Putting Down Roots in a Refugee Camp

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,784682,00.html

This morning the Somali refugees are trying, again, to bury a child in his new city. Henok Ochalla sees them digging up red earth with their hatchets. He stops his SUV, plods over to the parents and tells them this camp is a place for life, not a cemetery.

Life here admittedly drags on in filthy conditions, in hot tents surrounded by prickly shrubs cluttered with black plastic bags. But it could become a more nourishing life.

"You have to bury your child someplace else," Ochalla says.

Less than an hour later he drives past the improvised gravesite again and nods with satisfaction. "They understood," he says. The family has removed the small body and taken it to the place where a new sign reads "Graveyard." Children are still dying in the camp from the effects of malnutrition, pneumonia and infection. "They are digging everywhere," says Ochalla. "I can't allow that. Order is critical here now."

Ochalla is a powerful-looking man, a 39-year-old Ethiopian with a big, white smile, a smile that reassures people in Dadaab -- otherwise a hellish, chaotic place.