Returnee/Refugee camp...

Last week the team went to a returnee/refugee camp. We drove for about 3 hours to get to it. It was a very interesting experience actually seeing a returnee/refugee camp in real life and not just seeing it as a video on TV. Refugees have really become a reality for us. The returnee/refugee camp we went to is rather small with only about 362 families. Most of the people living in the camp are Rwandese people who were living in Tanzania or people who had just set up a home out in the bush and were not surviving on their own so they were moved into this new community. The camp has only been open about 7 months. Some people are still living in makeshift tents, cramming all their kids into one which is rather small, but all the families have been given a plot of land to build a house on and a couple kilometres away is land that each family will be given land to start farming crops on. A lack of rain this past year meant that there wasn’t a good harvest for most people. A lot of the children have swollen bellies and other types of sores on them as well, but their smiles are still so beautiful. The refugee camp was developed by CARE International and is funded by CARE Germany and CARE USA. We were told the local government is helping the refugee camp as well. The biggest need the people have is more food and other water supplies, like bore holes, to be brought in. Also the children are having to walk 5km everyday to get to the closest school, so there is a definite need for a local school to be built as well as teachers to be brought in or trained locally. Once the houses are built on this camp the next step they will be working towards is helping the people with their land and teaching about agriculture, as well as teaching people trades that they can use to start businesses and help develop this community.