A Camp they Called Compo - Location: Gezira, Sudan By Osama Mahmoud

08:21 PM April, 15 2018

Sudanese Online
Osama Mahmoud-
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Education was a big issue. School was far away from home. Home was in the middle of two big streams, an agricultural land where 1000s of families reside. The men and women work day and night growing different crops, cleaning, harvesting or fighting their way to open water channels to ensure a smooth irrigation session, mostly at night. Sweat, blood and tears plus the agony of an area infested by malaria, bilharzia and tape worms. The fruit of their labour neither belong to them nor shared equally with the owners, afterall they do not belong here. The land owners are doing them huge favour by providing part of there land as living accommodation.
As for the landlords, the nobles, they live far away from that land, where the local market, hospital, schools and communal facilities provide a much tolerable living.
As aforementioned, education is essential as the only hope to break the vicious cycle of the life within the camp. However, the obstacle being the amount of funding provided by the local authorities for the camp children to gain their basic education; this was next to nothing. In other words, the budget overlooked the children from the camps. Therefore, out of good will, school governing bodies, grant the limited spaces on the basis of favouritism. The rest of the kids have to join force with their parents to keep up with the lands maintenance. One does not have to look far to determine the camp residents backgrounds; almost all descends from the two very regions which the successive central governments neglected and / or waged war against (Darfur and Kordofan).

The camp experience is yet another form of segregation inflected on the marginalised people of Sudan since the beginning of the neocolonialism post 1956 by the elites and their cliques.

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