Pakistan - a snapshot of life in the camps

04 August 2009

A view from a camp for people displaced by the recent conflict in Pakistan

Elena Immambocus from DFID's Pakistan office recently went with a humanitarian team to visit a camp, in the Swabi district of the North West Frontier Province, for those displaced during the humanitarian crisis in the country. Here she describes what she saw and heard from those most affected by the crisis:

A jet of water streamed from the pump, bringing a crowd of children eager to cool off from the relentless 40 degrees heat and swarm of flies. The camp had been waiting for its own water supply and despite the inauspicious clouds of smoke and engine spurts, it had finally arrived.

Xandana, a former teacher from Peshawar turned lady hygiene promoter, joins from the nearby health centre and gathers the children around her for photographs, some of whom have been to school for the first time here. As part of the team managing the 30,000 strong camp, Faisal is candid about the challenges that remain – the lack of cooking fuel and the plastic sheeting needed to see out the monsoon season. But he is quick to point out what’s worked, no mean feat given the scale of the crisis – the child friendly play areas that have sprung up, the separate facilities for men and women. Above all he notes “people have got involved, the community are active and aware of their rights.”

Time seems to stretch out here like the green gauze spreading its way across the tented city to shelter communities who fled here from Malakand some four months ago. Most had journeyed for days on foot, constrained by the curfew and had to transit in other camps. Leaving behind fields and livestock, some of the farming families were now accompanied by the odd hen pecking the earth underneath a clothing line of freshly washed clothes. Some families had found food items to sell in the camp’s mini-market, helped out with camp duties or learned livelihoods skills in the workshops. Huge fans and fluorescent orange food containers from the distribution centre dominate the tents, where children and the elderly recline on thin mats lining the ground.

“We need mattresses,” voice sisters-in-law Shabina and Huzaima, both in their early 20s from Buner, and “more medicines,” casting their kohl-rimmed eyes on Sohail, 18 months old who is suffering from a fever and Abbas, 8 months old and sick from diarrhoea – one of the main heath concerns in the camp.

Returns that are now underway need to be safe, voluntary and dignified. But what happened to those left behind, to homes, land and orchards are questions common to many. Accessing the financial support on offer and knowing it is safe to return would help people get home. And as the promise of returning gets closer, emotions run high.

“My home is my paradise,” says Mia Munir, who sits on the informal judicial committee in the camp. Coming from Swat he brought his two wives and fourteen children with him and as he talks he takes out a Namaz prayer book in the top pocket of his kameez with care. “We’re thankful for the support everyone has given us. It has got here quickly and there’s so much need everywhere. But,” as tears fill his eyes, “I pray now that the sacrifice we made in leaving the village is accepted by God and that peace returns to our homeland, to Pakistan and inshallah, across the world. Now it’s my right to go home.”