apc.au blog

The Karen community, for whom 2009 is ancient history, will celebrate the year 2748 this December. Australia is host to a growing number of Karen who arrived here as refugees having fled their homelands in Burma.

In 2007, or rather, 2746, we began working with the Melbourne based Cultural Development Network on an internet video production series, Homelands, for young people from the Karen and Sudanese communities. The idea is to co-produce video pieces discussing their perceptions of homeland with other young people from Karen and Sudanese communities abroad, and where possible, those still living in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border and / or Kenya and the Southern Sudan respectively.

This afternoon I worked with a group of Karen young people who have formed a web development team to start the work of producing a site that will support, develop and promote collaborative video production amongst themselves and young Karen abroad.

They arrived with a draft plan for their website, however it had not included any scope for supporting the video production project. What it did provide though, was a clear outline of information flows that would inform, guide and promote the project. It just needed the Homelands components added.

I showed them through Vibewire, SlumTV and EngageMedia. As I talked through each of these projects Homelands Project Officer, Kirsty Baird, logged onto a chat room on karen.org and found someone involved with the Karen community in California who not only makes videos but was keen to gather up stills and videos from Karen living there. The pieces were starting to fall into place.

Curiously, Vibewire seemed less representative of an online community of young creative people than I recall. EngageMedia will no doubt become the host platform for Homeland videos and SlumTV demonstrates what is possible when a clear framework is provided up front! SlumTV make no bones about what they do. They teach kids in slums how to make videos and screen them.

The next step was to ensure we could get a website up and running quickly – a site that would be easy to use, a site that supported not only the Karen’s vision, but a collaborative environment from which videos can be produced from. I showed them through Wordpress and got their lead web person, Friday, to set up a free Wordpress blog and Karen TV was born! It is but a humble beginning…

By the end of the workshop we had everyone signed up as contributors. We covered some basic publishing techniques in Wordpress, found a design template everyone was happy with and put together a small production team to re-design a header image.

It was a terrific outcome.

We have momentum!

I left the Melbourne Multicultural Hub, wandered up to a Korean grocery store, picked up some supplies for dinner and walked home in the rain. 

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Photo: A Karen child from the village of Pilokkhi in Thailand near the Myanmar border. By Brian Adler, Public Domain, Wikipedia.

Home Lands is a recipient of an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant. apc.au will be involved in a component of the research being one of the partners of the application to the ARC. We are very proud to be involved in this project and to have been part of a successful ARC process.

What is Home Lands?

Home Lands is an internet television project made with entry level technical resources that connects refugee young people living in separated communities. Home Lands is underpinned by the premise that refugee youth resettlement is more successful if identification, communication and engagement is maintained with home communities.

Many young refugees struggle to develop positive cultural identities. The Home Lands project will explore the role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play in connecting young refugees to their diasporic communities and demonstrate how this can assist them in developing positive social and cultural identities.

How will it work?

Separated production teams collaborate towards the creation of regular internet television programs that are then broadcast to communities at either end of this production spectrum and to other community members around the world. Preliminary stages of the project will see the use of Engage Media’s video distribution software and Creative Commons licensing, which may well form the basis of a dedicated media delivery platform in the future.

What has Home Lands done?

Over 2008, the Home Lands project has been in a research and development  phase, through funding from the City of Melbourne’s Community Cultural Development Program and VicHealth (Victoria’s peak health promotion body). The Home Lands project has recently been funded over three years by the Australian Research Council and will continue to receive funding from the City of Melbourne throughout this time. Substantial research on the impact of ICTs on refugee/transnational identities will be undertaken by Dr Sandy Gifford at the Refugee Health Research Centre, La Trobe University, as part of the project.

A Home Lands future and partnerships

So far, work has been undertaken with Karen (Burmese) and Sudanese young people in Melbourne and Karen young people on the Thai-Burma border. We are seeking additional funding to support the on-going activities and are looking for international partnerships to support the international aspects of the project’s development over the next three years – 2009-2011 – in Thailand, Southern Sudan, Egypt and other Diaspora locations which could include Europe/USA/UK. Future phases of the project will see the introduction of other communities including Iraqi and Somali.

It is the intention of the Home Lands project that it becomes a sustainable resource to provide for on-going connection between separated communities around the world.

My first meeting in Nairobi was with two young Sudanese men who had both been in Kakuma as refugees. It is a real pity we are unable to visit Kakuma at this time, however, I have more information regarding the situation there than I’d bargained for.

The most important outcome of this meeting is the realisation that we may not be able to run Home Lands, in its present form, in Kakuma at all. The situation there is much more dire than what we had been told.

It appears that pressure is being brought to bare on people to return to their Home Lands. Services to the people in the camp are being reduced. The Tarkuna (traditional land owners of the site where Kakuma is built upon) raid and loot the camp regularly. Food rations, beans and yellow maize is provided in meager amounts, barely enough for one meal a day, is dished out once every 15 days. Hygiene is very poor. There is no sewerage treatment. Life for those who make it to Nairobi is an ongoing struggle…

Will it be possible to take a camera in and train camp residents to document their lives there?

Why is it that such information isn’t readily available? I’ve read many reports from various NGOs and I’ve seen nothing that even vaguely points to the conditions I had described to me… what I’ve written here is only a snapshot drawn from my notes. There’s much more to come…

In my last post I’d published a schedule that would have seen me pulling out of Kakuma today. However, due to revisions in the project and budget caps, that schedule was further revised. As such, Grant and I prepared a status report and research options for the Cultural Development Network and the City of Melbourne.

