The Life of a CARE Emergency Aid Worker: Meet Jessie Thomson

Every August 19, World Humanitarian Day celebrates the countless individuals who face adversity and danger to help others across the globe. In the week leading up to World Humanitarian Day 2012, it seems only fitting to feature one of these wonderful individuals who we have the pleasure of having on the CARE team.

Meet our very own Jessie Thomson. You might remember her from some of her guest blog posts!

Jessie Thomson is CARE Canada’s Acting Emergency Director. Jessie joined CARE in 2011, but began her humanitarian career as a student at the University of Toronto, Peace and Conflict Studies program. It was there where she volunteered with the World University Services of Canada (WUSC) Student Refugee Program, helping resettled refugee students integrate into their new lives in Canada.

More than cows

Guest blogger Jessie Thomson is the emergency response program manager for CARE Canada and recently returned from Kenya, where she was part of the CARE emergency response team. Jessie is travelling back to Kenya this weekend.

In Kenya, there is a saying that when a cow dies in a drought, it dies facing the nearest water point. You’ve likely seen the photos on the news – pictures of cow carcasses laying where they fell on the dry, cracked earth in East Africa. Perhaps you find the pictures shocking or perhaps you barely notice and think, “that’s sad, but it’s just a cow.” For me, it’s not only sad to see an animal that has died trying to reach water and food, but with each death there is a family that was dependent upon that animal for their food and income.

Three men assist a cow to stand up. Due to the shortage of pasture, most cattle in Borana, Ethiopia, are very weak and cannot stand alone. Credit: CARE/Gemechu Dida

I travelled by road to Dadaab, now the world’s largest refugee camp in the world. It’s about an eight and a half hour journey from Nairobi – and the place you start couldn’t be more different than the one you arrive at. After you leave the bustling metropolis of Nairobi, it’s a long journey of increasingly less and less greenery. The closer you get to Dadaab, the drier and less hospitable it gets – and the more the animal carcasses start to appear.

The cow carcasses – one every 100 feet – got to me. I grew up in a small town in farm country. I know what a cow means to a farmer: it’s more than an animal, it’s your livelihood. To lose a cow is to lose your ability to feed and care for your family. For the new refugees arriving at Dadaab, this is the situation they’re in. Many have sold off all their belongings or simply left them behind in order to get to Dadaab where they hope to find help for their family.

Newly arrived refugees from Somalia wait to be registered at Dagehaley camp, one of three camps that make up the Dadaab refugee camp.

I’ve worked in a number of emergency situations, from Haiti to Pakistan, but Dadaab was like nothing I had seen before. People were arriving hungry, many having walked for weeks. They arrive to join thousands other people in a similar situation as them. When new refugees arrive they receive a food ration that is good for 21 days in the reception area.

I was in Kenya to help work on CARE’s emergency strategy. We’re responding now, with life-saving food and water, but we’re also planning activities to help families recover from this crisis and to build resiliency in communities both inside and outside the camps, so that families don’t have to face an emergency like this again in the future.

Somali refugees in Dadaab: The worst crisis I’ve seen

By guest blogger Barbara Jackson, Humanitarian Director, CARE Emergency Group

We’ve just returned from a visit to Dadaab Refugee camp in northern Kenya, where I was accompanied by the CARE Canada President and CEO Kevin McCort, CARE Australia Head of Fundraising Andrew Buchannan and CARE USA Head of Foundations Liz McLaughlin.

In my more than 20 years of field experience with CARE, I have not seen such widespread levels of the effects of lack of food on so many people. Every single man, woman and child that we saw and met with of the more than 1, 500 people arriving daily do not have a spare ounce of flesh on their bodies. The adults are literally down to the bone; the children are incredibly listless, showing obvious signs of malnutrition and distress. Single mothers carry one or two children on their backs with others holding tightly onto their ragged wrap.

A mother sits with her child. Newly arrived refugees from Somalia live in cramped and makeshift homes on the outskirts of the Dadaab camps. Credit: Kate Holt

We met groups of over 40 people who had traveled together, leaving behind the elderly whom they knew would not be able to make the walk of 20 or more days to reach Dadaab. They do not know if they will ever see each other again.

Every single person with whom we talked – from those who had just arrived after a grueling journey to those who have been waiting in small hastily and sparsely constructed shelters, to those working as volunteers with CARE to provide food and some basic essentials – asked us to help them to tell the world of their plight. “Please share our message from Dadaab that we need help, that we cannot wait, that we have come this far and we still do not have the food and shelter that we need.”

There are more than 15,000 refugees who have arrived who are still not on the UN registration system and are not entitled to receive basic health services or a monthly ration of food. We met many of these people on the outskirts of one camp where CARE is now providing additional water and sanitation services.

When I asked to see their vouchers that were provided to them upon arrival to confirm when a date had been set by which they would be officially registered, I was surrounded by many people who dug into their carefully wrapped worn bags and pockets to show me vouchers with dates for as far away as mid September. One young woman asked, “I am hungry now and I have no shelter, how will I be able to wait this long for food for myself and my children? We thought we would be able to get help here but there is no help.”

