Broomsticks

Each morning I wake up and anxiously check my email to find what progress I've made in my seemingly endless effort to break into Kakuma. I had been instructed by the Senior Protection Officer at the Kenyan Department of Refugee Affairs to make travel arrangements to get up to the camp pending final approval, so all of my logistics had been tidily squared away this past week. Today I awoke to a cryptic email instructing me to get approval from the Ministry of Higher Education, ostensibly because I'm doing research. This email comes two days before I leave, and doesn't include a contact or a means of obtaining approval. I have been wrangling with him for weeks and have obtained full approval from UNHCR, who administer the camp. I am speechless.

Now I assume this is cultural and that nothing comes easily, right? But I also must assume that this man does not want me to go to this refugee camp. He has sent me to get the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. I sent emails to every contact I could find at the Ministry of Education. It turns out there isn't exactly a Ministry of Higher Education, per se. He's directed me to a nonexistent agency, which has absolutely no discernible governance over the refugee sector. I will continue with the full press. There's nothing else I can do - this has become my mission in life. I am feeling a huge weight though, and a creeping desire to cry.

The same batch of email brought an acceptance for my research proposal on 'Educating the Most Vulnerable: The Experience of Unaccompanied Minors in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp,' which I had submitted to the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council annual conference committee. So, I am really excited to have the opportunity to present my paper next spring at that conference- I've never done anything remotely like that. But it will not be possible without visiting Kakuma. It's all hingeing on the one thing. No pressure, no pressure at all.

Focus on Kakuma

The past month of my life has been consumed almost entirely by one thought - getting permission to go to Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya when I'm traveling with my DePaul study abroad group in the country for three weeks starting in late November. Permission to travel to the camp and enter it is difficult to obtain and the bureaucratic obstacles are formidable even if I weren't on a different continent with a nine hour time difference. I have a plan to do a needs assessment and interviews there on unaccompanied minor education that will allow me to complete my Master's thesis and ultimately work for advocacy and policy change to help these most vulnerable children.

The area of Kenya that the camp is situated in is desolate by any standard. Kakuma is located near Southern Sudan and was originally created to host the tens of thousands of refugees streaming in from the Sudanese civil war. It is now home to as many as 75,000 Sudanese, Somalians, Burundians, Ethiopians, Rwandans and Congolese (depending on who's counting). Commercial flights to the region are only to Lokichogio an hour and a half away, with the exception of a single weekly UNHCR flight from Nairobi, and military escort must be arranged for any road travel to the camp because of the threat of bandits. Aid and NGO workers leave the camp by dark because of the precarious security situation within the camp itself.

Because of these relative risks, UNHCR and Kenya's Department of Refugee Affairs take very seriously their responsibility to protect those within the camp and those asking to come to visit the camp. I cannot tell you how many different people I have had to plead with to get as far as I have, which is now hovering on the edge of approval to visit. The net result of all of these efforts is a weight of responsibility on my shoulders - the research I am doing, the experience I am planning had better be worth it for the refugee children I will study, the UNHCR staffers who have aided me along the way, and for myself and the effort I'll be undertaking.

If all goes as planned, I will be splitting off from my DePaul group the first week in December, flying from Kisumu in the southwest back to Nairobi and up to Lokichogio and then driving back down by escort to the camp. During the three days I'm at the camp I will survey, perform a needs assessment and interview as many of the educators and counselors who are working with the unaccompanied minors as is feasible. What's working? What is funded and what is underfunded? What is conceived at a desk in DC that doesn't translate in Kakuma? I assume the project will become very organic and that needs and shape will present themselves on the ground. I am adaptable and can capture what comes. A UNHCR plane will take me back to Nairobi and then I will need to fly back to Kisumu and find the DePaul group for the remainder of the study abroad trip.

I am so hopeful that this happens. I am committed to this purpose personally, professionally and spiritually. I will take pictures and document the entire journey -- not just Kakuma but throughout Kenya (Kibera! Lake Victoria! Elephant orphanage!), in this space.