Work...and a little play

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After settling in at UNHCR and at home I finally started getting to the real focus of my work here, refugee status determination, which meant spending a lot more time at the camp and at the RSD Unit around the corner from my house. For the first few days I sat in with my colleague Nelson during his interviews so I could get a sense of how it goes. I was free to ask questions of my own but in general I just listened; he has been doing this for a couple of years and has a pretty good hang of how to ask the right questions. After a few days observing I started conducting my own interviews. Basically the point of the interview is to find out why the person left their home country, and if they don’t want to go back, why not. Unfortunately, many people try to embellish their stories or even fabricate them in the hopes of getting refugee status, despite the fact that they would probably qualify anyway based on what really happened to them. So when conducting the interview, one has to really watch out for any inconsistencies or elements that don’t quite fit or sound right, and make sure to ask about them—not merely to catch someone in a lie, but to ensure that they have the chance to explain anything that might seem inconsistent, lest they get rejected for not being credible. Because interviews are conducted at the camp, and decisions written up back in the RSD Unit in Lilongwe, it isn’t simple to go back if you forgot to ask an important question, so you have to try to cover everything that might possibly be relevant to the person’s story, and to ask everything that you can that might verify their credibility, the first time around.

During an RSD interview we have to take verbatim notes of everything the applicant says, which is really tough on my wrist! Interviews generally last about an hour and a half, but in the case of families they can go as long as three hours because we interview not only the primary applicant but any family members old enough to corroborate the story. At three interviews scheduled per day, it usually averages around four or five hours straight of handwriting! It’s also freezing in the camp office; Dzaleka was located on the site of a former prison built by the former “president” (read: dictator) Kamuzu Banda, and reportedly he located it in the cold hills deliberately so the prisoners sent there would be miserable. During the winter months of June and July, it is so cold and windy there that while people are wearing t-shirts and sandals back in town, I have to be wearing tights under my jeans and multiple sweaters and a scarf indoors in order not to freeze. Last year when I worked at the camp it was my routine to head to a tea shop first thing in the morning for some hot, very sweet chai and fried dough. This year, I don’t have time for such luxuries; the moment we get to the camp there is a swarm of refugees waiting outside the office so we have to start work immediately. I finally smartened up and had the brilliant idea to have Mr. Ramazani, the owner of a tea shop in the camp’s bustling market, send up a pot of tea and some cups every day so we could all keep moderately warm. Needless to say I have since become the most popular Eligibility Officer 😊. Two pots of tea only cost $1.40, and are usually enough for two of us EOs, two interpreters, and a few of the interviewees to have tea throughout the day. So it’s a splurge well-worth indulging in! Of course, that’s not counting the dehydrated milk packets and copious amounts of sugar Africans like to put in their tea, which costs more than twice what the tea costs 😊.

The toughest thing about going to the camp for interviews, besides the interviews themselves which can be very arduous (and obviously depressing given the subject matter), is not having time to roam around like I did last year. I already spent several weeks at the camp without having more than ten minutes to walk around; and the UNHCR office is located way on the edge of the camp, so getting to the center where people live and where the market is wasn’t possible until after I’d already been in Malawi for nearly a month. I felt horribly guilty for not being able to visit immediately all the wonderful people who had guided me, and welcomed me, and fed me last year. I decided that I would have to venture a trip up the rocky, uneven, dirt road that leads to the camp one weekend.

During my first week at work, the UNHCR Representative had all the staff over to his house for a little party, where I got to know my colleagues a bit better and learned that there is a beauty spa in Lilongwe where one can get facials and waxing done (that's an inside joke for Mommy that she won't find very funny!). The following week I finally had my first real social outing in Lilongwe, with my colleague Anne and two new interns, Mike and Lesley, who had just started at UNHCR. We went to a really swanky restaurant called Buchanan’s in what’s known as the Four Seasons complex (no mystery there!). Although the prices were pretty high for Malawi (my mediocre pasta was around $9), the setting was really beautiful, on a wooden deck overlooking a pond and a backdrop of the amazing landscaping that is ubiquitous in Lilongwe. They also have these neat outdoor pot ovens they wheel over to your table to keep you warm during the evening. At dinner we decided that we should take a trip up to the northern part of the lake, where it’s warmer and greener and less flat than around Lilongwe.

