Thursday, 27 March 2008

Displaced people camps...

Last week I visited the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps in Naivasha. "Displaced people" are people who have had to leave their homes because of difficult situations like violence and have nowhere to go. There are at least half a million people living in these camps across Kenya - that's a lot of people - they would fill up Arsenal's Emirates Stadium eight times and there would still be people left over.

People have lost their homes and many families lost their loved ones. I always quite enjoyed going camping - but these people are crammed into tents as far as the eye can see. All they have are the clothes that they ran away in - everything else is gone.

These children at the camp were brilliant - happy to smile for their photo to be taken. But they are living in horrible conditions - they live in tents, their doctors are working out of tents and while the teachers are doing their best to keep the children in education, there are hundreds of children in every class - and not enough books or pencils to go around. That is like having one teacher for your whole school. All the health workers and teachers are doing an amazing job but it was very sad to see so many people living like this - and with no real plans for things to change. Anything that we can do will be a great help to these families who have nothing left.

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