At first glance, Farchana camp is pretty much what you’d expect.
The women spend hours hauling water.
The children play a lot of soccer
and if they’re lucky, go to school.
Once a month there’s a food distribution.
But mostly, you see people sitting under trees
and assume there’s nothing much to do.
You don’t realize that behind the scenes
almost everyone is working frantically.
Because you can’t survive inside the camp
without some form of extra cash.
If your goal is to make money
selling stuff is the way to go:
you have a captive audience of 20,000.
No matter how poor they are
they still need shoes,
and children’s clothes,
soap and toothpaste,
and candy.
Though if they can’t afford the commercial version
they can buy the local brand.
Wedding dresses
and cheaper ones for daily use.
Even the occasional luxuries,
like noodles,
pencils,
and tea.
There’s local honey in those soda bottles.
And toothbrushes
either imported
or the poor-man’s brand.
The problem is, you need money to buy your merchandise
and most refugees arrive at the camp without a lot of cash.
A few have managed to pool money from their extended family
until they can open up their own store.
Muhammad sells everything from batteries
to bubble gum.
He learned the trade by working in an older brother’s shop before the war.
By now he’s saved enough to hire a truck
and order his supplies from Abeche town
three hours away.
His sons do all the heavy lifting.
Muhammad just shows up to keep an eye on things.
He mostly sells to other store keepers
so he no longer has to sit inside his shop
and wait for customers to come to him.
The extra cash has allowed him to his hand at other businesses
like money changing.
And focus on growing his family.
With more money, he can buy more wives.
At 52, he just married for the third time.
He has to build a house and cover living expenses for each and every wife.
In fact, this is just another long-term investment:
more wives mean more children
and kids are the unpaid workforce
that run Muhammad’s growing empire.
This son squeezes fresh tamarind juice each day and takes it to the local market
seven kilometers outside of camp.
In Sudanese society, wealth comes with responsibility.
Muhammad not only provides for his immediate family, but also sisters, cousins, and aunts.
He has over fifty mouths to feed.
And when friends drop by, he’s expected to care of them as well.
But Muhammad’s well respected in the community.
When there’s a meeting, people listen when he speaks.
In this society, that’s worth almost anything.
But there are easier ways to get rich in the refugee camps
and this is one of them.
The monthly grain distribution has to be ground into flour before it can be eaten,
an extraordinarily exhausting process.
Several years ago the humanitarian agencies gave a mill to each block of refugees
with the understanding that they would be operated for the benefit of the community.
Those who ran them were supposed to charge a small amount for fuel
and the cost of their labor.
Once a month, the women bring their grain distribution to the miller
where it goes into a cue.
He gives them a receipt
and the few who can afford it
pay the fee.
The wait can stretch for hours
but it still beats doing it yourself.
Unfortunately, ownership of the equipment gradually migrated into the hands of just a few families
who now take half the grain in payment
from those who don’t have cash.
The mill owners then resell it
illegally
on the open market.
It’s turned them into the richest families in the camp.
No one dares complain.
Especially those who just arrived
without a penny to their names.
Typically you’ll find them making bricks
it’s one of the toughest jobs in camp.
On the upside - you need almost no capital.
Just a simple wooden mold,
a shovel,
an enormous amount of sweat.
The first step is to claim a spot where the sand has enough clay to hold it together.
Since these are among the poorest families,
children often end up working for their parents
And then don’t have time
or energy
to get an education.
Once they’ve chipped it loose,
they add water and kneed the mixture until it’s smooth.
They then drag it to a flat spot,
mold it,
and leave it to dry in the blistering sun.
In the village this would have been a job for men
but here there are too many widowed women,
all struggling to support themselves.
Because the bricks are never fired, they break easily.
It takes 1200 bricks to build a one-room hut,
at a cost of about two cents apiece.
That’s 24 dollars.
Of course, once you have a house,
you need to furnish it.
Because of cold desert nights and rainy season floods,
bed frames are an absolute necessity.
Carpenters are in big demand.
Carving bedframes out of wood doesn’t need a lot of tools or capital,
but it’s slow, hard work
and the finished beds rarely sell for more than a couple of bucks.
It’s these guys who figured out how to really cash in.
They’ve converted an old grain mill into a homemade welder.
Their bed frames sell for more than the house you put them in.
A haircut, on the other hand, will run you about ten cents.
The barber shops are behind the butcher’s stalls.
Most men want their hair cut as short as possible, in the itchy summer heat.
It also helps keep down lice, ringworm, and fleas.
