Oxfam is helping people displaced by fighting in Pakistan live with as much comfort and dignity as possible. But everyone is waiting for just one thing - the chance to go home.  Shumon Alam reports.

I am surprised and at the same time pleased when a guard stops me for my identification. I pass through a gate into a walled compound where long lines of white tents are set up on both sides of a pebbled path. In one corner children compete for their turn on the slides. To my left there are more rows of tents along a different path.

Hasan Jan (50), father of 4 and the leader of the ‘wash committee’ of the Umeed camp emerges from his tent to greet us. He proudly tells us, “I am lucky that I have my family in this camp. You will not find a camp like this any where.”

I could not disagree with him. Umeed is a small camp in Swabi district with 67 families. The camp is divided into rows, each identified as a ‘block’. Each block has about 8 -10 tents. Oxfam is responsible for providing water and sanitation facilities here: after every four or five tents, there are blue water tanks installed on a platform. After every few tents there are water points where women and children gather to wash dishes and clothes, bathe or collect water for their families.

Mr Jan is eager to give us a tour of the camp. As he walks through the camp he shows us a  water cooler, latrines and health points. “When the fighting started, I left my home and stayed with a relative for three days. That house was full already and I decided to come to this camp.” We have running water here, we get cooked food, we have separate areas for women to bathe. Our children have a school. I am lucky and thankful.” Even so, he thinks of his home in Swat. “You can give me all the things in the world but I still want to go back to my home. Here I feel like a refugee. You cannot call a tent your home.”

While Hasan Jan is extremely hopeful about returning home, Iqbal Khan  (37) worries about the future. He has been leaving in the camp with eight members of his family for almost a month. ” I think my living conditions are better than most people in other camps. But you need more than food and water.  I wanted to buy ice for water, but I don’t have money.”  He would like to work and move his family to a rented house. ” I cannot let my family live in a tent.  It costs 20,000 rupees (£160) to rent a room in this area. I look for work every day but no success. There is not much work in this area.” He is thinking of working for lesser wages than the current local rate of about 200 rupees. Iqbal will work for half that.

Hasan Jan agrees that these are the same worries for him but he refuses to dwell on them. “I can never have the things I had back home. But what I can do is make my second home as nice as possible for my family,” he says, spraying water on the top of his tent to cool down the heat inside, he added,  “I know all this is temporary and this helps me to pass my days.”

He walks us out of the camp, shakes my hands and returns to his work. On the way back to the office, I see hundreds of tents on the side of the road. These tents don’t have any water points or bathing areas. They do not have any playground equipment or schools for their children. These makeshift tents of cloth and sticks create a sense of privacy. Home is where you have privacy from the rest of the world.  Whatever their living conditions, all the displaced people are aware of how futile it is to attempt to create a home from home here. They are all waiting for one event - the day when they can go back to their home. They all take solace knowing that it is only a temporary situation.

Pakistan conflict: Oxfam’s response

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