Refugee Camp in Kenya Offers Skills Training for Sudanese Fleeing War

For tens of thousands of southern Sudanese, the desperate search for refuge from the death of their civilization ended at Kakuma Camp in a pitiless corner of northwestern Kenya.

Fourteen years into the war, Kakuma has grown into a city of sorts, population about 47,000, with its own politics and economy, successes and failures.

Stalls flanking a rutted road sell sugar, shoes, batteries and flashlights. A tailor mends well-worn clothes. A repairman fixes watches and radios. A video-cinema is showing “Basic Instinct.”

A library with a corrugated metal roof has neat shelves of hand-me-down books--from trashy bodice-rippers to medical texts. At the Turkana Cafe, men discuss poetry and politics, sipping sweet, milky Ethiopian coffee from saucers.

The mud-brick homes of Kakuma refugees are a contrast to the blue tarps pegged to the ground by Rwandans who have lived in eastern Zaire for nearly two years.

But the most remarkable difference between Kakuma and other refugee camps in the region may be the time and effort put into educating and training the mostly young refugees so that they will be prepared to help reconstruct their homeland, should peace come.

“This place will have major impact on the rebuilding of Sudan. It’s like a prefabricated house just waiting for the foundation to settle,” said Carl Triplehorn, team leader for the New York-based aid group International Rescue Committee.

“It’s up to the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] to get the right parts for the house--but some are thinking geodesic dome and some are thinking mud hut,” he said.

Whatever they build, they will have to start with basics.

The best guess is that 1.5 million people have died in southern Sudan since the blacks of the south rebelled in 1983 against a national government controlled by the Arabs of the north. Rebel factions based on ethnic groups also fight among themselves.

Eighty-five percent of the south’s population has been displaced. What little the region the size of Texas had before the war in the way of government, schools and health care has been destroyed.

Education is critical, everyone agrees, especially young people. Many walk hundreds of miles to move to the camp so they take advantage of its free schools.

“British colonialists prevented us from going to school in the south. We were uneducated, so it was the people in the north who were running the government, the businesses, the universities,” said Hoth Gor Luak, chairman of the camp’s South Sudanese Community, representing 2,000 ethnic Nuers.

On a wedge of land between two riverbeds that are dry except for terrifying flash floods stand three kindergartens, 20 primary schools and one high school.

The Roman Catholic charity Don Bosco runs a technical school where boys study carpentry, metal work and masonry, and it is building a school for girls to learn typing and tailoring.

“We hope that one day this war will be over and they will go home,” said coordinator Armin Pressmann. “After one year, they are able to build a house or furniture. They will need to rebuild when they return.”

What they learn at Kakuma can be as simple as men learning to cook or fetch water. “This is not our tradition. Men tend cattle,” said Jok Atem, 23.

Atem has pursued his education at Kakuma because “if you die here without aim, you have no history.”

His goal is to “marry in Sudan. I want to save my people--I would teach or fight.”

Teaching the young people not to fight is another goal at Kakuma.

“We must learn to live together in peace because when we return home to the Sudan we will not have one country for the Dinka and another country for the Nuer. We will all share one country,” said Diing Akol, 34, who lost a leg to a land mine.

He is part of a program that tries to help people resolve disputes peacefully.

But sometimes the anger cannot be contained. In early June, clashes between Nuers and Dinkas--who support different rebel groups--killed six people and injured more than 100 at the camp.

Other programs have been set up to help disabled guerrillas.

Nearly all are illiterate, so reading and writing are taught beneath open-air shelters at three centers. Veterans also receive counseling and are taught new skills so that they can earn a living.

Hunched over a sewing machine, a man with a furrowed brow and a fake leg makes camp uniforms; an apprentice carpenter makes a tiny walker for a toddler who lost a leg; others weave blankets or make sandals from tires.

“We are trying to provide them with something they can take home. We can carry our knowledge and skills back with us,” said Akol, who works with the veterans.

Another program offers loans and training for fledgling entrepreneurs who may someday get a chance to rebuild their country.

In classes that meet under thorn trees, men and women learn the fundamentals of bookkeeping, marketing and managing. They hone those skills by helping run poultry and vegetable farms, carpentry workshops and restaurants.

“The backbone of this program is training, monitoring and evaluation,” said its director, Peter Lominit.