Marie in consulting room with the Bassima at Chamishku camp
“Iraaaaq?” I’m speechless.
“You’ll see. It’s a top mission and it’s challenging!”
On reflection, is “challenging” really the word I’d use to describe this mission?
I made the announcement to my nearest and dearest when media coverage of the refugee crisis was at its height. They too didn’t quite know how to react at first! Mention “Iraq” and everyone automatically thinks of Saddam Hussein and images of war. All the same, off I go on a 6-month mission to the headwaters of the refugee exodus, in a country with an inhospitable landscape but a rich ethnic diversity.
My first field visit was to Dohuk, where Doctors of the World helps run two healthcare centres in the middle of the refugee camps. There are 4000 people in the Dawodia camp and 25,000 in Chamishku. While Europe debates on the number of refugees to accept, I find myself right in the middle of a camp with 4000 tents, 17 schools and 1 healthcare centre… ours. All the people in this camp are there with one objective in mind: survival! They left their homes to escape the bombs, the landmines, the invasion of IS, the massacres, the kidnappings,etc.
Walking round the camp, I feel tiny: my eyes can’t take in all these people. I’m captivated by all those penetrating expressions, all those people in traditional dress. Once again, I’m struck by how quickly life resumes its normal routines. Makeshift shops have appeared along the principal streets of the camp; old people talk in groups and children run around everywhere, playing. I get exactly the same impression in the healthcare centre. Life goes on, returns to its usual patterns.
Most of our medical team live on the camp. Many are Yazidis and speak Kurdish. Our team meeting is held in the local language, in fact. The only hitch is that Kurdish wasn’t on the school curriculum back in Belgium. At the first meeting, the team doctor came and sat down beside me and said “I want to be your translator, you have come to help my people and I want to thank you.” It was a gesture that really touched me.
So, not “challenging” but “intense” is the word I’d use to describe this mission