Doctors Without Borders brought its exhibit “A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City” to Loring Park September 27-31, 2007. It is an outdoor educational experience that strives to recreate some of the realities of living in a real refugee camp. The exhibit is made up of materials used by MSF (Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières) in its emergency medical work around the world, including emergency refugee housing, a food distribution tent, water pump, health clinic, vaccination tent, therapeutic feeding center, and a cholera treatment center.

In the middle of a cold winter day, police and military troops arrived at our door, giving our family five minutes notice to leave our home. My mind suddenly filled with questions, uncertainty and then extreme fear. What do I take? Will I be safe? What will I eat? How do I find water? Can I get medical care? Where will I live?

The people from our area walked for eight hours through blowing snow to reach a refugee camp on the border just inside Albania. Identification, passports, jewelry, anything of value was taken from us. Our homes were destroyed by fire shortly after leaving them.

1. How do I stay safe?- We walked one meter apart from each other to avoid land mines as they are everywhere. There are three different types of mines, all meant to maim not kill, small ones used to cut off arms and legs in order to make a person unuseful, tall ones to cut a body in half, tiny colorful balls that are used to entice and blow up children. In order to de-mine an area, needles are put in the ground, inch by inch, until they discover something hard, then they attempt to blow it up. Being this is such a laborious job, it is rarely done.
   
2. Where do I live?- We were given a canvas tent and a blue tarp for the bottom of the tent, eleven people to a tent. Each person was given two blankets. My family consisted of five people and we shared with six strangers. It started raining immediately and everything got wet. Early the next morning we started digging trenches, so that the water would run away from the tent.
3. Where will I find food?- One BP 5 package was given to each and every person a day to eat. This was a solid formula of multiple mixed carbohydrates, not a bit tasty! After three days we had access to beans, rice and potatoes. We were given a refugee ID, then we were allowed to go to get our daily ration. We needed to use everything, every day so that there wouldn't be fighting or thievery among us. We were always hungry, very hungry. When a plane dropped a pallet of corn, within one hour there was not one kernel left on the ground. After one month, make-shift kitchens were set up so that groups could fix food.
4. Where do I find water?- Normally a person uses about a hundred gallon of water a day. A refugee gets five gallons a day, and sometimes only one gallon when water was in short supply. This must be used for drinking, cooking and cleaning, besides cleaning ourselves. With this amount, showers are not possible. Water bladders are filled, a chemical added to help make it safe. Rainwater was saved to use.
5. Where can I go to the bathroom?- We dug a deep wide hole, put a base over the hole with another smaller hole in it. We used one of the many blue tarps and wrapped it around four poles and presto you have a bathroom, eastern style, meaning you stand or squat over the hole. We were given a hole cover to place over the hole when not in use to keep the flies and diseases away. Building a wood outhouse is not possible as people would tear it down and burn the wood. When the bathroom is full, we then cover it with dirt and dig a new one. Our bathroom was used by twenty to fifty people, obviously there were always long, long lines.
6. How will I cope?- The humanitarian law mandates to protect and provide for refugees’ mental health. We have one psychologist, who sees all of us every morning for one month. She has the children use drawing as a therapy, to help meet their needs, as many have watched as their parent or grandparents were slaughtered. We adults meet in groups to talk about our ordeals and try to help each other. After one month, hopefully we were cured! The psychologist asked our leader to stay with her and help out with others as he was a good listener. He was happy to be of help as there is nothing to do during the day. Boredom is a constant enemy for everyone.

   To keep busy, we set up schools with people teaching what they knew, up through primary. If you were high school age, to get any education, you would need to go out of camp to a city and attend a private school which would cost a lot of money. Rarely does anyone go.

7. How will I protect my children from diseases?- Vaccines arrive in cold packs and need to be used immediately. Nurses give a thousand shots a day. Lines form early, someone will clean the area, next stop gives them the shot, promptly placing the needle in special box for proper disposal, and lastly we are were given a card with the vaccine information on it. Children are given all the normal vaccines one would need.
8. What if I am malnourished?- Language differences are a big issue, for the children are given picture books to help them understand. Bands, like the ones you are given when you enter a hospital, are used to measure a child’s arm at the elbow. If they are malnourished, they are fed “plump it up” packages of a peanut butter like substance. They need to come to the tent each day and eat there package of “plump it up”, while the workers check on them.
9. What if I get sick?- There is a medic tent where we will be treated for our simple illnesses. We are also shown books in different languages to help with our language differences. We all receive a vaccination for measles, as a case of measles could wipe out our entire camp. The tent has two doctors and five nurses on duty around the clock.
10. What about cholera?- If we come in with a mild case of diarrhea we are given a package solution to drink at the tent. We continue to come until we are better. If we have severe diarrhea, we will be place in a bed in a tent with IV solution given to us until better. The tent is kept extremely sterile, using gloves, scrubs, booties, and the waste taken to a special area and placed in a hole and buried. Plastic body bags are kept for those who does not live.
11. How long will I be here?- We all know that Palestine has been at war for fifty years … we hope we won't be here that long. Though our basic needs are met, boredom and the longing for our own home makes each day very difficult. We try to stay positive. The day that the Kosovo border opened, we left immediately, even though there was nothing to go back to; it was our homeland. We took a tent, walked back the eight hours to our village and started to rebuild our lives. I continue to live there. As a thank you to all that MSF did for me and my family, I came on this tour, as a volunteer, to tell you my story. Please do not forget about the thirty three million people today displaced by wars.

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Nancy Lynch says, "Joy is being a wife, Mom of fourteen, eight with varying disabilities and living at home, Grandma of thirteen, and Great Grandma of three. Serenity is listening and watching the ocean, alone, at our home on Maui. Passion is friends, photography, reading, swimming and children." Nancy can be reached at nalynch@aol.com.