Meeting Lamira's family

The autumn two years ago I meet Lamira for the first time. We were both accepted to study at the United World College of the Adriatic, located in Duino, an idyllic sea side town in the Northern part of Italy. When Lamira told me that she is from Western-Sahara, I must admit that I had never heard about this country before. “I have never been to my home country”, she told another time. “I am born in a refugee camp in Algeria”. I didn´t really understand the meaning of these words before I sat down with Lamira one time into the second term in the college and she told about her life as a refugee in the desert in Algeria. But still I wasn´t able to imagine and understand what it meant… Then as time passed, our daily chats were more about our struggle with Biology, history essays and other things that bother you in an UWC and I stopped asking her about her life back home... In April I was accepted to go the refugee camps, where Lamira grew up, to do Voluntary work for three months. When people asked me why I decided to apply I always said – I meet this amazing Saharawi girl in my high School in Italy. She made me interested in the conflict and the situation of the refugees. My local newspaper even published a picture of Lamira when they wrote about me going to the camps. One of my missions during my time here in the camps was to meet her family. Many times I have wished Lamira was in the camp with me. After being in the refugee camps for the two months I finally got the possibility to meet Lamira´s family in Daklha. We left El Laayone before sun rise and as we continued driving the landscape changed and it got more and more mountainous. Finally, after four hours of driving we approached Dakhla. I got the same feelings as the day I arrived to the refugee camp for the first time. Again I was amazed that people can live in the middle of the desert, so isolated. I asked myself – why did they decide to build a camp here, so far away from everything else. It is two-three hours from Rabony. Later on, we were told that Daklha is where it is because of the water.

Lamira´s house was in outskirt of the camp, in an idyllic location with sand dunes and palms right behind their house. It was a big moment when I greeted Lamira´s grandmother wearing a black Melhefa outside her tent. It wasn´t before that moment I realized what Lamira had told me over our cup of tea sitting in her room in Duino two years ago. “I am a refugee”, she said that time. The girl I have shared chats and fun with during my two years in Duino, was really born and raised in a simple sand house, in the middle of the Algerian desert. After finishing the Hassania greetings with Lamiras grandmother: Jeklebes, lebes, jekl al her, skif ek, mesh allah and so on, I meet the rest of Lamira´s family: her aunts, uncles and cousins. We were taken into their house and served traditional Saharawi tea and cookies. I gave the family a photo album with pictures from Lamira´s life in Duino. It was incredible to see Lamira’s grandmother smile and kiss the photos of Lamira one by one saying “My granddaughter” in Arabic. Then we tried to speak with the family using the few Arabic phrases we know. Luckily, one of Lamira’s aunts knows some Spanish, so we managed to communicate. The family showed us photos of Lamira as a child. I hardly recognise her. In the night, I meet one of Lamira’s friends. She spoke perfect English and she told me more about herself during two hours than anyone else I have met before. Then, the whole family, Lamira’s friend and I desperately tried to call Lamira using the internet in the centre of the camp, 15 minutes away from the house with a car. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage. The next day we walked in the sand dunes with Lamira’s cousins. One of them, a three years old girl laughed every time I smiled to her. She was incredible trustful” and started to follow me everywhere I went.

During our days in Daklha, we also visited the camp, the sand dunes, the centre, the women’s centre and the garden. Daklha is completely different from the other camps in the sense that is more quiet and astonishing beautiful with the sand dunes. People in Daklha are supposed to friendlier than in the other camps and I think that is true. Life in Dakhla is also simpler than in the other camps. Many of the families do now have a toilet, it is isolated and there is no mobile phone reception. It seems closer to the nomadic life the Saharawis used to live.
Unfortunately, we were only able to stay with Lamira’s family for a night. We really felt how friendly and hospitable they were… It was sad to say goodbye to the family. In the car back home we all agreed that it was one of the most special families we have meet while we have been here. When you meet the family of your friends from UWC you realize what the two years in UWC meant to you and how it changed you. The last weeks in the college Lamira, Dora from Hungary and I made an agreement: Whatever happens in our lives, we will meet in 2020. I cross my fingers, for that we will meet in a free and independent Western Sahara

The life of a volunteer in the Sahara desert

It has been my first two months in the Sahara desert. For some reasons I had to come later than the two other volunteers Andrea and Maren. When I arrived to Layoone refugee camp for the first time I asked myself: ”How will I manage to live here for the rest of the year?” It was four o clock in the night and I had been traveling for almost 24 hours. The size of the camp was overwhelming. In the dark I saw the shadows of small, small houses made out sand everywhere.

But already the next day when I saw the camps for the first time in daylight, I realized that I will manage to live here. The camp is just like a small society. There are small shops, schools, hospitals and administrate buildings. All over the place there are houses made out of sand and next to a group of houses there will always be a green tent.

