-Caveat Lector-
dispatch
Dispatches From the War Zone, Message 31
By Masha Gessen
To read these dispatches from the beginning, go to
http://www.slate.com/dispatches/99-03-31/dispatches.asp?iMsg=1
Message #31: April 28, 1999
From: Masha Gessen
To: Slate - dispatch
It has stopped raining, the mud has turned to dust, and, instead of
bringing relief to the refugee camps, this has brought heat.
Tensions flare all over. At Stenkovec-2, the second-largest of
Macedonia's refugee camps, I get into a shoving match with an
overeager security officer from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe. He has been trying, with varying success, to
keep people from entering the tent. Me, I just want information.
But then, so does everyone else.
In existence for nearly a month, the camps have taken on patterns
and a tempo of their own. Stenkovec-1, being the biggest, is most
like a city. People move about in a constant quest that almost
invariably ends in a queue or a crowd of people working their
elbows or--more and more often, it seems--in a scuffle. Lines form
for no reason--because there is a rumor of someone up ahead giving
out blankets or food or the names off the next airlift list. If
only someone knew for certain where the right place to go or who
the right person to ask was--but how can anyone know for certain?
Some young refugee volunteers have set up an information tent at
Stenkovec-1. The only problem is, they don't have enough
information. After two days in operation they told me the most
common question was where to get blankets: Some people, they say,
have been here for two weeks and still haven't found the blankets.
They send everyone to a particular tent--they've heard that's where
blankets are distributed. Is that official information? No, they
say, but that's what they've been told. Another common question is
where to get a list of everyone in the camp to try to find
relatives, but neither the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,
which registers camp newcomers, nor the Catholic Refugee Service,
which operates this particular camp, will give the volunteers the
lists. And then, they have an old man who has been kicked out of
his tent by a family that considers it theirs. And then there are
all these people who want to know how to get on an airlift.
I also want to know how people get on an airlift. At Stenkovec-2, I
saw people filling out forms and got in behind them--but these
turned out to be "Lost Child" forms. I was finally able to learn
that most airlift processing is done through Stenkovec-1, so I
headed there. Carolina Spannuth, a UNHCR protection officer,
explains the system: Coming into the camp, refugees register with
UNHCR and check off their country preferences on the back of the
form; then UNHCR prioritizes the cases, placing the sick and
vulnerable at the top and being careful not to separate families;
then the International Organization for Migration books them on
flights--sometimes directly, sometimes after the country in
question approves the choice. The IOM tent is right near UNHCR's,
and it is crowded with staff and with refugees who have found their
way in. Like all tents in this camp, it is stuffy and it smells:
Many of the refugees have not had a proper bath in a month, and,
though people manage to wash their clothes in what can generously
be called a creek, in a far corner of the camp, the cumulative body
odor in this camp is overwhelming. The IOM works a dozen notebook
computers in two shifts, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and they still have
enough of a backlog of names to fill planes and planes. There are
12 flights today--five to France, two to Turkey, one each to
Sweden, Holland, Norway, Finland, and the Czech Republic. Every
evening, lists of names for the next day's flights go up, alongside
waiting lists in case of no-shows--so there are no empty seats.
Each flight goes out with 15 or so passengers more than its
capacity would allow, because infants and toddlers can sit in their
mothers' laps.
But what is a refugee to do in the endless weeks of not knowing
whether he will ever get out of the camp? And what does the UNHCR
understand about Albanian families, where a second cousin is a
close relative? And what if the country options change, as they do
constantly? And, most important, what is the guarantee that the
piece of paper they fill out on arrival will not be lost or
trampled in the mud before it can translate into a seat on the
plane? This is why there is a crowd at the chain-link fence that
surrounds the registration area. Dozens of people find a way
in--tagging along with a journalist, or pretending to be one by
speaking a foreign language. While I stand in-between the tents
with Simona Opitz, IOM's public-information person, people come up
to us, one by one, until another small crowd forms.
A short, squat man with gray stubble of a consistent length all
over his head and his cheeks explains that he has been living in
Germany for 30 years but his wife and seven children are just down
the road, at Stenkovec-2. How is this possible? Well, he has had a
job with Volkswagen for this long, but he wanted his children to
grow up in Kosovo, so he built them a beautiful house and bought
them a good life and came to visit three times a year. His oldest
is 18 and his youngest is 4 months. How can he get them on an
airlift to Germany? No way, says Simona. UNHCR's definition of
keeping families together extends only to those who end up in the
camps together: not to the family members who are abroad. This is
an issue for the German government. The man says he knows: After he
flew here, having worked overtime to get the money to do it, he
went to the German Embassy--you have to get there at 4 a.m. to
queue up, you know--but there are hundreds of people like him
there. Simona confirms this: Family members are flying in from all
over the world, she says, from the United States, Sweden,
Germany--and it's always the same story, and nothing she or anyone
here can do. The man says he was able to get his wife and the baby
out of the camp for a day, to take them to the hospital--he feared
the 4-month-old would develop pneumonia--but then he had to bring
them back. "See, they were being lenient," Simona says to me,
meaning the camp authorities, who have orders to let people out
only if they have Macedonian relatives who have done the proper
paperwork before coming to claim their relations. I have heard of a
number of scams that people have invented to smuggle their friends
and loved ones out of the camps, but none of these would work for a
family.
