Comparative Guilt

Tonight, as I sit in the quiet of a basic but beautifully spacious resort embedded in a jungle of coffee plants, monkeys are chasing each other through the dark green canopy above and playing in the fast-flowing creek that winds its way through the jungle. This is an oasis, a beautiful retreat from my day - but one that makes me feel terribly guilty. While I appreciate it and know the security reasons why I am here, how can I not compare?

About fifteen minutes away from me, in the Dilla Town, Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp there will be about seventy people sleeping in a 5 x 3 meter canvas tent, a space about the same size as my room. At the other side of the football pitch sized compound there is a concrete warehouse with a tin roof, about 30 x 10 meters, that is home to about 1,450 people.

While I sit here, breathing in freshly roasted (single origin) coffee and watching a young woman prepare it in the manner of the unique Ethiopian coffee ceremony, I am reflecting on my day and waiting for my dinner to be prepared and served for me. But the images and sounds of my second stop, a food distribution centre, play on continuous loop in my head. 9,000 people lined up, had their credentials inspected and stamped, carried their supplies out into the heat of the day, placed their mark on a verification record and lugged their months’ worth of rations (15kg of wheat, 1.5kg of beans, 0.45kg of vegetable oil per person) back to cook on a wood fire wherever they found a space to call home.

How can I not compare? How can I not feel guilty for my privilege? A privilege born, not from anything I deserve, but as a result of being born in a lucky country.

Just over an hour ago I was sitting in the dirt and smoke of the canvas tent talking to Etenesh Beyene, a forty-two-year-old mum with eight children. She and her family are among 40,000 people living in the Dilla Town IDP camp, and these are among the one million people displaced by the Gedeo - West Guji tribal conflict that is now almost 5 months old.

Etenesh, her husband and children left their home on April 10 this year when their neighbours house was set on fire and after their possessions, including their years’ harvest, (800 kg of coffee and 800 kg peas) was destroyed. They walked for four days, hiding at times in jungle and aqueducts to avoid raiding parties. Some of their friends were killed along the way, their money was stolen and their remaining possessions destroyed.

It’s been five months now for Etenesh and her kids, a baby only 8 months and the oldest 15 years. With the rest of the group she is living with, she and her husband have set up a place for the kids and they share all they have including their rations. In the far corner of the tent a wood fire is burning, filling the small space with smoke and cooking the beans ready for dinner. When asked about the future Etenesh says: “Now I don’t have any hope. How can I return? But, if peace is restored I will go back”.

Inexplicable Kaleidoscopes of Emotion

I was standing on a rise overlooking line upon line of domed blue and white tents connected by a maze of narrow rocky roads and a spiders web of electrical cables hanging symmetrically and swinging rhythmically from metal poles. Outside some of the tents small satellite dishes pointed hopefully to the sky some sitting atop 44 gallon drums of kerosene – a families fuel for cooking and heating. Water connection points dotted the campscape and communal bathroom facilities rose above the tents marking out the symmetry and revealed an allegiance to international standards of IDP camp design. In the distance a water tower the size of a small apartment block interrupted the picturesque mountain-scape that dominated the far distant horizon. 

There is a harsh permanent beauty to this place that has been overtaken by uncertainty, fear and incomprehension. In the far distance snow capped mountains guard the valley and feed a small stream that meanders around the mesh and razor wire fence. Contained within the fence, thousands of families – most arrived within the last 5 months, some in the last days – are trying to make sense of the latest, and what looks like a more permanent eviction from their homes and neighbourhoods.

Mosul is about 20 kilometres away, and as I sit listening to another story of displacement I ‘feel’ and hear the whump of exploding air ordinance. The people around me don’t even flinch. They speak of running from homes as bullets explode in walls around them and as aircraft scream overhead firing rockets into the neighbourhood. Some had a day or two to get out – reading the signs, watching the news – hoping that it was not as they heard – but eventually and reluctantly getting out before all hell broke loose. Others got caught in the crossfire or the unpredictability of a war – escaping as soon as they could and mostly by cover of night. Many, many were not so lucky. 

