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Travails of elderly IDPs in Borno
IF eyes are windows of the soul, Yeiza Uman’s eyes are giant panes. In her eyes, misery braids together with need, like tresses of a brooding bride. One sunny afternoon in February, Uman let loose her pain: “I need food. Give me food. Any type of food. I will eat it,” she said.
Suddenly, she slid into sleep and stirred again, like a seafarer shipwrecked on a strange island. Uman grimaced, then begged for food.
Uman starves because she is a ‘newcomer.’ The 83-year-old personifies the grief of every ‘new arrival’ at the Dalori camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri, Borno State. Her greatest worry is food.
It is extremely difficult for the frail old granny to feed. Her four children can barely feed themselves let alone the 83-year-old. Hence since she fled her home in Bama, in the wake of the dreaded terrorist sect, Boko Haram’s attack on her community, Uman’s life has been dire.
“To feed is very difficult. That is why I sell groundnuts to survive but people hardly buy,” she said.
Uman falls outside the loop of government and non-governmental organisation (NGO) dietary support for IDPs in Dalori camp. But while she starves, she rejoices because her six grandchildren are fed. As IDPs besiege Dalori camp from Borno’s strife-torn areas, the World Food Programme (WFP) in concert with the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) devised a system by which new arrivals are registered and accommodated into the camp’s feeding programme. But of the new arrivals, the welfare of malnourished infants, toddlers and other underage children are prioritised above all others because as minors, they are more vulnerable than others.
While minors are placed on WFP’s ‘Plumpy Sup’ nutritional diet among other provisions, the fate of frail, old women like Uman beggars urgent intervention. Uman won’t get a bag of rice from the WFP or SEMA. Not yet.
“But we will accommodate her in the next cycle of distribution of food and other provisions to adult and infant IDPs in the camp,” said a WFP staff.
Until then, the 83-year-old will continue to scrounge for food remnants from fellow IDPs currently accommodated in the camp’s food distribution programme.
But while Uman’s misery is limited to food and displacement from her ancestral home in Bama, deeper agonies afflict the fragile frames and psyche of her peers in the camp.
For instance, Mai Musti, 65, stirs to torment and a lingering foreboding of ‘greater evil’ every day. As he hobbled to a makeshift hut he shares with four others, Musti recollected the sad day in Bama, when he became crippled by searing bullets from the gun muzzle of Boko Haram’s terror squads.
His greatest grief, however, is the tragic murder of his son, Muhammadu, by the terrorist sect. “After they killed my son, they went away with two of my daughters: Yanzie 18 yrs and Ba’ana Fanakau, 22 yrs.”
In the wake of the incident, Musti fled with his two wives and four surviving children into the bush. “From there, the military came to rescue us and they brought us to this Dalori camp…I was a cloth seller in Bama but Boko Haram Haram burnt all my clothes to ashes. I don’t have anything to my name now. They also took two sewing machines, one motorcycle and two yards of clothes. They burnt the rest to ashes. If the government asks me to go back to Bama today, I will go. I am tired of this place,” he said.
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Standing in the middle of Dalori, the sprawling refugee camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri, Borno State, you could squint and be transported back in time to similar scenes in places like Anwa and Ojike Biafran refugee camps; the Musuhura refugee camp for Hutus fleeing Tutsi persecution in war-torn Rwanda; and several similar settlements in Albania, Haiti, Afghanistan, Kenya, Central African Republic (CAR) and Congo to mention a few.
These awful places share a common scent — a mélange of dust, sweat and fermented grief — which oftentimes, is accompanied by the unnerving sound that sandstorms make against flapping tents. The grisly testimonies of massacres, executions, rape, ethnic cleansing, escape and survival merge into a single narrative; slightly different versions of the same horror movie.
In the mix, Ahmadu Bubaji’s grief resonates with a tragic peal. The resonance is bloodcurdling and replete with anguish and rage several months old. Bubaji’s misery is unbounded: the 73-year-old lost his wife, Aminatu – thus suffering a brutal and sudden end to a marriage of 52 years. They lost Lima, their only daughter and two grandkids in a bloody attack carried out by Boko Haram in Bama. This occurred one month after he received news of his son’s death in a gun duel between the Nigerian Army and Boko Haram in Baga, Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State. Umar, his son, was gunned to death in a duel that left no fewer than 185 people dead. Precisely 2, 275 buildings were razed to the ground while 65 motorcycles and 40 cars were burnt in the attack.
