In the Lion’S Mouth: Hope and Heartbreak in Humanitarian Assistance

By Lewis Aptekar

In the Lions Mouth is an ethnographic study of humanitarian assistance. Through intense narratives about displaced persons and his interaction with them, Lewis Apektar makes the case for humanitarian aid as finely honed and specific, rather than based on a priori categories and generalities. Moreover, contrary to usual practice, Apektar contends that mental health assistance is at least as important as food and shelter and essential in Kaliti, a camp for displaced persons near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, if the displaced are ever to break the chains of despondency that hold them down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456804961

Lewis Aptekar

Lewis Aptekar received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Michigan. He is currently Professor of Counselor Education at San Jose State University. Among his academic awards are two Fulbright scholarships (Colombia and Swaziland) and a Senior Fulbright Scholar award (Honduras). Aptekar has been Nehru Visiting Professor (University of Baroda, India); has held a Kellogg Foundation/Partners of the Americas Fellowship in International Development, a Rotarian International Ambassadorship (Zambia), and a scholarly residency at the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center (Italy). He is past President of the Society of Cross-cultural Research; and is on the editorial board of Child Abuse and Neglect, Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS (SAHARA), and the Journal of Psychology in Africa. Aptekar has received research grants from the National Science Foundation to study street children in Kenya, and from the Natural Hazards and Research Applications Center to study post traumatic responses after natural disasters. His books include Street Children of Cali (Duke University Press, 1988) and Environmental Disasters in Global Perspective (G. K. Hall/Macmillan, 1994).

Book preview

In the Lion’s Mouth:

Hope and Heartbreak in Humanitarian Assistance

Lewis Aptekar

Copyright © 2010 by Lewis Aptekar.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010916593

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-0495-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-0494-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-0496-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

89079

Dedication

To my wife, Leslie Tenney, who gave me the wisdom and strength to work on this project and to our children, Rachel and Samuel.

To the people of Kaliti, thank you for all you have given to me.

Acknowledgements

Special appreciation to David Swanger, who as my editor, turned coal into gold.

To the following (listed in alphabetical order) who read the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions: Behailu Abebe, Francis Aboud, Mesfin Araya, Sara Bachman, Jo Boyden, Nancy Coleman, James Criste, Steven Engleberg, Nigisti Fishu, James Gabarino, Bob Gliner, Girma Getahun, Paula Heinonen, Joop de Jong, Jacqueline McAdam-Crisp, Tony Marsella, Lee Munroe, Bill Myers, Alula Panhurst, Paul Rock, Paul Rosenblatt, Sally Segal, Larry Tye

Preface

In the Lion’s Mouth is an ethnographic study of humanitarian assistance. Through intense narratives about displaced persons and his interaction with them, Lewis Aptekar makes the case for humanitarian aid as finely honed and specific, rather than based on a priori categories and generalities. Moreover, contrary to usual practice, Aptekar contends that mental health assistance is at least as important as food and shelter—and essential in Kaliti, a camp for displaced persons near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, if the displaced are ever to break the chains of despondency that hold them down.

Aptekar is a scholar and clinical practitioner who brings both intellect and compassion to his work with victims of poverty and war. He abjures romanticization of humanitarian aid, but insists on optimism and practical solutions amid the most appalling circumstances. Further, he is a man of heart: professionalism notwithstanding, Aptekar cannot distance himself from the plight of those he has come to help.

In his work in Kaliti, Aptekar engages camp residents personally and comes to know them as individuals. He participates in the life of the camp; provides both official and unofficial aid to the displaced; shares their joys and disappointments; and, in a manner best described by his own recounting, is never less than candid with everyone, whether they are the displaced victims of war, politics and poverty, or ranking officials in diplomatic and aid organizations.

Aptekar’s candor, realism and principled point of view pervade his relationships not only with the displaced in Kaliti, but also with his fellow aid workers and with us, his readers. Aptekar discusses the power and the limitations of humanitarian assistance, and he deconstructs myths that pervade humanitarian aid. He also reveals his own perplexities, failings and heartbreak as he labors to understand and minister to people for whom the future, as well as the present, is desperate and seemingly inexorable.

