Autumn 2000 (8.3)
Struggle to Feed Their Families
Farida Sadikhova and Arzu Aghayeva
Tea is a
common substitute for food in refugee camps. Refugees drink it
to stave off hunger when there is little else to eat. Photo:
choosing the theme for this issue, we knew that we couldn't cover
food in Azerbaijan without talking about those who need it most
- the refugees. Nearly 1 million Azerbaijanis (one out of every
eight people) were forced to flee their homes because of the
conflict with Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh. Hostile foreign troops
still occupy nearly 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory. Meanwhile,
tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis live in refugee camps throughout
the countryside, still waiting to return to their native lands.
This past July, we went to Sabirabad, about 2 hours southwest
of Baku, to learn how refugees cope when there is so little to
eat and no cash to buy food. For the 10,000 refugees who live
in this, the largest of Azerbaijan's refugee camps (Sabirabad
Camp No. 1), much of the day is spent doing manual chores: hauling
water, washing clothes by hand, gathering wood or dried manure,
making their own bread and trying to keep their families together.
These exhausting tasks are carried out by individuals already
weakened by malnutrition. Seven years in the camp have taught
them that the weather doesn't help matters, especially in summer,
which can be blisteringly hot. Amidst all these obstacles, we
wondered: how do they manage to survive?
Ismat Aydinova, 34, is from the village of Ishigli in the Fuzuli
region. After fleeing from her home during the Karabakh War,
she ended up at the Sabirabad Refugee Camp in 1994 along with
her husband and their three daughters. Today her children are
15, 11 and 8 years old. They live in a one-room mud-brick shelter
that they built with their own hands.
One of the greatest differences between the home she used to
have and the refugee camp where they now live is simply not having
enough food. Ismat remembers: "We used to have a big garden
in our village with all kinds of fruit: cherries, pomegranates,
apples, pears, peaches and quince. We also grew vegetables like
tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, onions, eggplant and
various green herbs. We didn't have to go to the market because
we already had everything we needed. We could cook whatever we
wanted: kabab, eggplant dolma, bozbash.
"We also got milk from our sheep and cow. We made our own
yogurt, so my kids could have ayran or dovgha (yogurt-based beverage
and soup) any time they wanted. Those were their favorite foods."
Water was nearby and crystal-clear. "We had our own well
and could drink ice cold water from it," says Ismat. "We
also had artesian water running from taps."
Returning to this former life seems like a dream for refugee
women, who now struggle to put any food at all on the table.
"We can barely make ends meet until the end of the month,"
says Ismat. "That's when the government gives us 20,000
manats per person, plus an extra 9,000 manats for each child.
Overall, we receive 120,000 manats (about $30) each month."
Monthly rations from
humanitarian agencies such as the International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRCRC) typically amount
to 5 kg flour, 1/2 kg sugar, 1 kg navy beans or rice and 200
g tea. There is rarely any assistance with meat, fruit or vegetables.
So what do you eat? we asked. "In the morning we have curds
(similar to cottage cheese)," says Ismat. "Just curds,
bread and sweet tea. Nothing more.
are dependent on food rations such as flour from international
humanitarian agencies like the Red Cross. It has been eight years
now that many of these refugees have been living in camps because
of the Karabakh War. International aid is decreasing more and
more, which results in refugees being hungrier than ever. Photo:
"Sometimes we eat twice a day, sometimes once, sometimes
three times," she says. "It depends on how much we
have to eat. When I say we have a meal, it doesn't mean that
we have something that can satisfy us. They're more like snacks.
Our largest meal is lunch - potatoes or occasionally, soup.
"Yesterday for lunch we had boiled potatoes. One potato
per person. In the evening we had tomatoes. Just tomatoes. Not
fried, just tomatoes by themselves, because they're cheap."
The refugees' diet depends completely on what's available at
the time. Mostly they make soups from tomatoes and potatoes.
Sometimes they have fried onion with eggplant, beans or macaroni.
Usually, they get these extra items with credit at a produce
stand in the camp.
"In the summer we eat mostly tomatoes," another refugee
mother confesses. "They're cheap, so we eat them all the
time - summer and winter. In the winter, we prepare dishes made
with canned or pickled tomato-soup or scrambled eggs with tomatoes."
Again, eggs are usually bought on credit and paid back when the
monthly assistance comes in.
Neighbors comment that in winter, they often eat pickled cucumber
and tomatoes with bread or make a thin broth with rice or noodles.
Even basic cooking ingredients like butter are nearly impossible
to get, though many of the residents used to make their own.
