotta tracks fringed by tall elephant grass, interrupted occasionally by clearings revealing simple mud brick homesteads. Everything is dry and brittle: a living, breathing tinderbox. Mother Nature’s palette is limited to browns and oranges; the only contrast is the brilliant blue sky and the women walking wearily along wearing colourful wraps. They carry babies in bright fabric slings whilst balancing water containers by swaying their heads like dancing cobras to ensure not one precious drop is spilt.

I catch only snippets of my driver’s information, “….720 square kilometres… ….founded 1971……Angolan, Congolese, Rwandan……17,000……..” My focus is the scene outside the vehicle; it’s the antithesis of the film playing in my mind’s cinema. People cooking, farming, trading, families building houses, this is permanent not transient, I realise. This is home: a settlement, NOT a camp.

I alight at a concrete shell. Inside I find peeling paint, a worn blackboard, a few broken desks and scores of eager faces, staring wide-eyed up at me. Teachers crowd in, languages blend into a linguistic cocktail: window frames are filled, not with glass, but with hundreds more faces, even legs and elbows. I sense their thirst for knowledge, they are not starving as I had imagined but hungry for education.

Pupils are herded out; I sit down opposite the young teacher in charge, a volunteer, a Rwandan, a refugee. His dark skin glistens with beads of sweat; his bloodshot eyes are pools of unimaginable horrors but with smouldering embers of hope. I’m drawn into his heart wrenching narratives by the soft, emotional voice. “Today’s children are tomorrow’s future,” he finishes and I understand why that spark is not extinguished. Behind his battered exterior I see courage, strength and belief.

Outside, under Zambia’s relentless September sun, I’m surrounded, inquisitively, by this future. They wear oversized shirts without buttons, tight tattered dresses, pyjamas, no shoes: their feet dusty and calloused. When I smile, their sombre faces erupt into beauty, transformed by bright wide smiles; I see they also wear hope and optimism.

That night I lie looking up at the stars, contemplating the six weeks I shall spend amongst these scarred but resilient people. I feel privileged to witness such a complex facet of humanity. I smile to myself, not a tent in sight, except the one I’m about to crawl into.