Daily life the refugee camps

I feel like writing a little bit about daily life in the camps. Part of this blog so far has been about the political situation, which of course is the background for why we, and indeed all the Saharawis are here. However, the lived everyday life is concerned with more pressing matters, and I will try to say a little about some of them.

If you think the Sahara desert is a hot place, you're very mistaken. At least this part of the desert, at this time of year. I don't have a thermometer, but I would guess it's around 5 degrees celcius, giver or take a little, from about 9 PM until about 12 AM. Then the sun slowly starts heating everything up – unless it's windy, which it often is. Then it may be seriously cold until about 3 or 4 PM. In practice, this means that when we have breakfast before school and dinner (around 10PM before we go to bed), sat on the floor, shivering whilst wrapped in fleece blankets. The last couple of nights, I've slept in woollen long-johns, a woolen shirt, a fleece jumper and thick socks – in addition to a thin sleeping bag and two blankets on top of me. People here have tents and small houses, but there is little difference in the temperature inside and outside. No wonder our entire family and half my class have a cold. I can feel my own throat swelling up as I write.

Another aspect of daily life is the unpredictability of things. For example, today only four students in my class showed up. The reason was that the gas had arrived, so people had to bring their empty gas containers and pick up new ones. I asked them, as nicely as I could, to let me know in advance when these things happen. They then replied that often, they didn't know themselves before it happened, except that the gas arrived roughly once a month. Imagine that – you don't know when you'll get gas next time for your stove! In addition to this, the water at the school has ran out. Rumors has it the water is roughly as unpredictable as the gas...

All in all, it seems to be true that the camps are well organised. On the other hand, well organised compared to what?

Teaching

The goals for this project are many, and some of them has to do with our function in the camps. It is, after all, the teaching of English that our daily lives revolve around. At the moment, we have just less than 50 students divided between the three of us. The students are mainly women between the age of 18 and 25. In addition to teaching the students in the morning, we also teach around ten teachers who work in primary and secondary school here in the camps. We teach in very small classrooms with only notebooks, blackboard and chalk as tools. It is both liberating and very challenging. Some of our students have no English at all and don't know the Latin alphabet, whilst others speak almost perfect English. We have divided the students into three classes with different levels, and try to our best abilities to teach – despite our lack of formal qualifications.

We are also about to start teaching the same students IT. At the centre where we work, there are a few computers available – or rather one computer at the moment. As some of our students already work as secretaries, IT-skills are essential, but to some extent lacking. The challenge of course is to teach ten students at a time IT skills with one computer. Never mind the fact that the language of the computers is Spanish, and the language settings in OpenOffice is Arabic.

Of course, our goal is for the students to learn as much English and IT as possible. However, to be able to speak English is only part of the motivation. The other reason our teaching is important is simply because it gives the young people something to do every day. Many of the women and men in our classes have already got university degrees. Despite this, there aren't any jobs for them in the camps, except for the few positions as secretaries. From what I understand, the reason for the lack of men in our classes is that most of them have work to do in the daytime, paid or unpaid. Some drive taxis between the camps and Tindouf, whilst others work as teachers, do building work, work in the administration of the camps etc. The division between the gender, whilst I'm at it, is an interesting one, and an issue I will come back to in a later post. For now, I have to return to preparing lessons – something which takes some time when you're unexperienced, as any teacher will tell you.

Contrasts

25.01.2011

Just when we though we'd started to figure out the life of the Saharawis, we're caught off guard. The other day, we started the day as usual with English lessons with our students. However, Abba, our contact in the camps, came and told us there was a delegation from the occupied territories arriving the same day, and that we should go and try to talk to them – which of course was an opportunity we didn't want to miss.

The people arriving from the occupied territories turned out to be human rights activists. Many of them participated in the protests in Western Sahara in November last year, and many of them had also at some point been to prison. We had heard stories about breaches of human rights by Moroccan authorities, amongst other things torture in prisons, but never actually spoken to someone who had experienced it. Needless to say, the celebration dinner (consisting of vast quantities of camel meat, including camel stomach, for those of you who are particularly interested), turned rather bleak when we started talking to the people whose presence we were celebrating.

In short, life in the camps is one of contrasts. On the one hand, everything is calm and quiet, and our days – as well as the normal life of the Saharawis living here – follows a fairly predictable, comfortable pattern. Then, there are the reminders as to why we are here. These people are refugees, unable to return to their home country. They are in a desperate situation which has lasted for 35 years. They live their lives here in the camps – but this is not their home. They put up their tents and build their houses, thinking that everything here in the harsh desert environment is temporary. This is not where they want to be, which the heated speeches made by the human rights activists illustrated. The Saharawis are about to lose their patience. As one of the activists pointed out; unless the international community steps in and helps solve this conflict, the Saharawis might again be on the verge of another war.

Past the checkpoint

23.01.2011

When writing this, we've been in the refugee camps in the Sahara desert for about 48 hours. Not long by any standards, but the amount of new impressions don't match the time spent here. Although all three of us, Bjørnar, Marius and Elisabeth, have talked to Saharawis and former participants of the project who have been to the desert, it's been hard to imagine what to expect. We'll try to sum up our impressions to hopefully give you a better idea of our lives in the camps so far.

So far, the trip can be summed up as follows:
A bumpy start! The airport express train from Oslo was cancelled due to technical problems, which is not what you want when trying to catch a plane to another continent. Then it turned out the plane from Oslo to Paris was delayed, meaning that we had 15 mins in transit in Paris. Needless to say, we ran. It's not every day one can say that one has missed a plane, and then de-missed it again, but that's what happened. However, our luggage got stuck in Paris. Bye bye, toothbrush!

Arriving in Africa. We had a good few hours to wait in Alger, and decided to celebrate Bjørnar, who turned 20 years old that day. We had planned for a meal at the airport, but realised when we got there that the lack of cash machines would prove a problem. Luckily for us, an acquaintance we'd made at the lost-luggage counter took pity on us and lent us some money. Thus, the celebration was back on track with tuna-mushroom-cheese(?) pizzas.

Checkpoints of various kinds. In short; we've lost count of the amount of security controls, forms to be filled out and passports closely examined by people in uniforms. Algerian police enjoy putting up security checkpoints clearly only to cause inconvenience as nobody never tries to actually search you. The highlight was without doubt the hand luggage check on the tarmac of Algers International airport, in complete darkness. Thus, not a chance in a million to spot, well, anything really. However, after the last Algerian checkpoint between Tindouf and the camps, no one has asked to see any papers, and the trip onwards went smoothly, thanks to our friendly and competent contact, Abba, with his rather sturdy jeep.

The camps. The three of us are staying together in one family. Thus; we've got ourselves a new sister, brother in law and mother. Our sister speaks a little bit of English (sight of relief from those of us who don't speak Spanish or Arabic), so it is possible to talk with her. With the others, we use a mix of sign language, Spanish, French, Norwegian, English and Arabic. Confusing? Not at all. Hopefully, our Hassania (the dialect of Arabic spoken by the Saharawis) will pick up and we will be able to communicate more. Anyway, the family is great, and so far, all is well. The atmosphere has been easy and relaxed ever since the first moment making the stay so far more than pleasant.

We have been making bets on who will get ill first though....

(Curious fact of the day; the Saharawis drink a lot of tea with a lot of sugar. We had 14 cups yesterday. Beat that.)