Adnan Ansari, IRUSA Vice President of Programs, offers a first-hand account from Kenya about conditions on the ground.
As we drove into Nairobi at 2:00 am, the thought of the mass graves witnessed in Dadaab followed me. The memory of the large mounds of earth, some fresh, with five to eight bodies buried underneath, imparted a very uncomfortable feeling: sadness and guilt, to say the least.
There had been several mass graves in sight, along with multiple single graves randomly spread amongst the wild bushes. All those people had made long journeys to Dadaab in their struggle for survival, but it had been too late for anyone to help them. Eventually accepting the loss of their loved ones, their relatives and companions on this arduous journey, had buried them together with many others.
Jan, an officer from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), first brought this to my attention. He had only mentioned the increasing number of fresh graves on the outskirts of the camp. The larger piles of earth with several bodies buried together, was a shock.
The term, ‘outskirts’ is misleading too. The camps named Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley around the town
of Dadaab have been full for some time; at least one more camp is in the making. The unregistered
refugees and the registered ones with no space allotted within the camps live on the ‘outskirts’ of the
camps.
“Each camp itself has 30,000 to 50,000 refugees living in the outskirts; the three camps themselves
collectively host close to 400,000 refugees. The daily arrivals in the outskirts is constantly increasing.”
Abdul Hakeem, our Kenyan Government guide told us. Abdul Hakeem pointed out the facilities (or lack
thereof) around Ifo as we drove through. Walking around the acres of land allocated to the refugees or
walking around the outskirts was not a practical option.
We had met Jan at the vaccination site. The refugees could be seen waiting earnestly for their turn.
“You see these children sitting on the bench?” Jan asked. “They are siblings, ten of them. At first, we
thought that they were nine, since the woman beside them had been holding onto an infant so close
to her chest that we did not notice. She is not the mother, though. Neither of the parents survived
the journey. Somehow, the woman had been able to bring the children over to us – who knows from
where!”
As I looked at the children, they looked back without expression. One can only wonder what was going
through their minds. They must have witnessed their parents passing away, one by one, in the middle
of no-man’s land. Had the parents been buried? Or maybe their bodies too were lying in the open fields
as food for the wildlife; just like the cattle carcasses every few miles on the dirt road from Garissa to
Dadaab.
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