You don’t need much to start a barber shop:
a broken mirror
and a brush or comb.
If you can’t afford the clippers then a cheap pair of scissors will do.
And a place to sit.
The final touches, and he’s done.
Even when they’re not at work, the refugees are supposed to stay inside the camp.
But a few have made private deals with the surrounding Chadian villagers
to plant gardens on a dry riverbed an hour’s walk outside the walls.
Abdul pays the landowners 50% of his harvest for the right to use the land and access to a local well.
The water table has dropped several feet since the camp was established.
That fact has turned the local Chadian villagers against the Sudanese refugees,
since they depend on the same water.
Unlike the Arab herders, the Sudanese refugees are people of the soil.
Farming is in their blood.
One of their greatest fears is that their children will not learn the necessary skills
to grow crops once they finally go home.
Abdul’s daily harvest represents some of few fresh vegetables available in the camp market
for 20,000 people.
The dropping water table isn’t just a local problem.
Throughout the region, the land is drying out.
Even if these refugees find their way home
they almost certainly can’t go back to subsistence farming.
At least for now, Abdul’s vegetables are hot commodities.
Before he even gets them to market, he’s sold half of what he picked.
Unlike fresh vegetables, drinking water is available to all the refugees,
though they still need some way to store it once they get it back to their huts.
Making water pots is typically a job for women.
First, Fatima prepares a place to work
then kneads the clay.
She dug this batch out of a dry river bed, over ten kilometers away.
Her mother taught her how to shape pots,
and without a husband in the camps,
this is how she supports her three children.
It takes about an hour to shape a single pot, including the occasional break.
Once she’s done,
Fatima gathers what little wood she can find
and heads out to the desert to prepare the fire.
The extra stones help keep in the heat.
No matter how carefully she packs it, the wood chips come up short,
so she adds dried cow manure scavenged from the local Arab herders.
There’s not much entertainment in the camp.
The fire draws quite a crowd.
The pot is only fired once, which means it’s porous.
The water gradually leaks through.
This acts as a natural air conditioning, and keeps the contents cool.
Fatima will feed the fire until well after dark.
All that work, and they sell for less than two dollars each.
Not all of Fatima’s pots get used for storing water.
These women are selling homemade beer,
despite the fact that alcohol is forbidden
by both the government, and Islam.
The women brew it from whatever grain they have on hand –
usually sorghum, since it’s cheap.
The more it bubbles, the more alcohol it contains.
By afternoon it’s already turning sour, and then it’s a race to sell it by day’s end.
Luckily, they have plenty of clientele.
The men have staked out almost every square inch of nearby shade.
Like any good businesswoman, she’s happy to give prospective customers a free taste.
But not all the refugees have time to sit around and drink.
Just around the corner, the tanners have been hard at work since dawn.
They bought a batch of hides from a local butcher
and have to soak them in a vat of ash and water before they start to rot.
They’ll pull them out daily to remove the hair.
It gets dried and sold for stuffing.
Ten days later, any remaining flesh is scraped off.
These are among the poorest workers in the camp.
They barely make enough to feed themselves.
Their wives and daughters are kept busy hauling water.
Though the men have by far the tougher job.
They have to scrub each and every hide for hours on end.
In the process, it does a real number on their hands.
After two long weeks, they’re almost done…
But the moment the hides dry out, they stiffen up again.
So they get pounded – and scraped - one more time.
And then sold for ninety cents.
The butchers, on the other hand, are the envy of the camp.
The Sudanese love meat, and it’s not included in their monthly food distribution.
This is not an easy job to get.
First, only men who have been circumcised can do this.
Women and boys are not allowed to slaughter animals to eat.
Second, you have to know the rules.
According to Islamic law, the death must be quick and merciful
using a sharp knife – and the blood immediately drained from the body.
But most importantly, you must have enough money to buy the animal in the first place.
Goats cost around twenty dollars.
Sheep are closer to forty.
And a cow can go for as much as two hundred bucks.
Gamar is quite the expert at what comes next.
He’s been doing this for over thirty years.
The best way to remove the skin is to cut a hole and blow.
It inflates the carcass like a balloon and makes it easy to remove.
The skin will eventually get sold to the tanners down the hill.
Within thirty minutes the goat is in pieces,
and ready for the cooking pot.
A cow takes a good deal longer.
They use every single part
even the half-digested grass inside the stomach.
The intestines are hung out like laundry,
or tied off into sausages with their contents still inside.
The rest of the animal is tastefully displayed.
Gamar is sold out by noon.
And that’s when he goes home and starts his other job
as a camp surgeon.