Women surviving hard times in Benue IDP camps

Living condition has worsened for the internally displaced people in Benue State following the cash crunch. In this report, the women in the Benue IDP camp share their stories on survival.

Amid the cash crunch, life has dealt a double blow on Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in Benue State.

However, to survive the hardship, most women living with their households in the camp have devised a means to feed their families.

Some of the women have taken to menial domestic jobs around their host communities while others are hired to work in people’s farm at the urban areas for a fee.

Our correspondent reports that at the LGEA Camp in Ugba, the headquarters of Logo Local Government Area, the women amid cash scarcity settled for combing the sandy environment around rice or grain grinding mills.

They resorted to gathering leftover grains from grinding mills which they process manually for food and income, especially as donors rarely visit the camp to distribute food and non-food items to them due to naira scarcity.

To this end, the women share their stories of surviving the hard times against all odds.

Musuma Gbawase, 32, gathers rice, soybean, bambara nuts and maize from “Barada”—where wholesellers stock their goods to resell at higher prices. Oftentimes, she goes to grinding mills to gather remnants of grain.

She gets back to the camp and goes through the tedious process of sorting the grains, then selling some at the market while reserving a part to feed her family.

“We’ve been here for six years. My family of 15 including my husband and children, relies on this (remnants) for survival, especially with the cash crunch biting us harder.

“We use the money I make from selling the grain to buy what we don’t have in camp and then eat the rest of the grains. That’s how

we survive here,” the petit woman said.

Gbawase noted that their biggest challenge remained lack of food as she pleaded with government to ameliorate their accommodation challenge by providing them with better space to sleep, farm implements and to pay school fees for their children.

Charity Uwom, 25, who also engaged in same venture as Gbawase, was cooking yam porridge when our correspondent caught up with her at the camp.

She narrated that the only means of survival for most women like her in the camp was to wake up very early in the morning and scout for crumbs at the grinding mills around the host community.

Uwom explained that when people come to grind their grains, there were usually some which fall off the engines and would later be discarded into the dustbin by owners of the mill.

“So, we will standby to gather all those leftovers—a mixture of rice, bambara nuts, soybean and maize— among others. We bring the mixture home as you can see for manual processing by first filtering away stones and sand.

“Afterwards, we separate the grains, wash and dry it in the sun. When that is done, we keep some portions for food and then take the rest to market to sell. We later

use the proceeds from the sales to buy things like soup condiments to make food for our families,” Uwom added.

Most of the women at the camp were seen in the heat of the day, working on their grains in order to get it ready for the next market day.

Jessica Halavaan, 32, who has lived in the camp since 2018, said not much money was realised from selling the grain but it was usually enough to put food on their table at least twice a day.

According to Halavaan, “those of us who don’t go out to gather leftover grains, trade in fire woods. We go to nearby bushes to get the woods and retail same for income.

“Living for women at the camp is extremely hard. You can see that we are not living in good accommodation. This old classroom with ripped off roofs is where we’ve called home for the past five years and not everyone has a space in it.

“Others depend on that ramshackle (points at a net tent) covering as shelter, and that’s where they sleep with their families. We’re just surviving by doing all kinds of menial jobs to generate income to buy food.”

The women also said that their deserted villages were still not safe to return to as those who even went there to fetch food for their families at the camp never got back alive.

“They were killed by armed attackers,” one of the women, Msendo said.

Corroborating the women, the camp chairman, Samuel Butu said their biggest challenge at the camp remained food and water. “We are over 150 people in this camp but we lack food and water. We appeal to government to bring us food.”

In the same vein,

Terkimbi Tseem, who lives in the camp with his wife and eight children, lamented the lack of food and shortage of water.

Tseem alongside other men at the camp who

include Ernest Aondoaver and Unongo Daniel, do menial jobs such as pushing wheel barrow, clearing grasses, empty soakaways and working on people’s farm to earn a living.