Wind and Sand

If today at the refugee camp had a theme it would be sand. We have had a variety of weather; everyday has been different. It has been cold and wet and warm and sunny, but today it was windy. The camp is located on an arid plateau with slight vegetation (shrubbery mostly) and no trees. When the wind started to blow sand was everywhere, visibility was poor and we thought, “How are we going to serve food in this?”

Our kitchen is an army tent. We have one for food prep and one for cooking. Our dining room is the outdoors. We serve hot food from large pots placed on the ground – sometimes on a make shift table. We are constantly being vigilant about hygiene issues. We have strict cross contamination guidelines, for instance we have one tent being used just for preparing meat and nothing else, we have stringent hand washing rules, etc. The problem is that there is only so much that you can do in these circumstances.

As nightfall approached the wind picked up, sand was everywhere and everyone was trying to take cover. The air was thick with particulate shooting off the tops of the hills and swirling into eddies before hitting the ground. The lights in the background pierced through the dense air like search lanterns. Off in the distance there were barely recognizable silhouettes of people shielding themselves as they walked about, and we were surrounded as far as we could see with tents. It was to say the least surreal.

Our plans to greatly increase the efficiency with which we served the food were thwarted by the weather. We knew that priority one was keeping this sand, which given the circumstances could have been mixed with any number of contagions or diseases, out of the food. We were able to use a couple of empty tents to serve the food but that meant that distribution went slower and the residents were forced to stand in line longer being sand blasted. We served six or seven thousand meals.

The Egyptian government has been flying about seven thousand Egyptians home every day. So once again the camp was full of Egyptians this morning, but they all were gone by the mid afternoon. The newest arrivals are the sub-Sahara Africans. We met thousands of people from Nigeria and Ghana, new to the camp, all of whom have the same story. They say that the Libyan people asked them to leave because they think that Ghaddafi is paying mercenaries and they are afraid of every black face because they don’t know whether or not it is someone paid to kill them. The interesting thing is that in every case they men said, “They asked us to leave.” It appears that even in war politeness counts for something.

The numbers are still huge, but they definitely seem to be diminishing. This offers some hope, but it is possible that the situation could explode. About 70,000 or so refugees have crossed the border into Tunisia. There are 50 times that many expatriate workers in Libya. We may be on the back end of this crisis or we may only be looking at the tip of the iceberg. Please pray for the former.

The real heroes in this scenario are the Tunisian people and the Tunisian military. More about that tomorrow.