City of Thorns

by Ben Rawlence

  The women worried about their security in India: would they be raped without their husbands to protect them? ‘No, don’t worry,’ he said. Could they practise their religion there? ‘Yes.’ Can’t we do the training in three months instead of six? ‘No.’ Can we come back during that time? ‘No.’ The men wanted to know if they were allowed to communicate with the women while they were in India. ‘Yes.’ The women didn’t ask that. There were many more questions than Bunker had time for but he was a visionary and, like most visionaries, he only had eyes for his vision. Later, when explaining the plan to the consternation of UN staff in the Pumzika bar, someone asked if the women could change their minds about being selected for the programme; he replied, ‘They cannot!’ And what if their husbands divorce them while they are away?

  ‘As soon as they install their first solar panel, their husbands want them back again,’ he assured the UN workers with a brutal confidence totally opposed to all their trainings and policies on participatory approaches to development. One of the UN staff was horrified at the abrupt transformation of the lives of the four women within twenty-four hours. ‘It’s completely mad … There’s an accountability problem if they can’t speak the language. How can they complain? There is no preparation, no real consultation.’

  Regardless of the pace and the lack of information, Isha ended Ramadan believing what the loud Indian man said, that, within two months, she would be issued with a passport and a visa and be on her way to India. She had no idea of the place; she had only seen Indian movies once, when she was younger, in Somalia. ‘Is India near Turkey?’ she asked. Before she had come to Dadaab, Hawo had never even seen a white person before, let alone an Indian. She regarded the world through eyes huge with wonder and a mouth that smiled a lot but said little. She was excited by the plan because, as Isha said on her behalf, ‘She will return a civilized person. She has never been to a city, because she is a pastoralist.’

  ∗

  On the Friday after Eid, Isha and her fellow solar mamas were called to the UN compound in Dadaab; there were forms to fill for their travel documents. The place was a building site. For all the talk of return, the UN appeared to be investing in infrastructure for the long term. Privately, senior staff admitted that they still expected the camp to exist in ten years’ time, whatever the Kenyan government might wish. Men covered in white dust resembling spirit dancers trudged up and down pushing wheelbarrows of rubble. The offices were being refurbished, flowerbeds were being relaid and a massive network of new pathways were being constructed ahead of the coming rainy season, so UN workers would be able to walk from their quarters to their offices to the bar without getting muddy shoes. Meanwhile some in the camp, like Isha’s children, slept in puddles in their tents. UNHCR had a surplus administration budget that had to be spent before the year’s end and which was, alas, non-transferable.

  On that Friday there were two planes laid on to Nairobi because of a surge of employees requesting leave over the weekend. Hungover after what had been an intoxicating week with parties and films every night in the compound – part of the refugee film festival that comprised one morning of short films out in the camp, and a week of feature films in the agency compound – the UN staff members barely noticed the four Somali women who sat there, dressed in their best clothes, waiting.

  Isha had a headache. The hammering of the builders made it worse. The lunchtime prayer approached and she wanted to pray. Dhabo, one of the women who had been selected from block D2, unwrapped her head scarf and gave it to Isha to use as a prayer mat. She went behind a low shrub, placed the scarf on the sand and knelt. Hawo went with her, and then Dhabo and Fatuma took their turn. Dhabo had come from Mogadishu in July 2011 and Fatuma from Gedo region at about the same time. Dhabo was a commanding figure, tall and dark. Fatuma was round and jolly, her sharp sense of humour soon revealed. She wore a name-badge with the logo of ‘Save the Children’: she was a cleaner in the compound in Ifo 2, earning 5,500 shillings ($60) a month, without which she was concerned her family would struggle if she went to India.

  A kind, careful man from the UN called Sam appeared with the passport forms and slowly filled them in one at a time, writing the answers for the women. Instead of measuring their height, he asked them to stand up so that he could estimate it. While the process inched forward, Isha sat like Cleopatra in a blue-and-red dress and grey hijab, her fingers curled around the arm of a black swivel office chair that rocked on the uneven concrete, as if it were a throne. Her feet tapped on the floor, impatient, and she stared around, her eyes roaming the ceiling and tracking the cleaners advancing down the walkway towards them. Along with the builders’ banging, birds gargled in the courtyard. A cleaner came and plugged her mobile phone to charge inside the low wall of the hut. As soon as she was out of sight, Dhabo unplugged it and connected her own phone, quick to spot an opportunity for free power: phone-charging cost money in the camp.