While Bubaji struggled with his grief, Boko Haram insurgents, dislodged from their camps in Sambisa Game Reserve by the military, issued an ultimatum to residents of his community and Gwoza local government area of Borno State. “They gave us one week to vacate our homes,” said Bubaji. Consequently, he fled with his daughter-in-law, Khadijatu and Idris, his surviving grandchild.
“We had no choice but to comply,” he said. Bubaji lamented the death of his wife and only son. He regrets the onset of age. At 73, he is unable to fend for himself neither can he provide his daughter-in-law and grandson food, protection and the care they deserve.
[quote font_size=”18″ color=”#000000″ bgcolor=”#d6c67a” bcolor=”#dd3333″ arrow=”yes”]“I am too old to do anything for anyone. I can’t even take care of myself. Every day, we have to endure hunger, insecurity and various discomforts. It is a sad thing that has happened to us. It is a very sad thing but I know that Almighty Allah will always help us,” Bubaji.[/quote]
Far from the insecurities that plague Uman and Musti, Samara Lantana, 67, dwells pitifully at the edge of Banki, off the highway leading from Banki to Mokolo in Maroua, Cameroun’s Far North Region. In the heat of the mayhem that caused the widow to flee her abode in Baga with neighbours, Lantana was able to gather her few belongings in a sack and travel light. This was because she had no husband and no child. All her worldly possessions were wrapped up in one large sack: four clothes, two slippers, cooking utensils, a mug, two plastic cups and a small bucket. This was all she could salvage before her house in Baga was burned to the ground during the invasion of her community.
“I saved what I could, but there wasn’t much time. Men were killed and homes were burned to the ground. I don’t ever want to go back. I have never seen anything so scary in my 67 years on earth. Life used to be peaceful in Baga. It is not anymore. Things have become too scary out there,” said Lantana.
The 67-year-old resides in a transit site for people fleeing the violence in Northeast Nigeria. Rummaging through her battered sack – each silent, dusty article in the sack clattered with gripping import: it accentuated the hopelessness and desolation of the 67-year-old native of Gwoza squatting vulnerably in abject destitution, in a foreign land.
Lantana shrugged off questions about her ability to survive in a foreign land given her vulnerability and language handicap – she does not understand French, the native language of her refuge. Neither does she have money or food to eat. “God will not let me die before my time,” said the 67-year-old who depends on the goodwill of Good Samaritans to survive.
The situation for thousands of IDPs seeking refuge at home and abroad, from the violence in Northeast Nigeria is so clearly defined. Life as an IDP is akin to dwelling in a purgatory, a place of suffering and expiation, where thousands of elderly folk and minors wander amid huts strung together of relief-agency donated plastic sheeting, trash-can fires and hastily dug pit latrines. They seek to scavenge the one thing that could sustain them through their period of misery; hope.
Like travelers between life and death, they wander between cities and displaced persons’ settlements, their host communities oftentimes reluctantly tolerating them. Many fear that if they return to their homeland, they would die by Boko Haram’s bullets.
“Many of us do not even have a home to return to,” said Yaqub Suleiman, 76. Suleiman was a farmer and cow seller with stalls in Maiduguri and Jibiya, Katsina State. When the “state of emergency was declared,” he had to rush back home to protect his newlywed wife and son. “She had just put to bed,” he said.
“I am already broke. These days, I simply make sure my wife gets at least two decent meals daily because she is breastfeeding our child,” said Suleiman with the grimace of one dreading what hardship may come when his meagre fund and luck eventually runs out.
Ultimately, many displaced people must fend for themselves, or rely on poorly run, often dangerous habitats or camps that are not always under the protection of the Nigeria Army or international agencies. Many of them disappear into cities, doubling up with family or friends, struggling to survive on their own.
