27 September 2010

Kassala, Sudan: In the barren outskirts of Kassala in eastern Sudan, Shagarab Refugee Camps 1, 2 and 3 house some 22,000 refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Over the 40 years the camps have existed, the sparse vegetation has been completely depleted for use as firewood and building materials.

Therefore, community elders and other dwellers came out enthusiastically to help plant more than 600 terminalia mentalis tree seedlings throughout the camps at the end of August. The refugees joined personnel from UNHCR, UNDP, FAO, ILO as well as UNV volunteers and Shagarab camp authorities. 

Staff from Human Appeal International, a UK charity, and Sudan’s Commissioner of Refugees (COR), Forestry National Corporation (FNC) and El-Sugya, a water and sanitation NGO, also took part.

By planting the seedlings, the camp dwellers demonstrated their self-reliance in beautifying and eventually providing shade to the camps’ amenities and facilities, which include schools, markets, a clinic and other services.

The trees will mitigate Sudan’s desertification due to global warming.  The refugees have shown their host country that camp inhabitants are not only receiving Sudan’s hospitality, but also contributing to its welfare as well as their own by planting and maintaining the trees.

This project was the brain child of Nigerian Murdakai Titus, an international UNV volunteer, who is a UNHCR Associate Eligibility Officer in Kassala, Sudan.  It is the culmination of his pledge, made during UNV’s 2009 Volunteering for our Planet campaign, to use voluntary action to improve the environment and help fight climate change.

Under the auspices of UNHCR, Murdakai visits refugee camps in eastern Sudan, where he ensures that the field offices of Sudan’s COR follow the appropriate operating procedures and meet the international standard for determining someone’s refugee status.

Murdakai observed that while the crowded camps were almost treeless, some trees had managed to survive the quest for wood. Among these was the terminalia mentalis tree, common to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city and his hometown. It even grows in his garden. 

Murdakai was inspired to provide a species of seed native to Sudan and mobilize and collaborate with Sudanese forestry experts and refugee communities to make his pledge a reality.

On his next trip home to Nigeria, he found his terminalia mentalis tree in bloom and brought thousands of seeds back to Sudan. Too late to include in the  2009 International Volunteer Day tree planting in Khartoum, Ida Munck, UNV Programme Officer with UNV’s Country Office Team in Sudan, suggested he bring the Nigerian seeds on to Kassala for some future use.

Murdakai approached Del Amieyth Atem, a manager with the Sudan Forestry National Corporation about planting and nurturing seeds, then transplanting trees in the refugee camps. “He agreed on the condition that the FNC first test the seeds to guarantee they would germinate and survive there,” Murdakai said.   

A few weeks later, the forestry manager delivered the news that the test planting had been a success and that his corporation would support Murdakai’s tree planting project.  About 1,500 seedlings were planted in the FNC central nursery in the town of Fau, tended by some refugee women.

The seedlings were conveyed to the Shagarab camps with the assistance of Ibrahim Abdalla, the COR project manager for the Girba, Kilometer 26 and Shagarab refugee camps where 624 were planted during the August tree planting. The rest were dispersed throughout the surrounding area. 

Murdakai found another ally in Wegdan Abdelrahm Idriss, head of the FAO office in Kassala. He had heard her speak stirringly about her work to involve and engage refugee women.  “When I approached her about the tree planting, she embraced the idea,” he recalled.

“Wegdan set up a tree nursery at the Girba refugee camp between Kassala and Shagarab, where 500 seedlings were planted and are now being tended by refugee women. Some 500 are expected to be ready to transplant soon,” he said.  The seedlings will be sent to the Shagarab camps, which still needs more vegetation, or to other camps in the region. 

For the August event, FAO also provided 150 hand tools which Sudanese forestry personnel trained Shagarab refugee camp inhabitants to use to plant and maintain the trees.

The newly planted trees face a few challenges; the water and fencing needed in their earliest vulnerable stages is in short supply in the camps.  However, Murdakai is optimistic that the various stakeholders have anticipated most contingencies.

Iklas Omer Suleiman, with the Sudan forestry management corporation, has suggested that camp inhabitants be encouraged to conduct their daily ablutions such as foot washing beside the seedlings, particularly in the plants’ early stages. Then, the run-off water will be enough for the trees to survive.
The forester has also assured the dwellers that any type of fencing may be used to protect the seedlings, whether it is made of iron, wood or grass.