KAKUMA, Kenya – I’ve been back from my latest trip to Africa for several weeks, but there are two girls I can’t get out of my mind: a mature 14-year-old called Nyanuel Noang from Sudan, and an impossibly sweet little 11-year-old named Michu Danabo from Ethiopia.We met them at the unlikeliest place. While driving through an arid plain in northern Kenya we saw in the distance, in the middle of nowhere, a cluster of low buildings surrounded by razor wire. Was it a prison? An army camp? A food depot?
It turned out to be at school run by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called the “Angelina Jolie Boarding School for Girls.” The actress, a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, donated money to help construct the school. But while the money came all the way from Hollywood, the girls came from the Kakuma refugee camp a couple of miles away.
 |
| VIDEO: Girls get a chance to learn at Kenyan school |
At the Kakuma camp, about 50,000 forlorn people from Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda are fed by aid agencies that work with the UNHCR. They live in shacks made of local materials like branches, mud, leaves and wood. Water is often available – but not always. Some Somalis have been there since 1991. There are schools, clinics and food depots. The camp offers security, support and comfort. What it cannot give is any hope for the future.
But for the past three years, the brightest of the refugee girls from Kakuma, as well as a few from the local tribes, have been permitted to dream.
…(read more)
