Desperate Africans seek unlikely refuge in Yemen
Reuters - February 27, 2008
Mohammed Assanali, 35, an ethnic Oromo, reflected on his 10 years in the camp after fleeing his homeland in Ethiopia, where he was suspected of backing the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front.
"Look at me," he laughed bitterly in a courtyard where he has planted saplings in the dirt. "Just I am playing with my children. It's a meaningless life. Sometimes it's darkness."
"NO FUTURE"
Assanali, like many of the 650 Ethiopians in Kharaz, dares not leave the camp for fear he might be caught and deported.
Refugees in Kharaz are marooned in futility, unable to go back to their insecure homelands or to find work in Yemen.
The Basateen slum -- which resembles a miniature Mogadishu minus the gunmen -- is more squalid, but Somalis there are less isolated and can at least seek casual work in Aden.
"I couldn't stand camp life," said a woman in a black scarf with orange flowers who gave her name as Fawzia. The 23-year-old has seven children and a runaway husband. She survives on casual domestic work, but has failed to pay her rent for six months.
"I hate myself, I hate my children, I have no future," she said vacantly. Beside her, a baby lay untended in its own vomit on the grubby blue carpet of her trash-filled shack ...