Safe but not free: first impressions of life in a refugee camp, Liberia

Toe Town transit centre

Campaigning on behalf of people you’ve never met, about circumstances you’ve never seen, is something we do all the time. I’ve just spent two weeks in Liberia, visiting the camps and interviewing the Ivorian refugees for whom I and many others are working at the moment. It was my first experience, and a thought-provoking one for me.

First impressions were, to be honest, a little underwhelming. I feel guilty writing that. It’s not that it was not clearly serious, or clearly devastating for those affected. But what I saw in the camps (and I was not able to get to the worst affected areas, explained later on) was, I guess, less visibly dramatic than maybe I expected. Not so much people whose lives were imminently threatened – in the camps no one will starve, no one will get caught up in the conflict – and much more a pervading sense of ‘flatness’ and frustration at the turn their lives had taken. It made you exhale slowly rather than inhale sharply, if that makes sense.

Pablo, a teacher.

People had fled their lives, left behind their families, their jobs, their status and found themselves idle and dependent in a camp where the food rations are meagre, work unavailable and the future – and the fate of their loved ones - entirely unknown. They had found security and the basics of survival, but they had lost their independence and direction. I guess I was more struck at how becoming a refugee has emasculated and imprisoned people, rather than how it had physically degraded them.

That’s not to say people were passive victims. Quite the opposite. I found myself pleased by how demanding many were, how unsatisfied they were to sit and receive handouts, how much they complained. They wanted to work. They wanted to start businesses. They wanted to improve their conditions. They wanted some control. Some moaned, some were exasperated, and if I’m honest sometimes you let the thought enter your head that a few were being ‘ungrateful’. But in reality, it just shows that people don’t lose their capacity to want and demand a better life for themselves and their families just because they become refugees. And nor should they.

Richard Gueye and family

I put a few profiles and photos of some of the people I met and interviewed on another blog post. A real mix of experiences, from all sides of the political divide. A pro-Gbagbo school teacher chased out of his house one night by armed men; 21-year old IT student who had designed posters for both sides, chased out of town by men with machetes; wives who had to leave their husbands and sons behind, who themselves were struggling across the border trying to avoid being conscripted or attacked by militias. A family of 20 who had made the trip together when their town came under fire, all of whom slept in the same battered tent. 

The camp conditions were adequate, if not exactly lacking cause for complaint. There was (meagre) food, water, sanitation, limited medical supplies and even a makeshift primary school. People had organised themselves into committees and the place functioned, if hardly flourished. 

Entrance to Bahn Camp

Unlike other crises you hear about, the camps were not ‘overflowing’. In fact the problem is the opposite; they’re largely empty. Only about 2,000 refugees have so far made it to the first refugee camp in Bahn, yet between 80 and 90,000 are stranded along border areas, close to the fighting, squatting in villages or makeshift shelters, without any proper access to food, water or sanitation. In one area there were 28,000 refugees registered, but only 11 water pumps.

Some don’t want to come to the camps - they prefer to stay close to the border in case it becomes safe enough to go home – others do and are kept trapped by the terrible roads and lack of transport. Some have chosen freedom over food; others have not been able to make any choice at all.

This is where the crisis is, but it’s near invisible. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, but not one that will make a good photo. If the deterioration continues, lives will be lost, but silently in the bush, not on TV cameras in camps. 

Importantly, it’s not just refugees who are at threat. Liberians who have been hosting the refugees so impressively, despite being amongst the poorest communities in the world, are now seeing their own food stocks exhausted. Prices of staple foods in local markets have doubled, many families are now eating only one meal per day, and many more have been forced to use what is known in the jargon as ‘severe coping mechanisms’ – scouring the bush for wild food, and eating seeds rather than being able to plant them. And yet remarkably they continue to host.

One of the better bridges

Bringing relief to these areas is almost already logistically impossible due to the dispersal of people and the desperately poor state of the roads. In a few weeks the rainy season will begin to descend and the treacherous roads will become impassable; the difficulty of providing relief will become a near impossibility. Add to that the possibility of these areas being overwhelmed by new refugee flows – UN projections talk of 250,000 people crossing the border if fighting intensifies - there’s a feeling of sliding painfully slowly towards a disaster. 

The bright side? Not a lot, but people do seem more and more to be grasping the severity of the situation, even if not on the scale it deserves. Competing with Libya, Japan and Yemen is no easy task, but a small increase in media and political interest can be seen. A little more funding is coming in bit by bit (the UK just announced £8m, which is not bad), but ultimately only about a quarter of what will be needed has yet been provided.

Airlifting in Oxfam supplies

And I got to see first-hand what so many organisations, including my own, are doing to respond.  I do feel quite privileged to have been part of an impressive Oxfam team there that’s just flown in water and sanitation equipment for 70,000 people, is busy setting up camps in some really tough areas, and will be distributing food to border villages very soon. 

It won’t be enough for all, it won’t make peace in Cote d’Ivoire, but it will be a life-saver for many. If you would like to support Oxfam’s work in Liberia, you can donate here.