THIS is a dramatic story of people displaced by instability and ethnic war in their country who found Zambia their home and were unwilling to return to their home land until they were repatriated. NELSON CHANDA reports.

FOR many decades now, Zambia’s hospitality to accommodate foreign victims of war, fleeing their native countries during and after the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, has been widely acknowledged by the international community.
After war broke out in the north-eastern part of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1998, refugees fled, expectedly, into Zambia from fierce confrontation with the Nyamurenge ethnic group of Burundi or Rwanda.
Those new comers were welcomed in this country through the nearest rural districts of Kaputa and then camped temporarily at Chiengi in Luapula Province.
Later in Mporokoso District of Northern Province, rumours spread like fire in the jungle that the Red Cross Society of Zambia and other non-governmental organisations under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) were to ‘employ’ volunteers to go and erect a settlement for more than 20,000 displaced DR Congo refugees at Mwange, a former Zambia National Service (ZNS) camp of the military wing.
When the day arrived, a Red Cross Society lorry and two other vehicles which were hired from within the rural district of Mporokoso were over loaded with ‘volunteers.’
Everyone was free to participate. The only ticket was to be sophisticated with a tool, such as an axe, a hoe or shovel to mention but a few.
Even tens of clusters of females were desperate to board the three trucks, but could not match the masculine strength of the big boys and men to secure space on the vehicles.
To be frank, it was too dangerous to vault up into the heavy vehicle because each individual had a dangerous tool of its own kind, which could injure anyone while struggling.
But luckily enough everyone was safe.
For my part, a new comer in the district, I got permission from my superiors at my place of work.
Armed with a hoe, I managed to climb onto the truck.
After almost 25 kilometres of travel to the West of Mporokoso, we reached Mwange, the would-be refugee camp.
The vast former ZNS site was a total bush which seemed to have been ridden by serpents.
On that first day, volunteers were categorised in various groups according to the duty they were assigned to do. Those of us who had hoes and axes were assigned to the vicinity of the stream where we were to widen a track road before a grader could turn it to bituminous standard.
Supervisors who were identified by their Red Cross aprons inspected the work regularly.
Others who were in what would become residential areas for refugees cleared the grass and shrubs with slashers and axes.
Pit latrines were dug with picks and shovels.
At least everyone had a duty to perform in the quest to begin developing a standard human settlement.
Also a large tent which stood very close to the water department and served as a clinic managed by a Philipino female clad in a white nursing uniform also added spice to the infant projects.
Certainly, other volunteers from abroad were involved in that humanitarian cause as well.
“Attention, please!” one tall, lanky white man who was driven in a Doctors Without Borders Land Cruiser vehicle, shouted to draw our attention.
“Divide yourselves into two groups of 10s,” the white man instructed repeatedly, but no-one responded. Instantly, I interpreted in vernacular mildly, and each one of us started moving, integrating ourselves in groups, as the European scanned me.
He went on wittily describing vividly how the sloppy landscape leading towards the stream would appear once levelled with earth, to prevent the water storage PVC tent tank from being blown away.
He sent the other group to the same job quite a distance away along the same stream.
Shortly, he was driven off by a Mporokoso native who had scooped the driving job.
Comprehensively, with hoes and shovels we raised a flatbed as if we were constructing an immense wooden mud walled and grass thatched roof hut to stand on very close to the stream.
The group I was in had no supervisor with a Red Cross apron, but worked with young adults.
The majority of the supervisors had mingled themselves with the group which had gone.
Abruptly, after an hour or so the white man re-appeared desperately to observe if his directives had been fulfilled or met.
“This is the correct job, well done!” he chanted, overwhelmed. Then he darted towards a unique standing tent almost 20 metres away and sealed off a ribbon of what was known as an entrance into the storeroom where hard plastic and other canvass water equipment were kept.
“Hey, young man please come closer,” he called me and asked what my name was and I told him as I strode towards him meekly.
“Good, I will be calling you the forename, Nelson,” he said confidently and I nodded in agreement.
The white man asked me again, “Why are you not wearing a Red Cross sign apron?”
“Anyway, I was not among those chosen,” I answered humbly.
“My name is Edwin, from Netherlands, I’m studying a master’s degree in architecture,” he introduced himself. Again, he directed that I call the nine members of our group to come and pull the tent which was to be erected on the large bed we had created as the main water storage tank.
“Now, you are the supervisor of the entire water department and my assistant too,” he exalted me unexpectedly. I was elated.
