Sun, 22 November 2009
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It's everybody's sun. An alternative to scarce firewood. Marie-Rose Neloum from Chad received an award on Thursday, the day before World Refugee Day, in a ceremony at Amsterdam's Tropical Museum. The prize is named after Gerrit-Jan van Heuven Goedhart, a member of the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation in the Second World War who went on to become the first United Nations high commissioner for refugees. The award is organised by the Dutch Association for Refugees.
By Bram Posthumus*Just as was the case 60 years ago, the present UN high commissioner has to deal with millions of refugees worldwide, and the numbers are on the increase again. One of the regions where refugees live in miserable conditions is the Chad-Sudan border area, where it is windy, dry as a bone, and almost always sunny. Thousands of people have fled from Sudan's western Darfur province to camps over the border in Chad, and it is here that Ms Neloum, chairwoman of the organisation Chad Solaire, does much of her work promoting solar cookers.
Endless quest
She used to have her own sewing workshop in the Chadian capital N'Djamera, hundreds of kilometres west. Her interest in solar cookers is thanks to Derk Rijks from the Netherlands. He wanted to stop the endless quest for firewood which takes up so much of the lives of too many African women.
Ms Neloum was converted when she saw a demonstration of solar cookers. She left with Mr Rijks for eastern Chad, where she was horrified by how hard life was, not only for refugees, but also for the ordinary population.
"It's a desert, it's not easy to find any trees, so the women walk long distances to find firewood. But people living near trees don't want their wood taken away, so there are often disputes between refugees and villagers." (Photo above right: Marie-Rose Neloum)
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