Posted by Nigel Chapman, Plan Chief Executive Officer
5 June 2013, Burkina Faso: Some 280 kilometres north west from Ouagadougou lies Gouedebo camp in the Sahel region, home to 10,000 refugees who fled the conflict over the border in Mali last year.
With little rain so far this year; it is windswept, a dusty sprawl of hand-made tents further than the eye can see. But even in more fertile parts of the year, I doubt it is that pleasant living here - especially for the mainly Tuareg people, who are used to the freedom of pastoralist living, with their cattle and goats.
This is a big camp - it has a fifth of all the Malian refugees in Burkina Faso - and one where Plan is taking the lead in education and protection of children, as well as supporting on water and sanitation.
The camp management is being coordinated by UNHCR and I am met by a fascinating cross section of staff from different agencies and nationalities, with a heavy bias to Africa both west and east.
Sturdy classrooms
The camp is less than a year old but already Plan’s contribution is very evident. Sturdy class rooms for some 650 pupils, including around 20 Burkina born children from the locality. This is important as it sends out a signal that in a society where many kids are still not in school, there is not one set of opportunities for refugee children and a second class citizenship for locals.
The gender balance favours girls and all the children are supported by some 30 teachers who cover a 6 and half hour school day split into 2 parts to avoid the worst of the heat. Many of these children have never been to school before; a silver lining of a kind.
The teachers I talk with are a well-motivated and lively lot: some are refugees themselves working alongside Burkina trained staff.
Sanitation concern
We meet the newly elected Refugee Council and the Council for Women. All of them are full of praise for Plan’s work in the schools and protection areas - but the big issue is the scarcity of working latrines, especially with the rains about to come and with them, high winds which can blow temporary structures away in minutes.
Plan is only a supporting player in this area: the non-governmental organisations taking the lead say they have few resources to build more - a point reinforced by UNHCR. It seems ironic that we can provide fully-functioning schools with all their inherent complexity but not enough toilets that work and provide dignity for people living here.
I wander around the camp briefly. The women are engaged in the usual chores: washing, cleaning, and cooking. I am struck by the number of men I see hanging around and with time on their hands.
And when we meet the refugee council led by proud men, articulate and adept at forming social and political structures, we ask about when they might return to Mali. Many are from Timbuktu and Gao. They do not know - they remain concerned about their safety.
Living with uncertainty
The reasons why people leave a conflict like Mali are not homogenous; each is an individual story so there is no universal answer as to when safe is safe enough.
Living with this open-ended uncertainty in a foreign land must be very hard, however well provided people are with the basics of food, water and shelter. Being a refugee in this camp is not really living - more a matter of survival when time can hang heavy.
One of the dilemmas for governments like the one in Burkina Faso and agencies like ourselves is how long should we be planning for this camp to operate. The longer it is there, the more permanent it becomes with the appropriate investment needed to build better infrastructure.
But at least now after the meeting in Brussels of all the interested parties last week, the issue of aid for the thousands of Malian refugees in Niger and Burkina Faso is back on the agenda. Agencies have struggled to raise funds in the light of Syria, which in its scale dwarfs the impact of the Malian conflict.
New fund bid
It is good to hear that Plan UK is co-ordinating a new bid to the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to support our work with refugees and internally displaced people in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali itself, with the full support of our country teams there. Maybe those much requested latrines will be a high priority and life in what is a tough environment will be a little better than now. And we all hope a safe return to Mali is on the cards soon.
I leave proud of Plan’s contribution in a part of Burkina Faso where we have no previous base. It is good to see how we are learning fast and a largely young and committed staff is rising to this difficult set of challenges.