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This blog will be an account my life working in a Refugee camp in Northern Zambia called Mwange. For the next year, I will be working for Right to Play, a sport and development organization based out of Toronto. What follows will be a life altering experience. Stay tuned....
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
July 19th
In the camp for a meeting today. Participation in these meetings has been a little difficult these days as kids and teachers are on vacation from school. That means that people leave the camp to go do business in the surrounding villages; travel long distances to visit family or prepare their fields for the next farming season.
I could really feel the desperate situation of starvation as I was speaking to people today. A man named Gilles came up to me explaining that he and his wife and their two little babies didn’t have enough food to eat. He asked me for US$ 100, that he offered to pay back. The brutal part was that this man was somebody that I have seen in the camp everyday and who has been really great to me. That made it even harder to explain that I wasn’t in a position to help him. He finished our conversation by letting me know he and his family would be leaving back to the Congo.
Later on in the day, I found out that an official from UNHCR head office in Lusaka would be coming into the camp to select candidates for UN sponsored resettlement. This means that if a family is selected, they are moved to a host country in the developed world like Australia, Canada, or England. Refugees are selected based on age, skills, education level, etc. It was nice to see that the same man that had asked me for money earlier that day would be one of the refugees that would be considered.
I could really feel the desperate situation of starvation as I was speaking to people today. A man named Gilles came up to me explaining that he and his wife and their two little babies didn’t have enough food to eat. He asked me for US$ 100, that he offered to pay back. The brutal part was that this man was somebody that I have seen in the camp everyday and who has been really great to me. That made it even harder to explain that I wasn’t in a position to help him. He finished our conversation by letting me know he and his family would be leaving back to the Congo.
Later on in the day, I found out that an official from UNHCR head office in Lusaka would be coming into the camp to select candidates for UN sponsored resettlement. This means that if a family is selected, they are moved to a host country in the developed world like Australia, Canada, or England. Refugees are selected based on age, skills, education level, etc. It was nice to see that the same man that had asked me for money earlier that day would be one of the refugees that would be considered.
