There are 20,000 Nuban refugees hanging around at a camp in Yida just south of the border, and the UN is trying to move them fifty miles south where they will be less in the middle of a battlefield. The trouble with refugees is that you can’t just load them into the back of a pickup and move them – they have to move of their own accord. The particular trouble with these refugees is that they are mountain folk who want to stay close to their mountains for fear of disorientation, so they are not at all keen to come south. The UN is trying to lure them south with the promise of schools in Nyiel and a university in Pariang, and our job is to make those facilities irresistible.
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| A bit of Nyiel Refugee Camp, waiting for refugees |
We are based in Bentiu and going by road through the oilfields to those sites when the road is safe and no one is dropping bombs on it. It’s a 6 hour round trip to Pariang, which is almost as bad a commute as people who use British Rail in the winter experience, and a 3 hour one to Nyiel, which feels round the corner in comparison.
I sat in on a P5 health and hygiene lesson in Nyiel, where we learnt about washing our hands and sang some songs. Half the school is housed in temporary longhouses, divided into four classrooms by plastic sheets. My class concentrated well and weren’t too distracted by my presence, but close to me was a hole in the sheet and children from the nursery class were taking it in turns to peer through it in wonder and disgust. Every so often they were yanked away by some unseen and no doubt exasperated teacher, but more kids would take their place at the peephole. Eventually an enormous bottom appeared and filled the hole, as the teacher sensibly used herself as a plug, and her class were once again able to concentrate.
The Easter weekend in Bentiu was not full of incident, although we did eat caviar brought from Moscow by a UN pilot and threw a rugby ball about in front of bemused locals.
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| Nyiel refugee camp urchins |
The camp in Nyiel is nice, but there’s only about 1,000 people there. Rows of empty tents sit waiting. The UN have installed a very nifty solar powered pump that fills a raised bladder; when taps in the camp are opened, gravity causes the water to flow out and the pump refills the bladder provided that it’s sunny, which is a reasonable assumption.
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| Nifty pump in Nyiel |
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| Bentiu Grand Hotel - two out of three ain't bad |