The next week the UNHCR Rep. invited me to be his “and guest” at some swanky function at the British ambassador’s residence. The invitation referred to the event as a vin d’honneur, which he explained to me was a fancy way of saying you could drink at lunchtime 😊. The grounds of the residence were absolutely stunning: the landscaping was lovely and varied, and there were guinea fowl walking around in the grass. A tent had been set up for the distinguished guests 😊 as well as a little bar. It turned out the event was in honor of the German ambassador who was retiring; we were chatting to him and his wife, and I thought I detected a French accent when she spoke but didn’t say anything about it. Ten minutes later she was greeting another guest and I heard her speak French, so I went over to her, hoping to establish some sort of rapport by saying in French, “I knew I heard a French accent!” She smiled and then replied, “So I have an accent then, do I?” Lesson number one at swanky affairs: it’s a major faux pas to tell a dignitary they speak your language with an accent! I was saved from my not-so-distinguished moment by a waiter who came by with champagne. (I’m just kidding, she was just teasing and was actually very nice to me!) In addition to enjoying some of the most delicious food I have had in Malawi—including smoked salmon which I hadn’t had in months—I got to meet a lot of people from the German embassy and the IMF (which shares the 7th floor of Kang'ombe House with UNHCR).

Someone was asking me how I liked Lilongwe and I gave my usual reply, which is that I love it, except that it’s too quiet at night. Lilongwe completely empties at night—you will never see a person walking down the street after dark, and there is absolutely no visible nightlife. A lady from the German embassy is the first person to finally explain why that is: apparently, during the Kamuzu era, there was a law in effect that people couldn’t walk around at night (a curfew). So even though Kamuzu is long gone, the effects of his sometimes-ludicrous policies are still with us. Another great one is that women couldn’t ride bicycles. There are more bicycles here, I would venture to say, than in Amsterdam, and certainly more bicycles than cars or minibuses, but you only ever see men riding them. Surely women have places to go too, so I asked someone why you never see them on bikes. Sure enough, Kamuzu Banda had decreed that women couldn’t ride bicycles. This probably had something to do with the fact that they weren't allowed to wear pants—that's right, up until 1994 when he finally was voted out in the first real elections, women could only wear skirts. They also couldn’t directly address men; to speak to a man—are you ready for this ladies?—a woman had to be sitting on the ground, at some distance from the man, looking down at the ground. Say what you will about the importance and value of tradition, I am happy to see Malawian women today looking men square in the face when they talk to them! The bicycle rule was especially cruel though, considering how spread out Lilongwe is and the fact that minibuses, I am discovering, are totally out of the affordability range of poor Malawians (who form the vast majority of the population). Minibuses today cost 90 kwacha per ride, which is about $.65—way out of the price range of someone with the average income of around 6,000 kwacha. So most poor people—who live furthest from the city, in the outskirts, of course—wake up at the crack of dawn and walk the kilometers into town. Unless, that is, they managed to afford a bike.

Next time, the adventures of Martina, Mike, and Lesley at Kande Beach…

Love,

Martina

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Photos

Camp interview room
This is the room where I conduct my interviews. I sit behind the desk, the interpreter sits across from me in the chair, and the interviewee(s) sits on the bench to my left.

Saida in front of the UNHCR office at the camp
Saida is one of our intepreters from Rwanda.

Edge of the camp market
This is the main road that cuts through the camp; the market juts off of it, to the right.

Maradona in the camp
Maradona is the brother of one of my interpreters from last summer who is now studying in college in Nova Scotia through the World University Service of Canada.

Main street in Area 2
Area 2 is right across the river from my neighborhood, Area 3—it's where the market can be found, the cheap shops, and street-side tailors. I had four pillowcases made on the street out of chitenje fabric for around $6!

Comments

[kpoms]

neat
i must've watched the video like 4 times looking at different things each time. even after reading all of your posts, i can't imagine what it must be like. amazing!