...At about this time, my aunty Gloria volunteered to help out with the distribution of food for refugees in one of the refugee camps. Eventually, she was sent to a refugee camp in Owerrinta.
My aunty Gloria is my mother immediate younger sister.
She left, but came back home not too long after, to ask my mother to allow her to take me to stay with her at the refugee camp in Owerrinta. My mother agreed. I do not why she did. But I sure was excited at the prospect of seeing a new place with my aunty.
One early morning, we both left Omoba, walking through several villages, and bush paths till we arrived in Owerrinta late in the evening.
Little did I know that I was practicing for what would be a far much longer, lonely and difficult trek soon enough.
Didie, Owerrinta means ‘small Owerri’.
It is located between Owerri, and a place called ‘Ugba’ Junction, on the way to Aba. It is also not far from the Owerri Airport.
The refugee camp was inside a seminary along the road leading from Owerri to Ugba Junction.
The facility is still there now, very close to a naval facility close to the Imo River on the same road.
As we got into the camp, I noticed that it was very large, with lots and lots of people inside it. From their languages, they were a mixture of people from present day Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers and of course Ibos whose towns and villages had either been over-ran by Federal troops, or are battlegrounds.
The scenario inside the camp, was like the ones you see on television of refugee camps in the Congo or Rwanda or any other such places where people had been forced to live outside of their homes, and then in camps, because of war.
Housed in whatever shelters were available, fed with whatever food items they were given, treated for ailments with whatever medicines were available.
They had no choice. They looked helpless, hopeless.
From inside the camp, sound of constant gun shot could be heard, not too far off. More and more people arrived into the camp daily. A lot of them wounded. Some of the wounded were in military uniform.
My aunty had just a bed in one of the dormitories in the camp. We shared the bed. It was an open dormitory, in a large hall with lots beds in it. It was always noisy, and there was hardly any difference between night and day.
My aunty helped out in different places at different times in the camp. Sometimes, she worked in the kitchen, sometimes in the clinic.
The clinic was the scariest of all the places she worked at. I usually left the dormitory to go to look for her around the camp during the day.
On one such occasion, I went into the clinic while she was on duty there.
I saw many children with bloated and almost transparent tummies all over the place. There were also adults with very scary injuries. Bleeding severed limbs, broken heads…There was a lot of screaming and wailing. The whole place smelt terribly!
They asked me to leave. They did not need to because I was too scared, to want to stay.
When my aunty came back to the dormitory later in the evening, she was upset with me for getting to the clinic.
I never went there gain on my own, except the day I was carried there, unconscious...
----BIAFRA:LEST WE FORGET!
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