Reflections on student refugee camp project
By
[A version of this story was published in the Spring 2011 newsletter of the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University]
On a Tuesday in the middle of December, a few thousand residents of the Osire refugee camp in Namibia – mostly Angolans, Congolese and Burundians – stream methodically into a makeshift tent where they pick up maize meal, beans, porridge, fortified cooking oil, salt and sugar. At about the same time in Malawi, also in southern Africa, mothers hold their children as they await medical attention in the Dzaleka camp’s health center, a child plays in a trash heap, and a Northwestern student helps a woman wash her clothes in mock exchange for a photo that will help tell stories of how refugees live. More than 3,000 miles due north in Amman, Jordan, an Iraqi refugee sifts through her memories as she connects a harmless fireworks celebration in her newly adopted neighborhood with the sound and fury of the sectarian violence back in Iraq that left her and other women “bereaved of their husbands and homelands, and left to raise families in a new nation.”
Those descriptions are among the nuggets 20 students and six faculty and researchers crafted in simultaneous visits over winter break to three different refugee settings as UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) commemorated its 60th year attempting to address the world’s intractable refugee phenomenon. The trips, underwritten by the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University, Medill and AT&T, provided students who had taken the cross-disciplinary Immigrant Connect course during fall quarter, with a palpable opportunity to dig deeper into the vagaries of refugee life that they had been reporting on during the quarter. What emerged were more than 60 stories published on Refugee Lives, an inspirational interview with three of the participants on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview, a half-hour documentary scheduled to air on the Big Ten Network on July 13, and a commitment to continue to focus both journalistically and through civic engagement on the lives of refugees.
What also emerged were some illuminating realizations about refugee life and policy that have been shared with UNHCR and with resettlement agencies. For years, UNHCR has attempted to find the right balance from among three durable solutions to the plight of refugees: repatriation (to their country of origin), resettlement (in developing countries, with the US accepting more refugees than all other nations combined) and local integration (near where the refugee camps are located). For millions of refugees, none of the durable solutions is attainable for them or for their children in the foreseeable future. UNHCR and the world community know it but can do little about it.
As we documented the frustrations in stories, video, photos and slideshows, we also captured the enduring resilience of the human spirit. That vivid interplay was out of our reach in the classroom on campus or in the communities of resettled refugees we reporting on in Chicago. No longer for the students who went on the trips and for those who are exposed to our stories.
We heard the call to prayer beckoning in the Hashmi Shamali neighborhood in Amman as we reported on forty Iraqi men taking the field for a soccer game wearing jerseys that declare on the back: “PFMP”: Play Football Make Peace, between Iraqi sects and between the Iraqi refugees and the Jordanians who are being asked to host them for an indeterminate period. We interviewed Congolese Pastor Basilwango Celestin who found his wife after she had disappeared from the refugee camp in Malawi by seeing her on television accompanying a powerful local politician. We showcased a dance troupe at the camp that calls itself Super Crew. They had organized to provide hope and entertainment for the beleaguered residents but they now want to see how far they can take their talents. In an improv comedy duo in Namibia’s camp, we uncovered a back story that prevents one of the Congolese young men from being resettled. Because of the interview his father had years earlier, his family was denied refugee status. His current status is in limbo, and as the youth counselor told us, his future is “blank.”
We arrived at the Osire camp in Namibia as the settlement itself may be about to change. Conditions in neighboring Angola have improved sufficiently that Namibia is considering invoking a cessation clause from the 1951 Refugee Convention that would relieve them of the obligation to host Angolan refugees. Because 70 percent of the camp residents are Angolan, it is not clear what the camp will become. This development comes at a time when UNHCR is exploring other durable solutions generally to the entrenched refugee phenomenon world-wide. They are looking at a range of public-private partnerships that seek financial and institutional support beyond that of nation states that agree to resettle or host refugees. Corporations, foundations and universities are in a position to provide sustaining support by adopting camps or individual refugees or families. To do that, officials at UNHCR recognize that forced migrations are likely to become more salient if a human face animates the issue.
In WBEZ’s Worldview segment that aired in early January, two students articulated lyrically what the project is about, what having exposure like this as young journalists can mean personally, and most importantly what refugee life is like. As they put it, it was about the indelible surprises of seeing the human condition; of having interviews turn into conversations; of observing a family express the concern for their children in the beaming pride they expose when they greet them at the door; and of the juxtaposition of hope in one family, which didn’t want to jinx their resettlement prospects by talking about them, with the despair of another family, which like so many others we met could envision no future to invest in.
What has stayed with me most from the trips is the dilemma of reconciling the journalistic value of giving forgotten people a voice with the humanistic impulse to not abandon them and others like them. In our discussions in class before we went, we were reminded to not promise too much or even appear to promise too much. As one of the students noted toward the end of the WBEZ interview, hope, even if it’s false hope, is something so many of the refugees don’t have available to them. Yet, we at Northwestern can do more.
As I was leaving the refugee camp in Namibia, I paused for a little boy who approached. His look was vacant, his face was caked in sand. He was carrying a plastic jar. He handed it to me. It was heavy and filled with sand. I showed him how impressed I was. I asked him what it was. I tried to make eye contact. I didn’t get through.
One of the UNHCR staffers told me he doesn’t speak. She wasn’t sure he understands what people say or in which language. As the boy mumbled something to us, she told me he’s one of the refugees Osire is trying hard to resettle in the U.S. or elsewhere. He’s suffering terribly, she said, and resettlement in the West could help him. The priority cases for resettlement are those who are most vulnerable and endangered.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say or what to think. My immediate thoughts – that it would be admirably humane to do whatever can be done for this boy – got brushed aside. In their place, I thought of three other young refugees with whom I’d just said goodbye. They have so much to offer. They would turn the against-all-odds opportunity into something tangible, limitless for them and for the U.S. or other host country if they were resettled.
As hard as UNHCR and Osire try, those three young men are stuck with no discernible way out into a future. My thoughts returned to the little boy whom I saw wandering away aimlessly. He might have a life underneath that sand.
Together, the four of them are among millions of refugees who live in camps and are, to much of the world, little more than sand in a jar. Not so for Northwestern students who are given the opportunity to illuminate their faces and report so much more. And not so potentially for future Northwestern students, as we begin discussions to pass on the contribution of journalism students to others at the university who are in a position to invest sustained time, energy and resources in a civically engaged partnership.
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