Dadaab, trip and first day...another planet!

The field. The real field. To spend over a week in Amsterdam and Nairobi can’t be considered being in the  field, even though they were hard working days, very stressful and full of difficulties. It wasn’t until  I was looking at the baobabs, at the wild goats and the small dusty villages sliding outside the window roadside during our final trip to Dadaab camp, when I really felt on the field.

That morning we woke up very early, at seven thirty, and had a quick breakfast. Five hours before, Chaliss from WFP texted Jen, saying it was not possible for us to go to Dadaab under their responsibility. Another slap in the face…the last one. I found Jen was really angry when I sat beside her in the hotel’s restaurant. She was eating her breakfast silently, with a sad and furious expression on her face. We had to talk about what was being said to us.

“So,” I started “what’s next Jen?”

“We are not allowed to go to Dadaab.” She replied.

“I know…but, again, we didn’t come here to go back home after a few interviews. That’s not fair.”

“They have a lot of work to do and little time to manage our trip. They’ve done their best and that’s all Riccardo” she pointed out “What do you think we should do next?”

I thought about it for a minute.

“I think we should get away from their supervision and go to Dadaab on our own, Jen. We’ve been waiting for them, they cannot help us anymore, and that’s fine. But we have our mission to accomplish. “

“That’s what I think too…”she replied “Victor and Patrick are picking us up in half an hour with a 4WD. From now on we’re on our own. We will manage our work load without having to stress them out.”

The 4WD that carried Victor and Patrick was on time. We checked out and immediately left for Dadaab. It was a 7 hours trip from Nairobi to Dadaab, a short distance which took us longer as we were supposed to run through dusty paths in the middle of nowhere. As we left Nairobi and reached the country; Victor, Patrick and I started talking about Kenya, and I had to chance to try and learn some Swahili. In the meantime Jen was enjoying the travel the best way: sleeping. She always said she likes to be rocked like a baby, that that makes her sleep, and good for her, it was a really rocky trip! The countryside was awesome, a slice of Kenya I wanted to see. Exotic trees, bald mountains, strange red rocks lying from million years under the sun, all kinds of wild and domestic animals were passing by outside the windows of the car. I can’t sleep while travelling, especially if I find myself in a foreign country I’ve never seen before: my curiosity doesn’t make me rest for a single second. The temperature rose up as we went down the mountains of Nairobi into the Somaliland, the easternmost region of Kenya, the closest to Somalia border. Everything suddenly changed. The plants, the animals, the villages and the people; everything suggested me that it was a totally different country. People’s shapes and features changed. Kenyans are strong, wide chested and well built, while Somalis features are very particular, very different. They have a very delicate bone structure, very tall and slim. Their behavior is different too. Kenyan people always smile. They’re friendly, they speak very loud, they enjoy physical contact and always seem to have fun and be passionate about life. I liked them very much indeed. Somali people are silent, cold. They stand beside you and look at you, staring at you, wondering who you are and where you’re from without approaching you. They only talk when necessary. They might seem rude but they’re not,  in reality  they’re willing to help and generous, as I later found out, although I didn’t know at the time. Along the road I could only see the differences, and I found myself a little uncomfortable whilst crossing the small villages that tinged of light colors the countryside which had turned from luxuriant to desert in less than two hours trip. Before getting into the 100 kms path that we had to cross to reach Dadaab’s camp, we stopped for a couple of minutes in a small roadside village. I picked my camera and started shooting a little. I was used to see the children smiling and running around me while taking pictures of them…not in Somaliland though. They hid and run away from me as they saw my camera, but I still tried to take some pictures of them. Then, a man from the other side of the road started shouting at me and gesticulating with angry looks. Patrick saw him and came to me:

“Put your camera in the car Riccardo” he said “Somali people get very angry if you take a picture of them without giving them money. Especially during the Ramadan.”

I obeyed without replying or asking for an explanation: the last thing I wanted was an argument with a Somalian person. The road ended after the last village and turned into a path straight to Dadaab refugee camp: a hundred kilometers of holes, dust and desert in a territory infested by bandits and guerrilla squads. We waited for the military escort, than left in convoy with other ten vehicles for Dadaab. It is mandatory on that path to move in convoys and with a military escort: that part of the country is said to be very unsafe. We felt safe and supported travelling that way, but, as said during the training, you have to be aware that anything can happen at any time. So, when we got a punched wheel, we stopped, assuming that the convoy would stop too to help us. Big mistake: all of the cars and the army truck passed over, not even stopping for a second to ask why we were stuck roadside… We didn’t expect this: they were supposed to stop, obviously. This made me very angry, and so did to the others, but we just didn’t talk about that and started working on the punched wheel. It was not easy: the car jack was continuously sinking in the sand, and we could not lift the car. I started wondering around in that semi-arid zone, looking for a stone or some wood to put under the car jack, but I could just find sand everywhere I looked. As I was walking among the bushes, a strange smell stroke me: it was dead meat stench, sweet and sharp, nauseating. I turned around a bush and I realized what was the source: dead cows. It was full of them everywhere. The little time I spent searching for a stone I managed to count at least five dead bodies, totally dried out by the sun with the white bones shining through the holes that some wild animal had done in their skin to eat the rotten flesh. In that region the draught stressed had being hard on crops and animals. Each one of those bodies represented the desperation of a family, their hunger. Two hundred kilos of meat, milk, skin…everything wasted under the sun. Along what was left before reaching Dadaab I saw dozens of cow bodies anyway. When I finally got back to the 4WD two or three Somalis were helping us. They were just passing by and they stopped, without saying a word they took their car jack out and bended under the sun, wasting energies and body fluid to help some foreigners stuck in the middle of the desert. And this, considering that it was half past one in the afternoon and that it was the Ramadan period, was very generous. They worked with us without saying a word, cold, statuary under the sun, then once the job was done, they picked up their tools and moved on without even saying goodbye. That’s why they’re shocking: they seem to be distant, but when they have to help you they will, without asking for any reward. We joined another convoy going to the camp and finally got there in the late afternoon. From outside Dadaab didn’t seem to be the biggest refugee camp in the world, with more than 350.000 people hosted and thousands arriving every day. On arrival one of the first things we saw was a well structured volunteer compound with people jogging around the perimeter and laundry drying under the sun. The environment was really familiar and friendly. On our left just the desert, running as far as the eye can see towards the sunset. We entered our rooms while the darkness was embracing the camp. We were leaded by Fidelity, a Kenyan volunteer in the Norwegian Refugee Council compound where Victor had arranged our accommodation. After traveling for over 400 km, one hundred of which were through the desert, Fidelity’s smile and her nice, polite words were like a flashlight in the darkness…

After a quick dinner I got into my room and fell asleep in just a few minutes, while mosquitoes were eating me,  de

spite of the brand new mosquito net I bought in Italy. While my eyes were closing, I imagined that maybe this was the face of what I was searching for: the baobabs, the dust, the poor and polluted villages, the hard faces of the Somalis, and finally Fidelity’s eyes, blinking in the first darkness of the night. This is the Africa I had been dreaming of, with her dirty and charming face, that hits your eyes hard like a slap in the face, just to caress you while you’re finally falling asleep. I liked it…it was awesome to be there.

Be aware: the hardest part of the trip was to come. 

Riccardo Cecconi