When it rains in Mali, it pours

By Anouk Delafortrie, Regional  Information Officer in Dakar, ECHO

“I am worried about my parents. I’ve not spoken to them since we came here. They’re old. Travel is difficult for them so they stayed behind. My husband tells me they’re fine but I find it hard to believe. I would like to return but we have no money. My husband goes out every day to find work in town. If he finds some we eat, if he doesn’t we don’t,” says Assa with a grave expression while her daughter huddles up to her.

 

Assa shares a dilapidated room with her four children. Her husband, his second wife and their six children live in the room next door. She’s afraid to sleep after the first rains sent mud flowing down the walls. The wooden sticks that form the ceiling look dangerously bent as if they could collapse anytime. But they can’t afford to move to a safer place, they already owe two months’ rent as it is.

 

 

Funded by the EU, teams of Handicap International (HI) are on their daily round of visits in Sévaré, a garrison town on the crossroads between the country’s north and south, close to the town of Mopti. Some 40 000 Malians sought refuge here as conflict up north dislocated their lives. Sévaré itself nearly fell into the hands of non-state armed groups in January 2013 when fighters launched a bold offensive and advanced within 20 km of the town in an apparent effort to take control of its military airport. Fears of a ‘push through’ to the south were what triggered France’s military intervention on 11 January.

 

Six months later people in Sévaré seem to be going about their business except for many of the displaced families who feel stuck in a place that has shown them remarkable hospitality, yet isn’t home. With the onset of the rainy season the window of opportunity to cultivate their land in time for the harvest is slowly closing and with it comes the realisation that they may be dependent on aid for many more months to come.

 

When Assa’s family fled their village in the region of Douentza, with fighters on their heels, they didn’t take any belongings nor did they remember to bring identity papers. Their new neighbours gave them clothes, cooking utensils and a washbasin, but without papers they weren’t able to officially register as ‘internally displaced’ and are thus excluded from certain types of assistance.

 

 

The European Commission´s humanitarian aid and civil protection department (ECHO) funds Handicap International to seek out the most vulnerable families like Assa’s and connect them with services and actors in order to improve their housing situation and provide access to food assistance and health care. HI also helps individuals with physiotherapy or mental health needs. During the visit Assa mentions she has a belly ache.  This could be a consequence of the unpurified water she drinks or a psychosomatic reaction to the stresses of her new living conditions.

 

HI’s psycho-social advisor Laetitia Rancillac has hired five mobile teams, each composed of a psychologist and a social worker, to identify people with specific needs. “It is common for people who’ve lived through armed conflict to experience troubles related to loss and mourning. They’ve lost their bearings, their property, their status; some have witnessed violence which can result in post-traumatic stress disorder,” Laetitia explains.

 

When one of HI’s psycho-social duos visits Fatoumata she complains about a humming in her head, as if continuously reliving the bombardments on the armed group’s  base close to her home. Barely audible she recounts the events: “I was out at the river doing the laundry when the bombing started. Shells were flying over our heads. I saw a woman faint. After that, I couldn’t do anything for three days.” Fatoumata also recalls other events that made a profound impression on her, like when the neighbour’s boy picked up a grenade, threw it in the air and by doing so wounded his friend who, conscious of the impending danger, had started to run away.

 

She took her two children to her brother’s home in Sévaré while her husband stayed behind in Gao to take care of the house. “At first I felt a lot of anger, I felt violated. Now, I’m just sad,” she says listlessly casting her eyes down. Fatoumata’s brother seems happy with HI’s suggestion for her to join a group where she can discuss and share her feelings with people who’ve had similar experiences: “We don’t want her to go back like this. We want her to get better first.”

 

In Mopti, ECHO funds Handicap International to ensure the most vulnerable among the displaced people get the assistance they need. The organisation also provides help to people with mental health or physiotherapy needs and engages in explosive ordnance disposal.

 

For more go to http://ec.europa.eu/echo/
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Crisis leads to unexpected opportunities for displaced children in Mali

By Alex Duval Smith

The conflict in northern Mali may have changed the lives of Fatoumata and Djeneba Touré forever – for the better.

The two girls, ages 5 and 3, are among 527,000 people who have been displaced by the crisis in northern Mali, according to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). They have lost businesses, harvests and even their homes. Many are living in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, primarily Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger. But the majority are from families like the Tourés – enduring cramped conditions while living with relatives or in rented accommodation in central and southern Mali. Most of the people displaced are women and children.

Life was straightforward in their hometown of Niafunké, near Timbuktu. “We lived in a house with a sheep, a goat and a horse – a white horse,” says Fatoumata.

For Malian children displaced by crisis, early learning centres provide

a chance to learn – and to heal.

In April 2012, the family was forced to flee when fighting broke out between the army and separatist rebels. Their house faced a military camp. “Men with guns jumped over the wall [into our yard], and they made a noise, ‘boom, boom’,” says Fatoumata.

Integrated Learning

Set up under a straw roof in the playground of Siribala community pre-school,
this early learning center is one of 18 in Mali and acommodates 60 pupils.

A year later, despite their parents’ financial hardships brought on by displacement, Fatoumata and Djeneba are enjoying life as they rarely did before. Every morning, they put on pink tunics and set off for an early learning centre here in the Ségou region of south-central Mali.

The centre was funded by UNICEF and built by partner NGO Plan Mali. Set up under a straw roof in the playground of Siribala community pre-school, it is one of 18 such centres in Mali and acommodates 60 pupils.

