Nothing prepares you for the dapper Nizip refugee camp in South Eastern Turkey.
Once you leave Gaziantep, Turkey’s sixth populous city, the famous Silk Road takes you to the troubled Aleppo in Syria, where tears and blood have been shed in recent years.
On the sides are orchards littered with diminutive pistachio trees interspersed with olive groves. And then mountains, rocks and desert until Nizip town swallows you up 40km into Syrian border.
Slightly beyond Nizip on to the left, the road - like a weary traveler - meanders up the hills and when it descends, unseemly site beckons: an expansive 145,000 square metres container camp ensconced beneath.
At the foot of the camp is the historic Euphrates River, its pristine waters spying on the sorrows of 4,818 humans, indeed as they have for millenniums.
At the main gate of the razor-wire fenced camp, a dog and her six puppies roam aimlessly. On the left side of the entrance, a young boy plays, scooping sand between pressed concrete floor tiles and dumps it a short distance away.
Equipment
The vanity of the back and forth exercise beguiles any parent. He reminds me of my son. At the main administration block built of prefabricated materials, a few parents, some crippled, sit on the desks awaiting the camp officials for some business.
As soon as we are ushered into the main office by director general of the camp, Ibrahim Elmis, I figure out that this is no ordinary camp. The boardroom cuts the image of a blue-chip company in Nairobi - executive reclining seats, exotic table and spotless mien.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nizip camp run by Emergency and Disaster Management unit. Here, we are more careful and watchful of our Syrian brothers probably more than we are with ourselves,” Elmis, a Turk, thunders in broken English.
As the tour of the camp begins, the reality of this statement, uttered beneath the watchful eyes of the portrait of Turkish founding father Mustafa Atartuk, assumes a concrete meaning.
Right at the entrance of the camp, a modern amusement play equipment stands on a corner as though scorning miserly. It’s the kind that most kindergarten schools in Nairobi pride in possessing. We take the main hallway bordering the chain-link, the container camps to our left cascading downwards on the banks of River Euphrates.
Like to the pied piper of Hamelin, the children of Nizip emerge one by one and form a swell behind and ahead of us. They are a curious lot. The brave ones like Jibril, approximately 6 years, catch up with us.
He’s a fine young refugee. His front teeth have fallen off in a “strange land.” He’s inquisitive and his language betrays his cause. We cannot understand each other. He nags and pesters me all through. I later realise he is interested in a glossy paper I am holding in my notes.
As soon as I give him, he disappears in the same manner he came. Milal is my new catch, flushed out from his childhood in Allepo. He too has no clue why I am here and is lost in his innocence. I pick up a conversation through a translator but before we could hit it off, a camp official shouts at the swell of kids about us, they scatter away into oblivion.
Ahead of us, we meet another group of children, flocking by my colleague from Ethiopia, Sam. To shake them off, he grabs the hand of one of the kids and kisses it away. They all burst into laughter complete with “hi-5” punches. We enter into a huge prefab building on our right. It turns out to be a pre-school complex. Inside are portioned rooms, a corridor at the centre. The first room is the computer games room. Here, a group of five kids sit on their desks playing games.
The computers are loaded with all manner of children games designed to enhance their mental capacities. Mohamed, transfixed onto one of the wall games boys of his age are fond of, was so busy that when I bade him bye he responded ‘good night’.
It is only when I was disappearing into the opposite room, the library, I heard him loudly correcting himself: “Good day.” In the library, Abdulaziz and Mohamud are “chewing” mathematics and physics books like there is no tomorrow.
They are in their early teenage, I could tell by their demeanor. Surrounding them are countless books of all types arranged in shelves.
Slightly ahead of these classes in a semi-autonomous unit was the kindergarten school. The kids went ecstatic when they saw us. Their imposing multi-coloured classroom was littered with pin-ups, drawing, toys etc.
An adjacent room is a toy store, stuffed to the full. We crossed over to yet another unit, a laundry unit: “They don’t wash their clothes. Instead, they bring us their dirty clothes and we launder them with these machines then they collect a little while later,” Aisha, a laundry attendant at the unit tells us.
The next facility after the laundry is a mini-mart, a supermarket. Here, refugees shop for their basics using a loaded shopper’s card issued for free by the Turkish government upon registration.
We move in to the container camps. They are partitioned into a bedroom, a sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and an extra room. They are all air-conditioned, connected to electricity and piped water.
The bathrooms have hot showers and every container has a pay-TV satellite dish. What’s more, the basic kitchenware like the cooker are provided for free by the government. It’s a super duper camp by any standard.
Ahmet Nahsan’s container is fully carpeted, furnished and exquisite
