“Before the war I had everything I needed. I had land and owned sheep. But I spent two months living in the bush and now my animals are gone, my home is destroyed, and I sleep on the bare floor without even a mat. I have no equipment to cook with, and our children are naked.”
These were the words of an elderly woman from the village of Pohan, in the Moyen-Cavilly region in western Cote d’Ivoire. Like hundreds of thousands of others, this woman had only recently returned to her village, having originally fled the violence that swept the area in the months after November’s disputed Presidential elections.
Before the war, her neighbours considered her a rich woman. Being rich in Pohan, I was told, means eating three times a day, with good sauce and a variety of ingredients. Being “middle-class” was eating twice, and having half your kids go to school.
I met her and others from the villages of Pohan and Gueya travelling with an Oxfam team undertaking assessments of humanitarian needs as part of the charity’s response to the crisis here.
At first glance these villages appear like many other neat and quiet villages you might come across in other parts of the country, nestled in lush green forests. Except that they were half empty, and many homes were burnt.
Completely abandoned at the height of the conflict, just one third of the population had yet returned to Pohan, and just under half had returned to Gueya. Those still missing – some 3000 people in the two villages - were presumed to be scattered around various sites providing for refugees either within the region or across the border in Liberia.
Tragically, the violence appears to have been neither random nor the work of soldiers alone. Houses burnt to the ground stood next to those that remain untouched. Bodies dumped in wells purposely poisoned the water. Seed stocks and farming tools were deliberately destroyed to prevent food being re-grown. In some villages the perpetrators had been members of the same community settling scores, or from neighbouring villages avenging atrocities committed elsewhere.
Such systematic violence makes returning as painful as fleeing, and means rebuilding communities will be a long and tricky process. According to the villagers, food and shelter are the most urgent needs – malnutrition has visibly increased and it rains daily now – while getting local economies moving is key to becoming self-sufficient once again.
The residents of Pohan and Gueye were desperate to get back to work before the planting season ends, but lack the tools to do so. They want to be able to buy and sell goods in the local markets once again, but the ‘tax’ to pass military road blocks - $1 per road block, of which I counted eight on our two hour journey - makes getting there unaffordable. Such racketeering is also preventing many others who fled from making the journey home.
While providing basic services to those who remain displaced their homes is as critical as ever, it is villages like Pohan and Gueye that will be the future face of the humanitarian crisis in Cote d’Ivoire as people return home. These villages were neither the worst nor least affected in the region, but now their fate depends not only on their own ability to reunify and move forward, but also on the support provided from outside to enable to them to do so, and the willingness of the men with guns to leave them in peace.
Out of the spotlight, they will continue to face up to food shortages and burnt-out homes by eating less and sharing more. Many will suffer but, as became clear during our visit, by giving up their houses for their neighbours and reducing their meals to feed those without, they are already demonstrating a remarkable solidarity that jars so inexplicably with the horrors that members of the same community inflicted on them. Summarised neatly by the village chief, old divisions no longer matter: “whether rich, poor or in the middle– we are all eating from the same plate now”.
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