Doing some digging

We spent today in focus group discussions with the refugee leaders and separate women’s and mens’ sessions to find out their situation and needs. We first met with the refugee Chiefs and sub-Chiefs (who all brought their own personal bodyguards!) and then spoke to about 60 women in a big group (it started small but then grew too big, but everyone wanted to participate). My Arabic wasn't the best to begin with, and it's no better now, but we got some good info.

What we learned in terms of water was that the refugees are accessing a haffir (a big pond built for cattle) for their drinking water, which is incredibly dirty and muddy, green from algae and quickly drying up due to hot weather. Another twist in the saga is that a passing nomadic Arab tribe, the Felata, are paying the host community to access the haffir for their cows. So they’ve added extra competition to a rapidly dwindling resource. Basically, the refugees are drinking contaminated water and its giving everyone diarrhoea. It's a terrible situation.

To compound the problem, the water issue is difficult. The host community has three boreholes (handpumps), two of which are broken/dismantled, and they therefore don't have enough for themselves. So naturally they don’t want to share it.

But the issue is of their own making. The Jamam community has refused to repair their boreholes over the last few months, even though we’ve trained pump mechanics and given them tools to do it. There is a feud about payment of the mechanics by the community – the Chief himself even told people not to collect money because Oxfam should come and fix it for them. The other borehole, which has a water yard and a pump attached to it, is also not operating.  The oil company PetroDar donated fuel for the community to use in the pump, who subsequently sold half of it, and when it ran out they refused to buy more. Plus they won’t even repair small parts of the pump, like the filter, which is currently the only other hindrance to use of this system. So much for long-term sustainability of water points! This community is really stubborn. So of course they are willing to share their water. It means someone comes to fix the boreholes for them. 

As for food, people don’t have the money nor the means to find it – there isn’t much around for the host community as it is. There is a real lack of food here in this little centre. As for a clinic – i don’t know what will happen with this, but someone (hint hint, MSF) needs to either set up something here, or visit regularly with a mobile clinic. I’m hoping they can send some medical expertise in soon because there are some very sick people here.

We had a Commissioner’s representative for the refugees come into our compound today, yelling and screaming about why Oxfam doesn’t repatriate critically ill people to the clinic in Doro. I think we should, but it would start a landslide of desperate people at our door, which we can’t sustain. So when we put him onto our Thuraya sat phone to the Commissioner in Doro, a car arrived within 2 hours to ferry the sick people to the clinic. Thank goodness.

Security is also an issue for them. There is a SPLA military barracks not far away, and there are soldiers moving up and down past the refugee camp and our compound. We also have ongoing security concerns about these guys because they’re always drunk when returning to their barracks from town, and they bother the refugee communities by making lots of noise and entering their houses uninvited in the evenings. The military police have to round them up every night.

As for progress in Doro, frustrations abound there too. Our drilling rig has hit rock at 24m in the first attempt, and at 22m on the second, and is now out of temporary casings to undertake further drilling. We are trying to mobilise resources to begin drilling a third site, in a completely new area that will hopefully yield water. The problem with this is that until its activities in Doro are completed, our drilling rig will be further delayed from reaching Jamam. In the meantime we're trying to get the parts to fix another one in our compound, but it seems like we don't have the complete kit to do it.

So things are slowly coming together, at least in terms of understanding the needs of the Jamam community and what we can do about it. We must finish providing water to people in Doro first with the drilling rig, but in the meantime we need to provide water as quickly as possible to these people in Jamam.