The Refugees of Nairobi

When I hear the word “refugee” a certain image comes to my mind. Namely, a worn-out woman with anguish and suffering in her eyes, holding a severely malnourished child. She’s sitting beside a tent in an over-crowded camp somewhere in the dry, deserted area where few others would dream of inhabiting. This is what I expected to see when I came to work with the International Rescue Committee; this was my limited conception of what it meant to be a refugee.

Living in Nairobi has really given me a new perspective of the hardships diverse people face when they make the unimaginably difficult decision to go into exile. Sidet, in Amharic, is a term that I used to hear adults using when they talked in a tone of gratefulness about how they came to the U.S. and nostalgia of the country they left behind. In my day to day life in Nairobi, I am constantly surrounded by people who live in Sidet. Somehow it is not so difficult for me to pick out who is not local; many of these individuals are Somali, South Sudanese, Oromo, and Eritrean.

A week ago, Aman, a fellow intern of Eritrean origins, and I met up with some Eritrean friends of Aman’s friend living in the U.S. They were all about our age 22-26. We hung out, ate dinner, played pool, went to a bar and had drinks….a typical Saturday night for people our age with no real responsibilities or worries. Our new friends dressed the way we do, spoke the same as us (not only in English but also an Amharic that outdoes mine), and shared our taste in music. They had attended some of the most exclusive schools in Addis Ababa…School of Tomorrow, Sanford, St. Joeseph’s. In all respect, they were no different than us but for one exception, they were all legally defined as urban refugees.

“If no work, going out every night and living off remittances from relatives abroad is what you define as refugee status,” I told Aman, “then I find it hard to feel sorry for them.” Though my pity would mean nothing to them, in my mind, I imagined seeing suffering, hunger, poverty and was surprised by what I encountered. Could it be really fair to categorize this group of urban refugees in the same category as those who actually live in desperation and seek shelter in remote camps such as Kakuma and Dadaab.

After being judgmental—usually the first instinct—I started to think about what it must be like to be in their shoes and realized that the life of a “urban refugee” is not much better than the life of a “real refugee”—you know, those we’re likely to see on the nightly news that easily strike an emotional cord in all of us. Regardless of socio-economic status in your home country, being a refugee in Kenya, you are automatically in a precarious legal and political standing. There are no guaranteed rights to most basic social services, abuse by the police and government officials is hardly given attention and making a livelihood in the formal sector is impossible as refugees are not legally permitted to work.

So, in effect, there is nothing to do but register and place all your hope in the possibility that one day your lucky number will be called and you find yourself en route to the promise land that is so often mentioned—America. Coming from a place like Kenya, which accommodates hundreds of thousands of refugees, that possibility is very slim. The time spent waiting for a bright future in the U.S. is squandered in a country that you barely know, do not care to remain in and, in return, is not welcoming to you. After a few months, a few years…even the most well-to-do, educated, motivated and aspiring individuals get worn out by the redundancy of this stationary life of simply waiting.