Archives for May 10, 2017

Auckland’s very own Sarah Badju was recently in Nigeria with Oxfam’s WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) team.

A violent seven-year conflict in Nigeria involving Boko Haram and the military operations to counter them has forced millions of civilians to flee their homes in search of safety. Millions of people in the country, and also in Niger and Chad, are now living in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps or host communities and are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and sanitation.

Oxfam in Nigeria has well-established programmes in some areas, however many places have been deemed too insecure or too physically difficult for humanitarian organisations to access – meaning that thousands of people aren’t receiving the aid that they desperately need.

The Oxfam Rapid Response team in Maiduguri have been working to try and reach more of these people. Oxfam is now starting programmes in three newly accessible areas (NAAs) in Borno state: Gwoza Town, Pulka and Rann.

New arrivals seeking refuge in Rann. Photo: Sarah Badju

Sarah Badju assisted with WASH work in one of these NAAs – Rann, in Borno State.

Rann was attacked by Boko Haram in April/May 2014 and wasn’t retaken by the Nigerian Army until March 2016. The people of Rann fled from the attacks, and have not returned as yet.

The majority of people in Rann now are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who have inhabited the town and are living in the abandoned and damaged shelters, as there is no camp set up.

The area is in desperate need of water and sanitation, and the infrastructure desperately needs to be repaired after the destruction caused by Boko Haram.

Around 40-50 households came to Rann each day while Sarah was there. That’s about 300-350 individuals. The town’s original population was 2,500, but it has now increased to 50,000.

 

A lady in Rann who received a hygiene kit and dignity kit from Oxfam. She told Sarah that she had walked for two days with her children to get to Rann. She came here to get away from “the boys” (Boko Haram). Photo: Sarah Badju

Oxfam’s response

Oxfam ran focus groups with both women and men, Nigerian Red Cross volunteers, the Nigerian Army and Youth Leaders to gauge what people’s greatest needs were. Women and men both expressed that they desperately needed more water access. Men also said that accessing food was a priority, and women expressed a need for livelihood opportunities.

When Oxfam arrived, it was estimated that people only had access to 3-4 litres of water per day (less than half of the amount of a flush of a Western toilet).

Oxfam have since distributed hygiene kits, environmental cleaning kits and dignity kits. We’re building enough toilets for 10,000 people, and have drilled 5 new boreholes which will provide people with clean water.

Oxfam’s environmental cleaning kits. Photo: Sarah Badju

The start of a new toilet that Oxfam is building. Photo: Sarah Badju

The priorities for Oxfam’s response are:

• Water provision, particularly the construction of boreholes
• Sanitation, particularly the construction of toilets that women and children can access
• Hygiene promotion, particularly the distribution of kits and water buckets and running hygiene training activities

Since the Syria Crisis began in 2011, just over 15,000 Syrians have moved to the US. Syrian families make the journey to the US, and other countries around the world, driven by the desire of safety, and giving their children a future with opportunity.

Below are four stories of families – brave families – who have journeyed to the US to start a new life with the help of the Syrian Community Network, a Chicago-based Oxfam ally.

Ahmed Abizaid is a father of five. The day bullets from a sniper’s gun shattered his leg when he was leaving work in Dera’a, his life changed forever. The injury to his thigh was so severe that for the first 15 minutes he felt nothing, but racing through his mind were his wife and children and deep anxiety about what might become of them.

Afraid to go to the local hospital, his townspeople arranged to smuggle him into Jordan, avoiding guards at the border. His family followed him after two months. Five operations later, Abizaid now has steel plates in his leg to stabilize it and is hoping for continued medical care of the injury here.

“It took two years ‘till I could walk,” he said. “The first year I could not put my leg on the ground at all. There was no movement. Now I can walk 200 to 300 meters, and it wears me out.”

Now resettled in a suburb of Chicago, and with a new baby having arrived last summer, Abizaid, his wife, and their five children—one of whom is Sham—are learning to navigate in a whole new world.

And as he feels his way through all the uncertainties, there is one thing he never loses sight of: the future his children will have. For Abizaid, that is the best thing about being in America.

