Tent City in Central Africa Swells as Thousands Seek Safety

Conditions are grim for residents of a camp by the airport in Bangui that has sprung up as people fled violence in the city. 

BANGUI, Central African Republic — The streets of the capital’s center are nearly empty. A few citizens slowly walk the wide boulevards, outnumbered by French troops patrolling after recent deadly violence. The battered buildings remain, but much of the city’s population has disappeared.

And so it has, rematerializing in a makeshift town by the airport at the edge of the real city. Almost anything can be bought in muddy paths of the impromptu market that has sprung up: flip-flops, dried fish, a haircut, yams, baguettes, jerry cans of gasoline, cheap handbags, okra, coffee, eggs, manioc fritters, clothes custom made by tailors sitting at old sewing machines. More than 100,000 people have moved to this rough, chaotic tent city in less than a month. In all, two-thirds of Bangui has picked up and moved, according to the United Nations.

The new city, grimly called the Ledger by its inhabitants after the five-star hotel on Bangui’s heights packed with government notables, including rebel generals and United Nations officials, is unmistakable evidence that the troubled Central African Republic is still in the grip of a low-boil civil war, despite recent steps toward a political settlement. A haze of smoke from a thousand cooking fires hangs over the camp, and the smell of raw sewage is thick.

People came here because they are afraid. Violence infests the adjacent capital’s ramshackle neighborhoods; looting and killing continue deep inside the labyrinthine alleyways. So magistrates, teachers, technicians, civil servants, doctors, students and housewives have all fled to the camp’s relative safety.

“Everyone has left Bangui; there is no work anymore,” said a camp resident, Steve Namsene, a firefighter in the military here.

Central African Republic’s Muslim rebel leader was forced out on Friday and flew the next day into exile in Benin, but his armed followers, the Seleka, linger and so does sectarian anger against them because of their nine-month reign. The violence could break out at one o’clock in the morning, or three in the afternoon, pitting neighbor against neighbor, Christian against Muslim, rebel against militiaman. At least 1,200 people have been killed in sectarian tit-for-tat violence since early December; nine more were killed Friday night in Bangui, the United Nations said.

In this country almost entirely without institutions there is no authority except the French peacekeeping troops. Their camp is at the airport; and the people of Bangui have moved next to it to be under the troops’ unintended protection. In row after row they have pitched a tent — often just an empty flour or rice sack suspended on thin plywood planks — in the barren fields. Between Dec. 16 and 28 the camp grew fivefold, to 70 acres, according to the United Nations. Children, mothers and jobless men are all crammed together under open sky, making the best of it.

“At home, there is only insecurity,” said a young cigarette-seller, Prince Yandoko, his wares shakily displayed on a plywood table. “We’re hearing gunshots all the time there. Here, at least, there is a system of protection.” In fact the only “system” is a rudimentary checkpoint manned by a few ragged-looking young Christian militiamen from the countryside, part of the mainly Christian anti-balaka, or anti-machete, self-defense forces. Nearby are the French troops, who only want the displaced people to go home.

In interviews none of them said they wanted to.

“I would rather stay here than go back to my neighborhood to die,” said Marcellin Endjikale, a student.

Mr. Namsene, the fireman, said, “It is this or death. If we went back to the neighborhood, we would be killed by the Seleka,” he said. Mr. Namsene, a father of five, said his two-year-old daughter was killed by a stray Seleka bullet when the rebels entered Bangui last March.

Others spoke of continuing firefights on their doorsteps. “There was a clash between the anti-balaka and the Seleka,” said Jeskin Ngarso, a refrigerator technician. “Everybody started shooting at once. We couldn’t stay there.”

The conditions at the camp are so bad that only real danger could have drawn this many people. “The hygiene conditions at the camp are a disaster,” said Lindis Hurum, a Doctors Without Borders coordinator there. “I am very worried about epidemics of all sorts.” Besides treating the sick, who press in throngs against the cordoned area where the group operates, the doctors assist in an average of seven births a day, and sometimes many more.

Camp residents say they are also afraid of potential epidemics. “We’re living a calvary here; we are suffering,” said Louisor Zepenge, a student. “Living like dogs. On the ground.”

Others spoke of a total absence of sanitary facilities, of widespread diarrhea and vomiting. At night, when people are attempting to sleep on the ground, “the maggots crawl about,” said Koffi Oualemgbe, an engineer. “There are no latrines.”

The United Nations says it has resumed distributing emergency relief supplies at the camp. But residents complain about the absence of help from relief workers living at the real Ledger, the luxury hotel. Indeed, the most visible presence by far is that of Doctors Without Borders, which is constructing a field hospital along with other aid agencies.

The United Nations Human Rights Council said on Monday it would convene a special session in a week to discuss rights abuses in the Central African Republic. The request was made by 36 member states of the council and submitted by Ethiopia, on behalf of African countries on the council.

The inhabitants do not want to stay in the camp. But they do not want to leave either. “We are obligated to stay here, even if the conditions are not good,” said Espoir Pengle, a market-stall vendor. “We have no choice.”