In addition to the merits we might expect of a book written by someone of his experience and expertise, woven in the texture of the narrative as a whole is Aptekar’s confrontation with the concept of giving. At one end of the conceptual spectrum we have notions of giving and charity based in religion and philosophy, which inform Aptekar’s actions. At the other end of the spectrum, we witness his daily confrontation with highly personalized and demanding needs: the needs of the grotesquely deformed beggar who squats at the traffic intersection; of the AIDS victim dying in a dark tent; of displaced persons denigrated continuously and deeply by their displacement; of men with no way to act like men; and of women who have been brutalized and abandoned. Aptekar is an authorized bringer of aid, working for a humanitarian project—but never is enough money and food officially available, and he is being asked constantly and personally for more: more money, more food, more health services, more of everything, to provide succor to persons whose need is huge and whose resources are nil.

In the Lion’s Mouth is essential reading for scholars and field workers advancing humanitarian aid and human rights in the developing world. The book also provides cogent insight and information for clinicians who implement community mental health. I commend this book, as well, to general readers for the universality of the portraits of individuals drawn in the narrative, and for insights into the satisfaction and difficulty of giving to others in need. Readers generally, I propose, will be fascinated by this corner of Africa with its unique folk customs and behavior. Inside and beyond Kaliti and its displaced persons, Aptekar portrays Ethiopia colorfully, with sensitive appreciation.

Aptekar places his work among valuable critiques of humanitarian assistance—e.g. Duffield 1995; Maren 1997; Sorenson 1993; Timberlake 1986—though these works do not capture, as he does, the stories of actual people who comprise war’s collateral damage. Another difference, in Aptekar’s book, is its forthright exposition of the moral conundrums confronting humanitarian aid providers.

More recent studies based on the awful truth that wars are everywhere, and increasingly impact civilian populations, include Fiona (2002), Fiona is directly relevant to Aptekar, because she also deals with the fearsome damage inflicted upon civilians; however, a notable difference between them is Fiona’s broad brush approach compared to Aptekar’s focus on specifics.

Other works that inform In the Lion’s Mouth include Lapierre (1992), Chandler (2002), and Newman and van Selm (2003). Aptekar’s work is thus part of a distinguished lineage, even as it develops its own modus operandi and charts new territory with its challenge to conventionally held ideas about humanitarian aid theory and practice.

Let me close by noting a problem posed by our nature:

We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others—even when we cause it. —James Carroll.

". . . any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind

and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls

it tolls for thee." —John Donne

These, I suggest, are elemental truths, and a dualism that In the Mouth of the Lion enables us to understand more fully, thanks to Lewis Aptekar’s insistence that the displaced persons of Kaliti are not the other; as well as his insistence on hard questions about the nature of giving, and the possibilities of humanitarian aid.

—David Swanger

Professor Emeritus

University of California at Santa Cruz

Table of Contents

Chapter One, first impressions

Above all we kept moving. To stop was certain death, Ato Kasu:

Touring Kaliti:

Closing the deal:

Getting help:

Taking the census:

Listening to their problems:

#1 Registering for benefits; Getting help from this government is like expecting honey from a fly, Zewde:

#2 Food for work; We work with a shovel and eat with a spoon, Abbay:

#3 Health care; I will have to go an entire day without eating to pay for medicine, Tsehaynich:

Health care from the clinic’s point of view:

To give or not to give: always a problem, rarely a solution:

To tell the truth or not: always a problem, rarely a solution:

As an Ethiopian proverb says; Thanks to God; let him not bring much worse:

Chapter Two: Developing a primary public mental health program, direct care for people with mental disorders

Why mental health?

Its untreated AIDS, not Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:

Local idioms of distress and multiple options for understanding:

Case study #1: Yodit at 21 already a widow and soon to be a mother without children:

Case study #2: Amarech, a fallen woman, and proud of it:

Case study #3: Getachew, the blind chewer of Chat:

Case study #4 Yeshe Woldegabriel: The evil spirit is riding me like I am the horse and it is the rider:

The expatriate’s idiom of distress:

Traditional counseling or counseling from the Western perspective: does it make a difference?

