Collection
Status
Available
Description
A researcher for Human Rights Watch describes the refugee camp in Dadaab, home to those fleeing civil war in Somalia, and highlights the life of various residents, including a former child soldier, a schoolgirl and a youth leader. --Publisher.
Media reviews
It is a portrait, beautifully and movingly painted. And it is more than that. At a time when newspapers are filled with daily images of refugees arriving in boats on Europe’s shores, when politicians and governments grapple with solutions to migration and erect ever larger walls and fences, it is
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an important reminder that a vast majority of the world’s refugees never get as far as a boat or a border of the developed world. They remain, like the inhabitants of Dadaab, in an indefinite limbo of penury and fear, unwanted and largely forgotten. Show Less
Rawlence’s account of this febrile life is nothing short of superb. His City of Thorns seems to be modelled on Katherine Boo’s insta-classic Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, and although Rawlence doesn’t quite possess Boo’s prose chops or mordant
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wit, he does compete round for round on embed and empathy. The detail he weaves into his nine intersecting narratives is so meticulously observed that his notebook stack must have resembled Tanzania’s not-so-proximate Mount Kilimanjaro. This is Refugees for Grown-ups – there are no pat bumper-sticker lines or cutesy take-aways, but a clear-eyed assessment of the immense, transformative migration that is leaving no corner of the Earth unchanged. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member Susan.Macura
This book looks at the lives of several people who live in Dabaab, a large refugee camp located in a desert in Kenya. The book describes how many of these people came to live there, what their lives were like once there and how the nation of Kenya, as well as the rest of the world, views and treats
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them. The author combines events from the world with the things that happened in Dababb in a highly readable and understandable way. While I had some doubts about this book when I first picked it up, I have gained a great deal of knowledge and understanding concerning this area of the world from this author’s perspective. The author is a great storyteller. Show Less
LibraryThing member dele2451
More proof that the people who control your food supply ultimately control you.
LibraryThing member BrittanyLyn
The stories of the inhabitants of the largest refugee camp in the world was heartbreaking. Whole generations that have been born in the camps and know no other way of life, with no "home" to go back to, either ravished by war or famine. This was a harrowing look at the limited opportunities
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available to the youth of the Dadaab camp, as well as the dangers and sub-standard living of day to day camp life. Show Less
LibraryThing member flashflood42
Powerful book on the Dadaab refugee camp for Somalis driven out of their country into Kenya because of drought and war. Yet this huge refugee camp in the desert is inhospitable in so many ways--corruption, lack of jobs, brutality and yet refugees come and come and come. Rawlence tells the stories
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of 9 inhabitants who struggle desperately--their reasons for being there, their life while there, and what happens to each--he also turns over his profit from the book to helping them. Youth leader becomes disillusioned, young teacher gets the education she needs to perhaps survive, etc. Rawlence also analyses the AID programs, the UN programs, and the Kenyan government, the Somali smugglers--all keeping these refugees poor, starving, and with no options. The book has no pollyanna ending as the struggle continues. Show Less
LibraryThing member mojomomma
About a dozen refugees are interviewed about their lives before and after they enter the Dadaab refugee camp on the Somalia-Kenya border.
LibraryThing member michigantrumpet
Ben Rawlence’s scrupulous (and sometimes dangerous) research informs his “City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp.” In 1992, Dadaab camp was built in Kenya at the southern border with Somalia. At its height, it contained over half a million souls.
We experience daily
These and others bring a humanity to a complex situation involving the UNHCR, other refugee and human rights agencies, multiple governments, and specifically the ever changing political scene in Kenya and Somalia. In the meantime, the resident refugees live lives of dignity, industry and courage filled with "impossible dreams and a nightmarish reality."
We experience daily
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life and travails there with people such as Gelud, forced as a child as a soldier into al-Shabaad, Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked insurgent terrorists. His escape puts him in danger should he ever return. Nisho, a porter with dreams of advancing in his native camp’s underground economy. Professor White Eyes, whose kindly acts are a beacon to his neighbors and the book’s readers. Muna, a Somalian Muslim, and Monday, a Sudanese Christian, whose very relationship puts them in danger of assassination from fundamentalist clans. These and others bring a humanity to a complex situation involving the UNHCR, other refugee and human rights agencies, multiple governments, and specifically the ever changing political scene in Kenya and Somalia. In the meantime, the resident refugees live lives of dignity, industry and courage filled with "impossible dreams and a nightmarish reality."
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ISBN
9781250067630