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Anatomy of a Temporary Country:

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Anatomy of a Temporary Country:

[Article]

Palmstrom, Becky

in eight acts

In camp myths, the name Kakuma means "nowhere." From the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, most aid workers fly 530 miles over the Great Rift Valley, which splits this part of Africa in half. Passing the glittering waters of Lake Turkana, turn left at the Ethiopian and Sudanese borders, and just when it seems you might crash into the lush mountains of Uganda, you will see it, springing up from the desert plains: row upon row of corrugated tin roofs and mud homes. The earth is cracked by years of baking under a hostile sun. Behind walls of recycled plastic bags stitched together and under roofs made of World Food Program cans hammered flat lives a population almost the size of Berkeley, California. This is nowhere. The refugees of Kakuma refugee camp come from many conflict-stricken African countries, such as Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Forbidden to settle in Kenya, Kakuma's seventy-six thousand residents have no option but to wait for resettlement elsewhere. In a way Kakuma is a temporary country, now composed of fourteen nationalities; eighty-eight churches and mosques; twelve primary schools; one hospital; one high school; three graveyards; three libraries; and any number of "hotels," as they call the small restaurants. It has its own laws, regulations, and customs. Yet this is a country almost entirely reliant on social security handouts meted out by the humanitarian aid workers-the de-facto government. Kenyan law stipulates that refugees cannot leave the camps without a permit. The camp residents are not allowed to work for a real wage, own property, or grow almost anything in the dusty soil, and so they are forced into dependency, often for decades; the average protracted refugee situation lasts for seventeen years. As Jeff Crisp, head of policy development for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees writes in the Refugee Survey Quarterly, "The right to life has been bought at the cost of every other right." More than ten million encamped refugees worldwide have fallen through the gap between nation-states. This is the story of how temporary places of protection have morphed into modern-day purgatories, limbos, waiting rooms. It is also the story of some of the young women of Kakuma who have lived their lives waiting in lines for the basics of life: from food and soap to sanitary pads.

2011

UC Berkeley

[Article]

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