A Refugee Camp in Chicago
- Producing Organization
- WBEZ
- Contributing Organization
- WBEZ (Chicago, Illinois)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/50-86nzsk58
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- Description
- Description
- Imagine if you and everyone you knew had to flee, because of violence, or a natural disaster. You've walked for days with no food or water. And you're wounded or sick. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders is trying to bring a sense of this experience to residents in five cities this fall. Its interactive exhibit is called "A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City," and it opens at the north end of Grant Park in Chicago today. Chicago Public Radio's Diantha Parker reports. ** The camp is about as big as a small craft fair--just under a dozen tents and shacks- but it's a scale model of the camps Doctors Without Borders is known for. The entrance is scaled down as well: a patch of ground covered with what look like green hockey pucks and beehives. They're models of landmines, and they're here to show that running away can be as dangerous as what you're running from. VAGO: With heavy rainfall some of these things displace, and they're shifted. And so where people have been using a route perfectly safely for some time, these things will shift and someone will be going along the same route they've always taken and get exploded by a mine. Deborah Vago is a nurse who's been with Doctors Without Borders since1995. All the people here to set up and give tours of the camp been on several overseas missions. JANSENNS: Port au Prince in Haiti, then Darfur. GRIMSHAW: I just came back from 11 months in Ivory Coast-civil conflict. BECKERER: I was on Sumatra. The organization is based in France, and is mostly known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF. Since 1971, it's gone into crisis zones as a neutral relief agency. MSF won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. The gear for this exhibit is stored in blue metal trunks, all bearing big white stickers with MSF's internationally recognizable symbol--an automatic rifle with a black x across it. ambi: rustling Deborah Vago is now building the food rationing area, a three sided shack covered with reed matting. VAGO: In South Sudan we could sit at night and listen to the termites munching the insides of these reeds. The exhibit uses a lot of this matting--it looks like windowshades. It's used in a lot of African refugee camps. There are other dwellings, too: a tin and wood hut, which you'd find in urban camps, and a round tent made of white cloth with a peaked top, used in the Sahara. The staff found a patch of Grant Park sand to pitch it on. Inside, they spread colorful mats woven of plastic and open a trunk of pots, cookstoves and lanterns. There are fun things too: like a green toy truck made from a can of insecticide. GRIMSHAW: I think there's another... Kelly Grimshaw is an MSF nurse, and says this stuff came from actual camps. GRIMSHAW: So what people will make or what's normally available in the field. So people will have cloths lying around and laundry drying, and whatever people can find to make themselves a home. In refugee camps, that doesn't include your own bathroom. A crucial part of this exhibit and all of MSF's missions is teaching people to use latrines and to wash their hands, because those are the best ways to control the spread of disease. The camp's main latrine not usable, by the way is called a VIP latrine. It does look pretty nice, but engineer Kate Ferguson says that's not the point. FERGUSON: It's not a very important person latrine. It's actually the true name of a type of latrine. It's called a ventilated improved latrine. Hence the vent. PARKER: Ventilated improved-- FERGUSON: Latrine. That's separate from the latrine for people with cholera---a very contagious gastrointestinal disease that can kill you overnight. A heads up: You don't want to learn much more about cholera before or after meals, and you will learn a lot here. So keep that in mind if you plan to visit. 20 thousand people in the US already have. The exhibit came to this country for the first time last year on a 4 city tour. In all it's been to more than a dozen countries. A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City is here through Sunday. After that, it'll head to Minneapolis, Houston and Dallas. I'm Diantha Parker, Chicago Public Radio.
- Media type
- Sound
- Credits
-
-
: WBEZ
Editor: Drew Hill
Producing Organization: WBEZ
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ-FM) and Vocalo.org
Identifier: (unknown)
Format: audio/mpeg
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- Citations
- Chicago: “A Refugee Camp in Chicago,” WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 3, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-86nzsk58.
- MLA: “A Refugee Camp in Chicago.” WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 3, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-86nzsk58>.
- APA: A Refugee Camp in Chicago. Boston, MA: WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-86nzsk58