Memoirs of an African Refugee, Dadaab 1995, (part 1)
6 min readBy David Mayen Ayarbior, Juba, South Sudan
June 8, 2016 (SSB) — In the last few days the government of Kenya has been in talks with the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the status of Dadaab Refugee Camp in North Eastern Kenya bordering Somalia. It is the biggest refugee camp in the world, housing majority refugees from Somalia, and sizable numbers from South Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Congo DRC. In fact, the camp is divided into three distant camps each about five miles from Dadaab Center where NGOs are based. The three camps are Ifo, Hagadera, and Dagahaley.
As I am following this latest threat, I became empathetic towards the refugees in Dadaab who may be forcefully deported back to countries like Eritrea to face their death or those raped victims who escaped Eastern DRC because of insecurity and stigma, let alone our whose country is facing economic meltdown on top of insecurity. I also wonder whether the Kenyan government does not see that Dadaab camps could be among the worst places to live on earth, hence those refugees are not there by choice to live with bandits, hyenas, scorpions, and snakes. I say that because Dadaab has ever been my home for two long, hard, and eventful years.
I have always thought I would one day write a small booklet titled “My Life in Ifo: Memoires of an African Refugee,” because it is from Ifo’s life experience (which I would want to share with my kids and others) that I decided never to be a refugee again and then joined the SPLA in 1997 (at 26) to fight for something bigger than myself. It is in Dadaab that I became a refugee waiting for a cup of Janjaro and another of maize flour every two weeks in three months intervals, starved for days without adequate food, dodged hostile bandits while hunting for rabbits and Guinea Hens, helped starving children as a “local” staff of MSF, and shed urban naivety expected in a young man who was born in a relatively well-to-do family and grew up in town.
Over twenty years ago I lived in Dadaab (IFO) for two years (1995-97) in what was South Sudanese Community of about seven thousand refugees, including a few families. Our community was further divided into four: Sudan 1 (Anywak), Sudan 2 (Nuer), Sudan 3 (Bahar Al-Ghazal, Dinka dominant), and Sudan 4 (Equatorians). Our boundaries were made of spikey (thorny) trees which were abandoned in the nearby poor-Savanah bushes.
Ifo (meaning death) lived up to its ominous name. It was as hot as Khartoum in summer or maybe hotter. Because of heat, you could constantly see mirage reflecting in the horizon. Death was commonplace especially among the majority Somali refugees. I don’t remember a single day without seeing a dead body on a wheelbarrow moving from the small MSF-B (Medicines Sans Frontiers- Belgium) run hospital on its way to the grave. Children below five were among the most vulnerable. We had grown accustomed to seeing their small rapped bodies because the graveyard was behind our community. In many instances, hungry Hyenas that were like dogs in nearby bushes emerged at night and feasted on those bodies which were not buried deep enough.
We had flown to Ifo from Cairo (Egypt) as a group of young men accompanied by a few ladies (almost all in our early and mid-twenties) when we heard that people were being resettled in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In fact, the group before us had been quickly resettled in those countries and that encouraged us to accept the venture. Having escaped conscription in Sudan Armed Forces/Popular Defense (Defaa Al-Shabi) after completing high school in 1991, my parents asked my elder brother and me to leave the country by bus across the Grand Sahara desert to Egypt- which was another venture as some buses got lost in the vast desert. But there was no future in Cairo for us either, hence after three years I decided to move to Dadaab as a gate to greener pastures, or so had I thought it would be.
Once we arrived in Ifo, we were welcomed on the first day by some friends who had arrived before us. We were asked on the second day to go cut grass, forest planks, and timber for building our own huts. We did just so, and there we became true refugees, as simple as that. We also used planks and grass to erect beds outside our huts for sleeping at night since it was extremely hot.
Hardly had we spent two weeks in Ifo before the real adventure began at one night. At that night our camps were raided by armed Somali bandits. They were locally known as “shifters” because they attacked buses, UN food convoys, and raided camps anytime as if they worked in shifts. Liked most Somalis in the camps, they chewed Khat or “mira” (a marijuana-like flowering plant) which made them intoxicated and restless.
At that fateful night of the attack there was a full moon which lit like a torch. It was a beautiful night before those shifters attacked. As they pulled our gate an entered the camp, they carelessly sprayed bullets in the air and over (some toward) our huts from their AK47s. They killed one man (our Community Chairman) in Sudan four (Equatoria) who had been to the local market that day to buy bags of maize and janjaro. They then looted our meager food ration before they escaped, or rather walked way on their camels while shooting in the air. The Kenyan police at the nearby small police post had never dared coming to the rescue of refugees no matter how loud they screamed.
It all started like a nightmare at that night. As we were asleep outside our huts we felt the ground shaking as if it were an earthquake. It was the stampeding sound of residents of those whose huts were near the gate. As they saw the shifters throwing hooks over our big-tree-gate and pulling it with their camels, they stampeded toward us. It did not make any sense to me when I thought big wild animals were invading the camp. Our collective reaction to run for dear life was instinctive and simultaneous.
What would rational unarmed humans do when they hear a stampede in an open area, bullets whizzing over their heads as if they were the main targets, and people running and screaming wildly. Well, we saw the result the next morning in form of multiple new open gates through our thick thorn-tree fence and bruises in the bodies of a few hundreds. It was time to mourn and bury our fallen comrade Community Chairman, but we somehow found a way to lough our hearts out at that sad incident a few months later when things had even gotten worse.
Mayen Ayarbior has a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Political Science from Kampala International University (Uganda), Masters in International Security from JKSIS-University of Denver (USA), and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London. He is the author of “House of War (Civil War and State Failure in Africa) 2013” and currently the Press Secretary/ Spokesperson in the Office of South Sudan’s Vice President, H.E. James Wani Igga. You can reach him via his email address: mayen.ayarbior@gmail.com.
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