By: Supreetha Gubbala
PART II
…………..Majority of staff at Gihembe refugee camp arrive at 7 am or earlier, stuffed tightly in the few vehicles shared by all partners to reach the camp’s odd location atop a hill and leave at 5pm or later depending on their work. After a week of working beside them, it is difficult to say these workers could be doing more or just caring more.
The medical staff in particular is meticulous, yet caring in providing what they can for their patients. With a regular staff of 30 nurses and a single doctor, the staff manages the health center with surprising capacity to care for over 20,000 residents. Currently implementing a vaccine program for the thousands of children in the camp, they are on average vaccinating a couple thousand children per day.
Thus, uncovering the simple good guy bad guy formula does not exist in the refugee situation at Gihembe because although it would be easy to blame authority, the problem has never been that simple. However, if anything is for sure, it is that many questions remain unanswered as resident’s accounts differ from the “facts,” and in these gaps, perhaps we may uncover solutions.
Stairway to Nowhere
Salama Innocent is a young Congolese boy aged 15. Born in the Gihembe camp he is lucky to have grown into a strong healthy teen, currently living with three other children and his mother. His family fled from DRCongo and arrived at Gihembe sixteen years ago.Salama’s daily activities consist of a slight chance of eating something, and fetching water and firewood.
For a normal person, these activities may consume a mere few hours, but as Salama explains to us this logic cannot apply here at Gihembe. Salama stayed in school until college form two, not completing the available education in the camp now ceasing at form three.
When asked why, he laughed at our naïveté. “ What is the point?” he smirked, “ After college form three we have to pay our own way, and to us, this means the end of our education.”
The Rwandan system contains six levels within its secondary school education, only three levels are funded at Gihembe. For most young refugees this leaves them in an educational, and life, limbo.
Why don’t you just get a job, we ask, something small? Salama is well-versed in this dialogue, and sighs.
“You don’t think we have tried this? We can’t get jobs outside of the camp. There is discrimination outside of here and this makes our situation worse.”
Young Congolese girls returning from the secondary school, walk by us staring with wide-eyed curiosity. Giggling shyily, Mahoro Solange, also age 15, admits she remained at the Ecole Secondaire De Gihembe (The Secondary School of Gihembe) through secondary level three and had just finished taking her final exam that day.
Currently living in a house of four other children under the care of her parents, for Solange hoping for more than one meal a day is almost as ideal as hoping for a future. “We just try not to think about it when we are at school because we know no one else has eaten either,” she whispered looking at her feet.
Despite, being provided adequate food rations every month via WFP, it seems a shortage of food is still ever present among refugees. Moreover, UNCHR fact sheet for Gihembe shows only a severe malnutrition prevalence of 0.37%, which questions whether or not this shortage exists in reality.
“If I don’t find a sponsor after this, I will drop out,” she explained, “ But really, I would like to become a doctor one day.”
It is rare that more than a handful of Gihembe’s over 700 secondary school students will find sponsorship, let alone all of them, and because of this education has lost its motivation.
“You know we work hard as students, just like any other student in Rwanda, and also under even worse circumstances. The government should at least help us advance in our education, if not, at least use an English curriculum,” she explained.
Rwanda has recently switched to an English curriculum, but this has left many secondary school students in limbo since their prior education had entirely been in French.
Waving her finger towards a rare metal gate, she told us, “Over there is a lucky one, but she is crippled.”
Jean Mukarugira is technically a lucky one as a 20 year-old girl who was able to continue her education. But as the refugee’s have come to believe here, few good things come without a price.
Polio has taken her right leg since she was a child. Without the privilege of a vaccine this common camp ailment is one that garners little pity. For a student like Jean, she tries to show how little she needs it.
Jean has just completed secondary five with a focus in accounting and has lived alone for three years now. Brought to the camp as an orphan, her relatives left her to fend for herself once her polio became a burden. “ I hope I can study until my Bachelors,” she tells us.
“For the secondary students, survival is more important than their education, so many choose to drop out. Especially now since they stopped education at secondary three, how can they be motivated to stay when their siblings are hungry at home?” she asked us.
Needless to say, we did not have an answer.
Hope School. The name is a little more than ironic when understanding the reality this school is facing. It was born of an effort by refugee parents to find a way for their children to complete their schooling after the secondary school program was cut after its third year.
In 2008, the Jesuit Relief Services announced it would cease funding for secondary four, five and six leaving many young adolescents in an education limbo. Other partners aiding in serving this population had received cuts themselves, and could not aid in preventing this cessation.
A recent report from the UNHCR Rwanda stated, “The main educational challenges include the inability for UNHCR to fund or sponsor a number of deserving students for post-secondary education, and the lack of school infrastructures to comply with the 9 years of basic education.”
Speaking to Solange’s complaint the report points out, “Also, the change in the national language of instruction from French to English by the Rwandan Government necessitates additional training for teachers and students.”
“As regards Secondary Education, only between 25 and 35 % of the camp-based refugee youths have access to secondary education. In this context, refugee girls do not represent more than 20% of the overall student body in secondary schools,” the report concluded.
Fidele Ndagijimana the schools founder and a refugee himself told us in an interview, “Seeing this issue, we as refugees attempted to resolve this significant gap in education. That is when we began to teach students ourselves, based on whatever resources we had.”
The school was opened on January 19th of 2009, but its still struggles to obtain official recognition for its students, and therefore motivate them to stay. It is the only and first, major initiative taken by refugees in the camp to provide services for themselves.
“We are not able to provide the basic materials that are required by an official school, such as numerous rooms,” Fidele lamented, “ But what is necessary really is the government’s support in helping us get a registration number as an official school.”
A committee of refugees supports the school and organizes the collection of Rwf. 70 from each family in the camp. This is barely amounts to 300,000 annually. Seeing the school’s struggle, the UNHCR encouraged the initiative by raising 130,000 Rwf. for them during this years ‘World Refugee Day , but even this does not come close to what they need.
“Sometimes I worry about them, if they will ever be able complete their schooling or leave this camp,” Fidele confides to me quietly as he stares at the mud-caked walls.
Two students of the Hope School, Mahoro Shantari (5.6) and Nshimiye Ndahiriwe (5.4) are trying not to give up the struggle, but are simply struggling to hold on to their future.
Mahoro lives in a home with eight other children and now that she is nearing her final year in secondary school she will attempt to find a local school that will allow her to take national exams there. Learn and studying what she can at the Hope School can only take her so far without its official recognition, and finding a local school to let her take the exams for free, is unlikely…….
Continued to PART III
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