A life as a volunteer here can never be filled with routines – ”No hurry in Africa” applies to the Saharawi life style as well. Sometimes we have been told around 11 o clock in the night that we have a meeting the day after. We got used to ”late minute” planning quite fast. The English classes are the only routines our life is based on. A month ago we started teaching in the school ”Olaf Palme”, which is a vocational training school for girls. We teach between two and four hours a day and share seven classes between us. After the classes, we drive home to eat lunch. After lunch we have Arabic classes, often followed by meetings with organizations, like the youth organizations in Layoone.

Sometimes life here is challenging. If we don’t have any program, time passes incredible slowly here. For the first time in many, many years I have had the time to listen to the watch ticking. There are no coffee places to go to here, no places to hang out if you want to have fun. Living here had probably been easier if we spoke Arabic, but we don’t and I doubt we will before we leave. When our Arabic teacher told us that ”not” is conjugated as verbs are in many languages, we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Next lesson we realized that this way of conjugating only applies when you talk about feelings. So, right now, Arabic seems more complicated than math and our ambitions to learn Arabic or Hassanya, the local dialect, in four months is far, far too unrealistic. Honestly, if it had not been for Maren’s and the other Andrea’s Spanish, we had been very lost in this society. Most meetings, teaching and daily life communication is in Spanish.

Sometimes we also feel very isolated from the outside world. For weeks we did not have a phone that worked and now when we have one, the reception is very unstable. The electricity in the camps is based on solar cell panels and it is not enough electricity to use our computers. Getting access to internet is also difficult. Internet is in Raboony, an administrate city, an hour through the desert from the refugee camp of Layoone camp. We feel lucky if we manage to check our emails every second week…
But at the same time life here a volunteer is incredible special and I’m happy that I decided to come here! Every day I learn more and more about the fascinating Saharawi culture and its unwritten codes. Despite being in a refugee camp, the place is beautiful – The women’s colorful Melhefas (dresses) in the desert, the playing children, the sunsets and the star sky and the moon during the nights.

Flowers From The Exile

The childhood is an innocent stage of life that everyone goes through. The infancy is when you can’t tell the difference between good things and bad things. For example if someone gives you an ember and a date, you will choose the first one because you don’t know that it will burn you.

The childhood is something very memorable, but only to those who were born in their own country, with their parents, with their peerage and with the landscape of their homeland.

Living as a child in the refugee camps is very different from any other country in the world. Here the situation is different from in our home land Western Sahara that is divided and occupied by Morocco. The families are separated. There is a wall. The children are suffering from many things: the war and its results, living far away from the homeland and living in exile. The children are deprived of living a normal childhood.

How should we remember our miserable childhood? We lived it as orphans. Many children lost their fathers in the war after the Moroccan invasion into Western Sahara in 1975. How can the children remember the loving compassion of their parents when their parents died before they were born? How should we remember our landscape that we have never seen? And our home parks that we wished we could play in with our friends?

The children in the refugee camps study the primary school in the camps, and they have to finish the rest of their education outside the camps. Many stay away for years and years to get an education. What will be the situation of them and their parents? How do the parents feel when they are deprived of seeing their children growing up? Sure if our country was free, this wouldn’t happen to us.

I’ll try and place my self in the position of a Saharawi mother, so many questions and worries will enter into my mind. How is my child now? Is he happy, is he sad? Is he studying or wasting his time? For how many years am I deprived of hugging my children because they are studying far away from me? A lot of people around the world can’t imagine not seeing their children for many years, maybe 20 years! These things happen to the Saharawies.

One day I was listening to my favourite radio channel BBC Arabic. There is a program that is called BBC Extra. I always listen to that because there is 10 minutes in English to learn the language, and I am very interested in that. That day they were talking about youth who leave their families to study abroad. Asking them how do they feel? How is their new life? And they were asking the parents too.

Listening to this I asked myself: what about us? We left our homes and our background many years ago. What about the children that is not in the spot light? The world doesn’t look for them, doesn’t see the suffering of the Saharawi children living in exile in the refugee camps. They are deprived of feeling a normal childhood. The childhood of the people that are my age went by. But it makes me think so deeply about today’s and tomorrow’s children. Our situation requests more attention from the world, more knowledge about the Saharawies.

Finally, the Saharawi children are flowers coming from the exile to say to the world that we are here calling for peace to spread over our country! We want to see children born far away from the fighting and the war. That’s enough, enough! It’s time to break the silence from the world and do more to find a solution for this issue. And we are looking forward to that day the children could benefit from a real childhood.

Written by Lwaly Dadi Ramdan