South Sudanese refugees: "tell the Pope about us!"

(Vatican Radio) When Vatican Radio’s Sean Patrick Lovett asked adolescents from South Sudan crowded in desolate refugee camps whether there was anything he could do to help, they said: ‘Tell people about us! Tell people that we are here – and tell the Pope! Tell the Pope that what he says is important and if he keeps saying how important it is to find peace and stability in Sudan, sooner or later someone will listen, and maybe we can go back home…”.

Lovett, Director of Vatican Radio’s English Programme, was in Northern Uganda at the invitation of two Ugandan bishops who run local radio stations in the Northwest of the country. Together with a small team of communications experts, Lovett was there to share experience and give training workshops in radio to over 60 professional journalists and technicians.

“We taught them as much as we could in terms of radio production” he says – “and learnt as much in the opposite direction”. But what was most moving and most enriching in terms of humanity – he says – was witnessing, first hand, the dramatic reality of tens of thousands of women, children and adolescents who have fled their homes because of conflict, and are now holed up in desolate camps, far from the eyes and the minds of the world…

Listen to the interview…

Working with the radio professionals in Uganda, Lovett says was ultimately enriching for all: “One of the things that I learned and that I would love to put into practice here is what they call ‘rural debates’ in which they take the radio out into the countryside, into the villages, and they give people an opportunity to speak openly about issues that are closer to them, they help people to articulate their problems and their ideas in an open forum which then they re-broadcast to those same areas”. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do something similar” he says.

The journey to Uganda brought Lovett into close contact with the reality of refugees. Remarking on the fact that although, at the radio we focus our attention every day on the situation of South Sudan and other conflict torn countries, he says: “it is another thing to stand there in the middle of the mud and slush and filth, and look around you and see and experience and hear the suffering that these people are going through”. He says that to be fair one must acknowledge the fact that the institutions do what they can. But Lovett continues the refugee reality "is so vast, it is so out of control and there is a limit to what a government or a humanitarian institution can do”. He explains that the Ugandan government makes available swathes of land and then, basically, lets the people get on with it.

“People live in a limbo – it’s a non-place” Lovett says. “They can’t go back to where they came from, they can’t go forward…” And he recounts that they have nothing. Even the things we take for granted every day like basic food, healthcare, education – “They have nothing”. He says in the refugee camps there are not even tents, the people have to cut down the trees themselves and build their shelters with mud and leaves. They dig holes to find water and perhaps some humanitarian operator will come in and build a well that will serve 2 or 3 thousand people.

Lovett says that “in the camps there are small children, women and teenagers. The men are either dead or fighting”. The children he says are resilient and pass the time with simple objects that they transform into toys. The women are always busy: they collect water and firewood, they cook, they wash what they have and take care of the children. There are hardly any old people because to be able to reach a refugee camp "you have to be able to run". “What hurt me most” – Lovett says – “were the young people, the adolescents, with all their adolescent issues, sitting there looking into space, with nothing to do. They don’t know how long they are going to be there”.

He tells of one camp he visited in which the adolescents passed the one book in English they possessed passing it one to the other. Although the subject matter was irrelevant to them (it was a book of English idioms”), he says "it is all they have to study with and it is vitally important because that book is what is going to teach them English and one day, when they leave the camp they will know English and it is their point of reference and motivation for while they are there".

Lovett explains the refugee camps he visited are in the Northern part of Uganda and most of the refugees are coming in from South Sudan. He says recent figures by the Red Cross point to some 60,000 refugees from that area, but he points out – no one really knows because the area is so vast. He says it is thought that some 150 people are coming in per day.

“In the Lugbara language” Lovett says – “the language spoken in Northern Uganda, there is no word for ‘hope’. You can’t translate the word ‘hope’. You live for the present, you subsist, and you do what you have to do to get through today”. He tells of a woman he came across in one of the camps who had a bullet in her leg: “they had to carry her 8 Km to the next camp because there was a health center there”. He says the people are really concerned about the impending rainy season because the rains cause the open latrines to overflow triggering disease where malaria is already rife and where no basic medicines are available.

In this panorama of despair and desolation, Lovett says the one contact with the outside world for the refugees is through the Catholic catechists – because the priests are too few and far between– but the catechists he says are extraordinarily energetic, vital and courageous people who end up being the spokespeople for the refugees regardless of their religion.

And then – Lovett adds – their direct contact with the outside world is the radio: “small transistor radios, battered transistor radios with a piece of wire coming out of the back as an aerial. That’s all they have to tell them about what’s going on in the country they come from, or to give them some sense of being part of a wider world”. And he says it’s not just about information and news: “it’s about consolation and encouragement”.

“One of the eye-openers for me” – Lovett says – “was to hear Vatican Radio’s programming”. Vatican Radio’s English for Africa Section programmes are re-broadcast on the local radio stations and are listened to by the refugees in the camps. It is so important he says, because “it reminds them that there are people out there who can hear them”.

“And when I asked some teenagers in the camp if there was anything I can do they said yes: tell people about us! Tell people that we are here – and tell the Pope! (They know who the Pope is because they listen to Vatican Radio broadcasts). Tell the Pope that what he says is important and if he keeps saying how important it is to find peace and stability in Sudan, sooner or later someone will listen, and maybe we can go back home…”.