September 8,2010
The Shack

After meeting Leanne and David, two long term WUSC volunteers, for lunch, we took them up on the invitation to go to the Shack for the evening.

Since people do not walk around at night in Lilongwe, the Shack is mainly for ex patriots and the upper class who can afford to hire a taxi. It is bar that serves Carlsberg ...exclusively, like everywhere else here. The key thing the Shack has that we need more of, for nights out in Toronto, would be the two beach volleyball courts. What else there is to know about the Shack is that the washroom is where the local girls meet up to get ready for a night out at work...think lots of neon.

September 9, 2010

Welcome to Dzeleke.

Tucked in a valley about an hour outside of Lilongwe, is a self sufficient village. It is out of view, seemingly only infiltrated by deliveries of Cocoa-Cola products and cell phone distributors to stock the small shops. It is not a dense community, in that the alleys and walkways between homes are passable, not overcrowded, and chaos is not in your face. The sounds are different from the city. Here, it is a mash up of English, French, Kiswahili, Chichewa, and many other languages and dialects. As you walk, the red dirt turns up, forming suffocating clouds. Women wash clothes on cement blocks that stand between the water pump and cement trenches which drain into the gutters. This is a permanent place.

What one will also notice when trekking into the community is the presence of the military on the roads, and the UNDP, WHO, and WFP in the village. There is a hospital and school as well. There is nothing to really shock one’s sight.  Instead, it is the stories of how people came to live here that carry weight.

This is Dzeleke, a community of 12,000 refugees, and you know it as you see JRS and UNHCR services. There are no frantically put up tents as one might imagine, but instead there are fired brick homes with thatched roofs.  They have established restaurants, shops, a high school, and all the other standards you expect in a community. This is where families grow, yet this is the periphery where people have become stuck, losing years of freedom in their lives. One must remember that although this has become a formidable home, no one chooses to be here and few have the chance to leave. Some have been here since the early 1990s when the camp was established, while others are within their first year.  It is home to people from Mozambique, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Zambia for various reasons. The majority though have found their way here from the DRC.

Sorting out passports and identification documents is an agonizing process. One man from Zambia, taking a break from reading a John Grisham novel explained, “If you want the truth, don’t look at the news, ask us. When you leave your home with a gun at your back, you do not turn around to search for your papers. So now you are stuck, you cannot go anywhere.” He is grateful to have this place, but that does not remove his feelings of constraint.   For life, they have given up freedom. After all, this village was converted from a prison, and some things never changed.

From what do you take refuge?

FYI

Dzeleke houses WUSC’s Student Refugee Program. Around 15 students a year are sponsored by Canadian Universities to come study the following year. The camp is good at reconnecting people between camps and countries. This is successful only if the other involved is alive and also looking for the family member.

Under the African Sky

After a long day at Dzeleke we returned to Henderson Lodge.  It’s a place where you find hedge hogs outside, while on the inside you find lizards, rats, ticks, bedbugs, and of course mosquitoes. The sun sets around six here so that by seven, the lack of lights leaves a blackened city.  Charles asked if he could show us something at his meeting. Off we went not knowing what this was about or really where we were to go. Fifteen minutes later we pulled up to gates and entered Gateway Boarding School for girls. He told Elisabeth and I to walk towards the buildings, but that he and Nathaniel could not follow. It was blackout and closing your eyes would not have made it any darker.

So under the stars in the power outage we walked towards the singing, afraid of startling the voices. Squeals were followed by giggles as they noticed us and pulled us in. “We are dancing in the light of God, Let it be.” Sung to the tune of The Beatles ‘let it be’ of course. Unsure of what was going on, and what the meeting was, the girls lead us out of the boarding area into one of the classrooms and we squeezed down the narrow rows of desks to sit with them. In came Charles and thus began a talk on how the value of a girls work is worth more than money. It will take courage and hard work beyond one’s education to find a job off of the streets.

Charles is a taxi driver by day, motivational speaker by night.