Ismat admits, "At home, we always had butter made from real
milk. It was imported from Moscow. But here we buy vegetable
oil. It's much different from what we used in our village. The
taste and quality is different. We have no other choice here;
we have to use vegetable oil."
Very Little Protein
Refugees eat very little meat, often no more than once a month.
One kilo of meat (lamb) costs about 10,000 manats (about $2).
Refugee mothers often buy only small portions of meat so that
they can eat it at two or even four meals. The meat may be ground
and stuffed in grape leaves to make dolma, or made into a broth
with potatoes, "sous". This month they had not yet
received any aid yet, so they had not eaten any meat.
Ismat likes to spread out the meat to last four meals. "I
buy it in four small portions - then I can cook a meat dish four
times a month," she says.
Other ingredients are also bought on credit. "In our camp,
there's a small store that belongs to a refugee," Ismat
says. "We buy things there like bread, macaroni, tea, sugar,
rice and flour, in small portions. We don't pay for the products
right away; we buy them on credit. For example, when there's
nothing to eat except bread, I have go and ask the store owner
to give me rice or macaroni."
"The vendor has debt lists for all of us," other refugee
Only Bread to Eat
Flatbread, the refugees' staple food, is made by hand- a time-consuming
and labor - intensive process. Ismat bakes two or three loaves
of bread every other day.
are so primitive in refugee camps. It's rare to have storage
space for any kitchenware. Saatli camp, summer 2000. Photo: Abdusalimov
She makes a yeast dough from flour, yogurt and a pinch of salt.
There's a tandir oven nearby, which is shared by ten neighboring
families in the wintertime. The oven is made of dried mud. It's
not built underground like some tandirs are. There's a special
cover on it, a sort of roof, to protect from the sun and rain.
"To bake the bread, we gather twigs and small pieces of
wood, place them in the tandir and build a fire," says Ismat.
"We slap the flat pieces of dough against the inner walls
of the tandir oven, making them stick. About five minutes later,
they're ready to take out. We never throw away the ash from the
tandir. We take it home and use it to warm up our mud-brick shelters
- especially in the fall and winter." Some of the neighbors
buy wheat and have it ground into flour. "We buy wheat in
Sabirabad," says a neighbor.
"It's 500-700 manats (about 25 cents) per kilo." There's
a mill in Sabirabad where the refugees can get the wheat ground.
Some people bake bread in a tandir, some on a saj (an iron disk
for baking bread or lavash). Some have simple kerosene burners,
and a few privileged ones have access to an electric oven. There's
a tendency to make more bread in the winter - eight or nine loaves
to last most of the week. But in summer the bread quickly gets
moldy, due to the heat.
Lack of refrigeration is a problem, especially during hot weather.
"I don't have a refrigerator here," bemoans Ismat.
"I had one before I became a refugee, but I couldn't bring
it with me when we fled. I barely managed to get the kids out
safely. Some people in the camp have refrigerators, but most
don't. So I can't keep food. If I make fried potatoes or macaroni,
we have to eat it all right away because there's no way to keep
the leftovers. Otherwise, we end up throwing them away."
Ismat says that she and her neighbors have improvised a partial
solution: "Our neighbor Orkhan, a 10-year-old boy, dug a
well in the ground, about 6 meters deep. There's water down there
that's not fit for drinking because it's very salty. But we can
manage to keep our cheese and bottled water cool just by lowering
it into the well. Things stay cool down there. When we need them,
we just pull them up."
There is no indoor plumbing in these camps. The water hauled
from nearby taps is undrinkable, refugees say. "We drink
tea instead of water," says Ismat. "The water is full
of dirt, and not drinkable. When my kids are thirsty, I never
give them water - just tea with a bit of sugar. It's safer."
"There are water taps in the camp," she explains, "one
for every 20 houses or so. We get the water from those taps;
it comes from an open ditch or canal. They say it gets purified
in the cistern, that chlorine is added or something like that.
But the purification system is not very good as the water is
Even so, there are long lines, making the process of getting
water a very time-consuming chore. "The water is available
twice a day: from 8 to 9:30 a.m., and then again from 5 to 6:30
p.m.," says Ismat. "I usually go get water about 7:30
in the morning, or sometimes earlier. I get up early and go stand
in line. If you go at 8:00 a.m., you'll return at 9:30. We usually
carry the equivalent of about ten pails - about 50 liters - to
"Then we boil the water, otherwise we wouldn't be able to
use it. Even then, it's still not pure. We used to have electricity
24 hours a day, so we didn't have a problem with cooking or boiling
water. But in the past year or so, sometimes the electricity
will go off and we've had to build a fire on the ground."
