Outside in

The road to Lugufu

About a two-hour's drive south of Kigoma there is a camp called Lugufu. It is populated by Congolese citizens and the landless children they have born there - approximately 61,000 people in total - some of whom have lived in the area for fifteen years or more. The camp is funded by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and is more commonly referred to as a "refugee camp."

I visited there last week to escort two visitors and to learn more about my organization's programs serving the refugees. It was an experience I will never forget.

Let me begin by saying that it is currently the dry season in Tanzania. Dry meaning no rain. Dry meaning I had lived here for five weeks and hadn't seen a drop; barely even a cloud in the sky.

As I stepped out of the Land Rover and approached the mud-brick and wood-beam schoolhouse, I heard a dull clap from the clouds above. I grabbed my jacket, and stepped into the classroom.

Approximately one-hundred students had gathered to welcome us, singing songs about the environment and acting-out a play about the perils of bushmeat hunting. As they clapped, so did the thunder outside. As our cameras flashed, so did the lightening. More clouds rolled-in and I noticed that they were the same steel-gray shade as the corrugated tin roof above us.

The rain began to pour, and the louder the classroom grew, the louder the students sang, until it seemed that the students were riling-up nature, and vice versa. Hot, sweaty air in the classroom was replaced with fresh air that smelled of campfire smoke, and the sound became deafening with the children and the earth seeming to scream with joy that rain had come at last.

Somehow the storm and the singing ebbed and subdued in unison. We all walked outside together, getting our shoes muddy, laughing, and feeling a little more alive.

The fluctuations in weather here can either save or take lives. On this day, the contrast between the dusty afternoon and the post-rain paradise was matched only by the contrast felt in each of us.

After the rain