Refugee Stories: Voices From Kakuma

We often imagine refugee camps as lines of tents. But Kakuma, in north-western Kenya, home to nearly 300,000 people, is more like a city. Media coverage of refugees often focuses on the extreme and the exceptional, leaving the daily lives of most displaced people far less visible. Many do not live in the West, but in large camps such as Kakuma.

To explore what life in such a place looks like, and how it can be seen beyond familiar images, University of Oxford researchers and refugee filmmakers living in the camp drew on a survey of more than 1,000 households and selected five households from across Kakuma’s economic spectrum. Refugee Stories: Voices from Kakuma follows these five households as they tell their stories in their own words.

With little firewood left, Rose, among the poorest residents, cooks a single meal a day. She has never eaten in a restaurant. In a dimly lit room, Elizabeth reads the Bible while caring for a sick child. Ayen opens her home to an extended family, then borrows against next month’s aid after a robbery leaves them with too little to last. Living alone after his family was killed, Abdirizak sells cigarettes from his wheelchair. Maker, one of the better-off residents, works in a pharmacy, usually eats out, and misses his family.

Together, these portraits reveal Kakuma as a complex social world full of different kinds of lives.