Central African refugees stitch together new life in Cameroon
At a forum for displaced people in Cameroon, RFI meets refugees from the Central African Republic whose talent for handicrafts is helping them build a new life.
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Sheila Marallah’s nimble fingers dance across the yarn, producing intricate patterns and works that seem to come alive with every stitch.
Each piece she crafts tells a story. Hidden within the threads and beads that she knits are messages, waiting to be deciphered by those with a keen eye and an open heart. Each stitch holds a clue, each pattern a puzzle waiting to be solved.
She weaves tales of love and loss, hope and despair, serving as a reminder that sometimes, the most profound truths can be found in the simplest of things.
Understandable, given her story.
Uprooted
Marallah came to Cameroon eight years ago when attackers struck her community in Bangui.
“I do not want to talk about it,” she tells RFI when asked to describe what drove her to flee.
“I am in a healing process. Talking about it will only reopen those wounds.”
But her compatriot Fifi Tecombi is more forthcoming.
Tecombi witnessed firsthand the 2013 coup d’état when a coalition of predominantly Muslim rebel groups, Séléka, overran the capital Bangui. They put President François Bozizé to flight and named former rebel leader Michel Djotodjia the new head of state.
But predominantly Christian militias known as the anti-Balaka – meaning "anti-machete" – would eventually force Djotodia out of power.
“I left the town of Boda on 1 December 2013 for business in Bangui and there was a coup d’état on 5 December. The anti-Balaka invaded the town and I couldn’t return because I am a Muslim – the narrative was that it was a Christian-Muslim conflict,” Tecombi said.
She trekked for three days, avoiding the highways for fear of coming face-to-face with the rebels.
“I left with nothing,” she said, in a subdued tone.
Tecombi, like Marallah, forms part of the over 352,000 refugees from the Central African Republic in Cameroon, uprooted from their country in the midst of war, rapes, kidnappings and maimings.
- ICC prosecutors seek war crimes trial for former CAR militia leader
- Fleeing Central Africans defy traditional ideas of nationality
Precarious situation
RFI met them this week at a forum for refugees, internally displaced people and migrants organised by G100, an NGO made up of influential women from around the world.
During the three-day meeting in Yaounde, Oliver Beer, who represents the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in Central Africa, shared disturbing figures about the situation throughout the subregion.
“The Democratic Republic of Congo is experiencing the largest internal displacement crisis in Africa, with 5.8 million internally displaced people, mainly in the east, while it also hosts more than a million refugees from neighbouring countries,” Beer said.
Other countries in the subregion also have thousands of refugees, and even more internally displaced persons, he added.
UNHCR is participating in a 3-day @G100wefleaders Yaounde conference to increase support for refugees, internally displaced people and migrants, especially women and children, in the Central African subregion.
— UNHCR Cameroon (@RefugeesCmr) September 27, 2023
4 women refugees are showcasing their business efforts at the event. pic.twitter.com/q51Ft3lT2r
Cameroon was hosting 470,000 refugees by the end of August 2023, according to UNHCR figures.
And while this forced displacement takes a toll on everyone, women and girls are placed in a particularly difficult position.
“They face all forms of gender-based violence,” said Caroline Sack Kendem, G100's global chair on migrant and refugee resettlement.
According to UNHCR, 52 percent of refugees in Cameroon are women and girls.
Resilience
The G100 meeting aimed to find ways of dealing with the problems displaced people, particularly women, face.
Beer said the UNHCR and other partners have initiated programmes and projects that are giving displaced people a fresh start – people like Marallah.
She says that thanks to one such programme, she was able to learn a trade that today enables her to pay the bills and feed her children.
Today she makes handbags, slippers, flower vessels and home decorations, which she sells at local markets or in craft shops.
She was one of four women refugees selected to showcase their business efforts at the G100 forum.
Asked if she would be willing to go back to the CAR, she turns pensive.
“It’s difficult,” she told RFI.
“If peace doesn’t return, I don’t see how I will go back there.”
Read also:
- In their own words: Central African refugees and returnees in Chad
- Central African refugees living in southern Chad and making a difference in their community
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