Dainag123: "It's a Small World After All..."

So we just got back and have a ton of stories and pics to share, this will just be the first of many posts...
We just got back from Lodwar and Kakuma around 330 AM this morning...I dont really
know where to start so I guess Ill start with this past weekend in Kakuma...

Kakuma is mainly a city made up of the refugee camp, it not far from the Kenya/Sudan border and it's REALLY hot...
My favorite part of getting to go to Kakuma was going to the refugee camp. Its something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’m just curious to see what the refugee camps are like, how they are set up, how the refugees are living, all of it.

The UN doesn’t allow pictures to be taken while youre in the camp so I tried to find some online…

First of all it’s huge! There used to be about 100,000 people living there but recently the UN has made a lot of the Sudanese move back so the population has gone down. There are refugees from almost every neighboring country. The Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, Burundi, and Sudan all have refugees living in the camp, which started back in 1992 when Northern Sudan was attacking Southern Sudan.

Ethiopian and Somali refugees

Collecting Rations

We had a warm greeting from the Somali’s when we were taking Boda Bodas through their community to get to the Sudanese…Most of them stared and yelled and made noises, but there was a particularly friendly Somali man sitting on the side of the road who yelled “F**k You, Motherf****r!” As I passed on the Boda Boda. Nice…

It was crazy to pass through all the different communities. It didn’t take long being in the camp befre you could tell the difference between nationalities just by looking at the person. As ou walked around you could tell when you moved from the Sudanese communityto the Congolese community to the Ethiopian community.

I was super excited to go to the Ethiopian community and Ben had some friends there so over the 4 days were were in Kakuma we spent a lot of time in that section…He even had a friend who had an Ethiopian restaurant so I got to eat Anjera again, twice…jealous?
No Ethiopian meal is complete without the random hard boiled egg

This was the view FROM the bathroom at the restaurant...The man told us to "go straight down the hall past the chickens and make a right when you get to the goats." No joke...

It wasn't so bad until Alice saw a giant tarantula in a cocoon on the roof of the room next to the bathroom...Safe to say I was done after that...

I have to say my first impressions of the camp weren’t that bad, save for the Somali section. It was one of the only cmmunities that seemed to have trash everywhere and hostile people.
I guess the main thing was I noticed people's lives went on as usual. They had made this place their home. Some created businesses and restuarants. Others had sports teams. I guess I was expecting just a mass of people sitting around wasting away.
Don't get me wrong people were definitely just sitting around, but I had no idea people could create businesses inside the camp, I was really impressed

All the other communities seemed to be cleaned up pretty well in the common areas, now the housing sections were sometimes a different story, but overall it didn’t seem as destitute as I thought it might be…

Sunday, Ben took me at the crack of dawn to a Sudanese service in the refugee camp. I have to say it was the most kick ass experience and probably my favorite church AND service I’ve ever attended, even though I couldn’t understand anything they were saying.

It was one of the most beautiful settings. I freaking loved being outside in the middle of the refugee camp at this service. About 75 kids came out and performed. They sang and danced to this huge drum, while someone sang over a bullhorn...

Ben said the whole church used to be filled before the UN made them go back to Sudan

The pulpit

The road out of Kaku..ma, the boy in the picture Yacob, lives at the guesthouse we stayed at...

The ride home was ridiculous! We got on the bus around 4PM and pulled into Kitale at 330 AM! It was so long and honestly uncomfortable. But I was able to lean out the window and take some of these pictures as we drove.