Evaluating the Western method of care in Ethiopia: Mekonnin: a case study:

A few suggestions for humanitarian workers: helping people with mental disorders:

Another expatriate’s curse: lunch with Sister Mary and what we learned from beggars:

Chapter Three: Helping vulnerable groups using a secondary mental health model

Choosing a vulnerable group:

Assessing the mental health of the vulnerable group: the adolescent study:

Examining the data: gender and age differences:

Adolescent males stagnating in the tea room:

Problems for modern young females:

Some further explanations of the findings:

Their parents’ adolescence:

Adolescence in Kaliti:

Providing secondary mental health for the adolescents:

The art program:

The secondary school scholars:

Pay but do not pass goal: learning to live with loss: the robberies:

Chapter Four: Developing a tertiary mental health program, building the civil politic; vacation to Lake Langano, more on limitations

The Core Group:

The effects of their own prior traumas: survivors of the Red Terror:

Choosing community groups; group counseling:

To our surprise:

Supporting the group of 121 households:

Rabid dog in camp:

The double edged blade:

We get our meeting:

Choosing the time to leave:

Chapter Five: The public mental health approach, summary, suggestions, problems and recommendations

What would constitute good community mental health in Kaliti?

Varied levels of mental health and what we did to help:

Suggestions for policy makers; the need to overcome four myths:

#1: The myth of aid dependency and sustainability:

#2: The myth of local leadership:

#3: The myth of women and children first:

#4: The myth of humanitarian aid without material assistance:

Is corruption a myth?

Dealing with more needs than resources; where I fit in:

Learning from the beggars: examining excuses for not giving`:

There is a standard of care in giving; how I fit in:

Chapter Six: "Fire Razes Homes in Displaced Camp

(Local newspaper)"

First visit: return of the war:

Second visit: getting worse:

Third visit: more of the same:

Fourth visit: people begin to move out:

Epilogue: June 2003: Fire razes homes in displaced camp!

Fire Razes Homes in Displaced Camp!

Postscript:

Bibliography

Appendix A

An Abbreviated Geography and History of Ethiopia

Political History of Ethiopia

A History of Hostility between Ethiopia and what is Now Eritrea.

Appendix B

List of Acronyms and characters

Names of participants:

Family

Household staff

Some Professional Colleagues

Some of the Core Group

Some people of Kaliti Camp

Chapter One, first impressions

Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia has five million inhabitants and lies on a flat plain at the bottom of the Ethiopian Highlands range on the western ridge of the Great Rift Valley which is where scientists believe our species originated. The city rests eight thousand feet above sea level; so on our predawn arrival, when Leslie, my wife, Rachel, our six year daughter, and Sam, our not yet 3 month old son, and I left the airport we huddled close to each other against the cold. With relief, I saw Dr. Gebre, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Addis Ababa, who was to be my new colleague. He was a regal looking Amhara Ethiopian, just short of middle age with a speckled head of grey hair. I was to join him as a consultant to a project that will study the mental health of Ethiopians who have been displaced because of the on-going war with Eritrea. As soon as we were ensconced safely in Dr. Gebre’s car we began our drive to our new home. Before long I saw a young man dressed in dark-colored, heavy rags frayed like bits of confetti. Staggering to remain upright with the aid of a homemade crutch, he found his balance and pissed in the street. No one paid him heed. Along the sides of the road there were many women wearing Western men’s clothes, their brows moist as they worked with shovels and buckets of mud to fill the many potholes that forced Dr. Gebre to drive like a wary hiker on dangerous terrain. Because of the condition of the road, we could not gain enough speed to avoid beggars approaching our windows. It took me a moment to realize that the several beggars who came to the window were blind. A child, used like a seeing-eye dog, led a middle-aged man––his opaque blue eyes staring blankly at me––to the side of the car. He slid an open hand against our window––and pleaded, Money, money, money, ferenji, ferenji, ferenji [foreigner], you, you, you. Calmly, Dr. Gebre suggested that I roll up the window. When I asked about the beggars, Dr. Gebre told me that many suffer from congenital birth defects and childhood illnesses. Polio, he said, is still not eradicated. But a good proportion of people on the streets, he told me, are among the 40,000 amputee war victims from Ethiopia’s more than 30-year civil war¹.