  When he had finished filling the forms Sam gave the women a pen to sign them with. There was laughter all round. They explained that they could not write, that was why they were there, although Isha proudly plucked the pen from his hand and signed her name in a flourish. For the others, Sam fetched an ink pad and pressed their thumbs to the paper. When he tried to explain what would happen next, it didn’t work.

  ‘Passporta? Somali?’ Dhabo asked.

  ‘UN,’ replied Sam.

  In principle, refugees have the right to a UN passport, what is called a ‘Convention Travel Document’ that allows them freedom of movement from their country of asylum. In practice, in Kenya there is a committee made up of members from the UNHCR and the Department for Refugee Affairs that issues them. But they issue very few. The women didn’t understand. They motioned for a translator.

  ‘Somali! Somali!’ they shouted, laughing. Sam called someone to come.

  A short plump boy with slick hair, a staff translator with the UN, arrived and explained. Relieved, Sam decided to share his personal experience of visiting. He was a Kenyan but he had somehow acquired a Pakistani passport.

  ‘Make sure you visit the Taj Mahal,’ he told them.

  ‘Yes,’ they nodded.

  ‘In Rajasthan there are very good flowers in winter, make sure you take pictures … photos!’

  The women looked blank. But they smiled at the mention of elephants.

  ‘You can ride them like camels,’ said Sam.

  ‘No, no, no,’ they laughed and shook their heads.

  ‘The holy animal for them is the cow. So when you see the cow, don’t beat it. The cows there are very friendly, they even walk in the street like human beings. The Indians worship the cow like a god.’

  Dhabo looked shocked.

  ‘There are over nine hundred gods.’ The translator heard ‘goats’ and there followed some confusion. Then the cleaner returned and frowned to see her telephone set to one side and her charger commandeered. She replaced it.

  ‘And the ladies in India have different ways of dressing,’ said Sam. ‘Traditional women wear a sari wrapped like this, with the belly open.’ The women shrieked and laughed.

  ‘Modern women wear like this,’ he said, pointing to a white woman in slacks and T-shirt walking in the compound.

  ‘We will dress like this,’ said Dhabo, smiling but defiant, indicating her current costume.

  ‘You can buy that there,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t carry a lot of stuff.’

  ‘With what money!?’

  There were too many unknown variables. The experience was too big to fully describe, the disconnect between the worlds too great. Sam sensibly retreated.

  ‘We’ll discuss more when we get near to the date of travel,’ he said.

  Fatuma, worried about her cleaning job, began to talk, but Sam had changed the subject.

  ‘The visa is only valid for one month. You have to report to the police, it is the police that extend the visa.’ The women looked confused. There came a flurry of words and jabbed fingers. The four female faces frowned
, their eyes pinned on the translator as he delivered their message.

  ‘They say they need someone to look after them, and a Somali translator,’ explained the plump boy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam, slowly, ‘it is our responsibility to sensitize them. We will coordinate with Barefoot College to help them.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the translator, ‘I have a meeting at three p.m. – I’ve got to go. He’ll contact you before you go to discuss more …’ he said to the women, backing away. And then he was gone, the women left adrift, a forest of questions sprouting in their minds and no way to communicate them.

  Sam tried to find a UN vehicle to take the women back to their homes but failed and in the end simply pulled out notes from his pocket until the women seemed happy. Being managed by aid agencies through mysterious procedures half-understood was a common experience and they accepted the confusion good-naturedly: they trusted the UN and they surrendered themselves to its knowledge. When they said their goodbyes they were all smiles, Isha’s gap tooth appeared and the women slipped out of the huge steel security gates, their veils snapping in the wind like wings. They were going to India!

  ‘This thing is not real,’ people said in the block. They were suspicious of the motives of foreigners.

