So, the bombing in the border region of Blue Nile (Sudan)
and Upper Nile (South Sudan) states continues, which means that thousands of
people are getting the hell out of there. Understandably. And coming here.
Bounj, the capital of Maban county where we are implementing
Public Health and Livelihoods programs, is the destination to which these
people are fleeing. They come with almost nothing; whatever they could grab at
the time, whatever they can carry – plus their children, their old people,
their sick and disabled people.
So when they arrive, they need the basics. They need clean
water, sanitation, shelter and food. And unfortunately for them, because the
humanitarian response is typically slow, they don’t get a lot of these things
for some time. When you run away from your home with nothing but the clothes on
your back, setting up a new ‘home’ in the open bush with no facilities and nothing
to support you – perhaps not even anything to cut wood with to build a rickety
shelter – means that your situation is,
to put it bluntly, F$CKED. To then not receive any help from anyone for weeks,
maybe months, is even worse. Especially when these agencies (us included) are
all in country and are supposed to be experts at responses like this.
Oxfam’s cause wasn’t helped by the mother of all f$ck-ups
that was the decision to completely evacuate all of our staff from Jamam when
the bombings first started. It meant that before we could send anyone back in
to respond to the refugees, we had to send a regional security team to assess
the situation and then mobilise everyone that had been sent ‘on leave’ from
Juba. It involved about 3 weeks of downtime, and then a mad rush to organise charter
planes and vehicle movement plans once we got the go-ahead to go back in. And
it took quite a while to get everyone here.
In the meantime, while we were running away, the refugees
were coming, and other organisations were moving to where we’d come from, coming
to assist people that needed it. We looked bloody stupid.
So now we have to redeem ourselves. And now that I’m here,
and have been briefed on the situation, I know that we have a good opportunity
to do just that; mainly because of the complete dog’s breakfast of a situation
on the ground. IOM (a UN-affiliated agency), UNHCR (the UN refugee agency, as their advertising so proudly states),
GOAL (an Irish NGO) and Medecins Sans Frontier (MSF) are on the ground. But
nothing has been done. Everyone’s confused about what UNHCR and IOM are doing
because they’ve stated they’ll basically lead this response, but have
subsequently disappeared off the face of the earth. So when we want to come in
and support the response with our own activities, we find no-one here to update
us on the situation, or share what they’re doing. So we have to try and
‘coordinate’ our response with very little information, and work out what role
we should play.
In essence, UNHCR have set up a camp in Doro, a town just
outside Bounj, to cater for around 35,000 Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese
Internally Displaced People (IDPs) fleeing fighting in Blue Nile State. That’s
a LOT. Sure, it’s not Dadaab camp in Kenya, but it’s a big number of arrivals
to respond to.
But right next to our compound, people have also arrived. The
local authorities allowed them to settle here, and they have already built new
houses out of local materials and even started digging their own latrines. UNHCR
had apparently planned to officially set up (ie demarcate land and organise people)
an official camp next to us, and start registering arrivals. Apparently it’s
going to cater for 45,000 people. Four thousand are already here.
UNHCR have informed us that in the next few weeks, they are
going to start sending people in buses and trucks from a town on the border
call Al Fuj to Jamam, where there are around 35,000 people trying to get away
from the bombing & fighting.
So, right on our doorstep we are going to have a refugee
camp. And we are the only agency within cooee of here. Bounj, where the major
response and all the NGOs are, is only about 65km away, but it’s a two hour
journey on a shite road. So, Oxfam, it’s time to pull up your socks and do
something about the situation in your own backyard. We are a WASH organisation
after all, so we need to take the lead on water, sanitation and hygiene
promotion.
Food – well, normally this is the UN’s World Food Program
(WFP) responsibility and we can really only advocate for them to assist. It
really depends on how organised they are (and at this stage I’m not holding my
breath). Medical assistance – this is MSF’s game. Unfortunately everyone is
focused on Doro at the moment. Sanitation seems to be covered by MSF, who is
building 25 public latrines, and IOM has pledged to build 3,000 household
latrines (lofty ambitions – and an interesting choice for a refugee camp).
