CEGRANE CAMP, Macedonia — In the early morning hours, before the visiting dignitaries come for their escorted tours, before the press arrives, before even the humanitarian aid workers get here, this camp is a woman's world.
Using a small broom bought in one of the provision stores that have sprung up in every refugee camp in Macedonia, one woman after another begins her daily ritual--often repeated a dozen times a day--of sweeping the bare earth in front of her tent and laying anew the cardboard boxes that serve as a doormat. In the growing heat, when a scorching wind blasts for much of the day and coats everything with a fine layer of dust, the devotion to cleanliness seems a hopelessly quixotic effort.
But sweeping up is one of the few ways that women in the camps can exercise some small bit of control over their daily lives. Even with the prospect of returning to their homeland growing bright again, so much else is a shambles.
With dusk, despite all efforts, order vanishes. In the tents of recently arrived refugees, small children often vomit for days before getting accustomed to the food, and across the camp infants and toddlers cry--off and on--throughout the night, which means that the women go without sleep as they attempt to comfort their children.
Perhaps most disconcerting for many of these women, who fled from homes in small villages surrounded by fields and trees, is this nocturnal noise that is a byproduct of living in a sea of people. At this camp, the largest in Macedonia, about 30,000 refugees are all but stacked on top of one another--a city by any estimation.
"The first night I came here, I felt I was in a huge, dark cave. There was noise from every side, but I could not see anything," said Fiza Jashari, 33, who has spent about a month in the camp.
For some women, the night brings something worse than sleeplessness. Women have begun to come forward to report that they are being physically abused by their husbands. One was knifed and another was beaten with a hammer here, according to aid workers. Many less extreme cases go unreported, aid workers believe.
"The realities for the women in the camps are harsh," said Nancy Shalala, a spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services, which runs one of the camps. She was visiting Cegrane to discuss with other aid workers how best to protect women from abuse.
