Suffering: A Harsh Daily Reality in Guinea Refugee Camps

By Rainer Lang

Date: November 2001

A group of smartly dressed people file solemnly into the cultural center in Conakry, capital of the West African country of Guinea. There are also TV and newspaper journalists. The center is the venue for an exhibition of paintings done by school children. Many of them show idyllic and peaceful scenes of rural life in the country in stark contrast with the daily reality that is Guinea.

The people who live in the countryside are poor and barely manage to make a living from farming. Guinea is now home to tens of thousands of refugees from neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia who fled the civil wars in their countries. This year most of them had to be relocated to new camps because of cross-border fighting and rebel incursions from Sierra Leone and Liberia. Most of the larger refugee camps were situated near the border; the intense fighting endangered the lives of the people in the camps. The fighting also triggered waves of hatred and harassment against the refugees who were seen by Guinean civilians as harboring the rebels, militia and army personnel.

Most of the refugees have been transferred to remote new camps inside the country by the UNHCR. Nevertheless, the refugees do not feel comfortable and want to return to their home country. With the peace process in Sierra Leone progressing, thousands of refugees have already gone back by boat from Conakry to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Last year, when the old existing camps were under attack, thousands gathered in panic around the Sierra Leonean embassy in Conakry. A year later all refugees had left the compound of the embassy, leaving no trace of ever having been there. Even the walls had been given a fresh coat of paint.

Refugees who want to return home are now gathering in a transit camp outside the city, 60 kilometers away from Conakry. On this particular day an old school bus brings about 70 Sierra Leonean refugees from the big camps in the north of the country to the Mambiya transit camp from where they are returning home. In front of a big tent with a sign "UNHCR Central Registration" the refugees get off the bus and are asked to queue up.

One of the refugees is Patrick Momoh (62). Like many other refugees he comes from the camp Kountaya in the northeastern part of Guinea, where refugees from Bounty Sierra Leone live. Patrick has sent his family home already. He wants to follow them as soon as possible. He had to pay 24,000 Guinea-Francs for the trip to Conakry. His luggage costs an extra 5000 Francs.

Patrick has been living as a refugee in Guinea for years. Life in the camp is hard, he says. It lacks everything -- space, food and medical treatment. On average, six people die in the camp every day, Patrick says.

Patrick is a teacher. He comes from the Konu district in Sierra Leone, the diamond area, which was one of the strongholds of the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Originally he came over the Parrot's Beak area into Guinea, a piece of land that juts into the north of Sierra Leone. When cross border fighting started in September 2000, after rebel incursions from Sierra Leone into Guinea, Guinean president Lonsana Conte announced that the refugees were no longer welcome, as they were suspected of supporting the rebel force. Since then tens of thousands of refugees have returned home. "We were suffering a lot," says Patrick. He wants to go home as soon as possible and had not expected to be brought to the transit camp. He had wanted to go to Freetown directly by ferry, but each boat takes only about 250 people.

Margaret has been waiting for several weeks in Mambiya camp. The 29 year old mother of two has sold all her possessions to pay the 35,000 Guinean Francs for the trip from the Parrot's Beak to Conakry. Margaret says that nine buses were sent back from Conakry by the Guinean authorities who are still hostile to the refugees, often confiscating their property. Margaret and her children were hidden by their Guinean driver. Now they sit and wait in the transit camp. Margaret is a widow. Her husband was shot and killed by the rebels when they attacked the camp in the Parrot's Beak.

Most of the refugees camps in Guinea, home to about 340,000 Sierra Leoneans and 150,000 Liberians, were located along the border to Sierra Leone and Liberia. After the cross-border fighting started, these camps were attacked and many refugees fled the camps. Because of these threats the UNHCR has relocated the refugees for safety reasons away from the border area to other places in the country. One of the new camps is Sembakounya camp. It is more than 30 kilometers away from the closest town, Dabola, in the middle of the bush, to avoid conflicts between the local population and the refugees. The locals are extremely poor and when they see that the refugees are given food and medicine by the aid organisations they become angry. The refugees tell that people were killed when the old camps were attacked by Guineans. And there are still some people missing who were taken to prison by the Guinean police.

Refugee woman and baby in front of UNHCR tent Sembakounya is a big tent settlement that offers refuge to about 25,000 people. The refugees who settled here complain that they have to sleep on the bare floor, that there are many flies in the bush and that they don't get enough food. "Here there are no jobs and we have to sell our possessions to get food," says Muhammed Kamara. Alice, a mother of five, has a six month old baby and doesn't know how to get enough milk for her, as the town is too far away. Her husband has been missing since the rebel attack on Forekariah camp, where she had lived before being brought to the new camp. Her baby is malnourished, according to the doctor in the camp.

Nevertheless Muhammed is "happy that they brought us here." He can no longer hear gunshots, which he says could be heard around Forekariah camp all through the last months. There is a school in the camp, a market and a clinic. People would like ABC development, a local NGO and partner of ACT members Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and ACT Netherlands to continue their work in trauma healing and adult literacy courses in French, drama and social sciences in the new camp. Eddie, who heads the literacy program, says that they do not have books, schools or chalk. He is desperately trying to get some form of sponsorship.

Many of the refugees in Sembakounya are waiting to see how the situation develops in Sierra Leone. It is reported that the peace and disarmament process is progressing slowly, but that the situation is still fragile. Many refugees want to see whether the situation will stabilize after the elections that have been scheduled for May 2002.

Some refugees have been living in camps for ten years. For them, the idyllic and peaceful rural scenes of the paintings done by children for the art exhibition in Conakry remain an illusive dream.