3/28/2006: Refugee camp in Somalia

[Undertoad]

This woman is in Somalia, just west of Mogadishu, in front of makeshift houses at a camp there, probably as people try to avoid the fighting.

When I saw this entry in today's Washington Post Day in Photos, I was struck by two things. One, how massive this encampment is, and thus how terrible it must be.

Two, how it eerie to see this one, after enjoying last Thursday's IotD.

[Oafed]

Uhm.. I wonder where they go to the bathroom

[glatt]

That's a good question. I wonder a lot of things that have to do with logistics.

How do you choose the location for a camp? Do you take the resources of the area into consideration, or do you just set up camp where you get tired? Does the camp just naturally grow as people see a tent and decide to pitch one nearby, or is it planned by some tibal leader?

Where do you get water?

Where do you get food?

What is in the area? I don't see any people in the picture, except the one woman. Where is everyone? Are they in the shopping mall that is just outside the frame?

If you've been away for a while, how do you find your way back to your hut?

I have many more questions than observations with this image.

[chrisinhouston]

Originally Posted by glatt

Where do you get water?

Where do you get food?

What is in the area?

This is one of the big problems. If you follow NY Times Columist, Nicholas Kristof you can read a lot about the issues facing these poor people. Going out to get food and water is usually where the women get raped by the janjaweed militias.

Here, I quote from an article by Kristof in then NYT Sunday 3-19 paper

<I saw a lot of heartbreak on my latest visit to the fringes of Darfur: two orphan boys living under a tree after their family was murdered, a 13-year-old girl shot in the chest and a 6-year-old boy trying desperately not to cry as doctors treated shrapnel wounds to his leg.
But the face of genocide I found most searing belonged to Idris Ismael, a 32-year-old Chadian. Mr. Idris said that a Sudan-sponsored janjaweed militia had attacked his village, Damri, that very morning. He had managed to run away. But his wife, Halima, eight months pregnant, could only hobble. And so she was still in the village, along with their four children, ages 3 to 12.


''The village is surrounded by janjaweed, with civilians inside,'' Mr. Idris said. ''There's no way for people to escape. The janjaweed will kill all the men, women and children, take all our blankets and other property, and then burn our homes. They will kill every last person.''

''The janjaweed will rape and kill my family,'' Mr. Idris added. ''And there's nothing I can do.'' >

I am so heartened that our Vice P, Mr. Cheney recently said on Fox news that he is satisfied with our responce to the problems in Somalia. Too bad they don't have some oil reserves, we'd be in there in a flash!

[tw]

Originally Posted by chrisinhouston

Going out to get food and water is usually where the women get raped by the janjaweed militias. ...

''The janjaweed will rape and kill my family,'' Mr. Idris added. ''And there's nothing I can do.''

Janjaweed militias are in Darfur - part of Sudan. Somolia is another nation that George Sr invaded and then Clinton wisely pulled US troops out of that 'no win' situation.

Meanwhile learn this story published in The Economist of 3 Mar 2006:

The danger of war spilling over
Two months ago, rebels hoping to depose Chad's strongman, Idriss Déby, drove through neighbouring Sudan in a convoy of brand-new Toyota jeeps and burst across Chad's eastern border near the town of Adré. Plainly egged on by the Sudanese government, they had no trouble passing through Sudan's many checkpoints, from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, a journey of some 1,600km (1,000 miles), to Chad's border. But Chadian troops loyal to Mr Déby, some of them recently trained in counter-terrorism by the Americans, beat off the rebels and chased them back into Sudan.

So far, this scrap among Chadians has not blown up into a war between Chadian and Sudanese government forces, though Mr Déby has declared a “state of belligerence” with his eastern neighbour. The battle of Adré, he suggested, was nothing less than a Sudanese plot to replace his African regime with an Arab one. His Chadian army has concentrated its forces around Adré, exposing the southern bit of Chad's border with Sudan to banditry. Despite a peace agreement signed recently under international pressure in Libya, a nasty proxy war is in the offing, with Chad upping its support for rebels in Darfur, while Sudan backs the Chadian rebels camped in Darfur who still want to overthrow Mr Déby's regime.

It's not just Somolia and Sudan (Darfur). Add to that list Chad and the recently opened petroleum pipeline what we have built from Chad, across Cameroon to the Atlantic. We make allies because we don't innovate and therefore demand more oil? And you thought the middle east was wild. Learn about the Central African Republic and Niger - or George Jr will do it for you.

[tw]

The Economist also provides this map since one cannot understand such politics without grasping the graphics. Somolia is off to the right and not on the Red Sea.

[FallenFairy]

The sheer enormity of these camps is mind boggling... then stop and think about just finding the most basic needs - fresh water, food.... omg.

[barefoot serpent]

The availability of wood for framing the huts and for cooking fires is probably the first consideration for siting these camps. Once it's exhausted, then they move on.

[Elspode]

I now feel officially guilty for even having thought of upgrading to a bigger camp trailer.

[funkykule]

I dont know about this camp, but most camps like this are set up by an NGO. who will distribute aid suppies etc..
Unless the NGO is pretty well equipped, initially they will have to go to the toilet everywhere. Its a big problem. Eventually they will dig trenches for toilets.
Logistics and Disaster Response/ Risk Management for situations like this involve huge amounts of money and organisation, (you probably know that already). I am studying to work in this area. I find it extremely interesting and mostly overwhelming.

[Kagen4o4]

there are more people in the top left of the image.
toilet?: anywhere
why there?: the landscape is no different for the next 300km
food?: whatever is chewable
water?: dig under plants?

[Trilby]

This puts my day into perspective.

[Wombat]

I have a friend who worked for a few years running food aid distribution for the WFO in Namibia and Angola. She organised large shipments of food from donations, organised the transport of the food aid from the ports to the refugee camps, and she ran the monthly distributions at the camps. Each month she would go with a handful of other aid workers to the camps with trucks of food, and over the course of two or three days at each camp they would hand out a one month ration to each of the tens of thousands of people queueing up at the trucks. Obviously keeping track of which refugees already had their ration was tricky, as was making sure that people too sick to get to the trucks also got their share. So that's how people in massive refugee camps like this get food.

[xoxoxoBruce]

These are the people I was talking about in this thread. Taken from camps like this and plopped down in Massachusetts, in a school system that's unprepared to handle them.

[Guess]

now compare this to that Japanese indoor beach IotD. kinda puts the world in perspective. a bit.