AMHARA NATIONAL REGIONAL STATE

Camps for displaced citizens look the same as in other parts of the country. Aid-branded water tanks and tents provided by international agencies wear out quickly as people try to make themselves as comfortable as they can. Four years since this became home for communities fleeing for their lives from Eastern Shoa and Western Wollega Zones in Oromia Region, there are now shops held together by blue plastic sheeting which sell tomatoes grown in converted paint cans, and packed cookies brought in from town.

The women and men whose new reality reflects nothing of their past move with dignity, trying to get along with neighbors, to keep their children clean and out of trouble. Women stop to chat on their way out of the camp for daily labor at a farm in the next town where they make 250 Birr per day harvesting carrots, and walk an hour each way to save on transport costs. Food rations which were more consistent have now been reduced to 15 kilos of maize per person, and the last delivery was three months before our visit. The women find maize difficult to bake injera with, and sell it at the town market for nearly nothing when everyone tries to get rid of their unasked-for rations. There is no cooking oil provided, and our hosts at the camp tell us that aid agencies have been asked to stop their provision of aid.

“We have been betrayed”, says a young woman resident of the camp. “The government says that there are no displaced citizens. It is one thing for the region to not give us support, but another to stop aid agencies from reaching us.” There have been slow deaths from acute food shortages in the camps that we visit. “We are always hungry,” another woman tells us. “When kind people from the town bring Kollo and Dabo, it doesn’t even make it to the tents as the kids will finish it.”

The displaced community is encouraged to go back to their homes of origin, and many would have been happy to, if it were safe to go back and if any accountability had been taken for what had happened to them. Some did take up the offer from the government to go back to Wollega but returned to the camp soon after, unable to even reach their farms, because it was not safe.

Some support still makes its way into the camps. One afternoon, packages arrived in the form of large plastic bowls given out to women registered on the list according to various criteria, and including slippers for children and adults, sanitary pads and small thoughtful items like a hand mirror and small bottles of Vaseline. As all aid, it’s never enough, but these camps are well-run and residents who have elected representatives to manage housing, aid provision and sanitation do their best to reclaim a semblance of order.

Beyond trauma and over the crowded conditions is the cold which at this high altitude, seeps to one’s bones, even in the warm season. We are invited into tents that offer no protection from the elements, and adults and children sleep on thin mats on the icy ground. As uncomfortable and as insecure as this place is, it is home for ten thousand people in one camp, and four thousand in another.

It is a home that they have been asked to vacate as soon as possible in the effort to ‘clear out’ displaced citizens, on land that is reported to have been given to a developer who is eager to build a factory. “He is tired of waiting”, they have been told. But they have nowhere else to go.