As we moved on I saw a toddler whose head was bald, save for a single tuft of hair––about the size of a respectable goatee––rising like a unicorn’s horn from the top of his head. I asked Dr. Gebre to explain. "It is purposely left so God can easily take him into heaven, he told me. I asked myself, is this how parents cope with having so many children who do not live to be adults? I could not imagine how I would cope with the death of one of our children. Did this tradition come about because lack of health care and adequate nutrition caused so many children to die before the age of five? When the war statistics are added the death toll of children increases dramatically. By the time the new government of Meles Zenawi took office some seven million people faced starvation, over 600,000 had been killed; many of whom were children².

 Above all we kept moving. To stop was certain death, Ato Kasu:

The following day., Gebre, (he told me to forsake the Dr.) and I paid our first visit to Kaliti, one of seventeen camps that held the 60,000 displaced persons in Region 14, the geopolitical area encompassing Addis Ababa and its immediate surroundings³. We were met by three of Kaliti’s elected governing camp Committee, Wro Zewde, Ato Mitiku and the Chair, Ato Kasu⁴. Zewde was barefoot and wearing a green, threadbare cotton pullover. I guessed her to be in her mid thirties. Both men were dressed in well-used, Western sport coats. Kasu, in his mid 30’s, stood erect and nicely shod in a new pair of leather shoes. Mitiku, balding and self-conscious, appeared a bit older, and as a less fashionably dressed version of Kasu.

The men escorted us to the camp office, a 10 foot-by-4-foot, mud-walled room. The air inside was malodorous, so I was grateful when Kasu unlatched the single wooden shutter. With better light, I saw that dirt from the adobe walls had cascaded into dust piles on the floor. We were invited to sit on two wooden benches, propped against the walls—except for Kasu, who perched himself on top of a small table facing us. They politely ate our offering of cookies and soda; while I found myself worrying about how long it would take for my family to find a house for our time here.

For the time being we were to be put up by Jim, an old friend from my work in Latin America. He was here as director of U.S. Save the Children. Jim had an extra bedroom in his house with two single beds that completely filled the space the four of us would share until we found our own house. I thought about Kaliti and our mutual temporary shelters as I left in the morning. I had set off briskly to the University of Addis Ababa to obtain the confirmation papers of my appointment as Visiting Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Leslie meanwhile took the kids to retrieve our personal effects from the Customs Office at the airport. We had both expected to have my position confirmed and our belongings transported that day. Instead, Leslie found out she needed a yellow form, one that only our sponsoring embassy can give us. My experience mirrored hers. To get my appointment papers at the University, I was told that I would need a form duly signed and stamped by the Office of the Provost.

I returned my attention to the conversation in Kaliti. Kasu was explaining that the men in the camp were born in the part of Ethiopia that stayed Ethiopian after Eritrea claimed independence in 1991. They had lived and worked in what became Eritrea for a long time, some of them for more than 20 years, as civil servants, as industrial workers, or as soldiers. They had lived an urban middle class life in local terms. Kasu told us, "When Eritrea won the civil war in 1991, we [Ethiopian men living in what became Eritrea] were considered enemies. The new government gave our wives––who were Tigrinya speakers from Eritrea––a few hours to choose either Eritrean or Ethiopian citizenship. If the women chose Eritrean citizenship, they could stay close to their families [of origin] but not with us [their married families] because we were considered enemies of the state. If they accepted Ethiopian citizenship, they could continue living with us but they had to leave their families [and original homelands]. Essentially, the women you see in Kaliti chose to leave their homelands to start a new life with their husbands and children."

There were two groups living in the camp: Amharas who worked in Assab, Ethiopia’s main port on the Red Sea until it was lost to independent Eritrea. The other was Tigrinya speakers from Asmara, the new capital of Eritrea⁵. Kasu described how to get to Addis Ababa; the people from Assab were forced to trek through the Danakil Depression. This is arguably the most inhospitable geography on earth. Kasu continued, Temperatures reached 50°C in the shade (122°F) and there was no water⁶. We were swept hurriedly from our homes so that most of us left with only what we could carry in our hands, and on our heads and backs. Some people caught rides on vehicles, the majority walked. Their bare feet became bloodied, but they trekked on by tying cardboard to their soles. As the barely discernible freshness of early-morning receded, the intensity of the day’s heat beat down on them, and then the winds blew. By mid-day, weakened under the unrelenting sun, the marchers barely shuffled, suffering in silence. We scanned the heavens for relief planes, and kept walking. Above all we kept moving. To stop was certain death. We tried not to look at the old, the infirm, and the small children whose parents could no longer carry them. We knew that they could not help them without dying, Kasu explained barely able to control his emotions.

