Buduburam Refugee Camp
At first glance, Buduburam Refugee Camp looks like a combination of lively shantytown and bustling African marketplace. The spaces between the shaky wooden stands that support bowls of red palm nuts, pig hooves, and pineapples are packed with noisy people on a Sunday morning. People are shouting for bargains in thousands of Ghanaian cedis (Ghanaian currency), and are swooping in on the best plantains (type of banana) before their neighbor buys them. Flies swarm the slabs of meat and the festering baked fish, but people are picking them up and stuffing them into bags anyway as deals are closed. At 6 am, the weather is already hot enough to make the thawing crabs steam.
Later in the day, the camp is alive with small businesses that are situated out of people's house fronts on what would be front yards, were there any grass or empty space on the ground. Stumps of wood now serve as display stands for everything from baked plantains to bagged 'pawpaw' (papaya), and some people line up imported sneakers or clothing for those who can afford them. Off the main road, families with coolers hawk cold purified water in small plastic sachets for 300 cedis each, or about 0.03 USD. Women and girls walk around with large metal bowls on their head containing bread, candy, or knickknacks for sale. Small children carry smaller children in large sarongs wrapped around their middles. The camp bubbles with energy as people hurry to church and sing, both in English and Liberian gospel, to glorify God and pray for better times.
Buduburam Refugee Camp, located about 40 miles west of Accra, Ghana, lives on hope. The camp contains some 45,000 residents, the vast majority of which are displaced Liberians who fled the civil war that plagued their country for 14 years. The war, which began in 1989, stems from complicated and ever-changing ethnic clashes between many of its 16 tribes. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 250,000 people, and the imprisonment, torture and rape of countless others. Many people are, and probably always will be, unaccounted for.
Residents at Buduburam are painfully aware of what they are missing. Education is a highly coveted asset, but only one in five can afford the $100 tuition per year to send a child to school. Approximately 90% of the camp children remain out of school, sitting at home and spending their most formative years learning nothing that will prepare them for a normal life. They have no television, few books, and very little to stimulate their minds into creativity, or help them form the mental framework that will be needed to cope in adult life. Their situation, when they return to Liberia, will be worse than it is now, as they will be expected to return to normalcy, yet will be unable to perform anything except the most menial jobs. Because only 15% of Liberians were literate before the war, home schooling is rarely a possibility for those unable to afford school tuition. While literacy programs do exist on the camp – especially for women – they do not scratch the surface of the vast numbers of people who could benefit from them. The adults who attend classes on camp are oddly misplaced in classes by age: many high school students are well into their twenties and thirties, having missed out on their high school years when they fled Liberia. They know only too well the value of education, and are desperate to learn practical skills.
In spite of the repeated letdowns as one peace accord after another has failed to bring stability to Liberia, most at Buduburam maintain hope for the future of their home country. The upcoming presidential elections in October 2005 may yet usher in a new era, but many remain skeptical as less than half of Liberia's 14 counties are currently patrolled by UN peacekeepers. Most are wondering what they will find when they do return home, and how they will begin to rebuild their lives and relationships. And when they go, how will they find their own way? With few improvements in education, in health, in sustainability, will they find themselves in a situation that is the same as the one they left? With no clear promises for the next year for their home country's politics, the present situation at Buduburam is better than that in Liberia. And so for now, in spite of all the difficulties, the refugees will stay, keep waiting, and plan for the future.
Dr. Julie Harris has a live journal where she records events in her life, as well as her work with Unite For Sight (UFS) in Buduburam, Ghana.