Mpaka Refugee Camp
On Saturday I visited a refugee camp. A crowded school bus carried me and 40 other students through the lush hills of rural Swaziland, bumping over potholes and gravel roads. The trip took over an hour. The mood on the bus was anticipatory - it was the first trip of the year to the Mpaka refugee camp (pronounced 'Mmpagka') where Waterford runs a program called 'Mpaka Peers.' It's a program aimed at helping the students in the camp with school and English proficiency. Visiting Mpaka is also a chance to play with some of the younger kids. For me, hearing about this experience was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Waterford. The work the school was doing in the camp looked amazing, and the Mpaka Peers program is also aimed at giving Waterford students a chance to learn from students in the camp.
The refugees come from Burundi, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Somalia and the camp has begun to become overcrowded. We were told that many of the children would not speak English, but we weren't told much else. When we arrived, I was surprised by how normal it looked - it looked like it could be any small rural town in Swaziland, with its low slung concrete houses and chickens running in the garden. As the bus drove through the tall gates topped with rusty razor wire, children came running. They crowded around the bus, running alongside as the driver was forced to slow down. We were divided into groups, with some going to help the older students with maths and English, and others going to play with the younger children.
I was in the latter group, and we were handed a bag of rubber balls and a few hoola hoops and warned to count them before giving them out and after giving them back. Toys in hands, we tried to make our way through the masses of kids towards the small fenced in play area. Two young girls grabbed my hands immediately, asking my name as we walked towards the playground. They were called Hannah and Nadia, and they were 8 and 9. Nadia was more talkative, but Hannah told me she had 11 siblings that all lived in the camp with her. Nadia had been in the camp for 5 years - she didn't say if she remembered anything else.
Once we made it to the play area, cheerful chaos ensued. We were kept busy inventing games with the hoola hoops, inflating balloons, and blowing up hoola hoops. The kids ranged in age from about 3-12, and most of them looked underfed. Most of them spoke quite good English, but some of them were silent. I thought that I was too busy to be as affected as I thought I would, but at one point, a toddler called Quinn pulled me over to the fence. A little boy was standing by it, running his hand over the rusty chain link over and over and over again. He didn't seem like he was looking at anything. Quinn took his hand and put it in mine, and he finally looked at me. That was when it properly hit me. For many of these children, this was all they'd known. Swaziland was not their home. They may attend school, but they wouldn't learn in their language, they wouldn't have a proper home to return to. Many of them would deal with trauma and mental health issues. Funding at the camp is perpetually insufficient, and it's becoming crowded and unsanitary. This may sound obvious, but it is one thing entirely to read about refugee camps, and another thing to experience them, and understand the full extent of what humans do to one another.
We spent about 4 hours at Mpaka, during which time anyone who had hair long enough to braid was braided within an inch of their life by the little girls, I almost fainted from the heat, and we took heaps of pictures with the kids. It was an incredible experience, and I hope I have the chance to go back.
The refugees come from Burundi, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Somalia and the camp has begun to become overcrowded. We were told that many of the children would not speak English, but we weren't told much else. When we arrived, I was surprised by how normal it looked - it looked like it could be any small rural town in Swaziland, with its low slung concrete houses and chickens running in the garden. As the bus drove through the tall gates topped with rusty razor wire, children came running. They crowded around the bus, running alongside as the driver was forced to slow down. We were divided into groups, with some going to help the older students with maths and English, and others going to play with the younger children.
I was in the latter group, and we were handed a bag of rubber balls and a few hoola hoops and warned to count them before giving them out and after giving them back. Toys in hands, we tried to make our way through the masses of kids towards the small fenced in play area. Two young girls grabbed my hands immediately, asking my name as we walked towards the playground. They were called Hannah and Nadia, and they were 8 and 9. Nadia was more talkative, but Hannah told me she had 11 siblings that all lived in the camp with her. Nadia had been in the camp for 5 years - she didn't say if she remembered anything else.
Once we made it to the play area, cheerful chaos ensued. We were kept busy inventing games with the hoola hoops, inflating balloons, and blowing up hoola hoops. The kids ranged in age from about 3-12, and most of them looked underfed. Most of them spoke quite good English, but some of them were silent. I thought that I was too busy to be as affected as I thought I would, but at one point, a toddler called Quinn pulled me over to the fence. A little boy was standing by it, running his hand over the rusty chain link over and over and over again. He didn't seem like he was looking at anything. Quinn took his hand and put it in mine, and he finally looked at me. That was when it properly hit me. For many of these children, this was all they'd known. Swaziland was not their home. They may attend school, but they wouldn't learn in their language, they wouldn't have a proper home to return to. Many of them would deal with trauma and mental health issues. Funding at the camp is perpetually insufficient, and it's becoming crowded and unsanitary. This may sound obvious, but it is one thing entirely to read about refugee camps, and another thing to experience them, and understand the full extent of what humans do to one another.
We spent about 4 hours at Mpaka, during which time anyone who had hair long enough to braid was braided within an inch of their life by the little girls, I almost fainted from the heat, and we took heaps of pictures with the kids. It was an incredible experience, and I hope I have the chance to go back.
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