A boy who can't be older than 19 comes up and tells a confused
story to justify his desperation to get near a computer with the
refugee database. First he claims he is a journalist, not a
refugee, then finally says he is a refugee who got here later than
his parents, who did not check off a country preference on the
form, so he needs to do it or the family won't get out. Simona's
credulity is tried, and she really shouldn't be doing this anyway,
but she takes down the family's information.
"So where do you want to go?"
"Austria."
"Do you have relatives there?"
"No."
"I think Austria is taking only the people who have relatives.
Where else?"
"Sweden, the UK."
"And?"
"I don't know. What do you suggest?"
This is when Simona finally loses her patience. I'm not sure
whether it's being treated like a waitress who might help create a
good meal or the absurdity of the very question that gets to her.
"Who are you, anyway?" she says. "I shouldn't be doing this at
all."
"OK," the boy responds. "Norway."
In the tent, an IOM coordinator checks the computer and tells her
the country preferences were entered: Like everyone else, the boy
just wanted to make sure his family was in the computer. "Stop
doing this," the coordinator tells Simona. But everyone who leaves
the tents seems to end up doing "this." Satko Mujagic, who fled
Sarajevo for Holland six years ago and is now working for the Dutch
immigration authorities here in the camp, takes down the names of
people who claim to have relatives in Holland. "It's like a
Schindler's List, that's how I think of it," he tells me. "They are
not going to die here, but still ..." It seems arbitrary and unfair
that he would help the people who happened to catch him by the
chain-link fence, but then, what kind of man would he be if he
refused?
He and I walk over to the spot where refugees board buses for the
airlifts. There are tearful goodbyes, final medical checkups, more
tearful goodbyes: These are relatives, friends, people who may have
shared food, water, or shelter on the journey from Kosovo. Today's
record number of flights is roughly equivalent to 15 buses, from
two camps, and there are 16 coming from the border today just to
Stenkovec-1. There is a rumor that, with no room in the tents, the
new arrivals will be sleeping under tarps. There is also a rumor
that a riot is brewing at Blace, the border crossing. In this dry
heat, rumors can catch fire quickly. In any case, the only
surprising thing about a riot at Blace would be that it would
happen now rather than at the beginning of the month, when some
relief workers actually persuaded the refugees to call off a
demonstration that had the clear potential of turning into a riot.
A journalist from the Sun and I agree to share a car to the border.
A bit later, when I find him to go to the border, he says, "No,
Richard Gere is coming." The potential for riots exists every day,
but Richard Gere comes only once. Sure enough, he pulls in, and is
immediately set upon by dozens of journalists. He shakes the hand
of an OXFAM representative and asks him for something--his vest,
perhaps, because the guy hands over his vest. Richard Gere poses in
it and gets back into the Jeep, which takes him to a far corner of
the camp, with journalists running alongside it. "Who was that?"
one of the Macedonian police reservists mobilized to guard the
camps asks another. "I don't know," his friend responds. "Bill
Clinton, I think."
There is a better chance Kosovars know who Richard Gere is:
Virtually everyone in Pristina used to have a satellite dish for
the TV, and pirate videos were always in abundant supply. But it
doesn't take a celebrity to create a crowd in the camp, and one
forms as soon as Gere is dropped off. Because this is just up the
path from the Israeli youth group's playground, most of the curious
are children. Gere drapes the OXFAM vest around one of them.
"Is there anything you can ask me for, that you need?" he asks.
A man pulls toward him through the crowd. "We are wondering how
long we are going to have to stay here in the camp."
"I don't know," Gere smiles a Richard Gere smile. "I just got here
myself, and I'm wondering how long I'm going to stay here."
I push my way out of the sweaty crowd and walk back. Just like a
city, the camp instantly reverts to its routine self, as though
nothing had happened. Kids are swimming and women washing clothes
in the littered, stinking creek. People are lining up for food.
Buses are unloading new arrivals, and I note that they are now
getting food, water, and blankets right when they get off the bus.
Behind me, my colleague from the Sun is interviewing a girl touched
by Richard Gere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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