Personalizing space – creating your home in a refugee camp

Introduction.

A refugee camp is a place where people come to or where they are sent to when they are for some reason forced to abandon the place they used to call their home.

There are many reasons why this can happen, but one common reason is a conflict or a war that makes the environment unsafe and the chances of supporting yourself limited. Such is the case on the border of Somalia and neighbouring countries where hundreds of thousands of people live in the various refugee camps as a result of the ongoing war in Somalia. People that come to these camps are at first often forced to wait outside the camp for some time before entering, and then have to make their home by any means possible, often under a tree, sometimes for a period of three months.

Temporary solutions and how they affect the refugees.

Upon being admitted into the camp they are if at all possible presented with a sort of temporary solution for their housing, often a tent of some sort, or maybe a shelter of some kind. The practical problem is that these solutions are of course intendended for short time use, and with time and a prolonged stay they start to fail in their function of sheltering their inhabitants, often as a result of excessive heat or heavy rains.

The more personal and often mental problems arising with this prolonged stay, is that as people are forced to live in this paradox of temporary and permanent, they are unable to create a safe and reliable environments for their home. They are of course very much out of control of their lives, and they are dependent on outside help for food and shelter. With a prolonged stay under those circumstances they become passive and feel trapped, insecure and sometimes unsafe. This affects them gradually with time, so as a result they may experience a severe loss of identity and dignity.

They are therefore, both on a practical and personal level, in need of a more permanent solution to their housing situation, a solution that allows them to develop their home throughout their stay in the camp.

Creating a home.

But this home is not only a place, it is also the cluster of feelings associated with it as well as the objects you use to make up your home. It is very much a state of mind and it is also a reflection of your personality. It is therefore in the end all about personalizing the space or environment which you inhabit. Refugees that live in a camp have, as a rule, very little control of their lives and it is vital to use every opportunity to increase this control, and one way is to increase the influence they have in building and organizing their own environment.

Having come from agriculturally potential areas, many of the refugees find the policy of the camp frustrating as it denies them opportunities for self-initiatives, enterprise and development in the country of asylum, when at the same time humanitarian assistance is limited. This frustration is costing many refugees their self-esteem and and leaves them hopeless and unprepared for the future.

As a result, a significant portion of today’s refugees have severe psychosocial and physical health concerns. In a camp such as the camps on the border of Somalia and neighbouring countries, “the monotony in life and unemployment, as well as dependence on aid with no freedom to earn a livelihood, are the basic reasons for depression,”

Involvement.

Learning something and having something to do is an important factor against depression and in keeping your identity and dignity. When you build or make something yourself, you know how it works and it becomes a part of you; it makes it easier for you to personalize your space and create your home..

Helping each other in this process also brings you closer to others and you get to know each other, thereby increasing the safety of the camp.. When you build your house yourself you also feel good about yourself and you have a purpose.Building a house and creating your own home thereby gives you control over a part of your life.

Receiving education and educating others on various ways of solving practical problems concerning houses is also an important factor in being able to repair and develop your house or home during different stages of a prolonged stay. As it is now and as time goes by, in many cases,the temporary shelter becomes worse, made up of sticks, bits of plastic, old clothes (including stretched and halved designer jeans), most with gaps in the walls and the roofs.

Possible solutions.

What could be part of the solution is a sort of a upgradable housing system and a part of the research for the practical outlook of such a system might also be extensive research into what components the inhabitant of the camp regard necessary for building a home at each stage of their stay in the camp. This system would incorporate the involvement of the refugees and makes the housing upgradable with each period of the stay in the camp, a system that builds on the existing structure but improves it and adapts it to different needs.

In this way,hrough focusing on the importance of the refugee’s own collaboration and involvement in creating their own environment they gain more control of their lives in a very difficult situation and as a result make it easier for them to maintain their identity and dignity.

Adaptable housing to suit your needs.

One solution is an upgradable housing system and this system would incorporate the involvement of the refugees and makes the housing upgradable with each period of the stay in the camp, a system that builds on the existing structure but improves it and adapts it to different needs.

The starting point could still be the tent, but that can be used as a roof or a cover during later stages. Although building knowledge exitsts in all countries, building material can often be hard to find, as is the case in these refugee camps in Kenya.The idea is then to have some sort of mold units, made up of recyclable material such as cardboard, which people can then use the local material that is at hand, such as straw and mud, to make more solid. This way the material brought to the site does not have to be brought back,.which simplifies things. This way it is also possible to expand or change the dwelling as time passes, to make it better suit the inhabitants needs.

Establishing the needs and wishes of the refugees.

Usually when disaster happens or new refugees appear, resecue organizations offer the same tents or solutions to them and the refugees are forced to live in the tents even for a longer period. The needs have changed, but the help they get is still the same. Resecue organizations spend similar amount of money and effort, but the help they provide doesn’t really meet refugees’ needs.

Therefore, we try to find the way to know or understand more about what the real needs are in their daily life depending on different time spans.

Communication Card includes different types of housing system, from temporary to permanent, and also from different areas and culture. We hope to use these cards to have a dialogue with refugees. In this way, resecue organizations can understand more about refugees’ situation before they act and it can help to develop a more suitable housing system.

Clip 1.

This is a short film about living in circumstances that are supposed to be temporary but are in fact permanent, the effects this has in creating a home and a way of making this easier.

Clip 2.

This is about the difference in trying to repair a failing temporary solution and building an upgradable home that is adapted to the time spent in the camp.

Clip 3.

This is about an idea of a sort of visuell questioning system in order to assess the needs and wishes of the camps inhabitants during different periods of their stay.

Clip 4.

This short movie explains in a simple way an idea of one way of building an upgradable home that is customized to the inhabitants needs at different stages of their stay.

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