Daily Routine in Malawian Dzaleka refugee camp – a quest for survival

Temperatures are cool at the open settlement of the Dzaleka refuge camp.  The July winds are considerably stronger here than in the capital, Lilongwe.  I am immediately surrounded by children of all ages expressing their excitement at the occasional sight of a ‘mzungu’ – a white person. Some of them have never seen a white man and they stare with awe. But others have learnt that mzungus are warm and trustworthy.  They would run up and embrace their white strangers.

According to the deputy camp administrator, Mr Ngoma, the biggest single refugee group at the camp are the Rwandese, numbering somewhere around 3,845.  The Congolese follow next with at roughly 2,725, and the refugees from Burundi amount to about 2,355.  The atmosphere in the camp is generally peaceful: the refugees have seen enough war and conflict. There are minor tensions of ethnic basis, but they tend not to escalate. The camp welcomes a few hundred Somalis and Ethiopians  every month. However, the these two groups rarely stay in the camp and get themselves smuggled out before long (mainly to South Africa).

The camp’s inhabitants stay in brick houses with straw roofs, or build their own huts out of sandy clay bricks. The living conditions vary a great deal: some dwellings have no windows or doors and only have small holes in the walls to allow in some light and fresh air; while some have electricity.

Some refugees have no entrance door to their house, yet they will own a cell phone with Internet access, or they will have no cooking sets for their food, but own a working TV. I guess the notion of necessities is different for people who once lived a life in abundance and then lost it all in a matter of minutes. Keeping these things from their past that connect them to the outer world is essential for them to be in touch with the normality of life.

Otherwise, the poverty of the camp’s inhabitants is striking. Every individual at the camp receives a minimum monthly “package” consisting of 13.5 kg of maize (rice), 1.8 kg of beans, 1750 g of cooking oil, 450 g of sugar and 150g of salt distributed by Red Cross in cooperation with the World Food Program. Apart from that, the Red Cross distributes blankets, soap, towels and cooking sets to new arrivals but these food supplies and commodities are scarce.

“We serve cooked food only to new arrivals every day,” says Cecilia Banda, a social affairs officer with the Red Cross. “The way from the northern reception point of Karonga to Dzaleka is very long and they are hungry upon arrival.”

In addition to the supplies and food distribution, the Red Cross is also running a community services program, including registration of newborns, raising awareness of contraception possibilities and gender-based violence. They also run an orphan care committee. The Red Cross is responsible for tracing services or finding relatives in other countries and camps to reunite families. They also arrange recreational activities such as football games, basket weaving for women, book reading and games outside the district with Malawians.

The fundamental principles of every child’s right to a primary education set by the UNHCHR Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 are fulfilled here by the Jesuit Refugee Service. Not only do they run primary schools for the refugee children and local Malawians, but they are also building a secondary school. These initiatives have not been easy to implement due to the shortage in funding and difficulties with obtaining permissions from the government.

The Malawian government’s share in the running of the camp includes a security unit consisting of four policemen, the administration of the camp and coordination of the NGO activities in the camp territory, a constructed water pipeline and personnel for the local clinic donated by UNHCR.

“We have no doctors at this hospital,” says the clinical officer Mr Katuli. The hospital is served by largely uneducated clinical assistants, four nurses and Mr Katuli who received a clinical officer education three years ago. They deal with minor injuries and give vaccinations; serious illnesses are treated at a district hospital 9 km away from the camp.

Since 2003 the hospital has had 17,166 references from Malawians and 9.700 from the refugees. The most common problem according to Mr Katuli is irrelevant visits.

“They come with any other demands than medical: complaints of malnutrition, lack of blankets and cooking facilities” – he claims, with a painfully realistic conclusion: "The refugees will hardly tell you the truth about their lives as it is, even though its bad enough as it is."