The
talk at breakfast was of the weather. A local predicted that
the months of dryness and clear skies would end in two weeks.
That was much sooner than expected. The Red Cross still had
a lot to do before June, when the rainy season was expected
to settle in over eastern Chad, where some 250,000 Sudanese
refugees who fled fighting in the Darfur region live, over 43,000
of them in two Red Cross-managed camps.
Later in the day, the Red Cross workers watched clouds gather
and the sky darken. In the middle of the afternoon a dust storm
swept across the arid landscape, clanging doors and shutters,
overturning chairs, and spreading orange silt over everything.
An hour later, the first heavy drops fell.
Frédéric Blas, a relief and construction delegate
of the International Federation, grabbed his team and raced
across the road from the Red Cross base to the medicine storage
building, which lost its plastic roof in a storm a few weeks
earlier.
Replacing the roof on the building was near the top of the pre-rains
to-do list. Frederic and Chad Red Cross staff quickly spread
plastic sheeting over the medicines and equipment, trying to
gauge what needed protecting most urgently. Then they jumped
on to the roof to nail fresh plastic across the frame.
As suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped, leaving a cool,
clear evening. But the downpour was a reminder of the coming
rainy season, and of all the work that remained to be done.
“Of course we need to make sure the dispensary is secure,”
says Frédéric. “We also really want to finish
pouring concrete on the floors of our big warehouses to protect
goods from the rain. Plus we are building three distribution
centres to store goods and to distribute them to refugees. And
we have already built 73 shelters in schools to protect children
from the sun and rain, but we have a few more to do.”
“These projects take time. We will have to speed up and
hope that this shower is not the true start of the rainy season,”
he adds.
The rainy season is on the minds of all the Red Cross workers.
It is an unknown quantity at Tréguine camp, which opened
in September 2004, after last year’s rains, and which
is home to 14,500 refugees.
The Red Cross needs to find an alternative home for a large
group of residents whose tents are in a wadi, a dry riverbed
that will soon fill up with fast-moving water. Idriss Issakha
Matar, water and sanitation manager of the Chad Red Cross sweeps
his arm across an area of Tréguine camp.
“About a hundred people will have to move. Their tents
are on land that is low-lying. When the camp was set up last
year, people didn’t know exactly what the situation was.”
Even on higher ground, violent rainstorms can still inundate
households, force tents to collapse or blow away, and cause
damp misery.
Fatna Mahamat Déyé, a refugee representative in
a neighbourhood of Bredjing camp, says many of its 28,500 residents
are worried about the three-month rainy season: “There’s
nothing to sleep on. A few people cut down some trees to make
beds but most people sleep on the floor.”
The desire to sleep above the ground within a few weeks is reinforced
by the knowledge that scorpions and poisonous snakes become
more common during the rainy season. As a result of the unavailability
of beds, some latrines have been damaged, with people taking
the iron support rods inside to make something to lie on.
The Red Cross cannot give beds to all 43,000 refugees in the
two camps, but is working to ensure that those most at risk,
including the elderly and chronically ill can sleep above the
damp.
In recent weeks refugees have been trained to visit and check
on people who are chronically ill, have a disability or are
elderly. The visits could be life-saving during the rains, says
International Federation social welfare delegate Annette Molle-Kouoh.
“We’re afraid some of these people might die in
the rainy season. They are at risk. Often they sleep on the
floor. We want them to sleep a little bit above the ground,
maybe on a camp bed, which we will order.
“Sometimes especially vulnerable people get a cold or
other illness. There is also the threat of cholera or other
epidemics if they stay in the dirt like that. One bout of illness
and it could be the end for a frail person.”
Already some refugees are piling soil and sand inside their
tents to raise the ground level ten or 15cm, to give themselves
a little bit of protection. Many people are also digging small
drainage channels in the sand and soil around their tents to
allow the water to run off.
At the end of May, the Red Cross workers will spray tents to
repel mosquitoes and other insects. They will also distribute
mosquito nets and run a campaign to encourage families to avoid
malaria by using the nets and removing mosquito breeding sites
such as empty containers where water could gather.
It is sometimes an uphill struggle. An assessment discovered
that half of the mosquito nets distributed in October 2004 found
their way to the local market, as refugees decided to sell them
to buy higher priority goods such as fresh vegetables or meat.
In one neighbourhood of Tréguine camp, 90 per cent of
the nets were sold.
The coming rainy season has another significance for refugees,
says Cedric Fedida, a spokesperson for Oxfam, which sets up
water systems in the camps: “If the refugees don’t
go back to Darfur very soon, they will miss the planting season,
which is May, June, and the beginning if July. So they will
be dependent on international aid until the next harvest, in
October 2006.”
When the rain comes, sandy riverbeds will quickly fill with
water whose currents are strong enough to sweep away a truck.
So the Red Cross is also collecting a buffer stockpile of food
for 20,000 people for three months. The supplies could also
be used if there are supply problems due to a deterioration
in the security situation or administrative delays.
Although the coming rainy season brings particular difficulties,
there are camp residents whose suffering is greatest now. Donkeys,
goats and sheep are dying of starvation at an alarming rate
in the months before the rainy season. Already at 8am the Red
Cross truck that collects carcasses for disposal reports it
has found three donkeys and several sheep in and around the
camp.
“There are lots of carcasses and we’ve just started,”
says the driver.
The death of a donkey is a particular tragedy for families who
arrived in safety in Chad thanks to their strength and endurance.
Here in the camp, the patient labourers carry firewood and other
essentials of life. They are money in the bank to Sudanese families.
In the coming weeks the Red Cross hopes to distribute fodder
for donkeys and other animals desperate for the grass that will
only grow once the rainy season has started properly.
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Chad
Red Cross water and sanitation manager Idriss Issakha
Matar monitors preparations at Tréguine camp for
the rainy season (p12868)
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Chad
Red Cross volunteer Haroun Ibrahim makes sure there is
clean water to mix concrete for the floor of a warehouse
in Bredjing camp (p12867)
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Red
Cross workers finish building hangars to protect school
classes from the sun and rain (p12870)
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International
Federation social welfare delegate Annette Molle-Kouoh
trains refugee caregivers in looking after especially
vulnerable people (p12869)
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A
thin donkey searches for food among rubble and sand. A
number of livestock have died of starvation ahead of the
rainy season (p12871)
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News
