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.