Abstract
The current chapter deals with two different cases of post-war displacement, divided by thousands of miles and located in two different social, cultural, and political contexts. The two authors of this chapter believe that sometimes what the construction of knowledge within any discipline needs is to use more comparative empirical research for seeking more insights and understanding of the social world. Thus, collectively, the authors through this chapter compare two far away cases of displacement but too similar within their lived experience in reality in order to contest some of the mainstream notions within the anthropological library. The main focus is to study the concepts of home and belonging between two post-war displaced cases in Africa, the post-war Acholi of Northern Uganda and the Palestinian refugees of Jaziret Fadel village at Al-Sharqyiah Governorate in Egypt. They have found that when people come across the borders, the act of physical crossing is not as difficult as penetrating the invisible ones. People can acquire visas, escape the authorities at checkpoints, or easily camouflage to be able to go through border points. However, when it comes to crossing the intangible borders, to be able to penetrate the social fabric of the newly settled in community across the border is a laborious exercise.
TopIntroduction
For some, Home is a place of birth while for others it is an imagined idea based on memory and other media of communicating history. For those people, original home does not exist in reality anymore, so they have to invent something from scratch. In this sense, home-creation process carries more weight than home-building one as it has nothing to build upon in reality. In this vein, we introduce two complementary perspectives of home- creation process. In that sense, the main theme of the chapter is be about exploring the idea of home creation and the need to belonging after conflicts and forced displacement; from both the perspective of return and the perspective of no-return. Consequently, the sub themes explores: How the intangible boundaries (social, cultural, generational, political, etc.) can be more destructive and create more barriers than the tangible ones (physical, borders, visas, etc.) in the process of home building within different displacement cases? Secondly, to explore: How people make use of different social fabrics, spaces, time, and places to create a sense of belonging? How people manage to survive within a new social context and gain social acceptance in their daily experience through the continuous struggle to get acceptance after displacement?
Historical Contextualization
In this chapter, we discuss belonging from the perspective of return and regaining home (Acholi case in Uganda) and also from the perspective of no-return when there is complete creation of a new home (the Palestinian community in Jaziret Fadel village in Egypt). The Acholi case presents an example where a whole population was displaced for over two decades. The period 1986-2007 saw massive violence, massacre, torture, rape and generally the worst crime against humanity ever recorded in the history of Uganda. This was the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony and the Uganda government under the presidency of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. During this time the Acholi people scampered to safety whether internally or externally. Many Acholi people lived in camps and in the neighboring countries especially Sudan, DRC, Central African Republic and Kenya among others.
The second case is represented within a Palestinian community of some thousands Palestinian refugees who fled their home village of Beersheba (Byr Sab' / Ba'ar Sab') in Palestine after the 1948 War and came to provincial Egypt areas. The particular area that being tackled a second comparative case of study within this chapter is the village of Jaziret Fadel that is located in Al-Sharqiya province about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Cairo (as mentioned in details within chapter 6 of this book). The focus of the study of this case within the current chapter is about the study of the symbolic conceptualization of home and Individuals' sense of belonging, from the perspective of no-return, for the inhabitants of Jaziret Fadel village in Egypt.
Methodology
The two authors have faced different difficulties while conducting their fieldwork, each in her/his field site, in both Uganda and Egypt. Dealing with post war displacement is not an easy topic as it requires navigating contesting and the different taken for granted notions, beliefs, and sometimes ongoing political conflicts. While in the Uganda case, the study was conducted in Kitgum district which is part of the broader Acholiland (sometimes referred to as Acholi sub-region). In order to understand Acholi returnee notion of displacement and post conflict return, in the Uganda case, it entailed following them up to the villages where they settled, i.e. in Orom Sub County and Namukora in Northern Uganda. It entailed establishing rapport; learning to act so that people go about their business as usual; getting off cultural immersion to be able to intellectualize what is learned, putting it into perspective and write about it convincingly (Benard, 1998). Studying and observing how returnees reconstruct their lives in the post-war period was really interesting; complete emersion gave a deep and rich understanding of the new life of returnees.
Key Terms in this Chapter
1948 War: Between the Israeli armed groups and the Arab army from Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine is known historically by the name Al-Nakba which means “ Catastrophe ,” while the War of 1967 was between Israel and neighboring the Arab states of: Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It is also known as Al-Naksa which means “Setback,” ( National Palestinian University of Journalism, 2020 ).
Displacement: Within this chapter is mainly about the social conditions of Wars. The forced mobility because of conflicts and violence in different cases within the African contexts, in both Uganda (Acholi people between Uganda and South Sudan) and Egypt (Palestinian refugees coming from Palestine).
Invisible Boundaries: Ideally one would think that by ‘boundaries’ we mean physical and tangible ones that require crossing borders between states and using passports and visas, while it’s more about the Invisible boundaries that are harder to cross which the authors of this chapter had categorized into five different forms: social boundaries, generational boundaries, cultural boundaries, linguistic boundaries, and academic boundaries.
Home Creation: Is the process most of the displaced people find themselves facing after their displacement from their original homes. It happens when their original home does not exist in reality anymore, so they have to invent something from scratch. In this sense, home-creation process carries more weight than home-building; as it has no remaining foundations in reality to build upon.
Home: Is a place of birth for some people, while for others it is an imagined idea based on memory and other media of communicating history after their displacement.