By Sabine Wilke
I can hardly believe my own eyes, sitting on a straw mat in the shade of a mango tree in Southern Chad. I have been here before, two years ago, when tens of thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic fled violence after a political coup in their home country. The local community here in Gore in Southern Chad embraced them with open arms, hearts and room to set up their tents.
But today it’s 2016 and the images of refugees crossing the border have faded. Media cycles and aid workers have moved on to other crises and conflicts around the world. Today, I am here to visit a village savings group, one of CARE’s super-recipes to help communities overcome poverty. While emergencies continue to make the headlines, multi-year development programs rarely do. Change is slow to show and tell.
The savings group consists of women, who, as we know from our experience are the smart budget holders in the family. CARE offers training and materials to women, both local Chadian but also those from the Central African Republic who still live here as refugees. I let my eyes wander around the circle we all sit in. A young woman looks pregnant and glowing, another one holds on to her purse, one woman concentrates on reading her savings book. And one lady sitting there, with a rose headscarf, bright eyes and friendly smile… looks very familiar to me! Could that possibly be… Fatimé?
It’s a rare delight for an aid worker to be able to follow up on people we meet in crises and hear how they have been doing ever since. My fellow visitors looked at me in surprise when I started to mumble and get all excited. At the end of the meeting, after the women showed us how they hold their weekly meetings, count the savings and give out loans, they lead us to a table with handicrafts, clothes and food items. Eager entrepreneurs, wanting to seize the opportunity of this visit to sell some of their products. I approach the woman. “Bonjour Madame, do you remember me?” “Well, of course I do”, she says in fluent French. “We’ve met a few years ago and you sent me the photos you took of me and my family. One of them still sits on my shelf. Welcome back!”
We both giggle like little girls and quickly exchange latest news. Where do you live, Fatimé? Still in the tent? “No, I was able to move to a small house.” Where are your children? “One daughter has moved back to Bangui, but the others are with me.”
In 2014: Fatimé Malicky is showing CARE staffer Sabine Wilke old photographs. When she fled her home, she could only grab her purse with these pictures in it. Now they’re all that remains from her past life.(Photo: CARE)
“How have you been ever since?”
You know, Fatimé was a business woman back in her country, a taxi driver, store owner, an independent woman. Proud middle class. When I first met her in 2014, she took out her purse and showed me photos of her former life. It was one of the most memorable moments in my work for CARE. The photos showed a life put to hold by war. A good life. An independent life; proudly shown to you by a woman now reliant on food distributions, living under tarpaulins, but still holding her head high. In 2014, Fatimé was the leader of a women’s sewing group in the refugee settlement. They had received sewing machines from CARE and sold the clothes. How is your business now, I ask. “Not good. Someone broke into our communal house and stole the only sewing machine we had.” But Fatimé doesn’t give up. She now saves money to buy her own machine and plans to carry it back home every night. This woman takes her life into her own hands. And she has realized a plan she had told me about back in 2014: together with a few other women, she opened up a small cafeteria and sells snacks.
A summit far, far away from Chad…
In two weeks, the world will convene in Istanbul for the first ever World Humanitarian Summit. Istanbul is far away from this remote corner of Chad. The conference aims to improve the quality and quantity of humanitarian aid in a world that today sees more frequent and complex disasters than ever before. And one of its so-called “core responsibilities” is to link humanitarian aid in emergency situations to longer-term support for vulnerable communities. Some say this is not the priority. They say it is humanitarian aid first and foremost that needs to be improved and safeguarded, especially in war zones. While I certainly agree with this prerogative, I think of Fatimé and know that this is just one side of the story. Yes, she received one-off support back in 2014. A tent. Some food. Seeds to grow peanuts. The sewing machine. But then what? She doesn’t want to go back to Bangui, her home town just yet. “It is not safe”, she tells me.
You might not read much about it in the news, but to this date, almost half a million people are still displaced and in need of assistance in the Central African Republic, another half million live as refugees in neighbouring countries such as Chad. Fatimé told me back in 2014 how there had been ‘death all around her’ in the Central African Republic, how they had camped at the airport in Bangui, desperately thirsty and hungry, constantly under threat of being attacked by militia. I can understand that she prefers to stay in exile for now. Cruel memories and trauma are not easy to overcome.
In 2016: Seeing Fatimé again after almost 2 years was a rare delight for CARE staffer Sabine. It doesn't happen often that we can follow up on people's lives, as situations change quickly, especially in an emergency. (Photo: CARE/Josh Estey)
We have to be in it for the long run…
So you can imagine how happy I was to see that Fatimé is now part of one of CARE’s savings groups. That she can save money and earn a living, maybe even build a more permanent, better life in exile. The UNHCR estimates that the average time a person is a refugee increased from nine years in 1993 to 17 years in 2003. So today’s reality is that people don’t get the chance to return home after a few months or years. The support we provide needs to take this into account. An emergency response doesn’t end the day after a war does. Conflicts and crises are more complicated than that. As a consequence, humanitarian aid has to be linked to support for recovery and resilience, enabling vulnerable groups to cope with stress and uncertainty.
In my line of work, there is a risk to become disillusioned by political processes, papers and declarations. It is a constant battle to secure funding to continue providing meals, water and shelter for people in need for the next days, months, years even. As much as you want to do, it’s never enough. I remember talking to a young orphan girl, she was 16 at the time, in the same refugee settlement in Chad where Fatimé lived back then. CARE could only provide the girl with sanitary pads every three months because funding had decreased. Well, it is an inevitable biological fact that menstruation occurs every month. I was so angry when I heard this.
But anger doesn’t lead us anywhere. Nor does frustration. CARE has been taking part in the regional and global consultations ahead of the World Humanitarian Summit and will be present in Istanbul with a delegation. We have also developed our own commitments to improve the aid we deliver. And we call upon governments, the United Nations and the private sector to be part of the change we need to see happen.
Fatimé most likely won’t hear about the summit and its declarations . But I want her to feel first-hand the actions following it. And that next time I have the privilege to visit Chad, I would love to meet her again. In good health and spirits, with a new sewing machine. And with new photographs to share, not just of her past. But also of a decent present and a hopeful future.