Some grim picture
Until recently, older people’s needs in disasters and conflicts were addressed only by broader adult health and humanitarian programmes. This has changed as several recent emergencies highlighted this population’s vulnerabilities. Of the 14, 800 deaths in France during the 2003 heat wave, 70 percent were of people over 75 years. Of the estimated 1, 330 people who died in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, most were older persons. Worldwide, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated that older persons make up 8.5 percent of the overall refugee population, and in some cases comprise more than 30 percent of caseloads. In 2005, approximately 2.7 million people over the age of 60 were living as refugees or internally displaced persons. Globally, the proportion of older people is growing faster than any other age group. In 2000 one in 10, or about 600 million, people were 60 years or older. By 2025, this figure is expected to reach 1.2 billion people, and in 2050 around 1.9 billion.
In developing countries, where 80 percent of older people lived, the proportion of those over 60 years old in 2025 will increase from seven per cent to 12 per cent. Moreover, life expectancy at birth has increased globally from 48 years in 1955 to 65 in 1995 and is projected to reach 73 in 2025.
Impact of displacement on the old
While older people vary greatly in their health status and ability to adapt, the risks to this population in emergencies remain significant.
But as the situation worsens, some elderly IDPs like Falimata Muhammed have learnt to devise strategies to survive. Muhammed has spent three years wandering about as an IDP. “I am 50 years old. I used to live in Bama but I left Bama after Boko Haram attacked us in the village. I sold blended maize in Bama. I never tried to return but since I came here (Dalori), I have been selling pepper, tomato and kola nut to survive. I don’t make much. I only do this petty trade in order not to stay idle. Even today, if Bama becomes peaceful and we are allowed to return, I will pack up my things and go,” she said.
Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 80 per cent of the disabled population live in developing countries, where the prevalence of disability is approximately 20 per cent, according to recent research figures. That rate is expected to increase dramatically as the population ages. By 2050 in India, the incidence of disability is expected to jump by 120 per cent, in China by 70 per cent and in sub-Saharan Africa by 257 per cent.
Even normal physical changes associated with aging that may not greatly impair daily functioning, such as reduced mobility and failing eyesight can become significant handicaps during an emergency. A WHO report noted that “An older person with arthritic knees and diminished vision, living alone in a high-rise apartment with no family members or friends nearby, can become incapable of getting food or water or of fleeing danger, and may be overlooked by neighbours.”
If that older person is living in a rural area like Bama, Baga, Gwoza or other Nigerian war-ravaged areas, his ability to flee from danger may wholly depend on his health status and the willingness of his younger and more agile neighbours or relatives to assist him in flight. For some older people, the loss of eyeglasses and walking canes can increase their dependency on others for sustenance and security.
Older people’s susceptibility to dehydration and shock can endanger them during flight, evacuation or other circumstances which place them in unfamiliar living conditions.
They may also experience greater adjustment difficulties as they usually have stronger ties and attachments to their former communities. Dramatic changes in their lifestyles and status also affect their well-being; the wider effects of a disaster or crisis may see older people lose their roles or status within a community, and they may find it more difficult to adapt to new and unfamiliar situations, such as living in camps.
At the Dalori IDP camp for instance, family and religious heads who once led their communities have lost much of their traditional authority as conflict has disrupted and displaced their communities, and their roles have largely been taken over by camp managers, local government officials, international agencies and new leaders chosen from among the younger refugee population.
Psychology of the refugee in flight
In traditional parlance, migration is explained by “push” and “pull” factors. The ‘push’ factor, according to Dr. E.F. Kunz, a renowned European psychologist, provides the migrant with reasons to leave the old country, and the ‘pull’ factor of the country of choice provides him with a purpose and a wish to migrate. According to Kunz, there are two types of refugee: the anticipatory refugee, who flees his country before the deterioration of crisis or escalation of violence. He flees to escape death among other disadvantages of being caught in the line of fire. The other, he explains, is the acute refugee who waits till the crisis degenerates before he flees. Consequently, he flees across the border to a neighbouring country where he hopes to enjoy relative peace and security. However, as time passes and the hoped-for changes do not materialise, the realisation gradually dawns on the refugee that somewhere in the course of the exciting and dramatic events, he miscalculated and there will be no comfort in his country of asylum neither would he enjoy a victorious return to his homeland.
At this stage, the refugee still does not look forward, but already knows that the doors are closed behind him. His main preoccupation is, therefore, the redefinition of his relation towards his country of birth, family and friends. He is taking the first step that will change him from a temporary refugee into an exile. “He has arrived at the spiritual, spacial, temporal and emotional equidistant no man’s land of midway-to-nowhere and the longer he remains there, the longer he becomes subject to its demoralising effects, argues Kunz.
