November 02nd, 2012

I couldn’t help but remember seeing families each day carry bodies of little children and loved ones, covered with an old blanket, to bury them outside our camp, or the common everyday acceptance of seeing little children with very large stomachs and small little legs their eyes pleading for help.  I couldn’t stop my tears right there in class as the memories which I thought were placed on a nice safe shelf in my mind came flooding back to me where I, too, with my mother and one year old brother and three sisters under the age of five, scratched out an existence within the hopelessness of Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya.  Dadaab - the name itself sounds like something out of World War II with scenes of starving children and adults, dysentery, unsanitary living conditions, people fighting over food and water, human waste everywhere, malaria a household term, and malnourishment indiscriminately eating its fill of young and old alike