Waiting The largest human storage place I have ever seen: Kakuma Refugee Camp. It is the second largest refugee camp in Kenya. 100,000 people from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Burundi and Uganda spends an average of 17 years of their lives here. The influx from South Sudan are currently (May ’12) 450 people a week.
They are waiting and waiting and waiting.

 A classroom in Mogadishu Primary School inside the Kakuma Refugee Camp. This 4th grade class consists of boys and girls between 7 and 12 years (and probably older). There are 160 students of different nationalities in the class. Danida provides support for education in Kakuma through LWF. 

 

Primary school headmaster, Mr. Waiyaki, at Mogadishu Primary School in Kakuma.

 

     

   

Boys playing football. Their “ball” is a lot of plastic rolled tightly. The field is a part of LWF’s “Youth and Sport unit within Kakuma”. 

 

Shelters for men where they can play different games. The place is visited mostly by men from the same ethnic group.

 

 

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Facts / Kakuma Regufee Camp in  – an unusual rainy – May 2012. The LWF hosted this visit. Kakuma camp was established in 1992 following the arrival of 16,000 Sudanese “Lost  Boys” and “Lost  Girls, minors who together with 200 caretakers undertook a hazardous five year odyssey which  began with flight from the civil war in Sudan to Ethiopia; after war erupted in Ethiopia, they went back to an insecure Sudan before being forced to make their way into Kenya through the border town of Lokichoggio. In the same year, large groups of Ethiopian refugees fled their country following the fall of the Ethiopian government and added to the refugee population.The  camp  is  divided  into  three  parts:  Kakuma  I, Kakuma  II  and  Kakuma  III  which  has  a  predominantly  host mixed nationalities. The  camp is located on the outskirts  of Kakuma town, which is the district headquarters for  the  newly  created  Turkana  West  District  in  Rift  Valley  Province  in  North  Western  Kenya.  Kakuma  town  is situated along the lodwar – Kakuma – lokichiggio highway, 120 km from lodwar town, 95 km from lokichoggio and approximately 1,000 km from Nairobi. The local population is approximately 96,000 and is predominantly agro pastoralist  but  community  members  also  practice small scale gold and precious  stones  mining; rain fed irrigation is also  practiced,  but  with  limitations  due  to  the  region’s arid and semi arid climate with average temperatures reaching 40 degree Celsius.