In the same vein, Abiodun Iluyomade, a social psychologist and founder of Refugee Haven International (RHI), an NGO, argued that subsequent administrative, economic, and psychological pressures may force the refugee to renounce his homeland for relative safety and stability in his country of refuge.
A never-ending trauma
For many of them, the tragic massacre and devastation that marred their lives will continue to afflict their psyches like happenstances that happened only yesterday and reoccur in real time, according to psychological experts.
Indeed, many elderly IDPs are caught in the past by unresolved questions of missing husbands, wives, children and grandchildren. For instance, Hafsatu Banda cannot put into words why her daughter is missing and her husband is lying six feet under the ground. She cried every time she tried.
Hunched by a tree trunk in her tiny space amid Dalori camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), she fanned houseflies from her face with gnarled hands. Her wiry hands hovered delicately, quivering like moth wings, while her eyes fixed on a steel bowl holding her spoon and a rusty talisman. The blaze of the sun against the utensil cast a desultory glow that made her eyes gleam, in an outrage of bitterness.
When she spoke, a faint glimmer stole into her face, like the feral nuance of a cat, maddened by separation from its young. Her lips pursed as if she would speak but instead, a great glob of spit hung there, glittering; before she let it fall on the simmering sand. The spit sizzled like shea butter spread over freshly roast yam. It articulated the widow’s pregnant silences thus giving tenor to the grief she’s been cradling since she lost her husband and only child.
“God will reward those who killed my child,” she said, adding that she has given up on finding her missing husband. She lost contact with him as she fled Bama in the wake of Boko Haram attack three years ago.
Through her narration, Banda shed the sad tears of a woman who is childless in her twilight and uncertain if she had been widowed.
Many elderly folk like Banda have been traumatised in some way or another, but very few of them understand and appreciate the need for psycho-social support, partly because they did not know such a thing existed and partly because, it would be embarrassing to admit they needed help, according to Arifa Mahmud, a psychologist.
Mahmud narrated her experience with an elderly survivor and IDP from Baga who often attempted suicide. The latter saw her husband and son killed; she was then raped and had a gun thrust so deeply into her vagina that she will never be able to bear children. Unlike many other traumatised elderly folk, she gave vent to her miseries as a way to find a brief release not available in her daily life.
There is a whole body of literature on psychiatric treatment for torture victims and there are various schools of thought on rape counselling. But shockingly little attention has been paid to the effects of conflict on the psycho-social status of the elderly or on how they process and cope with their experiences. One very recent study of trauma in non-conflict situations indicates that there may be gender differences in the response to trauma. The study found that, although the lifetime prevalence of traumatic events is slightly higher for men, women run twice the risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorders, suggesting that certain types of trauma may have a deeper and longer-term psychological impact on women.
Of course, it is not only women’s mental health that is important. Healthy psycho-social adjustment of elderly men and boys who have experienced violence and conflict is also important to their families and communities. There are numerous indications that combat exposure and post-traumatic stress in men lead to higher levels of substance abuse and domestic violence. There is also some evidence that post-traumatic symptoms can abate for years, but then return in later life, particularly in stressful situations.
Like life and death travellers…
There is no gainsaying that life is tough on the elderly in an IDP camp. Many of them are destitute. They have no money. They feed poorly and some of them are nursing several wounds and psychological trauma. There are a lot of cases of mortality in the forest for lack food and appropriate health care according to an aid worker.
For those IDPs who have access to camps, provisions are minimal. There are rarely organised methods for distributing food or shelter, and families must devise their own ways to earn money to get these necessities. On one of The Nation’s visits to cluster IDP communities across the state revealed the miseries of Borno’s displaced citizenry, the elderly in particular. In one incident around Damboa, elderly IDPs were observed jostling with the youth to for tiny shares from a meagre morsel of bread. The bread, which was barely enough to feed one person, was cut into three or more parts and shared amongst them. You couldn’t distinguish the young from the old in the mad scramble that ensued as a visitor doled out bread and groundnut to the IDPs from a big basin.
Many displaced people have fled to cities where they live with virtually no assistance or protection. The reasons they go to cities rather than camps vary. Some are hoping to avoid violence in camps. Others flee to cities hoping to find jobs, training, medical help and access to other services.
