The Dadaab refugee camps in eastern Kenya are huge but they make themselves known slowly. After passing through the city of Garissa, you travel for a couple of hours along a dusty track and come to a derelict checkpoint. A soldier sitting in the shade waves cars past and goes back to chatting with the friends who have come to keep him company.
Beyond the checkpoint is the town of Dadaab, home to about 70,000 camel herders and farmers. Among this local population, refugees from all over Africa live in three locations. If you count them together, the trio of camps would be Kenya’s fourth largest city. Each one feels a lot like a city, too. They have internet cafes, pharmacies, auto repair shops, and bus depots. But then, people have had a long time to get settled in.
This year 2011, Dadaab will mark the 20th year since refugees started arriving here. Most are fleeing the war in Somalia, but others are citizens of Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, even Zimbabwe. The United Nations Refugee Agency said in early December that Dadaab’s non-indigeneous population was now 300,000, a staggering number considering that the camps were originally built to house 90,000 people.
One of them is Mohamed Dahir, a camp elder. Visiting his home says a lot about what it means to be a refugee in Dadaab. His famiy has been here for years and there is no sign that anyone will leave anytime soon. The walls of his compound are covered with hundreds of U.S. AID vegetable oil tins flattened out and hammered together. The tops of oil drums have been cut off, sliced in half, painted blue or green or red and then laid around the buildings as decoration. We sit on straw mats under the shade of a tree where a cool breeze blows.
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