For whom the bells toll: Kambo (18): Fifty Years of Solitude
07 March, 2014Khartoum (Sudanow) – In 1925, the Gezira Agricultural Scheme was established on an area of 2.2 million feddans to provide the British factories with crude cotton.
Until very recently, the Gezira has been the biggest agricultural scheme in Africa. When the scheme was established, its administration faced a problem of labor during the cultivation and harvesting seasons. Consequently, the scheme administration brought labor from Darfur and Kordufan regions.
Kambos (-a deformed word for English word CAMPS- and meaning temporary chanty residential areas) have been established to accommodate the workers until the agricultural season ends after which they return to their home areas.
However, with the growing internal migration and displacement rates due to civil strives and drought, the work force and their families chose to settle at the Kambos which spread around wide areas of the scheme.
Over 3000 Kambos are scattering around the Gezira agricultural scheme.
THE STORY: Kambo (18): Fifty Years of Solitude
“We have learnt to adapt to suffering since we were kids. Our day begins at 5:00 a.m. and ends at 5:00 p.m.”, so Abdul-Aziz, a resident of Kambo (18) started telling his story with the Kambo.
Clutching his bent back and wiping the drops of sweat from his pale forehead as he was cleaning a Hawasha (a farm), Abdul-Aziz continued with his story, saying “I’m 45 years old. I, my three brothers and two sisters did not have enough time to join school. We have never entered a class room in our life. We had experienced a very hard childhood at the agricultural schemes collecting cotton, not to mention other hard tasks such as bringing the water from the canal and watering the small farm. I, my brothers and my father shared a small room, while my mother and sisters shared another similar one.”
He went on to add “presently I live in the family house. I got married when I was 20 and established my own family inside the family home. Presently I have five children, three boys and two girls. My eldest son is 19 years old. I have worked hard so that my children won’t suffer from the problems which I had faced, but all my attempts failed and all of them have dropped out from the school, either because it is far away or due to my inability to provide their school expenses.”
Fatma, Abdul-Aziz’s wife offered us water, which I first mistaken for juice before discovering that it was muddy water from a canal just behind their house.
“Education is not important, but securing our food remains the number one and most important priority. The children’s presence at the Hawasha is more beneficial than the school”, said Fatima, before leaving to bring water from the same canal to prepare dinner.
While we were having dinner, Abdul-Aziz said that Kambo 18 was founded in 1960, noting that irregularity of education and discontinuation of the pupils at schools constituted the main challenge facing them.
He said the number of the basic level school pupils at the Kambo is 42 (males and females), pointing out that the pupils go to Kartoub village school which is far away from the Kambo and that they usually drop out of the school before they complete the basic level.
He said their means of transportation represented in donkeys, bicycles or on foot, noting that “the main source of drinking water is the canal which is also used to water the animal and farms. There is no electricity supply where we depend on gasoline to light our homes during the night.”
Ahmed Abdalla, a native administration leader, cited the suffering of Kambo 18, saying “the population of the Kambo is estimated at about 600 people according to 2008 census. They live over an area of about 5 feddans.”
“Over %80 of the Kambo population are illiterate where the people here are not concerned with education and the only school lies some tens of kms from the village. The people depend on the canal for drinking water and for watering their animals. The water crisis has contributed to the spread of diseases such as bilharzias and others. In fact, Kambo 18 suffers from lack of all basic services and proper living conditions”, he said, noting that the nearest hospital lies some 35 kms from the Kambo and it is not prepared to receive urgent cases as there is only one medical assistant.
In this connection, a source at the Gezira State’s Ministry of Agriculture said that Kambo 18 is one of about 3000 emergency housing areas that spread around the Gezira scheme and which lack basic services including water, health and education, pointing out that lack of services is a basic problem in the state, but it further aggravates at the Kambos due to absence of planning and because the residents do not own the land upon which they live.
The location of the Kambos near the scheme villages led to emergence of disputes between the residents of the Kambos and neighboring villages where police records registered many law suits that have been filed on aggressions that take place now and then.
