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Adephine speaks softly. She pulls on her mother Elisabeth, slipping behind her as soon as the gathering of people at this remote MSF health clinic in Tanzania increases.
A refugee camp may limit the movement of people, but it can do nothing to prevent the hopes and aspirations of a 12-year-old girl from coming out of its dark and dark limits. Adephine often leaves her imagination flying outside the Nduta refugee camp in northwestern Tanzania, where she has been living since January 2017, when her mother fled violence in Burundi. In a place far away from the camp, she dreams of becoming a doctor one day.
As she says that, she gains confidence and her eyes look straight into your eyes. In the camp, she takes classes in English, French, basic mathematics and science, but says with a touch of melancholy: "We are often punished at school and I do not like it.
It is not only these daily punishment experiences that threaten to dampen the spirit of children like Adephine, but the hard work of living in a place where rationing is the norm can stifle any trace of ambition. Adephine's father and his two brothers and sisters only joined the family in the camp later when the registration stopped.
"My husband is not registered and therefore can not get help," says Adephine's mother Elisabeth. "We share the food we receive from us". A small piece of land around their modest two-room house in the camp provides some green vegetables and beans. "But that's not enough," says Elisabeth.
More than 230,000 Burundians in three camps in Tanzania will remain dependent on much-needed humanitarian aid until long-term solutions are found. But for now, they are in desperate need of support. This little-talked crisis continues to be miserably funded, revealing major gaps in the humanitarian response. Limited food, poor living conditions and poor sewage management are recipes for outbreaks. The Nduta refugee camp, where MSF is the main health care provider, has recently experienced a spike in diarrhea cases, but our teams have been able to react quickly and stem the spread of the disease.
Back at the health clinic, Adephine plays with a capsule strip. "When you're sick, you can get treatment," says his mother, Elisabeth. But she would like them to have more variety in the food than they received in the camp. Adephine, her younger sister, Rachel and Elizabeth, seem composed. What the future holds for them remains shrouded in uncertainty. But with those dreams that take you away, there's always that little relief to escape, even briefly, and escape the harsh reality of the camp.
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