In this report you can read what has been achieved to date. Grant and I were both impressed with the information thus far gathered and the networks established. For instance, I’m writing from the office of the Kenyan based Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN), an APC member, who have been terribly generous in providing space for me to work from whilst I’m in Nairobi.

Yes, I’m in Nairobi, having left Cape Town on Sunday and arriving via Johannesburg 6am, Monday morning. I’m staying in the Sarova Stanley, built in 1902, a most august establishment where Ernest Hemingway is said to have often stayed.

My schedule is now as follows:

• Sun 6 Apr: Cape Town to Nairobi via Johannesburg
• Mon 7 Apr: Jo’burg to Nairobi
• Mon 7 – Thu 10 Apr: Nairobi
• Thu 10 Apr: Nairobi to Istanbul via Johannesburg

As you can see, there’s no Kakuma Refugee Camp listed. Due to budgetary constraints we’ve had to pull back from arrangements made with UNHCR to visit the camp. Although regretful, what I hope to achieve in Nairobi ought to pave the way for a dedicated site visit when resources are available.

In the previous article I discussed the processes required to get me to Kakuma via the UNHCR and other required routes. In the next few articles I’ll provide a blow by blow description of getting there and anything of interest along the way.

Schedules

The schedule published in that first article is one of many that have been prepared along the way, and as of today, clearly not the last. Thanks to our travel agent, Cloud 9 Travel, I’ve been able to make these issue revised schedules and have flights re-booked with relative ease.

It’s been tricky to coordinate schedules for both Kenya and Thailand given the constraints of net access, work space issues and the excessive telephony tariffs throughout Africa, with South Africa perhaps the highest.

In addition, I’m now to ensure that I can coordinate UN charted flights from Nairobi to coincide with security escorts to and from Kakuma. But before I get this far, I’m still trying to get Kenyan Government approval to enter the camp and I can’t get this if I can’t coordinate communications with our proposed guide there, Peter Mabouch.

If Peter and I are unable to communicate frequently with each other would I still go to Kakuma? It would be a shame to have come this far and not go. In short, I’ll go, but with far more caution.

I’m also arranging to leave some of my luggage, including my guitar, at the APC office in Johannesburg. This means getting there and back from Nairobi, organising transports to and from the airport and accommodation in between.

Note: Have since made contact with Peter via colleagues in Melbourne, but unable to reach the Kenyan Government official we need to communicate with prior to fixing our schedule with the UN (charted flights, security escort, etc.).

I’m making plans for Kenya now that I have a line of contact through to the UNHCR in Geneva and their officers in Nairobi. It will be interesting to see how much of the trip from here on in can be organised remotely, particularly flights. Given my replacement credit card will only work at point of sale, not via the net nor phone, I’m having to rely entirely on our travel agent to make all my bookings.

Here’s the proposed travel schedule that should see me leaving Cape Town on the morning of Monday, 10 March.

• 10 Mar: Cape Town to J’burg, late morning.
• 11 Mar: J’burg to Nairobi
• 13 Mar: Nairobi to Lokichoggio, Kenya (leaves from Wilson Airport, Nairobi)
• 16 Mar: Lokichoggio to Nairobi
• 16 Mar: Nairobi to J’burg

I’m working on the basis that I wouldn’t need to spend more than 2 -3 days in Kakuma covering traveling time and other unforeseen logistics.

I hope to travel with Peter Mabouch, a young Sudanese refugee who had been in the Kakuma Refugee Camp since 1992. He’s been briefed by Archangelo N. Madut, or Nyuol as we’ve got to know him, a counselor/advocate based at Foundation House. Peter is keen play the role of identifying participants to the project in the camp, or alternatively, recruit others in Nairobi should we find too many limitations hindering involvement of participants in Kakuma.

At the outset of this research project for Home Lands we’d planned to look at the Thailand end of the project. With the problems in Kenya and subsequent uncertainties, it seemed unfeasible. However, being as I was in South Africa, if there were to be any possibility that I could get there, and if my colleagues back in Melbourne approved, I’d head in.

It was during the Home Lands presentation I’d made at the APC Eboard, staff and management meeting in Ithala, South Africa, that the first step to Kakuma had been taken. Not only were APC people enthusiastic about the possibility of having me there, Karen Banks and Anriette Esterhuysen were confident that our contacts through to UNHCR in Geneva would help to pin point the right people to get the necessary protocols for my visit seen to.

They were right! Karen asked me to prepare a briefing paper and after it had been sent, it was only a matter of days before we had a contact in Geneva who subsequently put me directly in touch with his colleagues in Nairobi, asking them to assist in making the necessary arrangements for my visit to Kakuma. The first thing I had to do was just get to Nairobi to ensure their support for the Home Lands project, my research trip and the logistics required to get me in and out of there.

I’ve also been in touch with James Nguo, Regional Director of the Arid Lands Information Network-Eastern Africa (ALIN) and Tony Roberts from Computer Aid, a frequent visitor to Nairobi. Given that ALIN are APC members, working with James has been entirely necessary as he’s provided views to the political situation in Kenya that are not widely known, at least not in my circles. Tony has joined the Home Lands team as part of the growing reference committee and will be an invaluable resource as I take my first steps on Kenyan soil.