Shortly, we embarked the Land Cruiser and were driven away to familiarise ourselves with various projects underway in that vast settlement. When we came back, Edwin showed me how we could make the canvas water storage tent standing. That was the end of the first working day at the would-be Mwange refugee Camp.
At 17:00 hours all of us volunteers had to knock off and be driven back to our respective homes in trucks to the central district.
The ZNS military personnel clad in green uniform at that time manned the camp day and night.
After three weeks had elapsed, hundreds of tents were standing like mushrooms, coupled with pit latrines. The pump and generator at the source of drinking water, a stream, was operationalised and begun functioning. The gigantic generator provided power and the pump pushed water to the chlorination or treatment tank.
The distribution tank was elevated to increase pressure to taps in residential homes for the almost 20,000 expected refugees from DRc. All those projects were under the guidance of Edwin, the architect.
For the first time I observed how a modern settlement is began.
Eventually, one broad day light, dust-raising heavy articulated truckloads of refugees began arriving at Mwange camp from Luapula Province’s Chiengi District where they had been camping temporarily.
The passengers who were loaded in the open long trailers looked like zombies with their heads and bodies awash with gravel dust like grave diggers.
They sat gloomily like they were carrying in their midst corpses, or rather, they were as depressed as slaves.
It was heart breaking and sympathising.
On disembarking the abnormally loaded lorries, hordes of DR Congolese faces told stories of being relieved from traumatising gun and bomb explosions which massacred people in their war -torn region as they fled. The people appeared pale and frail.
Now they felt at home in Zambia.
Initially, the thousands of refugees who had arrived seemed to have settled down in their respective tents and received food rations well.
It was speculated that it was usual for volunteers to vacate the camp after 17:00 hours.
Some leaders of non-governmental organisations such as the Red Cross Society, Care International and ‘San Frontiers’, discouraged (us) from working in the refugee camp at night as a preventive measure in case the refugees’ enemies had pursued them to carry out an attack.
More vigilantly, we were cautioned to protect especially the source of the water in case it was contaminated.
Every morning at 08:00 hours all volunteers would report for work at the refugee camp.
But in the process, as the number of refugees kept on increasing every day, we found that the refugees were nearly going on rampage since all workers at the water department who left full tanks of water had knocked off.
The water tanks went dry between 20:00 hours and 22:00 hours. Water is life, but the beneficiaries suffered the blow of water scarcity until the following morning.
At once, the Red Cross Supreme representative from Ghana, known as Gerald, accompanied by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) representative, together with the master of projects, Edwin, my immediate supervisor, confronted and advised me to solve the problem of water scarcity in the refugee camp at night once and for all.
Indeed, I was a scapegoat.
Kalokoni, the chairperson of Mporokoso Red Cross Society remained speechless.
Leaving no stone unturned, I assembled the water department workforce and announced that henceforth, we would not fear working at night before we taught them (the refugees) to do it for themselves so as to address the shortage of water.
That day, many water department workers were filled with exhilaration to hear that that the night shift would commence the very day at 18:00 hours or dusk.
Not unexpectedly, I had to put myself in the fore front.
Yes, the refugees didn’t eat their own words by reporting water shortages at night.
All the canvas water storage began to deflate around 20:00 hours, as thousands of the refugees were consuming water at a swift rate.
The pump at the source commenced to roar invincibly.
The generator brightened the water department premises and the health centre nearby.
By mid-night all the water storage tanks had bulged to capacity as chanting of “Zambie! Zambie!” echoed in the night.
That was a good night “mercibokou,” thank you in French, they said.
The following morning, all the stakeholders congratulated one another ceaselessly.
The scourge of the water blues had vanished, which delighted Edwin, the master engineer who hugged me ecstatically.
During the night working shifts at Mwange refugee camp, the only inhuman activity we observed was that most females who had no spouses were invaded in their tents by men or big boys who raped them.
At sunrise the following day appropriate measures were put in place by deploying vigilantes who arrested anyone found wanting after we had reported the matter to relevant authorities.
The Red Cross Society ambulances which used to travel extensively ferried seriously ill patients to Mporokoso District hospital headed by Dr Andel.
During that period the late President Frederick Chiluba (MHSRIP) sent a representative to visit Mwange refugee camp and, on seeing a helicopter flying overhead in readiness to land, all DR Congolese refugees scampered into hiding thinking that it had come to attack them, something which was prevalent in their own country.
Every one of us, volunteers, got amazed. But the refugees emerged from their hiding and perplexed to find that the entourage aboard the aircraft had brought messages of peace from the Head of State.
It was quite funny! During that period women, girls and boys had been included among the local volunteers.
