An oasis of peace: Mennonite Guest House a way station for weary travellers

NAIROBI, Kenya -- For missionaries and aid workers all over Africa, there exists an oasis of peace and comfort along their journey where they can rest their head and share a meal.

For 50 years, the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi has been a way station for weary travellers on a mission. It opened in 1964 after the Eastern Mennonite Missions purchased the property from King's African Rifles.

The Mennonite Guest House recently changed its name to Amani Gardens -- Amani being the Swahili word for peace. But to the thousands who've taken refuge there in the last five decades, it remains the Mennonite Guest House. There's no swimming pool, mini bar or TV in the rooms -- just beautiful gardens, comfy beds and fascinating dinner companions.

A Presbyterian couple who grew up during The Troubles in Belfast and have been working since 1992 in the isolated village of Tuum, that sounds like "tomb," drove 1,000 kilometres to visit their kids attending school in Nairobi.

The Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi

Free Press diversity reporter Carol Sanders recently visited Dadaab, Kenya, home to more than 357,000 refugees, making it the biggest refugee camp in the world. Along the way she visited the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi and also met aid workers who say smaller, good news stories in Nairobi go unreported. Such as Kazuri a ceramic bead factory in Nairobi.

Growing hope amid despair

DADAAB, Kenya -- With no electricity or flush toilets, a school built by Winnipeggers has big hopes for little kids in the middle of a desolate patch of Africa.

Off a red washboard road lined with shoulder-high ant hills, 71 preschoolers at the Humankind Academy are learning English, getting a decent meal of rice and beans and a decent start to young lives that don't have a lot of opportunities.

The students have planted a garden of pawpaw, spinach and beans inside a natural fence of thorns, like barbed wire. But it's the children's growth that has been most impressive, said Salat Mohamud Noor, Humankind Academy's head teacher.

The calm in the storm

DADAAB, Kenya -- In one of the most volatile places in the world, a Winnipegger casually travels the maze of roads that breaks up a mass of humanity.

Men are quick to shake his hand; women greet him with "Salaam alaikum."

His name is Ahmed Warsame and he carries the rather ordinary title of operations manager. But his is no ordinary job -- he is responsible for the safety of about 360,000 people.

And this place -- Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp -- is no ordinary place.

In the danger zone

DADAAB, Kenya -- "If there's an attack, stay in your house unless it's on fire. Hide under the bed and wait for instructions."

I thought the safety adviser was kidding.

He continued: Avoid entering the "blocks" of the refugee camps. If you must go, have four heavily armed police officers in the vehicle in front of you and four behind you and get in and out quickly, he said. And if the vehicle's hit, lie low.

That formed the basis of the security briefing I received when I arrived at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' compound in Dadaab. Safety expert Michael Makova wasn't kidding.

The long painful wait: Refugees in Kenya dream of Winnipeg

DADAAB, Kenya — Most people in the world have never even heard of Winnipeg.

For a teacher and an electrician trapped in the world’s largest refugee camp, Manitoba’s capital is the place of their dreams.

They have loved ones in Winnipeg who hope to bring them to Canada to live one day; loved ones who see all the opportunities and unfulfilled potential.

The teacher and electrician live in Dadaab — in the hot, orange-dust desert of northeastern Kenya not far from the border with Somalia. There, more than 357,000 refugees live in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ five camps. Many have been there since civil war broke out in Somalia more than 20 years ago. Recent drought and famine drove tens of thousands more to the camps — Dagahaley to the north and Ifo, Ifo II, Hagadera and Kambioos in the south.

Dadaab: A day in the life at a refugee camp

Dadaab, Kenya, is home to more than 357,000 refugees, making it the biggest refugee camp in the world. Winnipeg Free Press diversity reporter Carol Sanders recently visited the camp to unravel its many connections to Winnipeg.

Kenya’s 9/11: country’s crackdown on terrorism and human rights is being felt in Winnipeg

DADAAB, Kenya — It was only going to be a brief errand to pay a bill, so leaving her three-year-old son, Amen, with a neighbour wasn’t a big deal.

Three weeks later, Gelila Eyassu hadn’t seen her son because she was rounded up under the Kenyan government’s Usalama Watch and dumped in the world’s largest refugee camp.

Operation Usalama — the word is Swahili for safety — is targeting terrorists, but security forces are scooping up refugees and many Africans in Nairobi who don’t look Kenyan, even if they have legal documents allowing them to be there.

It’s the grim new reality in Kenya, the former British colony that has experienced a series of terrorist attacks since 2011. Last year, the Somalia-based militant group Al Shabaab was responsible for the bloodbath at Westgate Mall in upscale Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Al Shabaab struck again earlier this week, killing at least 49 people in raids on hotels and a police station in Mpeketoni.