Water Wellness

This is the fourth post in the Perspectives of Poverty project. Special thanks to Fred Minyaliwa and Samson Kumphale of the Dowa District Hospital who made the visit possible, and to Don McMurtry for assisting with the project on this trip.

Sitting atop a dry, barren hilltop, the Dzaleka refugee camp is home to roughly 10,000 displaced people from Eastern and Central Africa. Their flight from their troubled homes has brought them here where, with few options to hope for, most wait for an opportunity that may never come. Many have been here for years.

I had visited Dzaleka before, in 2008, and was somewhat jarred by the experience. The camp is nothing like the image I had expected of tents and chaos in a field – an image I only knew through media images. The shocking thing about Dzaleka is its permanence. I learned that, for so many thousands, there is no end to a conflict when they have nothing to go home to.

But I also realized that I had an expectation of how I should feel upon visiting the camp, not only what I would see. I expected to be devastated by the stories I heard and the hardship that people were enduring. It is true there are stories I do not even want to repeat, much less imagine living through, but in reality I heard, saw, and felt much more than that.

People are so much more than statistics of a tragedy, but it can be difficult to see beyond the word ‘refugee’. I certainly found this – until I visited the camp – and I found even more difficult the task of communicating simultaneously the wit and character of a brilliant woman, and the tragic story of how she lost her family in Rwanda. I hope that this installation in the Perspectives of Poverty project will help to achieve this – to show people as whole human beings, not merely victims of tragedy.

Arop Lual Two, Darfur, Sudan

Arop fled the war in Darfur in April of 2007 and made his way to Malawi alone where he has been ever since. We met him in the transfer station of the camp where he is currently living after termites destroyed his house. Fluent in impeccable English, this telecommunications engineer now lives in a corrugated metal building built for people passing through the camp. Here he waits, but opportunities are scarce. When asked about what he hopes for in the future, Arop replied that he has none.

The photo taken through the window screen shows where Arop lives, but it says little about the exceptional person that he is. Despite the scarcity of opportunities for his future, there is an abundance of intelligence and curiosity within this man that cannot be overlooked. The second photo speaks to this. It is a portrait of Arop, not posing, but articulating the nature of the telecommunication industry to my friend Don.

Mossi Jafari Baruti Ndwali, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Mr. Mossi Jafari is the leader of the Muslim community in the camp, and the owner of a tea shop and copy shop that does scanning, photocopying, printing, writing, and music production. He has also been a refugee his entire life.

Although he identifies as Congolese, he has never been there, having been born and raised in a refugee camp in Burundi before fleeing conflict there in 2005. This successful, soft-spoken businessman now lives in Dzaleka with his wife and six children. For me, the term businessman and refugee did not used to seem synonymous, but I probably am not the only one who wouldn’t expect to enter a mud brick structure in a refugee camp and find a simplified version of Kinko’s. It is incredible, but it also makes perfect sense. The food stipend that Mr. Mossi Jafari and his family receive is meagre and life is hard, so he looks for new opportunities to expand his business and support his family. In his case, this meant sourcing some electronics from a close friend in South Africa and learning to use the internet, word, excel, and powerpoint. It remains a difficult road, but Mr. Mossi Jafari is finding a way.

The two photos of Mr. Mossi Jafari are taken in the same place: one is in front of his business, the other is inside it.

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My ignorance about people continues to astound me. Even on this trip to Dzaleka, I continued to catch myself making assumptions about others, looking through the lens of them as ‘refugees’ instead of simply seeing people for who they are. This is even easier to do when only a photo or two represents an entire person, or group of people, and tries to tell their story in a single breath. There is always a multitude within people.

But it remains difficult to think or feel many different things at the same time. A group of Congolese grilled the most delicious goat meat I have ever tasted, yet I may have been served by people who watched their families die. If that is the case, should I remember the moment as delicious, or tragic? I suppose I try to feel both, difficult though it is, and I am becoming convinced that this simultaneous perception is what is needed to create lasting change. Someone like Arop needs an opportunity, and that requires us to see both the hopelessness he speaks of, and the talent within him.