‘It is not us versus them’
Two World Food Programme (WFP) retailers from host and refugee communities in Kakuma, Kenya share common ground
Manalio wakes when sunlight peeks through the tarp walls of her shelter in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Seven children stretch and rise from one mat sprawled beneath a tin roof. The youngest daughter, just 2 days old, is bundled to her chest for the walk.
It’s not always easy for a Congolese woman like her to blend in on this side of camp which lies on the edge of the local community. In a modest printed cloth, hair wrapped high, Manalio stands out among women from the local Turkana tribe passing by, necks adorned with beads to mark their status as married women.
Manalio opens her makeshift shop in the camp market at 7 am and does not consider the years of struggle it took her to get here. She knows to survive is to look forward. She is tired, Manalio says. She is 35.
She looks down at her hands gently folded in her lap and speaks softly.
Across camp, Rebecca leaves her children with her husband, prepared to run home if they cry for her. She looks strikingly relaxed while bearing the responsibility of her business and family. She stands tall as she speaks with us in her shop.
Their mannerisms and backgrounds may be different, but Manalio and Rebecca’s experiences share a thread of unity.
In 2011, after Manalio’s parents were killed in Congo, she moved to her husband’s country. In Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, the environment was no safer. Political crisis struck while armed rebel groups began to run the streets. Land disputes and massacres became frequent. Suddenly, Manalio had no home. No family in Congo. No peace. With nothing left, they traveled over 1,000 kilometers to Kakuma Camp in Northern Kenya, home to 191,500 refugees.
One year later, Manalio’s husband died and she was drowning in grief and debt from his medical bills. Shortly after, she found out the business he left behind had been selected for a contract with the World Food Programme (WFP) to join 200+ local shops in Kakuma where refugees can spend the cash assistance they receive. WFP taught Manalio how to run a shop and within months, she brought in more sales than her husband had.
Rebecca, who is local to Kakuma, had a small stand in a nearby Kenyan market when WFP offered her infrastructure to set up her own store in the camp. In return, she would stock nutritious cereal products for refugees.
She was one of the first Kenyans to risk opening business in the refugee camp. Her husband was against the idea. But like Manalio, Rebecca makes the difficult decisions in her family.
The establishment of Kakuma Camp in 1992 created tensions between refugees and Kenyans, which persist to this day. While the situation has improved, some locals still perceive refugees as privileged with the luxury of food assistance and work opportunities in the camp. Gradually, refugee came to mean someone selfish and dangerous in the local community. When Rebecca first opened shop, she was afraid to walk home at night. “It’s human nature,” she says, “fear between strangers.”
Manalio is one of the refugees Rebecca would have feared. But they are alike: two business owners, supporting their families. And they both know the backlash that comes with being a successful woman in their communities.
Manalio’s success, as it often does for women like her, came with fear and abuse of power from the prominent men around her. The two adult sons from her husband’s previous marriage routinely appeared drunk at her door, demanding she hand over her shop profit. She refused. Community leaders struck back. They labelled her independence as hysteria to justify kicking her out of her shop and home. With no property or sense of belonging, Manalio’s life reverted to the one she tried escaping in Burundi.
She stiffens — shoulders cave in, head drops low and tears travel down her neck — as she tells us her children had to drop out of school during this dark period.
Rebecca, who speaks louder than Manalio but says less, is more cautious of what she shares with us. She strikes me as restrained, someone you cannot imagine crying. But she knows too the judgments that can be directed at independent women like herself.
The way she holds herself builds a wall of protection around her. It might look like confidence — and, in a way, it is. But other women might recognize it’s more than that: it’s a mechanism she developed to survive in the male-dominated field of business.
Manalio also does not wallow in the face of hardship. She acts. When no other authorities stepped to her defense, she called WFP who helped move her to another part of camp and set up a new shop in a welcoming community.
Today, she walks home safely, business is flourishing, and her family is protected. Her eldest son takes a bus to a prestigious Kenyan school where he is second in his class. She looks up from her hands and with a smile says, she pays the fees with her shop profit.
Rebecca’s business is growing too. She has an employee now, a refugee, who often walks her home at night. “We’re not strangers anymore,” she says, they’re my neighbours.” She realized their experiences as refugees — how they feel both pain and joy — are not so different from her own.
Manalio and Rebecca are women who relentlessly fight life’s battles. Although they have never met, they share a story — not one of refugee versus local; wealth versus poverty; or us-versus-them — but a story of womanhood as they strive forward to feed their families, living and giving life.
WFP works to strengthen local shops and supply chains in the remote market of Kakuma Refugee Camp to give refugees and all consumers in the community better value for their money. Cash-based assistance provides choice and autonomy to beneficiaries. While retail engagement helps stimulate their greater economy, offering significant business opportunities such as the retail training and support given to women like Manalio and Rebecca.
