In the dry areas of the Kenya, peo­ple find a place to sleep within refugee camps set up for peo­ple who had to flee their home. Not all of the peo­ple in these camps are “bums”. Some peo­ple are end­ing up in these camps through nat­ural dis­as­ters, which seem to be increas­ing in num­ber. Some peo­ple end up in these cities because of war, tak­ing away their safety and their livelihood.

NBC News reporter Mar­tin Fletcher, one of the last of the good TV News jour­nal­ists, pro­vides this tour of signs posted around one such camp.

They shuf­fle aim­lessly in the dust: 50,000 refugees crammed into thou­sands of huts made from branches, leaves, mud and plas­tic in the Kakuma camp in North­ern Kenya.

Natives of Ethiopia, Soma­lia, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, the refugees have fled wars aggra­vated by drought, yet even here the sup­ply of water is spo­radic. They eat once a day from sup­plies pro­vided by aid agen­cies. Kakuma is one of the old­est and largest refugee camps in the world and some peo­ple have been here since 1991 when it was established.

They don’t like to talk to strangers about their prob­lems, but the roads are lined by plac­ards, erected by aid agen­cies, with slo­gans and exhor­ta­tions that are like win­dows into the refugees’ pain.

The most graphic reads: “STOP FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION – IT IS A HEALTH HAZARD (RISK).” The signs are in Eng­lish, Kenya’s offi­cial lan­guage, but since the camp’s res­i­dents speak a wide vari­ety of regional and native lan­guages, the words are incom­pre­hen­si­ble to most refugees.

How­ever any­one can get the mes­sage from the dis­turb­ing illus­tra­tion of a woman kneel­ing with a razor while a mother offers up her infant girl. Female gen­i­tal muti­la­tion is almost uni­ver­sal in Soma­lia and com­mon in neigh­bor­ing countries.

Another exhorts peo­ple to “STOP WIFE INHERITANCE” – the prac­tice of giv­ing a widow to the dead man’s brother. Orig­i­nally this was done to pro­tect the widow, who may not oth­er­wise find another hus­band, but aid work­ers say it reduces women to the level of chat­tel. It is one of the key issues they raise when try­ing to edu­cate women about their rights, but there is a major prob­lem: men are the lead­ers here and they must agree to end the practice.

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