A refugee camp gives you much food for thought. Not only the obvious thoughts like ‘wow this is really really sad’ or ‘wow imagine this was me living here and my only belongings were that bag of dirty clothes’. But also ‘oh my God, what should we do’. And ‘oh my God, I never knew refugees could be difficult and demanding’.
In a country where many people still live on less than a dollar and 25 cents a day it is hard to expect the Ghanaians to be really welcoming to even more poor people from Ivory Coast to share the scares resources with. Yet, that doesn’t even seems to be the problem at the moment. Surprisingly one of the ministers even warmly welcomed them last week. But some Ivoirians are somehow under the assumption that they will get a nice house when they get here. So when they see the UNHCR tents on the hot and dusty camp site, they refuse to get out of the bus. And they don’t like the maize and beans and would rather eat cassava and complain about this. Everybody who reads this blog regularly knows that I am not a huge fan of most Ghanaian local dishes. I guess I just never had imagined I had something like that in common with a refugee from a country where they possibly chop off your head with a big knife…
Crappy buses and trucks older than mankind, loaded with hundreds of people and tons of colourful luggage on the roof cross the border with Ghana each day now. They slowly make their way through the potholes in the road and dangerously lean towards one side sometimes, almost tipping over. People’s heads and arms stick out of the windows as there are way too many of them on one bus. Nobody but some UN cars drive the other way, towards Ivory Coast. It’s mainly women and children who are coming. Their husbands stayed behind to protect their property or fight back home. When I was looking at the choked border town I suddenly felt propelled from nice and quiet Ghana, where people pray to Allah and God hand in hand and couldn’t be bothered to fight each other because of their ethnic group or political affiliation, into the reality and results of a brutal conflict in the neighbouring country. Women and children fleeing their homes because they are scared to be raped. Or scared somebody may kill them.
Walking around in the camp was a bit embarrassing. Many UN agencies and organisations had been walking around there already and I was afraid another white car and another white face raised expectations that could not be met even higher. I wanted to talk to people but was scared they would ask me for things I couldn’t give to them. Some people said ‘thank you’ which was even more embarrassing as I haven’t done anything. Then a little boy and his two sisters invited me in their tent as le soleil was too hot the boy said. There was nothing in their tent but some blankets and a sleeping baby. In my poor French I asked him about his school at home. It had been closed for a long time he said, but he used to have books at home to study. His favourite subject was history. And I realised that, besides the different food preferences, liking history was my second thing in common with this little boy. And that we should really quickly get 10.000 copies of the set of French textbooks we have in the office and distribute them.