Faisal Mohamed Shatta, a social researcher in Gezira state, said that the conditions in the Kambos have mainly been represented in economic exploitation and deteriorated humanitarian services ever since the establishment of the Gezira scheme up to date. This matter has caused a qualitative shift in the nature of work and conditions of Kambos’ residents, particularly the women who work all through the agricultural phases without consideration to their health and psychological conditions or physical ability
He explained that after the collapse of the Gezira scheme, namely since early 1998, job opportunities in the agricultural domain have reduced and many of the Kambos’ residents moved to work at factories or mining areas while others migrated to big cities. Accordingly, the women have been left behind to look after the children and supervise small agricultural areas, while some women resorted to making traditional wine or work at homes in the neighboring villages to provide for family expenses.
Shatta further explained that the women in the Kambos suffer from inhuman conditions represented in lack of health services besides issues of environmental health, child and maternity health and high rate of women mortality during birth giving.
He added that during the rainy season, the Kambos become isolated from the external world due to lack of means of transportion and good roads not to mention the issue of lack of drinking water where the people resort to using the contaminated canal water which causes the spread of infection with cancer, kidney failure and bilharzias, particularly among women and children.
In the past, each village had a latrine so that the residents wouldn’t respond to their call of nature near the canals, besides that health inspectors used to be sent to those villages to raise the people’s health awareness.
In the meantime, Abdul-Karim Salih, (55), from a neighboring Kambo, says “last year a dispute broke out between us in Kambo (16) and a neighboring village, which is separated from us by just a street, spurred by a fight between the youths of both sides. The dispute caused the security authorities to intervene where law suits were filed against the residents of the village. Consequently, our children were expelled from the village school and prevented from entering the village club despite the fact that we have contributed to the establishment of the village’s school, mosque and club through self-assistance. Although we have shared the life at the area for tens of years, yet they are complaining about our presence under the pretext that we cause pressure on their health, education and water services. They regard us as expatriates despite that many generations of our Kambo were born at this area. Although the distance between our Kambo and the village is less than 20 meters, but we do not enjoy the electricity service like the village’s residents.”
Hassan Warraq, a researcher at the Gezira scheme, on his part, believes that there is discrimination between the people of the Kambos and the residents of the neighboring villages in the basic rights such as electricity, water, schools and health centers which are services that the State should provide for the citizens without discrimination.
He went on to say “however, the Kambos’ residents do not enjoy those basic rights and do not own the land upon which they have been living for tens of years. Additionally, the successive administrations of the Gezira scheme had exercised blackmailing against the residents of the Kambos by threatening to move them from their Kambos whenever they demand their rights in organized houses and good services. The Kampos’ residents are living in miserable health conditions due to the tight areas of such shanty towns where they have been living illegally for decades.”
Ahmed Abdalla, a native administration leader, meanwhile, spoke about the future of Kambo (18), saying “the Kambo reflects an issue of thousands of villages experiencing the same conditions.
The issue of Kambos has been aggravating throughout the years where the successive governments have failed to address and resolve, particularly the issues of basic services such as education and health besides transforming the Kambos into organized model villages.”
He added that “the citizens at the Kambos are politically exploited to win their votes during the elections, and when the voting ends the promises made to them on settlement and provision of services end with it.”
He further noted that, as native administration representatives, they demanded the political leaders in the area to hold a conference to discuss the issues of Kambos, explaining that the leaders agreed to hold such a conference but on condition that the issue of housing should be excluded as it is hard to resolve and could spark confrontation between the farmers and the owners of the lands.
“Life is going on and we have no hope that things would change to the better. Our people have lived here for over 50 years and nothing had changed. This means our children will also suffer, this if we do not resort to carrying arms against the government”, said Abdul-Aziz.
He charged that the suffering of Kambo 18 has continued for over 50 years, depicting the suffering of thousands of families who have been living in the Kambos since the establishment of the Gezira scheme, accusing the State of “turning a blind eye against our suffering,” . He expressed his belief that this was a reason why hundreds of the sons of the Kambos have joined the rebel armed movements in Darfur.
END
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