Only after a moment’s pause did he say. At the end of every day, the bereaved had to plead with the strongest among the survivors to bury the dead. Most of those who died were not buried. Two weeks passed like this Mitiku, who was from Asmara offered more details of what happened when, without notice, families were forced to leave their homes with neither clothes nor other belongings. Their thirst was such that as they walked through enemy territory to Sudan and safety, they drank water mixed with blood or urine instead of facing dehydration and death. Mitiku told me that his niece, Abrihet, a teenager at the time, had been living with her family in an army barracks. When Abrihet arrived home from school with a friend, the barracks were cordoned off with barbed wire. In spite of being able to see her parents, Abrihet and her friend were forced to board a truck and leave without them, without even saying good bye. On the second night of the march, Mitiku continued, Abihet’s friend collapsed. Abrihet held her friend in her lap, listening as she cried, Water, water, water, over and over again. It was Abrihet’s first experience with death. She was to see much more, Mitiku declared. Of the one hundred people in the truck, forty arrived alive. The dead were buried only with sand because the others had to move on or die. Once they arrived in Sudan, Abrihet had to clamber over the bodies of relatives and other friends to get off the truck.

At this point, Zewde spoke up with her own story: It took my family twenty days to get through the Danakil. We had one jerry can of water for me, my husband, and our eight children. Then Zewde’s eyes filled with tears: We lost three children along the way. She described how the remaining family walked on until reaching sight of the border where they encountered a small band of bandits who forbade them to continue. When some men in our group complained, their throats were slit. Throughout the night, the rest of us remained captive in terror; but in the morning they allowed us to continue walking. Zewde interpreted her family’s release as a blessing from God. Many, in their late teens and early twenties at the time, survived when those who were weaker, younger siblings and grandparents, could not.

Once the displaced arrived in Addis Ababa, they went to Jan Meda Camp, the government’s processing center where they were photographed and given identity cards, and became officially

89079-APTE-layout-low.pdf

displaced. I knew that the terms, displaced, and, refugees, were legal concepts with important consequences. Internally displaced people are refugees within their own country but not regarded as such, they were forced to rely on local government resources. And resources were meager: as the officially displaced, they had only the frail economy of Ethiopia on which to depend. In contrast, officially designated refugees were outside of their country of origin and received support from the United Nations. In most cases, those in a refugee camp supported by the U. N. lived better than they had in their homes. Statistics comparing child refugees living in Ethiopia with Ethiopian children in general show why. In refugee camps in Ethiopia, there were organized schools, usually well attended. The food was nutritious and water is safe to drink. Of Ethiopian children outside the camps, only 23% entitled to attend school were enrolled. Among the general populace fewer than 20% had access to safe water. Finally, health care and the availability of prescription medications in the refugee camps far exceed what was available locally, particularly among the poor. Certainly resources accorded refugees were far superior to those available to the displaced people we served in our project, as conditions in Kaliti attested,

Zewde went on, We found ourselves squeezed in a power play between contending political rivals. The new government—the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) overthrew the Derg, the former government for which the displaced were working in Assab and Asmara. The EPRDF had no intentions to spare precious little resources to employees of their former enemies. The reader should note, sadly, that competing political parties and/or ethnic groups are common in modern warfare. The acronyms denote different people with powerful hatreds that compelled them to war. Yet when it comes to the mental health sequel of war, acronyms can be substituted one for another. We confront not only a powerful case for the generality of war’s consequences, but also a connection between conflicts. In the end we are all human. This is why this book tells not only the story of the people of Kaliti, but a story of war’s treachery, independent of cultural specifics.

Two conflicting stories exist about how the displaced were treated after being registered as officially displaced: their own view was that they were cheated, while the government’s view was that they were cheaters. The government maintained that once a displaced person died, others took the deceased’s identity card and inserted his or her photograph to get extra benefits. So the government conducted new registrations, each time reducing the census of the displaced, angering displaced persons who saw the new registrations as punitive, and who believed the government’s action prevented many legitimate claimants from receiving benefits. Because no records were maintained, it was difficult to ascertain whose story was legitimate.