Many a Zambian volunteer experienced a language barrier with the DR Congolese refugees the majority of whom spoke French, Lingala or Kiswahili.
But at least a quarter of them could speak iciBemba or a bit of the English language. Some foreign senior volunteers such as Edwin, expressed themselves fluently in French, too.
When war breaks out, it’s mostly the females, children and old people who become vulnerable.
Of course, the weaker sex is abused sexually or abducted. Children are abandoned or slain, old people too.
Frequently, some victims of war narrated the hardships they had gone through, such as skipping decomposed mutilated human bodies and starving as they fled in forests.
One elderly woman in her mid-forties did not mind to bear the burden by picking up an abandoned one year old girl child she had come with, wanting to adopt her as her daughter.
The noble refugee said it was a gift from God. How miraculous it was!
Furthermore, by God’s grace, one aged pastor who was admitted in a Bukavu hospital north-east of DRC with a swollen leg, gave a testimony of how his wife picked him in a deserted health institution and fled forcing his leg to walk until they sailed on the vast Lake Tanganyika.
They reached Nsumbu, a fishing village on the Zambian side without an idea of the whereabouts of their adolescent last born twin daughters. It was agonising.
According to my research, at Mwange refugee camp, I discovered that war alienates young school going children who flee from classrooms not knowing where to locate or find their parents or guardians again. Sometimes those parents could be either slain or have fled to the unknown.
War is devilish!
Some refugees from DRC were accused of having been conspiring with the enemy and were isolated for fear of being lynched by their colleagues.
In the central district of Mporokoso we interacted with three of them who narrated haunting experiences of their own.
Among them was a former lecturer who deserted the University where an incursion was carried out.
He spoke proper English and became an interpreter between me and the other high ranking military men. They were applying to seek asylum in Belgium.
One afternoon, there was drama at Mwange Refugee camp.
The refugees were protesting over food which they thought was monotonous and of poor quality. I couldn’t understand where the fracas emanated from.
The wide dependable gravel main road was blocked by burning heaps of fire wood as a Red Cross Society Land Cruiser pick up was being threatened to be burnt to ashes until their sentiments were heard.
A veteran, who was a Mporokoso Senior Citizen known as Kabemba, a retired police officer and a Red Cross member, drove the Land Cruiser ferociously, swerved it beside the heap of fire and parked it beyond where the refugees had blocked him and threatened to kill him if he crossed the barricade, together with other senior Red Cross Volunteers.
“Please go! Don’t stay at the water plant; some refugees are waiting for you to vacate, some workers who were driving a truck which was used to drill bore holes at the camp and were escaping through a narrow muddy old road alerted us.”
Together with females who had made the water force department, I walked in front as all Congolese refugees who stood along the road applauding us, as free people.
Kabemba the senior supervisor of the Red Cross hardly moved.
To my mesmerism, upon seeing us, the water department work force, everyone who feared to cross the barricade joined us. We by-passed three heaps of burning fire in the middle of the road.
“Please, join us,” I told veteran Kabemba and he responded positively.
That was how everyone was rescued around 17:30 hours and by-passed the ZNS military personnel who stood alert and silently outside the main gate.
Soon we had embarked on trucks waiting for us on Kawambwa – Mporokoso road which was rare.
No volunteer was left during the night because at that moment we had already taught the refugees to operate most departments on their own.
They persistently demanded employment in order to earn Zambian Kwacha, they called money as ‘Makuta’, in Congolese language.
By the end of the third month the infrastructure at Mwange Refugee camp had been altered, replacing temporary structures with permanent ones.
Tents were supplanted by concrete- block structures. Canvas pipes or tanks were replaced by steel or poly pipes and others.
When the then Home Affairs minister in the MMD Peter Machungwa and the former governor of Katanga Province in DRC visited Mwange refugee camp in Mporokoso in 1999, the settlement appeared modern.
Since the war had abated many refugees were urged to return to their home country but they resisted and they were later repatriated.
Currently, the Government has dedicated Mwange Refugee Camp to the youths who have been empowered to utilise the facility for skills training.
The youths are to be drawn from all ten provinces to curb unemployment, according to the media.
Comments: 0964894338,cnelsonenock@yahoo.com
NB: Contributions to this column, the column you write, should be sent to The Editor, “It happened to me” P O Box 30394, Lusaka, email:tozletters@gmail.com or drop them at any of our Times Printpak offices.  Please note that it may take some time before articles are published; this is because they are published on a first- come- first- served basis. Don’t lose hope. Keep sending in your valuable contributions. Editor.