  ‘Your blood will be removed.’

  ‘They will sell your organs.’

  ‘Why are they taking the uneducated ones? Because they want to cheat you.’

  Hawo got worried and came into Isha’s hut for reassurance.

  ‘Don’t listen, they’re only jealous,’ Isha explained.

  ‘Don’t go, Mum!’ Isha’s children cried. ‘There are lots of Somalis abroad, and they are fine.’ She told them not to believe the stories.

  Isha was worried not about being exploited but about money: how would the family survive without her income? Gab said he would manage and supported her in her opportunity. Now the family had something to look forward to. Their life had a horizon. The programme meant her family would be confined to the camp for at least a year: the six months of the training and then some time afterwards setting up the solar panels. Isha set about winding down her commitments in readiness for departure. She stopped the small business and she resigned her position as a governor of the local primary school for which she had been paid a small stipend. It made her nervous, this relinquishing of her survival mechanisms, but she felt an obligation to be honest with people and she had been inspired by the magnetic words spoken with conviction by the strange Indian man. She trusted him.

  36

  Knowledge Never Expires

  Kheyro, too, for the first time in her life, was planning on leaving the camp. It wasn’t quite Canada, as she had dreamed, but it was an adventure – further into Kenya – and it felt like a divine reward. In block A2 the family had had the best Eid ever. ‘Now we are one of the wealthy,’ Kheyro said. With her wages she had bought new clothes for the family, they had fed ten people in their home and even given meat to the neighbours.

  Ever since she could remember, Kheyro had wanted to visit Garissa, the capital of North Eastern Province, the nearest large town to Dadaab. But, without a legitimate reason for travel and without the money for a bribe, a movement pass had been out of reach. In a way, it was the bombings that made Kheyro’s dream come true. The shortage of Kenyan teachers willing to work in the camp due to the insecurity had led to a drive to recruit more, less-qualified, incentive-refugee instructors. So now she would be going for training in Garissa.

  She liked the people at Handicap International but giving massages was not furthering her knowledge, and she had come to dislike the job. When an advertisement for teachers appeared on the tin wall of the Abu Woreda Hotel in Bosnia, Kheyro had bought foolscap, made copies of her certificates at the copy shack in the market and written an application letter that she took by hand to the education officer in the compound of the agency CARE in Ifo camp. Four days later, she found herself in an interview room facing three men: two Somalis and one Kenyan.

  ‘Teaching has its problems,’ one of the men said, ‘What do you do if a boy that you are teaching says, “I love you”? How do you deal with that?’

  ‘I think I should tell him that I am like his sister, his mother,’ Kheyro said. They seemed to like that answer, she thought.

  The next day, Friday, they offered her a job at Equator primary school in Ifo 2. She called her friends: ‘I am going to be a teacher!’ On Saturday morning there was a meeting of all the new staff. Everyone said their name and they were asked which subjects they could teach. Kheyro said she liked science, social studies and religion. She had never stood in front of a class before. But on Monday morning she started her new job. There was even a minibus to ferry the teachers from Ifo 1 to Ifo 2: no more walking two hours back and forth to work!

  Equator primary consisted of two long lines of classrooms made of concrete walls either side of a compound dotted with young trees too short to offer shade for the current generation, perhaps the next. To one side of the compound was a door with ‘Staff Room’ written in chalk. On the wall inside was a hand-drawn crest with the school motto, ‘Knowledge never expires’ and a list of the class sizes. Total: 2,154 pupils. And these were the lucky ones, part of the 43 per cent of the children enrolled in primary school. It made for a ratio of around one teacher to eighty pupils. The mandated maximum was supposed to be forty-five.

  Every morning, Kheyro wrote her name in the attendance book. If you forgot, you missed your wages. Then she would greet her colleagues, take her chalk and her notebook and go to class. The headmaster was a Ugandan who had fled his homeland in the 1980s with the warrior priestess and spiritual forerunner of Joseph Kony, Alice Lakwenna. He had been Kheyro’s teacher at Ifo secondary only a few years ago. His deputy was a stocky Somali nicknamed ‘the belly’ whom Kheyro liked to tease.