Everyone also seems to think that as well as doing WASH in
Doro, that we’ll take complete responsibility for Jamam – because it’s right
next door; which is fine by us, as long as we’re supported in the areas in
which we don’t have the expertise.
So, it seems that the plan is this. In terms of responding
in Doro, we will initially assist with water and hygiene promotion, and then
when the other organisations come on-line, scale back things there and focus
purely on Jamam. While they don’t seem to be anywhere in sight, UNHCR should be
registering newly arrived refugees and allocating them places to ‘live’; MSF
have set up a clinic; GOAL are planning on hygiene promotion; IOM/MSF are
building toilets and WFP is distributing food.
In the absence of any reliable information or people to meet
with, we’ve decided to focus on what we do best –WASH. We plan to undertake
hygiene promotion activities in the camp initially, because its needed, it’s
something we can do with very few resources, and GOAL aren’t on the ground yet.
Even though it’s not a ‘tangible’ activity – as in it doesn’t involve building
anything - hygiene promotion is an
essential activity in a crowded environment like a refugee camp. People are
living in unhygienic conditions; they’re having to shit and throw their rubbish
near their homes, and don’t have the water – nor the habit – to wash their
hands. It’s the perfect environment for cholera, typhoid, and most commonly,
diarrhoea. An uncommon and trivial problem for the majority of us, diarrhoea
kills more children around the world every year than any other disease.
Compound this problem by sticking a whole bunch of people into a small area
with no facilities, and voila! You have a major problem. But it’s so simple to
prevent! Can you imagine?
When it comes to water, we are the only ones with a drilling
rig, so it’s essential that we put it to good use. We already have a technical
team on the ground in Doro to drill two new boreholes, and rehabilitate three
others. We’ll build water yards (which are basically large rainwater tanks on platforms
where water is pumped) and attach tap stands to the tanks so that multiple
people can take water.
The team is ready to start drilling – as soon as UNHCR get
their shit together and organise the camp properly. We’d done some initial
community consultation and mapping to determine where the new boreholes should
be drilled. But then we got word that UNHCR, despite their absence in the last
week, were on their way back to demarcate the existing refugees, who had set up
in the demarcated camp area, into more orderly sectors. This then affects the
work we’d done on siting the boreholes in the most appropriate and equitable places
to meet demand. Hopefully we don’t have to move them, but if the new camp
layout means the boreholes aren’t in the right place, we’ll do the process
again and make sure that the locations don’t cause conflict amongst the
refugees.
Once this is done, we plan to move our rig to Jamam and
drill two new boreholes in the Jamam camp to cater for those arriving soon.
All these plans could change however, depending on what
information we can glean from other organisations, and especially if UNHCR
emerge somewhere, and hopefully soon.
So tomorrow is the key. We are sending a team to Bounj try
and find out what is going on with UNHCR. We’ll try and meet with GOAL, suss
out their plans, find out who their already-identified community volunteers
are, and start involving them in Hygiene Promotion activities in the camp. GOAL
have said they can have staff on the ground to do this within a week, but so
far nothing has happened in this department – so we want to support the
volunteers until GOAL can effectively do it. Then we’ll focus on Jamam. GOAL have also said that they can’t get an
emergency response team on the ground until about a month’s time, so in the
meantime it’s up to us. The timing of Christmas doesn’t help our plans either.
We’ll do a reccie of the land around our compound, and talk
to the refugee community, to determine the water and sanitation situation and
needs of the people there, so we can target and plan our response for them.
We also have a barge on its way down the Nile with supplies
of timber, pipes, hygiene promotion materials, plastic sheeting, submersible
pumps, generators, you name it. 23 tonnes of materials and equipment for us to
provide emergency water and shelter, build emergency pit latrines and bathing
shelters, and carry out hygiene promotion activities. By the time it arrives,
hopefully we’ll have a much better idea of where we should use these materials.
So, lots to do! Let’s see what happens tomorrow.
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