Drew's African Odyssey - Mwange Refugee Camp, Zambia

Off to the camp today to give the last session of the netball workshop, little do I know that today is food distribution day and apparently that has priority over my workshop! The women that have been coming to the workshop are from the secondary school and most of them are expected to go and collect the food from the distribution centre, so only 4 girls showed up at the netball field. I decided to postpone the last session until Wednesday.

With not much else to do for the day, I decided to go and see how the distribution process works for myself. When I arrived at the Centre, thousands of people were all sitting around waiting for their turn to take food. I immediately received stares and comments from the refugee as they are all still mad about the sorghum issue - I can't seem to get away from that one. I learned that the process is carried out in stages whereby each section in the camp will be called to come and get their food, with the family with the most members going first and the family with the least members going last. The Red Cross is in charge of the distribution and in order for the refugees to get food, they have to present their UN issued ration card which gets them salt, oil, beans and cereal. The ration lasts them about 2 weeks. I spent most of the time learning about the process from a lady named Victoria, who is in charge of the distribution (see the video!!). Eventually, I met with the Refugee Officer from the government, and the UN field officer and chatted with them about how it was going. It was a really interesting day, but it was tough to see how desperate the people are - grabbing and yelling for the food and even insulting the workers for the quality of the food! From there it was back to my usual spot by the river for a bite to eat. Took lots of pics today and I'm sending them back to Canada right away.

Posted by: Drew Gardiner / 12:10 PM