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Emmanuel : Stories : Makindu Refugee Camp (1942 - 1945)
Makindu Refugee Camp (1942 - 1945)
This story was compiled from letters salvaged from a scrap heap by Constantine G. Emmanuel when he was General Manager of Dwa Plantations, Ltd., in Kenya (1978-1990). The first two letters, dated 1942, are correspondence between Mr. A. B. C. Smith, Dwa General Manager, and Mr. Donovan, Makindu Camp Commandant. The third, dated 1945, is a letter to Mr. Smith from the United Nations representative at Makindu.
By Gregory C. Emmanuel, February 2001
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The three letters on which this story is based are brief and to the point, yet they tell more by what is left out than by what's in them. Click on the image thumbnails above to read the letters.
About 23 miles northwest of Kibwezi at Makindu, the British (and later the United Nations) maintained a refugee camp for people displaced by the war. There were Greek women and children in the camp, but where they came from and if there were any men or people of other nationalities with them we don't know. If there were any men, they were most likely housed separately from the women, perhaps in another camp.
Even today Makindu is just a name next to a dot on the map, in the middle of nowhere, sandwiched between the Athi River to the east and the Chyulu Hills to the west, just another stop on the way to Nairobi or Mombasa. Just like today, in the 1940s it must have been a collection of a few tin and grass-roofed mud or cement-block huts boiling in the heat and choking in the red dust of the Mombasa-Nairobi road. Around Makindu the thorny scrub bush is thick and stretches away monotonously in all directions; nothing relieves the eyes in the glaring light. On a clear day, looking southwest towards Tanganyika one sees the blue mass of Mt. Kilimanjaro shimmering above the bush in the heat-haze.
Was the camp a collection of huts and tents arranged in precise, military rows? Was it fenced in? Life in the camp couldn't have been easy or comfortable. The refugees were probably provided with only the basic amenities and food was not plentiful because it was subject to war-time rationing. The flies, mosquitoes, spiders, scorpions, ticks and snakes that abound in the area added to the misery. At night they must have woken to the howling of the jackals and hyenas fighting over scraps of refuse. It's hard to imagine the surreal situation of these women who found themselves refugees in a strange land, among people with very different customs and who didn't speak their language .
What became of these women and their children, how many were there, who were they, did they speak any English or Swahili, were they ever repatriated to Greece, are any still alive? And what of their children? Did they have toys to play with? Was there a school in camp, and if so, who taught them?
In the beginning of March I emailed the United Nations requesting information about the refugee camp in Makindu. They haven't answered me yet, but when they do their response and any resulting correspondence will be added here.
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