Tunisia: Faced With a Life in Limbo

Photo credit: NY Times

NATO's five month bombing campaign in Libya under the guise of protecting civilians has not only caused major disruptions to the lives of thousands of Libyan civilians but it has also taken its toll on countless numbers of refugees from sub-Saharan Africa who took up refuge in Libya after fleeing violence and persecution in their own countries.

In this two part series I'll introduce two young women whose lives were turned upside down when the "Arab Spring" reached Libya, and explore how they've managed to overcome their obstacles while faced with a life in limbo.

Twenty-year-old Eiman and her family was living a fairly good life in Libya before the war hit. Her parents, originally from Darfur, fled to Libya where Eiman and her brothers and sister were born.

At the time of the conflict, Eiman was in her third year of university where she was pursuing a degree in agronomy and nutrition but those dreams had to be put on hold as the situation worsened.

"We were so scared when fighting erupted between pro and anti-Gaddafi forces on my street because we could hear the guns, people were shouting and everyone was running from one area to the next trying to find safety," explains Eiman in an interview with Her Blueprint. "The security situation became unbearable when NATO started bombing and eventually we fled to Tunisia. My father who was in Benghazi working at the time of the fighting had to flee to Egypt and we're waiting for him to join us here in Tunisia."

Located in the middle of the desert along the main Libyan coastal highway leading to Tripoli just east of the southern Tunisian border crossing of Ras Ajdir, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) run Shousha camp has become home to thousands of refugees like Eiman since the outbreak of the Libyan war.

For most inhabitants of the camp, daily life has become difficult.