Integration with the host community is a primary objective, so two-thirds of the pupils are displaced children, while the rest are local, including six with physical or mental disabilities. Attendance is free, and everyone receives a mid-morning bowl of porridge – a real benefit in a country where kindergarten is a costly luxury generally reserved for children of urban professional families.
The school's director, Kadiatou Sylla, says it’s clear that hosting the early learning centre has been the right move. “These children are really traumatized,” she says. “Often, if you make a noise near the displaced children, they don't like it. They run away.”

One teacher notes that she has seen displaced children run and hide when they see a plane in the sky.

Addressing needs

Educational games provided by UNICEF are a big attraction for the pupils. There is singing and clapping, and the current focus is on learning the names of animals. To ensure that the children’s full range of needs is addressed, the centre's three teachers – all local mothers – have been trained to identify signs of trauma and to address these issues through playing games.

Children receive a free meal at the early learning centre, an added incentive
for parents to send them there. Teachers are also trained in spotting
signs of malnutrition

Accountant Aliou Sidibé, the grandfather of Fatoumata and Djeneba, hosts the girls at his home in Siribala, and he welcomes the early learning centre.

“It is quite something for these girls from Niafunké,” he says. “Not only are they experiencing education at an early age, which they would not have been able to do in the north, but they are meeting local children, and their trauma is being addressed.”

He notices how his grand daughters have suffered. “I have seen them have nightmares and jump out of bed at night. Their mother also has been affected and is not best-placed to support them, because she has become overprotective,” he says.

Extraordinary opportunity

UNICEF Education Officer Souleymane Traoré has helped set up 10 early learning centres, and he sees them as an enormous success. “We had worked on an estimate of 50 children per centre, but in some of them up to 75 children are attending,” he says. “Not only do they receive a meal, which acts as an incentive for parents to send them there, but we have provided the teachers with training in spotting the signs of malnutrition, so we are closing a gap there.”

He believes that for girls like Djeneba and Fatoumata, attending an early learning centre can be a life-changer.

“In the northern Malian context, where early marriage remains a reality for girls, this chance for them to be awakened to education is an extraordinary opportunity,” Mr. Traoré says. “It could well impact positively on their parents’ decisions for them in the coming years.”

For more go to www.unicef.org

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Mali Crisis: A Young Mom’s Story

By Helen Blakesley, West and Central African regional information officer for CRS

Djélika pushes a plaited braid off her face and hitches her five month-old son higher onto her hip.

She leans down to look into the metal pot that’s simmering on the wood stoked stove, placed on the kitchen floor.

Cooking has been her main occupation since they left Timbuktu. Since they fled in fear for their lives.

The day the rebels came, Djélika was sitting in the classroom with the other students, as she always did. Listening carefully to the teacher. It was her favorite lesson, physics and chemistry.

Then the gunshots started, startling the teenagers sitting in their neat rows behind their desks. The rebels weren’t far away. Their stray bullets were finding innocent victims in the small school building. Some students fainted, others hid, still others were hit—and a number died.

Djélika Haïdara with 5 month-old Ousmane
Credit: Helen Blakesley/CRS

Djélika was pregnant at the time. A newly wed bride carrying her first son. She knew she had to get out. She slipped out of the classroom, skirted the building and ran to the back wall. She managed to pull herself up and over and kept on running.

Crisis in Mali disrupting schooling of 700,000 children

 

 By UN News Centre

The education of some 700,000 children in Mali has been disrupted due to the violence in the country, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said last week, adding that there is an urgent need to rebuild schools, train teachers and provide learning supplies.

A student writes on a chalkboard at a school in Bamako, Mali. Credit: UNICEF/Tanya Bindra

Northern Mali has been occupied by radical Islamists after fighting broke out in January 2012 between Government forces and Tuareg rebels. The conflict uprooted hundreds of thousands of people and prompted the Malian Government to request assistance from France to stop the military advance of extremist groups.

Since the violence began over a year ago, at least 115 schools in the north were closed, destroyed, looted and sometimes contaminated with unexploded ordnance. Of the 700,000 children affected, 200,000 still have no access to school, UNICEF said in a news release.

Many teachers were among those displaced and have not returned to the northern part of the country. Instead, they are working in the already overcrowded schools in the south, which cannot cope with the amount of displaced students from the north.

Mali: Drinking water a priority in north

By ICRC

The humanitarian situation in northern Mali is still a source of concern. Displaced persons in the north-east corner of the country lack food and water. The ICRC and the Mali Red Cross are working to help people who have been affected by the conflict.

"The country is facing a difficult humanitarian situation," said Jean Nicholas Marti, the head of the ICRC regional delegation for Mali and Niger. "In the northern region, access to drinking water is still a big worry for recently displaced people in Tinzawatene, close to the Algerian border and in some other towns such as Ménaka, Timbuktu or Gao."


Aid distribution site Konna, Mali
Credit: ICRC

Teams of relief workers from the ICRC and the Mali Red Cross have handed out jerrycans and water purification tablets to almost 5,400 displaced persons in Tinzawatene. They are also repairing wells in the Akharabane and Achibriche areas, which are also near to the Algerian border, where there has been an influx of displaced persons. The situation is particularly worrying because residents are having to share their meagre resources with the newcomers.

Mali: ICRC visits detainees

By ICRC

The ICRC has been able to visit people detained in central Mali in connection with the conflict, in order to monitor their treatment and conditions of detention. At the same time, the organization is helping people who have returned to their homes in central Mali, after having fled the recent fighting.

Mopti sub-delegation Head Philippe Mbonyingingo explains.