Left: Only a few kiosk-like stores exist in
refugee camps. Simply, there is so little money that most refugees
have to seek credit for the occasional purchase of macaroni or
flour, sugar or tea. Here potatoes and onions are for sale at
Saatli Refugee camp No. 1, summer 2000. Photo: Sadikhova
The water hauled from the taps is used for more than just cooking
and making tea. "I use water from the communal faucet to
wash dishes," Ismat says. "After we eat, I wash the
dirty dishes in a wash basin. If the plates are not that greasy,
I simply rinse them in cold water. When they're greasy, I wash
them in warm water."
Taking a shower is a luxury that only comes once a week. "We
don't have a bathroom in our house," she explains, "but
there's a bathhouse in the camp. It's not so big, about the size
of a two-room apartment. It's divided into two parts: one section
for men, the other for women. It's open one day a week, from
3 to 10 p.m. It's always crowded." Some refugees opt to
wash with a little water in a bucket at their homes. It's a very
Poor Growing Conditions
A casual observer may ask, "If refugees have so much trouble
getting food, why don't they just grow it themselves?" It's
not that easy, says Fariz Ismayilzade, Resource Center Coordinator
at the International NGO Hayat. "When we talk about refugees,
we have to remember that they had a completely different lifestyle
in their native lands," he says.
"They had pastures, they raised sheep, they planted gardens
and crops. When the refugees moved to camps, they lost their
traditional lifestyle. Even though they have enough space, the
growing conditions in the camps are very poor. They can't grow
the things that they used to grow in the mountains. So they've
had to change what they eat.
"Refugees in Sabirabad and Saatli may have access to a market,"
he continues, "but they don't have any money. I've seen
ducks and chickens running around in those refugee camps, so
apparently some of the refugees have a little 'property' of their
own. But inside their houses they don't have anything. They eat
from day to day and are unable to store anything."
"What can we grow here?" Ismat asks in frustration.
"First of all, we don't have any money. Second, the soil
is very salty, so nothing grows. When my youngest daughter sweats,
crusty salt appears on her skin. I think it's because we live
on very salty soil."
If you visit an Azerbaijani refugee camp, you will immediately
notice that the refugees still believe in showing hospitality,
even though they can't lavish food upon their guests as they
once did. Fariz recalls taking some Italian journalists to one
of the Sabirabad camps last year.
"We stopped at some boxcars parked on a railroad siding
in the middle of nowhere, where six refugee families were living.
As we were leaving, I saw one of the refugee women offer some
lavash (paper-thin bread) to the journalists. The bread was really
dark, probably made from the worst quality wheat.
Obviously, it was all she had. I tried to offer the woman 10,000
manats (about $2.50), but she refused it. She gave but would
not take any payment, despite her destitute situation."
It's not uncommon for refugees to offer guests, especially foreign
guests, whatever they have, even when they don't know where their
next meal is coming from.
Having enough dishes is also a problem. "We own a total
of five glasses with saucers, five or six plates, and a couple
of dishes," Ismat says. "Sometimes when we have guests,
I want to treat them to tea, but I don't have enough glasses."
If there's a special occasion at the refugee camp, such as a
wedding, the host usually buys food on credit, trying to make
the spread as festive as possible. These days at weddings, refugees
usually serve things like sous and dolma, but not usually pilaf
(rice). There might also be apples, pomegranates and quinces,
plus soft drinks like Fanta or Cola. When the guests come to
the wedding, they offer presents of money, which helps the host
pay the bills after the wedding is over.
One foreigner observes: "It's not uncommon that the talk
at the table is not about how nice the wedding is. Rather, it's
usually about the good times of the past."
Perhaps the worst part about facing these daily challenges as
a refugee is having to watch one's own children go hungry. "Look
at my kids!" Ismat exclaims. "They're so skinny and
pale. Sometimes, it's only bread that we have to eat for two
to three days at a time. Bread and absolutely nothing else. In
the summer when we often have just tomatoes to eat, my children
say that they have terrible pains in their stomachs. Maybe it's
because they're constantly eating the same food, or maybe it's
because the tomatoes are too acidic or spoiled."
She says that sometimes her children are too weak to get up and
do the simplest tasks. "My kids are not very strong. Sometimes
when I ask them, 'Go and bring me this or that,' they say, 'Mom,
I'm too weak, I can't go and bring it.' They simply don't have
"Kids like to eat fruit. But the last time my kids ate fruit
was a month ago - they had some plums and a pear. Some fruit
sellers from the town came to our camp. We happened to have a
little money and bought some fruit. When we don't any money,
sometimes I go and exchange a kilo of flour for 2 kilos of fruit.