  The day before Eid, she had given the results of an exam on Islamic Religious Education to Standard 5. The children were mostly below fifteen, the youngest, nine. School years did not follow biological age because of the random effect of the war; children simply continued where they had left off, where they could. Kheyro held the precious test papers in a bundle tied with string beneath her arm. Early light poured through the mesh windows lighting up the Roman alphabet and the annotated diagram of a bird on the wall. Kheyro flashed back and forth in her blue and gold dress and an ochre veil, up and down the freshly sawn desks distributing the papers. The boys had shaved heads for lice, dusty faces and sandy feet. The girls were cleaner, all dressed in the uniform of green skirts and magenta shirts – each school had its own unique colour. Eagerly, they snatched the papers to study the verdict on their work. The girls sat scowling to one side while a mass of boys crowded together in the middle, all leaning over each other to read what Kheyro had written.

  She had one textbook, in English, for each subject, and in the evenings she sat at home and prepared her lesson plans, trying to remember how her teachers had done it. Science was her favourite topic; she still had an idea that she might become a doctor one day. The poor pupils of Ifo 2 were disciplined and eager to learn. But they were embarrassed learning about the human body and its reproductive systems. ‘Madam, you cannot teach about this, it is very difficult,’ one of the boys said. ‘In our religion girls cannot talk about men’s bodies.’ She told them she could, that it was not haram, and they got used to it.

  Teaching three subjects was hard work. The salaried Kenyan teachers taught only one specialism and for that they were paid 40,000 shillings ($490) a month. The pay for incentive teachers was 6,800 ($82), slightly better than the 6500 ($80) she had been getting at Handicap International but the difference with the Kenyan teachers caused resentment. There were two at Equator. One of them, called David, was a special needs teacher with a class of deaf and dumb kids. ‘David is a nice man,’ Kheyro said, ‘but the system is not good.’

  The new job opened Kheyro’s eyes to something the pioneers of the ’92 group had already confronted: the iniquit
ies of the incentive system. A few years earlier, Fish and Tawane had joined others in protesting the unfair burdens of work placed on incentive workers. In a letter to the media they had called the incentive system a violation of national and international labour laws, which it probably was. Kheyro had no paid vacation and if she fell sick she would not be paid by her employer. But Kenyan teachers had a contract with the Ministry of Education that included generous terms for vacation and sick pay, even a pension.

  That incentive workers were allowed to work at all was a compromise between the UN and the Kenyan government. But what had started out as a charitable idea had degenerated into a kind of slave labour. Incentive workers are the backbone of the humanitarian operations in the camps, often working harder than the paid staff. Of two people working side by side doing similar jobs, one can be paid $90 a month and the other $9,000.

  There were occasional strikes and protests about pay but in a decade little had changed. The incentive system had only become more entrenched: since the kidnappings and the scaling back of services, there were more incentive workers and more need for them than ever. And the refugees needed the jobs. Without her wages, Kheyro’s family would be reliant solely on the rations which had recently switched from rice to sorghum. Sorghum was unknown to them, they didn’t know how to cook it, but luckily with Kheyro’s wages they did not need to learn: they fed it instead to the goats.

  Soon after Eid, Kheyro took the bus to Garissa from the CARE compound along with eighty teachers from the other camps who were also going for the training. With neither ID nor a movement pass, she dreaded the police. The road to Garissa that runs dead-straight west for seventy miles through the barren scrub had several checkpoints. At the first the teachers’ supervisor showed a list of their names. At the second, at a place called Modigari, the police refused to allow the refugee teachers into Garissa. They demanded to see work badges and alien cards. Refugees have a right to an ‘alien card’ like an ID card, but at that time refugees said the standard bribe to get one from the DRA was 5,000 shillings. For thirty minutes, Kheyro and the others waited in the bus while negotiations proceeded on the phone. In the end the camp chairman of CARE phoned the police headquarters in Dadaab and the bus was released. From the window, Kheyro saw beautiful houses and compounds, ‘well-planted and green’.