Touring Kaliti:

Then, Zewde, Mitiku and the Chair, Kasu invited us to walk through the camp. Kaliti covered about one acre of dusty barren land a few miles south of the city and had 2,146 people living in it (our census will be discussed later)⁷. The density of its living space, including private living areas, two public buildings, the latrine, the tents used as stores, and public walkways came to 1.98 square meters per person, which exceeded the population density of the Warsaw Ghetto at its most crowded⁸. Visualize a person taking a step in any direction, and then either bumping into someone or being forced to step aside. Then imagine the cooking smells and conversations that provided the backdrop to our tour. In the foreground put flies clustered, thick and bold, on every surface.

89079-APTE-layout-low.pdf

As Committee members guided us on a tour of Kaliti they explained that the people from Asmara arrived first, thus receiving one of the three the biggest tents (provided by the European Union), each measuring 305 square meters. Each tent held, as we discovered from our census, on average twenty-six households. The living space for each person was 1.23 square meters, roughly the space an average-sized person needs to lie down in. Family size averaged six people, although the average household declared itself to be 9.5 people. The difference was because families took in the orphaned and disabled as renters, the only way families could afford to stay together. Because the people from Assab arrived later, they were given tents that were set up for four families. Each of their tents measured 27.15 square meters. Divided by four, each family had 6.78 square meters. In these tents, the average living space per person equaled 1.78 square meters. Not only did the people from Asmara have the better shelters, they knew how to work cohesively as a group because they came with stronger communal social networks than the people from Assab. As a result of being first and better organized, they were able to get most of the aid benefits by having more representatives on the camp Committee. Because the people from Asmara were Tigrinya, while the majority of people from Assab were Amhara, different treatment led to ethnic tensions within the camp. When dealing with outsiders, like government authorities or NGO’s, the shared hardships of refugee status overrode ethnicity. Those who arrived after the first two groups, many of whom were war orphans, were forced to construct their own lean-tos. These were no more than discarded pieces of plastic, scraps of fencing and newspaper, hung from the sides of one of the more durable tents. Homes making up this lowest rung of domicile offered even less space and less protection from the elements. Most had beds of mud and straw, covered with blankets the displaced were given six years ago. These blankets were so thin, in many cases people were forced to sleep in their only set of clothes.

89079-APTE-layout-low.pdf

The rains had not yet come, so the mid-day heat was barely tolerable inside the tents, but Committee members told us that it was unbearably cold at night. Most households had a mesob (hand-woven grass basket), used for storing injera (the local bread made from the flour of teff, a very small grain from the indigenous teff plant (Eragrostis tef), a species of lovegrass cultivated in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Usually, the women went to the communal kitchen where they milled the teff into a runny dough left to ferment before baking it in the form of large pancakes on a clay griddle (mitad) over fire. The women told us that in the morning they ate injera with wat, (stew or sauce, made of onions, garlic, pepper, and meat if possible). There was no lunch, except at times left over injera without wat. At night it was injera again, maybe with lentils. For many, meals were no more than slightly sweetened popcorn.

89079-APTE-layout-low.pdf

When we arrived at the far edge of the camp we were shown the spigot that was the single source of water for the camp. The pipe was set next to the latrine. This concrete structure, built with eight stalls, was awash in filth which overflowed into the surrounding area. Those who lived close by suffered from flies and stench, while those residing at a distance were forced to use buckets, (which they left outside of their tents until full and which dotted walkways like buoys). The displaced carried the waste buckets to the latrines to be emptied. Children were allowed to relieve themselves on the ground.

I was to learn that Kaliti at night was different. At night I felt transposed into a village of the nineteenth century, a time when people’s social lives were kept circumscribed within walking distances, where most entertainment came directly from one person to another. There was no electricity, so people used candles; a few had kerosene lamps. I guided myself by watching the outlines of people visible through the canvas walls of their tents. These images would emerge, and then blend into the recesses, actors in a silent movie. When I was inside a tent, I could see people on the outside moving in a steady stream from tent to tent, to and from the common latrine, and to darker corners where the young gathered. Because at night they faced the