"It's very difficult for mothers to see their children go
hungry. I don't know what to do when my kids ask me for something
to eat. My younger ones often cry and say: 'Mom, they're selling
watermelons over there. Please buy us some!' But I don't even
have 500 manats (11 cents) to buy a watermelon.
"When I can't give my kids what they want, I feel really
depressed. My heart breaks, but I try not to show it. I just
tell the kids that I can't buy it. I try to explain our situation
"Sometimes my kids smell a neighbor cooking kabab and they
come running: 'Mom, there's a good smell coming from that house.
I want to eat what they're eating, too!' I try to distract them,
saying: 'No, it just seems that way; they're not cooking anything.'
I try to make them believe that they didn't smell anything. It's
a lie, but I have no other choice.
"Many times when I see that my kids are hungry, I give my
share of food to them. My youngest daughter notices and asks:
'Mom, why aren't you eating?' I tell her: 'Don't worry, I've
already had my share.' How can I eat when my kids are hungry?"
Most refugee kids learn from an early age to keep quiet about
their wishes. They see the situation and understand. There are
no jobs - nothing. The neighbors are all in the same situation.
Everyone is poor.
Risk of Disease
Malnutrition makes refugee children vulnerable to another threat-disease.
With no money for medical treatment or supplies, refugee parents
watch helplessly as their children suffer from diseases like
scabies, influenza, malaria and tuberculosis.
Fariz says, "In the Sabirabad refugee camp, I met a woman
who was 35 years old, but she looked more like 50. She had two
little children. I was showing a foreign journalist around. Suddenly
the woman started screaming: 'Come here! Come here!'
"When we went over to where she was, she told us that she
had tuberculosis and that nobody was helping her. She called
her kids to come out of the house. They were so thin and probably
had not had any meat in a long time. She said that her children
would soon have tuberculosis, too. She was desperate and wanted
to ask local and international organizations to help."
What do the coming years hold for Azerbaijan's refugees? At least
in the immediate future, prospects look grim. Refugees will tell
you that during the past eight years they've been living in the
camps, the situation has gone from bad to worse. "We don't
receive as much food as we used to," they say. "Plus
our children are growing up. They need more food and they need
Food rations are being cut back or eliminated altogether. "We
used to get yellow peas as humanitarian aid," says Ismat.
"Sometimes we would exchange the peas for curd: a kilo of
curd for a kilo of peas. A kilo of curd costs 1,000 manats. But
now we've been cut off from receiving the peas. We don't know
what the future will bring. We don't know what we're going to
Food isn't the only provision that's been cut back, she observes.
"We used to get 30 liters of fuel as humanitarian aid each
month. We use the fuel in the stove to keep the house warm. We
received it as part of the humanitarian assistance from Iran.
But now the supply of kerosene has been cut off because the aid
has been decreased. We're concerned about how we're going to
keep our house warm."
A New York Times article reports that UNHCR's (United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees) budget for Azerbaijan has been
reduced from $12 million last year to $4.7 million. Fariz says
that other organizations are also reducing the amount of goods
given out to refugees. "Instead of giving out direct humanitarian
assistance, NGOs are developing more and more training programs.
Most humanitarian organizations think that the crisis period
of refugees - 1993 to 1995 - has already passed. For example,
Hayat has been doing training on conflict prevention, legal rights
and business skills. Instead of giving out food, as we were doing
in 1994, we're doing more training."
Even though the Azerbaijani government reached a cease-fire with
the Armenian forces in 1994, there is still no peace agreement,
so refugees are not able to return to the lands that they call
home. Many of them have been waiting for eight years. Though
still eager to return, most of them doubt that it will happen
"When neighbors gather, we often talk about food shortages
and curse those who drove us to such poverty," says Ismat.
"We often talk about the 'good old days' when we ate kabab,
kufta and dolma. We want to go back to our lands and grow vegetables
and fruits there. We don't want to stay in this camp forever."
Special thanks to Vugar Abdusalimov of UNHCR for facilitating
the visit to Sabirabad refugee camp and to Fariz Ismayilzade
of Azerbaijan's first Humanitarian Association, Hayat, for providing
background material. Farida Sadikhova and Arzu Aghayeva
are AI staff members.
(8.3) Autumn 2000.
© Azerbaijan International 2000. All rights reserved.
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