“My children will be educated,” he said. “My children’s future is the most important thing for me.”

And though school has only just started, they’re learning English quickly, especially his oldest daughter, who is 13.

“I ask her sometimes, ‘what is this?’ and she translates for me a little,” said Abizaid, sounding justifiably proud. “You know, it’s all new to her, too, but she’s learning.”

There are other satisfactions, too—things some Americans may take for granted since they haven’t experienced otherwise.

“We feel safe,” said Abizaid simply. “And what’s more important, I’m seeing the order here. The order in America is the best. . . I see it much better than what we have. For example, when I see a car stop for someone to cross the street; when I see my children walk to and from school and I’m not worried about them.”

It’s been a little more than a year since Batoul Taha and her family flew to Chicago and stepped from the plane into the welcoming arms of a group of volunteers from a local church who have helped ease the family into their new lives after fleeing the war in Syria.

“When I came to the states I always thought we will have some financial support, but actually it means way more when I found the emotional support,” said Taha, thinking back on all that the church volunteers and others have done for her and her family.

Among those meaningful gestures was the gift of a six-week summer class at the Art Institute of Chicago, where Taha focused on fashion design and illustration. The volunteers payed for her tuition and materials—at least those she didn’t scrounge from home, like the fabric pieces she used in a construction that focused on textures.

The church group had a hunch Taha and the art institute would be a good match. They had seen some of her drawings, Taha said—a skill her father, a calligrapher, had encouraged her to pursue when the family moved to Lebanon, before coming to Chicago.

“My father, he knows how to draw also, so he taught me how to draw,” said Taha, laughing at the memory of her early lessons with him. “One time, he said you should draw it in the middle of the page. I was drawing at the top of the paper.”

To help her, he bought Taha colored pencils and paper.

“I love the materials,” she said, describing the inspiration she gets from them. “Especially when I see the white paper I like it so much—without the lines. It gives you the way forward.”

When Feras Shawish and Rehab Alkadi resettled in Chicago after losing everything they had worked hard for in Syria, they knew it wouldn’t be easy. There was the isolation of being newcomers; the frustration of forestalled career dreams; and the day-to-day challenges of navigating in a new culture.

But for all the difficulty, there are moments of profound delight—proof that yes, they can make this work, that they will fit in. And the best part is, their little boy, who is now 4, will probably beat them to it.

The other day, said Shawish, their son came home from day care and announced, with an ease elusive for people whose native tongue doesn’t include the sound “p,” that he wanted a pink car. There it was: the perfect “p”, popped from the mouth of a child who a few short months before hadn’t spoken a word of English.

“We cannot pronounce pink,” said Shawish. “It’s not ‘p’, it’s ‘b’, like boy. . . I cannot pronounce pink like him. Oh my god, he speaks very good English.”

So, by the way, does Shawish, who gleaned much of what he knows from the mountain of medical textbooks and journals he pored over in Syria. Still, when your offspring surpasses you—and he’s only 4—well, that’s something to marvel at.

Strolling down the streets of Chicago in a gingham shirt and shorts in late summer, Samhar Assaf looks so at ease it’s as if he has lived in the Windy City his entire life. Chalk it up to the movies.

In his hometown of Homs, in Syria, Assaf spent many happy childhood hours watching big screen tales made in America. Anything starring Vin Diesel got a thumbs up, and cities with towering skylines almost started to feel like home.

So when Assaf, 20, landed in Chicago a few short months ago, it was no biggie. Not at first. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that Hollywood wasn’t telling the whole story about the USA.

“I thought life would be very easy—from the beginning,” he said. “Of course it was not easy from the beginning.”

But Assaf has a personal motto: “If I love it, I can do it.” And he has been throwing himself with determination into every challenge that presents itself—including gearing up to get his high school diploma in the US, despite the fact that he finished his studies before coming to the US. But without the papers to prove it, and with a determination to go to college, he was headed back to school to start his junior year in September.

Photos: Coco McCabe/Oxfam

Many Syrians are still caught up in violence, are fleeing their homes and losing touch with their family members. Help us keep them safe and donate today:

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