“No Place like Home”  

 Home is Home. Home is a shelter where a human being defines its life. Yes, no place can substitute home. Home is the ancestral land for indigenous people. Home is the land where the umbilical cord of the natives is buried. Home is a cozy bed where a diseased human is buried with out trouble. Home is home where everything is available and found abundantly. A home is the setting where you can feel proud and at ease. It’s God-given grace. It is a place where sense and sensibility is secured.  Repatriation to home land, for any refugee that has been hosted for years in aliens land, is the joyous part if his or her life.  To march towards home land, of course, is the great pilgrimage. It’s like the Biblical allusion where Moses has led the Israelis from Egypt to their mother land via Red sea.

The Eritrean Kunama Relief Association (EKRA) is a non-profitable and non-political institution. It deals with humanitarian and social developments of the Eritrean Kunama people. It is a civic organization with certain objectives at hand with official representatives in Europe, Canada and Africa-mainly in Ethiopia and the Sudan since its emancipation, in 1998. It carefully follows and studies the living and spiritual conditions of the Eritrean refugees with a special reference to the Eritrean Kunama situated in Shimelba (Ethiopia) and other refugee camps in the Sudan. While dealing with the above sectors of refugees, a project of group resettlement was proposed in Waala Nehbi a site where the refugees of Eritrean Kunama were allocated for the first time. Here, people scared, confused, and suffered from nostalgia. As such that project was made public, debated and rejected by the Kunama unanimously. The Eritrean Kunama refugees had formidable reasons to reject that project. They are minorities with a great bondage and affiliation to their grand mother’s (afa laga) land. Their identity and social chemistry, ones and for all, is tied with their ancestral land. Any Kunama, by nature is proud and never exercise the habit of begging. In their cultural experience, begging exploitation of one’s labor and confiscation of one’s asset with out the consent of the concerned is taboo. The abundantly availed farming and grassing land where every Kunama is authorized to till and benefit from with out a limit is the grace that has made the proud Kunama people to reject the project hoping the government of Isaias, under the pressure of the international community and the Eritrean opposition forces, could be toppled sooner so that they can repatriate and live in peace. They don’t want to be scooters of alien people with whom they don’t have any association and familiarity. They don’t bother about economic advantages if it touches their diginity.They don’t let go their sweat wasted. This is a sheer reflection of their egalitarian social background. This is the typical traditional way of affection to their nationality, culture, and land as well. For the outsider, the rejection could be seen as a sluggish performance of the Kunama people not benefiting the opportunity given to them.Still, for a second time, a group resettlement program is proposed. Here too, majority of the Kunama refugee has rejected the project ones and for all, for the same and number of reasons. To cite some of the reasons for the rejection of such a “noble” project is the report disseminated by their keens that have used the opportunity and settled in USA, Canada and Europe ahead of time. Through a telephone conversations and postal messages, those pioneers are warning their relatives, now and then, not to think of coming to abroad enumerating the problems they have encountered. The impacts of natural calamities as earthquake, flood, and the swift and fatal winds as Catharine and the likes are the horrible catastrophes hampered the Kunama not to think of that “golden opportunity.” The cultural, linguistic and social barriers, too, are there to play the maximum role to deviate the attitude of the Kunama refugees. For them, the best and easiest way is, still, the repatriation program where the existence and continuous harassment of the Eritrean regime is becoming a stumbling block.

 For the office of UN, the UNHCR, and related humanitarian organizations, the idea of resettling the Eritrean Kunama refugees in a group to a third country, from economic prospect, could be seen as simple, sensible and remedy for their economic status. But for the traditional, peace and land-loving Kunama, the case is not as simple as aliens have thought.Thusfar, the Relief Association of the Eritrean Kunama (EKRA), through this noble opportunity, would like to inform the concerned bodies that the case of resettling the Eritrean Kunama to a third country needs a thorough reconsiderations. The question of indigenous and democratic rights of the Eritrean Kunama should be seen and relate with the human right records of the Eritrean Government reported by the state department of the USA. Their plights should not be ignored either. Let’s give our hands in doing away of the despotic regime of Eritrea. Let’s heed to their plight in a genuine spirit. Group resettlement scheme will not replace their home. Yes, indeed, no place like home!!

                              Eritrean Kunama Relief Association (EKRA)