The other day an Oromo refugee man upset over the fact that we wouldn’t help him pay for his medication pulled out a knife and threatened to stab a coworker of mine. Our security guard had been chatting with his friends and didn’t notice what was happening, so staff had to handle it.
Nearly every day a Somali woman named Ayesha comes to the office to demand cash or material assistance. She sometimes uses her crutches as weapons when she gets angry. She also screams very loudly but last week I saw her in a relatively quiet mood. She was sitting in the waiting area, quietly criticizing everyone who passed. As an American coworker walked past her Ayesha said, “And that one is from Britain but she can’t even speak English.” She chose to harass me next, scolding me for having a Somali wife but not being able to speak Somali.
The agency I work for is responsible for most social programs in Basateen. That means, more than anything really, that there are many refugees who come to the office to ask for material assistance. To most refugees I’m sure that more cash, food, medicine, clothing, etc. will make life better. The situation in Basateen is absolutely dire but there are those suffering from trauma that tend to focus on material as the solution to everything painful. When we do give them what they say they need they’re often back in the office the next day to demand something else.
There are a few women we serve who are like this but there is one who's very extreme. Last week she came to the office to ask for help to get back to Somalia. She said she’s had enough of Yemen. This was after she had received cash, food, and mattresses – all of which she requested. She thought the material would ease her suffering. When it didn’t she blamed her pain on being in Yemen. She said she wanted to leave her children here and return to Somalia. She became so distressed and desperate for attention that she tried to undress in front of our staff in the office. She was screaming wildly as she tore off her clothes.
As if all this wasn’t enough, the office itself has been hard to bear. The electricity has been off for over three weeks now, which means that we cannot even run fans. If it’s 95 degrees outside, it’s easily 100 inside the office. The supervisor tells everyone at the morning meetings that the electricity will soon be back on. She implores everyone to be steadfast then leaves for her air-conditioned office in another area of Aden, far from Basateen.
There have also been stretches where the office is without any water. It’s hard to describe the feeling of using a “bathroom” that's easily over 100 degrees, whose walls are covered with all sorts of bugs, and doesn’t have any water. Luckily the malaria medication I'm taking has plugged me up.
The apartment the agency set me up in has cockroaches and rats. Worse, there’s a mosque directly across the street whose loudspeakers are level with my bedroom window. Around 4:30 every morning I wake up when they turn the speakers on. I can hear the click and then the static. Then we have to listen to some poor, tone deaf elderly man do his best adhan. The mosque also broadcasts every prayer, every khutba (sermon), and every Qu’ran class during the week. I stopped going to the mosque in Chicago because I felt like I was constantly being yelled at. This seems to be my punishment.
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