Kathrine and Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Refugee Camp

Anne Margrethe and Kathrine write about their visit to a refugee camp close to their practice place. Anne Margrethe observes:

Three dirty and tired children placed in the back of a vehicle. Sitting close to each other, and staring a bit afraid on the mzungu that’s also sitting there. It looks like they are trying to comfort each other. There’s plenty of space, but the children, and three women together with matooke (banana for cooking) and a bag with some belongings, is squeezing themselves together in the very end of the vehicle. This is a refugee family that we (Kathrine and I) met while we visited a refugee camp.

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Kathrine continues:

So we left early Friday morning with the bus, and we’re picked up in Mbarara for the next 2 hrs stretch. (The camp was only 60km from the border of Tanzania) [...] This is Nakiwaru, the biggest refugee camp in Uganda. There is living somewhere between 22 000- 30 000 refugees here. Most are from Rwanda and Sudan, but they also come from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya. What might also be special with this camp, besides the big size, is that most of the population has actually lived here for at least 10 years, so most of them are more or less settled.

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