Ten Reasons for the Arts in Refugee Camps
By Awet Andemicael
awet@post.harvard.edu
Last year, I conducted research for UNHCR (available online at http://www.unhcr.org/4def858a9.html), which suggests that artistic activity often plays a powerful positive role in the lives of refugees living in camps, and can help them survive and even thrive emotionally, spiritually, and physically. (more…)
Requirements to be a Refugee
By Rwanda Gasabo
One day, a rich father took his son on a trip. He wanted to show him how refugees can be. They spent time in the camp of these poor refugee families. On their way home, he asked his son, “Did you see how they are? What have you learnt, son?” The son said, “We have got a pool, they have got a seasonal river with a fantastic name, “LAGGA”. We have lanterns which come on at night but most of them have stars. Daddy one thing is very funny, we buy food, but they queue while some are beaten to receive theirs for free every two weeks. We have walls to protect us; they have friends around their thatched houses. Look! We have encyclopedias, they have The Bible.” And he added, “Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we might be…”
“It does not take much to be a refugee, simply your belief, education, political opinion, or residence in a mineral rich area.”
It’s not about what you have or don’t have, it’s about who you are. Who takes care of refugees? God, which is where their identity is.
UNHCR’s Home
Thatch, tarpaulin,
Poles, ropes and nails,
UNHCR’s definition of a home.
No materials for a door,
Leave alone a latrine.
By Maketh Ajak
No Ration for Birds
Girl pounding grains in a mortar
Droves off doves pecking at the bran
With a pestle.
There’s no ration,
For birds from World Food Program.
Art on the Run
By Torben Ulrik Nissen, Jesper Lorentz Bertelsen and a KANERE reporter.
Art on the Run is a project supported by the Danish Centre for Culture and Development. Danish artists arrived in Kakuma on March 21st and left on April 6th, 2011. During their stay, the Art on the Run team shared their experiences with a welcoming and enthusiastic refugee community. The artists met with KANERE journalists, artists, refugees and humanitarian Agencies (more…)
Poem: A Secure Place to Live
It is the crack of the giant
of a giant country waiting to fall apart
the clear street of leer town
shaded by neem and leer trees
lined along its highways (more…)
Poem: Threats
Life full of threats
threatens intelligent
friends are stupid
law was bridged
justice denied (more…)
No More Bloodshed
Five decades of war
Millions of people lost life
Birds and wild animals feed on
Both old and young suffered in pain
The blood of the innocents flows to the rivers
Let the few liberate for the freedom
No more bloodshed. (more…)
SOME WHERE
Without expectations
ever imagination
spontaneously comes
ideas that breaks the silence
Stretched, like a thread.
Where they have been?
Where were they existing?
How it flows and originates?
Oh! I get them, once,
Once in a blue moon,
Only for seconds. surrendered me, to exploit
to expand, to philosophies
wisely, to understand human wise
To see, feel, sharing the feelings
Contradictory world.
i guess human is wise
his wise ness which brought total mess.
His deaf and dampness
makes one dear then other fosterness.
The philosophy intellectual
survival of the fitness
eat the weak,
rise as strong as lion,
terrorize and bark.
so as human being,
longing,
the old – early world
No body knows
where the idea comes,
experience, knowledge, intuitions
some time, some way
it comes to observe
some enjoy, others suffers….
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