Clinging to hope
Oxfam communications adviser Kelsey-Rae Taylor tells Cherie Howie about life in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh
Kiwi Kelsey-Rae Taylor tried to prepare herself before she visited thousands of Myanmar’s Rohingya people, displaced after fleeing violence and persecution.
Before her seven-day stay at the camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the communications adviser for Oxfam looked at photos and watched footage from the refugee camps.
“I thought I was preparing myself . . . but you can’t really capture the scale of what is happening.
“A camp going on for miles, it’s hard to describe that. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
“It’s like stepping into another world.”
Almost a million Rohingya refugees have left Myanmar for Bangladesh, 700,000 since August.
The United Nations described the military offensive that sparked the exodus as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. The military claims it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies targeting civilians.
Oxfam is among several agencies working in the camps, focusing on providing clean water, sanitation and food security.
Taylor, 28, visited the camp as part of her work with Oxfam.
The refugees, mainly women and children — most have lost husbands and fathers in the conflict — face challenges in “everything you can imagine”.
“The very basics of life — safe water, adequate food, safe shelter, safety, as women, from exploitation because there’s poor lighting in the camps . . . crowded conditions, waterborne diseases.”
Oxfam is helping the women stay safe by holding workshops and increasing lighting at the camps, Taylor says.
There is malnutrition and shelter is basic. Refugees receive bamboo and tarpaulins on arrival to construct temporary homes, but because the shelters had to be built on poor sites, the conditions, including already woeful sanitation, are expected to worsen rapidly when 2.5m of rain falls in the three-month monsoon season.
Up to 150,000 homes are at risk of being washed away.
But the stories of heartbreak number much higher.
Among those Taylor met during her visit was a 35-year-old woman, Nur* who had walked constantly for five days with her eight children to reach relative safety. Nur’s husband died in the conflict and the journey, with so many little ones under her care, was harrowing.
“Her youngest son, who was 2, she had to tie him to her shoulder with a rope for five days,” Taylor says.
“Her shoulder had swelled up to her neck but she said ‘I knew that if I let him go I would never find him’.”
The journey ended with a dangerous river crossing, where Nur watched others being washed away to their deaths.
Taylor was in awe of her strength and dignity. “She was such an amazing woman. And her children. They were all so polite. Even though they’d come through this awful experience and they were now in these dreadful conditions, I could see she was the kind of mother who kept their faces clean, their collars turned down . . . essentially she was just keeping her children happy and putting on a brave face.
“It was really humbling.”
* Name changed