Meheba Refugee Settlement

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An older man sits next to me on the bus. He is eating a large oblong cream filled donut and repeatedly insists I try.
"I can't handle the cream." Somewhat true. After an hour or so driving we stop. He gets out for the five minute break and comes back with half a fried chicken and the greasiest french fries I've ever seen. "You don't eat chicken?!" He is astonished when I refuse to share the fried chicken. I finally accept a french fry. Thus we bond over the first five hours of my bus ride north. Eventually he gets around to asking me where I am going and why.
"Meheba? There's not any refugees there anymore, you know that? They all left." He tells me matter of factly...why on earth am I going to an empty settlement? He is a cop and had been stationed in Meheba for many years. "The pulled all the police out when the refugees left."

The people on the road-side are painfully picturesque but the bus moves at impossible speed. After hours of sticking my camera out the window I haven't achieved a single worthwhile picture. Bored of taking bad photographs I decide to instead take note of how often we pass a vehicle driving in the opposite direction. 14:00. 14:04. 14:08. Every four minutes, perfectly. I try to think how infrequent that would appear to a person standing still on the side of the road, why our passage provokes such a stare from the villagers. The calculation, however, is impossible because I can't begin to decide how fast our bus is actually going. All concepts of time and space seem oddly distorted. I notice a boy wearing plastic bags on his feet and two vehicles pass in surprisingly quick succession. 14:11. There is a field of untended multi-coloured cows. Then nothing. 14:15. Another village, still no cars, everything seems worth noting for the simple depth of its unimportantness, unknowness. None of these places have names. How could anyone possibly know how many people there are in this country? How many languages they speak? This bus isn't stopping, we haven't passed any other buses. And I see only the periphery. The edge of the bush, so to speak. My writing style has begun to mimic the books I've been reading. I wonder if a single Zambian has ever read any of those books. Why do so many Westerners write about Africa in books that no African will ever read? Who are we writing for? Is there a purpose or is it simply a narcissistic ploy to show other Westerners, "I lived there. I saw that and had really deep thoughts about it."

Meheba is not empty. There were once 70,000 refugees. Most did leave, but 14,000 people remain. 14,000 people is not no one. Yet...according to most Zambians, no one lives in Meheba. It is easy to see why they think that. You could walk for an hour down the right path and see not a soul. There are no cars. Most people do not have access to even the most basic health care. Many were born and raised in the camp. They are not allowed to leave. I make friends with Mary, a woman in her mid thirties, fluent in English and multiple African languages, trained in psycho-social counseling and HIV care, noticeably intelligent and capable. She is Angolan but has never seen Angola. She does not speak Portuguese, the language required to get a job in Angola. Zambia does not assimilate refugees. She lives in limbo, belonging no where.

My job is to determine whether it would be possible to set up mobile VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) in the camp. The VCT itself is easy, we do it on a weekly basis. But then what? Most likely at least 10% of the people we test will be positive for HIV (rates are rarely lower in southern Africa). Who will treat them? Who will prescribe medicines and change their prescriptions if the treatment fails? There are no doctors in the camp. Without a bicycle it is impossible to travel to the clinics to access the clinical officers. There are options...but they all require money which does not exist. So for now...nothing is done.

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