Friday, April 01, 2005
Easter weekend Part 3: Back to Kallar
Well, all good things must come to an end, so Monday morning with a slight hangover and it was back on the road "home" (yeak, thinking of the Kallar YMCA as home?! Now that's scary!). This was a fairly nondescript ride back, apart from a slight detour to check out the IDP camp I had spied on the hillside on the ride down.
I passed through a small village to get to the camp, and then came out to a flat, rocky rise heading up to a few large boulders on the hilltop. I passed a temporary hospital, obviously set up by the resident NGO for the camp, and pulled up in the shade of the boulders. I climbed up some rough stairs on the largest boulder, as shown by some kids who were on top, and as I climbed up the IDP camp spread out before me on the other side of the rise.
Now THIS camp was exactly like the ones I had envisaged from home, and similar to the camp I had seen years before near the border of Rwanda in Tanzania. Rows upon rows of shiny tin-roofed shelters, curving around a central work/storage area. However unlike the camps you might imagine, or even the one I saw in Tanzania, there wasn't quite the feeling of desolation hanging over it. The rows seemed very neat, and there was even a children's play area. Maybe a b-grade English holiday camp would be a fairer comparison? ;o)
I headed down into the camp proper, and met up with one of the MSF workers helping to run the camp. The question I had foremost in my mind was where had these people come from, we must have been 4 or 5km from the ocean. But apparently they had come from the coast, and the area was only just now being cleaned and prepared for the building of permanent housing. So while it initially seemed a little less fortunate than the Kallar area, where they are at least living mostly on their own land, from what he was telling me they will start building their permanent housing from next week. At the moment in Kallar that's not likely to happen for a good month at the very least. Anyway, curiosity satisfied, and some new information garnered, and I was back on the road and home to Kallar.
And so ends my Easter weekend. I hope yours was a great one!
I passed through a small village to get to the camp, and then came out to a flat, rocky rise heading up to a few large boulders on the hilltop. I passed a temporary hospital, obviously set up by the resident NGO for the camp, and pulled up in the shade of the boulders. I climbed up some rough stairs on the largest boulder, as shown by some kids who were on top, and as I climbed up the IDP camp spread out before me on the other side of the rise.
Now THIS camp was exactly like the ones I had envisaged from home, and similar to the camp I had seen years before near the border of Rwanda in Tanzania. Rows upon rows of shiny tin-roofed shelters, curving around a central work/storage area. However unlike the camps you might imagine, or even the one I saw in Tanzania, there wasn't quite the feeling of desolation hanging over it. The rows seemed very neat, and there was even a children's play area. Maybe a b-grade English holiday camp would be a fairer comparison? ;o)
I headed down into the camp proper, and met up with one of the MSF workers helping to run the camp. The question I had foremost in my mind was where had these people come from, we must have been 4 or 5km from the ocean. But apparently they had come from the coast, and the area was only just now being cleaned and prepared for the building of permanent housing. So while it initially seemed a little less fortunate than the Kallar area, where they are at least living mostly on their own land, from what he was telling me they will start building their permanent housing from next week. At the moment in Kallar that's not likely to happen for a good month at the very least. Anyway, curiosity satisfied, and some new information garnered, and I was back on the road and home to Kallar.
And so ends my Easter weekend. I hope yours was a great one!
posted by Dave | 3:03 pm |
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