Finding shelter is a major concern for those displaced in urban areas. Urban refugees and displaced persons often end up homeless, trying to survive by living and working on the streets, or they crowd together in the homes of local residents.
Vision, hearing and other sensory deficits and cognitive/neurological deterioration may make it more difficult for some older people to understand emergency warnings and directions. They may be unable to evacuate or seek safety, or become disoriented and confused in unfamiliar surroundings, according to health experts.
Older people’s health may also be compromised by poor diet and nutrition. Malnutrition’s causes may include poverty, responsibility for supporting grandchildren, living alone or age-related disabilities such as immobility, blindness and/or loss of teeth. During emergencies, older people’s vulnerability to hunger is often heightened by inaccessible food distribution points, difficult-to-digest foods, inability to prepare food and share scarce food rations with family members.
However, from a mental health perspective, older people have been found to be more resilient than younger people, in part because they have a greater life experience to rely on. Yet there is a growing awareness of disasters’ and conflicts’ magnified effects on older persons, as losses, displacement, poor health and social exclusion may act as cumulative and interactive stressors that can lead to trauma-related syndromes, anxiety, depression and other illnesses, according to medical research.
Indeed, older people in crises experience dramatic changes in their lifestyle and community standing; this too may affect their well-being. The wider effects of a disaster or crisis may see the elderly lose their roles or status within a community and they may find it more difficult to adapt to new and unfamiliar situations, such as living in camps.
At the Muna camp, for instance, family and religious heads who once led their communities have lost much of their traditional authority as conflict has disrupted and displaced their communities, and their roles have largely been taken over by camp managers, local government officials, international agencies and new leaders chosen from among the younger refugee population.
The life of the displaced remains insidiously bleak, some would blame it on the adversities of war. There is no school for children on the camp. Social workers from WFP and SEMA engage in a daily struggle to provide them succour and order, even as their efforts are persistently plagued by inadequate facilities, shortage of food, water and medical supplies. Displaced children enjoy no tales by moonlight, drawing lessons or reading. Their mothers are too busy, ruing their fate and braving each new day with its fresh ordeals. Most fathers are withdrawn; they regret their fading authority and influence over their fates and families.
The older men, however, sit around in clusters of twos and threes discussing the political situation with varying levels of despair. The older women too gather the children and tell them stories about life in their youth, when everywhere was stable and peaceful. Some, however, simply love to sit alone and stare into the distance.
Uman dreams of returning home. Likewise Lantana and Banda. But Muhammad Saliu, 65, is wary of returning home so soon. At the time of The Nation’s visit to Dalori, he was 11 days old in the camp. “I just arrived from Golomba. Boko Haram attacked our community and we fled into the bush. For six days, I hid in the bush until soldiers came to rescue us. They brought us to Dalori. I have not been admitted here. When I am registered, I hope to get food ration and other provisions,” he said.
“Life is safer here at the moment but there is nothing for me here. I would like to go home. I know things will get better soon,” said Muhammed. It is a rare optimism that she affects. In the dark reality of her world, it glitters bright and clear like an emerald, dazzling with wit six decades old and the valiance of a tenacious spirit.
Like his elderly peer, Musti’s gaze burned into the mythic distance, his eyelids blinking as if to shut out the past. But he couldn’t. Vignettes of blood and the hastily carved corpse of his son, Muhammad stole from his lips, distressingly, into the air. The effect was spine-chilling to be precise. Bitterness bulged from the convulsive theatre of blood that brutally marred his life, into the russet radiance of the day.
“Boko Haram killed my son and stole my daughters,” lamented Musti, for the umpteenth time.
The clothier from Bama recounted with grief and a mien that suggested, among other things, a visceral lust for vengeance, his ordeal in the bloodbath that reduced Bama to a ghost town.
Then he fell silent and stared ardently into the distance. It was a macabre silence replete with spasms of blood-curdling angst, misery and discontent.
Hard as it was to picture the extent of his bitterness, a furtive glance at the ugly stump replacing what used to be his left leg indicated a man utterly torn apart. His good leg, that is, the right limb, seemed gnarled and wiry from wrestling with the sleight of years and the trials of flight. It dangled on a threadbare mat from which tufts of yarn spiraled and flared, as if in consonance with Musti’s sighs.