Yet, these vouchers are like gold, and each one is carefully wrapped up and tucked back away for safe keeping. Without a voucher, a family does not get into the system and therefore it is as if they had not walked and risked their lives to reach Dadaab. They do not exist in the system.

Our CARE staff is working many long hours each and every day to help speed up food distribution, to get water and sanitation services out to those who are escaping from the drought plaguing the region, to increase educational services for the influx of many more young children. The commitment and dedication of our staff is incredibly impressive and they are doing this in the face of many challenges and difficult working and living conditions. There is no complaint voiced ever, yet their faces are lined and at the end of the day, almost too tired to talk. We must get them additional help and support and we need to get it to them now.

I am extremely heartened by the great willingness and generosity of the CARE members to offer expertise and personnel as well as hopefully, in the short term future, significant additional funding. Many of the people whom we met thanked us – for the support they are receiving now and for what they truly hope will be the urgent additional support that they need now.

On Monday, Kevin McCort and I will meet with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) High Commissioner in Geneva. We hope that we can help ensure that the refugee registration system in Dadaab will be rapidly accelerated for without that, there will be a continued huge gap and many women, children and men left without any hope.

I am now in Ethiopia, visiting communities where CARE Ethiopia works to see how we can help expand our programming here to ensure that people do not leave their homes in search of help, that they will be able to survive the coming very lean months.

Dadaab’s refugees – patient, but hungry

As I arrived in Dadaab by plane, I looked out the window and my first thought was of how much the camps have expanded since my last trip here in June 2009. There are shelters spread out around the outskirts of the camps for several kilometres. The vastness of the camps becomes even more obvious when you are on the ground. They are not just “shelters” – they are full of very poor, vulnerable, and mostly very young people, about 70% women and children.

Kevin (left) listens to a young boy at the registation center in the Ifo camp of the Dadaab Refugee Camp. Here, people wait patiently to be registered as refugees.

Shortly after arriving, I visited a school for new arrivals. It was impressive but overwhelmed: 2,500 boys and 1,400 girls are registered in the school, but there are hundreds of newly arrived refugee children who have essentially “crashed” the school.  They flood through the gates all morning clearly wanting to learn, but they are also drawn by the free lunch. Even with a full ration from World Food Programme they are still hungry and it’s a difficult reminder that we need to expand the basic education program in the camp, including the feeding component, but don’t yet have the funds necessary to do it.

Later in the day, I met a woman who had walked 17 days to get to the camp. I asked her: How did you do it? How did you get food and water? How did you manage to get four children to safety? Her answer was simple, yet tragic. She said they would listen for voices and watch for homes along the way. Whenever they saw people, they would beg them for what little they could share.

An experience that I found particularly impressive was witnessing the donations made to the newly arrived refugees by established refugees and Somali businesses in Nairobi. There are truckloads of biscuits, powdered milk, clothes and sandals that have been donated for distribution in the camps. It is inspiring to see this generosity up close and I am happy to be able to share it with my fellow Canadians.

How we choose images

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. We, at CARE Canada, understand the value of a captivating photograph and how it can help you, the Canadian public and our donors, travel with us to the countries where we work. Through photographs, you can see how Canadian donations are making a difference in the lives of women, girls, men and boys around the world.

Woman collecting water at a water point that is having water delivered by CARE in Dadaab.

We love sharing photos with you, but we understand that we have a responsibility to ensure the people we take photos of are treated and shown with dignity.

Every day we receive pictures from our staff around the world. It’s our job, at CARE Canada headquarters in Ottawa, to filter through these so we can share images that keep you informed on what is happening and how CARE is responding.

The recent drought crisis has resulted in a large influx of images from CARE’s work in Dadaab, Kenya – you can see that reflected in our Flickr photostream. We know that many of these images can be upsetting, but we always try to find balance in what we show. So how do we make those decisions? We follow three guiding principles:

• Provide an accurate reflection: We try to provide balanced images that give the most accurate reflection of a situation as we know it. This translates into showing a diversity of images, from children at school or families using CARE-run services, to potentially more upsetting images, such as sick children or people receiving medical treatment. It also means providing background information or descriptions, where necessary.

Mother sits with her malnourished child in a therapeutic feeding centre in Dadaab, Kenya.

• Defend dignity: A key aspect of CARE’s mission is to defend the dignity of the people we work with around the world. Sometimes we will choose to not share an image if we feel it doesn’t meet this standard.

• Consider reader’s sensibilities: We are aware that some images can be very disturbing. It is never our intention to shock or upset our readers, and we want you to feel comfortable coming back to us for new stories and information. We always take you into consideration when choosing an image.

All of these criteria must be balanced against each other. You may feel that sometimes we lean too much one way, while other times too much another way. We would love to hear your thoughts.

