Refugees in plea for maize mill

Some 2,960 Congolese refugees living in a camp in the Central African Republic (CAR) have appealed to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide them with a maize mill and to equip their maternity hospital with a cupping glass. "We have harvested enough maize but we have no mill to grind it," Aboubakar Massingambo, a representative of the refugees told a UNHCR delegation on Sunday at Camp Molangue, 120 km south of the capital, Bangui. The delegation was headed by the UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner, Kamel Morjane, who was on a two-day visit to the country. The head of the UNHCR in the Great Lakes region, Ursila Aboubakar, CAR Interior Minister Marcel Malonga and UNHCR representative to the CAR, Emile Segbor, were also in the delegation that visited Camp Molangue. "We will take into account your demands for our next year’s programme," Morjane said in response to the refugees' plea. The refugees embarked on serious maize cultivation in January when the UN World Food Programme ended its food distributions in the camp in January. With the help of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which provided seeds and farming tools, and the UNHCR, which bought 200 hectares of land, the refugees who were grouped in 100 cooperatives produced some 500 mt of maize during the last cultivation season that ended in July-August. The UNHCR bought 90 mt of maize, which was then distributed to 700 vulnerable people in the camp. The Huilerie and Savonnerie de Centrafrique bought the remaining maize. "My husband and I harvested 300 kilos but we kept 60 kilos at home for our consumption," Marie Jeanne Mbida, a 46-year-old mother of four, told IRIN on Sunday. She said she was pounding her maize with a mortar to make flour. Massingambo told the mission that the refugees also wanted to be trained on how to service the camp’s water pumps. He urged the UN agency to consider equipping the local chapter of the government’s refugee body, the Commission Nationale pour les Refugiés, with a vehicle. "Our maternity hospital urgently needs a cupping glass for complications during childbirth," Georgine Assaka, the officer in charge of social affairs and women’s promotion within the refugees' management committee, said. The camp’s midwife, Francoise Ndayen, told IRIN that the provision of a cupping glass would especially help in cases of miscarriage. She said that some maternity patients were sometimes taken to Mbaiki Hospital, some 30 km from the camp. Assaka also said that women in the camp needed training in trades such as sewing, embroidery, knitting, soap making and baking to diversify their sources of revenue. She added that refugees needed more supplies of household items. Morjane congratulated the refugees for their agricultural achievements. He said that as the peace process was progressing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where he served as the UN secretary-general's representative from 1999-2001, the UNHCR would accord more attention to the repatriation of the Congolese refugees, who now totalled 7,000 in the CAR. The first batch of 300 refugees, who have been awaiting repatriation for two months, are due to leave on Tuesday for DRC capital, Kinshasa. Morjane will leave Bangui on Monday for Chad, where some 41,000 CAR refugees have been living since March and where thousands of Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region are reported to have arrived recently.