REFUGEES-SIERRA LEONE: Death Stalks Displaced Camps

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jul 8 1998 (IPS) - More than 700 displaced persons, mostly women and children, have died in the past two months, at the Masingbi displaced camp, about 260 kilometres north of here, aid workers say.

The displaced, who fled the battle between the West African Intervention Force, ECOMOG, and remnants of the ousted Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta in the eastern town of Kono, live in some 2,000 make-shift thatched huts.

Conditions at the camp are appalling, as the death toll among the displaced, keeps rising.

“The average death toll is 10 per day and these are mostly women and children,” says camp commander, Sahr Fengai. “We are appealing to aid agencies to urgently step in with relief items for the camp dwellers, otherwise everyone would die of hunger, disease and starvation.”

Last week, an inter-agency assessment team, comprising the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), CARE International, the Sierra Leone Red Cross and the Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) visited the camp to evaluate conditions there.

They said they found the camp overcrowded and that “conditions are alarming”. Even on the day the team arrived at the camp, seven people died.

“Between April and June, a total of 761 deaths were recorded among the displaced and most of these are hunger-related or malnutrition cases,” Pa Roke Komeh, the traditional ruler of Masingbi, where the camp is located, told IPS.

He said the mud booths, used as shelter by the displaced, leak and that the plight of the displaced will worsen since the rainy season has started.

“These people need medicines, food, clean drinking water and nearly everything,” he said.

The displaced survive on bush yam, which they dig and use as their staple. Children and adults venture into the wild forest, near the camp, to fell fuelwood which they in turn sell in the market to generate income.

According to the Sierra Leone Red Cross, common diseases among the displaced include respiratory track infections, measles, colds, coughs, rashes and malnutrition caused by lack of food.

CARE International’s Tamba Kasor told IPS that displaced children could be seen in the Masingbi township, scavenging and begging for survival.

“The situation is pathetic and the bulk of these displaced persons don’t have any home to return to because retreating rebel forces have burnt and vandalised all towns and villages in Kono district where they hail from,” Kasor says.

The majority of camp dwellers are traditionally farmers. But, at a camp where food and medicines are few and far between, survival is the name of the game.

“This is the planting season and I should be right on my farm, but the rebels looted all my seedlings and grains stored in the barn,” says Musu Mattia, a 34-year-old woman who lives with her four children at the camp.

The inter-agency team promised to provide the displaced persons with plastic sheets which they would use as roofs for their huts.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that there is no clinic on the camp for the 20,000 displaced persons. The nearest health centre is in Magburaka, about 50 kilometres from Masingbi and already 135 malnourished displaced persons are being treated at Mapburaka government hospital, the only therapeutic feeding centre for the displaced.

CARE International has promised to build water wells for the displaced, whose source of drinking water is a running stream nearby.

While the displaced persons look forward to humanitarian assistance from NGOs, there is little likelihood of them returning to their home. The protracted fighting between rebel forces and ECOMOG has left most of Kono district, the diamond and agriculturally-rich region in ruins.

Towns and villages have been decimated and farmlands completely ravaged. Notwithstanding this, the displaced persons still express feelings of nostalgia.

“I want to return home and start picking up the pieces,” says Bondu Sangarie, who lost her husband and four children in the battle for Kono.