City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence

Author:Ben Rawlence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2015-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

By March 2012, conditions in the camp were sliding back towards emergency levels. The month before, MSF had launched a report titled ‘Dadaab: Back to Square One’. The suspension in services was having a serious effect, they said. Health posts were being staffed by volunteers for weeks on end. Malnourished children were filling the outpatients’ ward again, joining those who had been saved in the famine who still needed up to a year of supplementary feeding. If services didn’t resume soon, MSF warned, ‘the health of the refugees will continue to deteriorate with life-threatening consequences, with aid organizations helplessly witnessing the situation.’

Several schools had not opened since January as teachers failed to show up for work. Emptying latrines was among the services not classified as ‘life-saving activities’ and they were overflowing. The rats, and cholera, had moved in. Hagadera was the worst affected and in some parts of the camp a sweet haze hung motionless in the dry-season heat. People defecated in the bush at the edge of the camp among the snakes and the scorpions beyond A1 and A2 block where the bandits often visited. But when the police cars did their rounds there in the outer reaches, the men in long beards gripped their sticks in annoyance and looked down, avoiding the gaze of the Kenya police.

Putting aside his frustration about the lottery, Tawane tried to focus on the urgent practical matters at hand. ‘Things are moving well,’ Tawane told his friends, but it was more wish than fact. He was, in truth, operating beyond his emotional and physical limit. But instead of quitting or running like the others, he began to perceive the turn of events as a challenge to his sense of duty. He talked to Fish, lost in the flare of the city lights, but Nairobi held no magic for him. Tawane’s family was here.

Then, at the beginning of March, there was an attack in Nairobi in which grenades were hurled at a bus station killing ten and injuring sixty. A few days later, Tawane got the text message that he had been expecting. From an unknown Somali number came a promise: ‘We know the bad work you have been doing with the infidels. God willing, Islam will catch up with you, wherever you are.’

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