Outside the registration centre in Dadaab

This video was taken outside the registration centre at the refugee camps in Dadaab, Kenya. The people in the video are waiting to register. Many here are exhausted, having walked close to two weeks from Somalia due to the drought and on-going conflict. More than 1000 people are arriving at the camps daily.

You can learn more about the current food crisis and how you can help on the CARE Canada website.

Africa drought: Arriving at Dadaab

Photographer Kate Holt travelled to the Dadaab refugee camps in north-east Kenya to report on conditions for new arrivals from Somalia. She gives personal insight into the situations of people arriving in Dadaab and life in the refugee camps. You can watch her audio slideshow on the Guardian website: http://ow.ly/5EIdh 

Drought Crisis on CBC’s The National

Last night, CBC’s The National featured a story about the drought crisis in East Africa. They visited the Dadaab refugee camp, run by CARE Canada, in Kenya. The Dadaab camp is the largest refugee camp in the world. Originally designed to hold 90,000 refugees, it now has a population of over 370,000 and 1,000 people arrive daily.

You can watch the story on the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2051137447

CARE, in partnership with the Humanitarian Coalition, has launched a joint emergency appeal to bring lifesaving support to those affected by the drought. Learn more about how you can help on the CARE Canada website.

Impressions from Dadaab

Emergency Media Officer Alexandra Lopoukhine describes the situation in Dadaab refugee camp, northern Kenya, where nearly 1,500 people are arriving each day.

When a family arrives:
Outside of the reception centres, crowds of people are waiting. UNHCR has set up a structure that is open on all sides, but has a roof to help shade the burning noonday sun. It is still not big enough for all the people. The people are quiet; they are exhausted and in what seems like shock.  They are called into the reception centre in small groups to keep the flow inside moving.

Once they are called up to enter the reception centre (a fenced in compound with various tents, benches, tanks and taps of water that CARE provides) , they go to one of the three reception centres being run by UNHCR staff. They first go through an electronic finger printing screening which registers them and their family.  They get coloured bracelets based on which camp they are being received in (blue bracelet in Ifo, yellow in Dagahaley and red in Hagadera). They then move to receive non-food items being distributed by CARE staff (plastic mats to sleep or sit on, blankets, jerry cans). At that point they move to the food tent, and receive two weeks’ worth of food. CARE staff gives the food out. There is a medical tent for malnutrition screening and the CARE tent for counseling.  At the final step they are given a registration date and time to get to their UNHCR registration centre where they will then get their WFP ration card, tents and allocation of land.

Living in the camp:
Because the camps are full, people are setting up their places to live where they can find land. This has lead to sprawling overflow, haphazardly set up. Deforestation (de-shrubbing) has taken place. This is a real source of tension with the host community. This is the land that typical Kenyan-Somalis use as nomadic feeding and living grounds. So when the wind blows, the wind blows red dusty dirt all around. At times the dust is so thick, you cannot see one foot in front – cars stop, people cover their faces; lack of visibility can last up to a minute. The houses are round stick buildings with any type of covering around. The wind can blow these houses down. The children are generally covered in the dust. Feet are perpetually dirty, it seems. The sandy-ground is hot and many refugees have no shoes. Flip flops from China seem to be the most popular type of footwear.

One woman’s story:
Hawa Aden Hassan is a 30-year-old old with three children. Her husband stayed in Somalia. She has been here five months. She and a friend went out to collect branches to make their houses and they were attacked. They were able to get away and suffered only minor injuries. They are now afraid to go out and collect what is needed; she said they are sleeping in the open air. They generally don’t feel afraid, but they really want schools for the kids.

“The violence (in Somalia) is not good. This place is good as long as there is no fighting and there are schools to go to.” -  14-year-old boy.

Water

Posted by Alexandra Lopoukhine

This morning, CARE staff were discussing, at length, ideas and plans on how to increase water supply in the areas where the newly arrived refuges have settled. A CARE International Water Expert has been with the team here in Dadaab for a few days now, assessing current needs and formulating a plan forward: more 10,000 gallon tanks; more drilling; more boreholes.

This afternoon, I headed out to the outskirts of Dagahaley and talked with some people who have been here for less than three months. A crowd quickly formed. One woman told me about the lack of water. Above us all, stood a very tall man (I am quite short, but he really was tall) and he explained to me that way too many people have to share one latrine. He told me they need more water – what they have now really isn’t enough. The crowd all agreed.

It was then that I explained that a water expert has come to help CARE determine what we can do about the water supply situation. I told him we know it is not enough. I told him the world is paying attention; money is coming-in to help get them more food, more water and more support. I apologized that things are this way right now, but that with all the new people coming recently, it has genuinely been hard to keep up. I asked them for patience.

What happened then will stay with me for a very long time. As my translator finished explaining that we were working hard to figure this out, he smiled. He smiled and stared me in the eyes and said thank you. The crowd nodded their heads and smiled as well.  I say this now, this “thank you”, was the most sincere exchange I have ever been part of.