Refugess face uncertain future
Authorities have as few as two weeks to decide the future of Mulanda Transit Camp where Kenyan refugees were moved to barely a week ago, according to Mr Michael Mataka, the deputy secretary-general of the Uganda Red Cross Society. The camp was initially set up to function for between two weeks and a month, he said on Wednesday during a tour of the camp. He added that once that period passed, officials from the Ugandan government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, will have to decide whether to move the camp to a more permanent location or to make the current site more settled.
“At that point a decision will have to be made,” he said.
He said the uncertainty in Kenya, where violence has been raging for a month following flawed presidential elections, has rendered decision-making a difficult guessing game because the violence and resulting flow of refugees has been so unpredictable. “It is not clear how long this situation will continue,” Mr Nataka said.
The Red Cross, as well as other organisations like UNHCR and World Vision, are providing food rations and household items like jerrycans, water tubs, blankets and mattresses. The site of the camp is covered in white tents where the refugees sleep, with some sharing with three or four others.
About 1,200 Kenyans have settled at the Mulanda site, while another busload or two of refugees arrive every day. Given that as many as 7,000 Kenyans have so far crossed into Uganda because of the post-election violence, officials had prepared the camp to accommodate 10,000 refugees. So far, that number has not materialised at the camp.
The refugees who managed to hold on to some money and belongings decided to stay near the border, rather than move to the new Mulanda site about 30 kms from the border. Others, like Peter Kihiko, lost everything and so had little choice but to move to the new site.
“The people who came here were ransacked, but those with something left stayed in Malaba,” Mr Kihiko said, while leaning against a fence post chatting with his long-time friend, Zakayo Ndungu. Until last month, the pair were both shop owners in Malaba and have known each other for 20 years.
Today they find themselves living as refugees with nothing left.
“We were businesspeople, we could eat whatever we wanted,” Mr Kihiko said. “Now, in one month, we are in poverty and eating only beans.
Mr Kihiko said he and the other refugees have heard that they may have to move yet again to a more permanent site.
The refugees had mostly gone to temporary refugee camps in Malaba and Busia before shifting to the larger Mulanda site last week.
Earlier this month, many of the refugees at Malaba showed signs of having some small financial means. Some read newspapers, while others went into town to buy small amounts of food. Today, that money has mostly disappeared and the refugees are left to rely on the hand-outs from humanitarian organisations.
One, Alex Kamau, 20, fled Eldoret shortly after the December 27 vote, leaving his mother and sisters behind. He has not heard whether his family is safe, but in the meantime, he fears for his own safety in the camp.
“Men have been drinking,” he said. “I borrowed Shs3,000 from one man so that I could buy some vegetables. I don’t have the money to pay him back and now he is threatening to hurt me.” One woman selling vegetables at the camp said her wares, such as a bundle of four tomatoes for Shs 200, were not selling because no one in the camp has money left.
The Monitor