I met families (and church leaders) who spoke of thousands of Yezidi women still held captive by Islamic State – including their relatives – girls as young as 7. I heard stories of bravery in the face of fear, of neighbour supporting neighbour and of people from surrounding cities such as Erbil driving their own cars toward the fighting to pickup strangers who had fled on foot – bringing them to safety and temporary housing in their own communities. 

I wonder how I can describe the scale and the ‘feeling’ of these fenced off places; but more importantly how can I convey the stories of the people who survive here? How can I convince the world, or more realistically the people in my sphere of influence that this is not right, this is not something we can ignore, this is not ‘other’? One of my roles is surely to communicate the unfairness and injustice; the overwhelming and insatiable need; the disappointment, the anger, the frustration, the gratitude, the fear, the hope, the confusion? Theirs is an inexplicable kaleidoscope of emotions and response. But, I don’t have the words to do this description justice. 

I sit with a family in their (tent) home: there are twelve people, three families in these two tents. A new baby was born to the family just last night, in the tent next door, without proper medical support, (Mum and baby are in care now doing alright but the baby is jaundiced). A one year old cries for Mum; two beautiful teenage girls sit quietly, almost on top of their dad; an 84 year old grandma sits in the corner wrapped in blankets, she says nothing; a young man and woman arrive to join us – announcing that they have just got engaged – they offer us sweet tea, and lunch, hospitality they can hardly afford. 

But when asked about their feelings about the future – they have little hope that they will go home anytime soon. If they had the money they would get out of Iraq – “to America or Australia” where they have relatives – and what was there to go home to anyway? 

Mosul was a big multi-ethnic city. A major economic, educational and cultural hub. One person I spoke with (who has family in Australia and has visited them) called it the Melbourne of Iraq. Can you imagine if Melbourne was attacked in the same way? If the East of the Yarra was systematically and deliberately destroyed by heavy artillery and street by street warfare, if snipers located on roofs on the West bank were shooting at any movement on the East. If over three quarters of the population had to flee east and north and live in tents throughout winter? 

I honestly can’t imagine it, it seems inconceivable - and yet to these displaced residents of a once proud Mosul it was equally unlikely - and yet that is the equivalent.

Offering Hope, Inshallah

To the south-west of Azerbaijan lies the territory of  Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked region of about 4,400 square kilometres that has been in dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan since Azerbaijan's independence in 1991. (I won't go into the politics of it, you can look it up if your interested.)

But whilst the politics and military actions continue, (although there is a uneasy stalemate that exists at the moment) it is always the indigenous people that pay the price. (About 583,000 people are displaced from their homelands, and 230,000 children have been born to IDPs.) I met a young man today that 19 years ago, with his family, fled his families ancestral land for fear of being killed in the conflict. He told me stories of a happy, uncomplicated, although poor childhood. He painted pictures of the mountainous area in which he lived, and the games that he and his mates used to play.

But then tears well up in his eyes as he recalls that in the last few months, he remembers that the only toys he and the other kids had they collected from the ground around their village. They took pride, at the time, in finding all different shapes and sizes of bullet and shell casings that they would join together into belts, chains, maps and what ever they could imagine. He recalls that as his parents hurried he and his siblings away all they took with them were these ballistic toys.

Arriving in Baku, he and his family moved into a single room at an old Russian Youth camp that had been set aside for the thousands of Internally Displaced People (IDPs), some came to Baku, others have made their homes closer to the disputed area, living in hope of return.

19 years have passed, and the young man still lives with his family at the old Youth Camp. He has completed his schooling, which was all done in a room at the Youth Camp, he has obtained an undergraduate and Masters degree. He is working for a Non Government Organisation that is delivering Community Based Economic Development programming to the IDPs, and next year he gets married!

So, we sit and drink spiced tea together, we discuss the theories of economic development and the difficulties of life, (and what would I know really) - but, "essentially" he says, "I have to do this work, I have to try and make a difference for the people that I belong to, I have to try and offer hope. And one day we will all be able to go home if we want to. Inshallah."