The Myth of Self-Reliance. Naohiko Omata
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of simplistic interpretation of the reasons why remaining refugees continue to stay in Ghana apparently remained consistent over the years. In one of my interviews with a UNHCR programme officer, she explained: ‘Liberian refugees came to Ghana for resettlement purposes. But now there is no resettlement opportunity for them. I don’t understand why they are still staying in Buduburam camp’.4
From this point of view, the camp was perceived as a ‘springboard’ to a better life in developed countries in the North. During my research, indeed, I interviewed a good number of Liberian refugees who did come to Ghana for the purpose of resettlement. Because of the historical affiliation with the United States, in particular, the sentiment towards this ‘dreamland’ had spread into the Buduburam refugee population, and many Liberians thus saw the United States as a destination or the best place to live. Although UNHCR repeatedly emphasized that an avenue to resettlement had been closed for Liberian refugees, a considerable number of refugees, especially young people, still believed that the door for travelling to the Global North would open up again in the future.5
While I certainly acknowledged the popularity of resettlement among the camp’s residents, at the same time I remained uncomfortable generalizing about 18,000 refugees in the camp as simply ‘resettlement seekers’. I was also uncomfortable with the implication that these refugees had not experienced persecution or exposure to violence in Liberia. As I shall show in this book, however, there were many Liberians who had to flee to Ghana to escape threats to their physical security and dignity.
The Importance of Networks in Buduburam Daily Life
Life in Buduburam camp was governed by a complicated web of human relations and social institutions. From these interactions, personal connections beyond immediate kinship often emerged as an important source of resilience in the daily economic life of refugees.
The Virtue of Sharing: Mutual Support Networks
During my fieldwork, whenever I came back from interviews to my shared house in the evening, I almost always found some refugees in our small living space. They came to meet my co-resident, Philip, one of the respected refugee community leaders. Almost always they invited me to eat with them, and I usually joined them. After eating, these visitors normally stayed to chat and watch TV for about an hour. Then they returned to their own homes at around 8 or 9 p.m. Some of Philip’s long-term friends came to eat at our place virtually every day. Their visits were very naturally accommodated – as if they were expected to come and eat there. Philip once explained to me that he always told Sam, his housekeeper, to prepare some extra food for these guests. I soon realized that these informal social activities had economic implications as well.
In the conventional definition, a household is a group of co-residents who draw upon a common pool of resources and function as a basic economic unit. However, a household often becomes fluid in a mobile population such as refugees, where people are often attached to several groups at the same time and are accustomed to sharing various resources with non-family members (Clark 2006: 3).
The household among the Buduburam refugee population certainly went beyond a group of co-residents. Inside the camp, the sharing, lending and borrowing of resources such as food, water and petty cash frequently took place between different households or between individuals linked through various connections such as kinship, clan, school and church membership. Whilst kinship was still a common element that cut across many refugee households, non-biological members were also accommodated as part of a household in some cases. As I shall show throughout this book, the transfer and exchange of resources between these refugees, especially underprivileged ones, were embedded in their daily survival strategies.
Religious Life: Churches as Spaces for Network-Building
In Buduburam camp, Christianity was the predominant religion, although Islam and traditional beliefs were also present on a smaller scale. According to statistics assembled by the LRWC in 2009, there were seventy-eight churches and one mosque in the camp. During fieldwork, I normally did not set up interviews with refugees on Sundays because going to church was almost a customary practice for many refugee households. There were also a certain number of refugees who commuted to Ghanaian churches outside Buduburam camp. After church prayers in the camp, ‘social hours’ always followed and the church served as an arena for people’s social life as well. Refugees cooked and ate together. They shared their happiness, dreams, frustrations and plight with each other over Liberian dishes.
Besides the provision of religious services, churches often played a role in assisting Liberian refugees in the camp.6 Especially in the early stage of their exile in Ghana, some of these faith-based organizations were engaged in providing social services, including vocational training and dealing with trauma (Dovlo and Sondah 2001: 207–8).
Furthermore, churches provided a space for networking. The active involvement of local Christian organizations contributed to connecting Liberian refugees with the host community and with Christian institutions abroad. Dick’s (2002a: 34–35, 53) work also underlines the significance of churches as a means for Liberian refugees to access additional financial and material resources through social networks. The role of faith-based organizations in refugees’ economic life will be highlighted in later chapters.
The Causes of Displacement: Liberian Prewar History and the Civil War
Buduburam refugee camp had a history of more than two decades. Despite their prolonged exile, refugees’ camp life could not be divorced from the pre-displacement period in Liberia. In order to contextualize the economic lives of refugees in exile and the aftermath of repatriation and the cessation of refugee status, understanding Liberia’s historical background, including Liberia’s formation and prewar social structure, is essential. Therefore, this and the following sections provide a chronological account of refugees’ displacement: from Liberia’s prewar ethno-political landscape and its civil war to protracted exile in Ghana, including the attitudinal shifts among non-refugee stakeholders.
For the vast majority of Liberian refugees, the direct cause of their forced displacement was the fourteen-year civil war that began in 1989. The roots of this conflict, however, were deeply embedded in the formation of Liberia as a country in the early nineteenth century (Sesay 1996: 37). In 1821, Liberia was founded by interests in the United States as a means of resettling liberated American slaves, who were subsequently called Americo-Liberians. In the new country, the group of emancipated slaves from the United States established a political strategy of division between themselves and other, ‘uncivilized’ natives (Bøås 2015: 61). The Americo-Liberian ‘elites’ severely marginalized the indigenous population and ruled the nation as quasi-imperial masters until the late twentieth century (Adebajo 2002: 21; Ellis 2007: 43; Nmoma 1997: 3). Native Liberians were relegated to second-class status and were given only very limited access to social, political and economic power. As the subsequent chapters highlight, this historical inequality is significant for understanding the diverse realities of refugees’ socio-economic conditions in exile, and even their post-refugee lives.
Accumulated frustration and anger towards the ruling elite paved the way for Samuel Doe, an indigenous military officer, who took over the country in a military coup in 1980. The insurgency led by Doe brought to an end the entrenched Americo-Liberian monopoly of power. Nevertheless, Doe’s ruling regime was characterized by incompetence, corruption and cruelty (Cleaver and Massey 2006: 179). In a process often criticized as ‘new tribalism’, Doe started filling important government posts with people from his own ethnic group (Bøås 2015: 64; Sesay 1996: 37). Doe’s regime experienced multiple coup attempts and a lack of support from the majority of Liberian citizens. Meanwhile, Charles Taylor, a former minister of Americo-Liberian origin who had fled Liberia for the United States, established an anti-Doe military movement during his exile. In December 1989, Taylor’s army advanced