SEQUIM — Sequim volunteer Tom Schaafsma is expected to return this week from a nearly three-week trip to Kenya where he has led a ShelterBox USA effort to set up some 7,000 tents for those plagued by conflict and the worst drought in 60 years.
Schaafsma left Sept. 7 for the Kenyan refugee settlement of Dadaab.
“He became the team leader,” said Jim Pickett, a fellow Sequim Sunrise Rotary Club member who also has worked abroad.
Pickett said Schaafsma, a former Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year and a Clallam County Community Service Award recipient, oversaw a staff that worked with him.
Together, Pickett said, they recently set a ShelterBox record, erecting 283 tents in a day in Dadaab, said to be the world’s largest refugee camp.
There are more than 450,000 people in three camps in the region, many fleeing violence and famine in Somalia, where crops have failed during decreased rainfall in two consecutive rainy seasons.
‘New village’
“They set up tents in a one-mile-by-one-mile area,” Pickett said. “They set up a new village.”
Through Sequim Sunrise Rotary Club and its main cause, ShelterBox, Schaafsma is a member of the ShelterBox Response Team, a highly trained group of volunteers who deliver on-the-ground aid to survivors of natural and other disasters around the world.
Each green ShelterBox contains a disaster relief tent for an extended family, with a stove, blankets and water-filtration system among other tools for survival.
As a member of the ShelterBox response team, trained for deployment to towns and cities, retired carpenter Schaafsma has volunteered in earthquake-stricken Peru, Mexico after Hurricane Jimena and Honduras following major floods.
In Japan in April
Schaafsma in April traveled to Sendai, Japan, where ShelterBox aided thousands of Japanese victims of the 9.0-magnitude quake, followed by a powerful tsunami that literally wiped many Sendai-area communities off the map, leaving many homeless in its devastating wake.
In Haiti, Schaafsma and the rest of his eight-member response team lived in tents beside the University of Miami’s field hospital, where the daily patient count was in the hundreds.
The trip to Kenya was his seventh ShelterBox USA deployment.
The drought in the Eastern Horn of Africa and ongoing conflict in Somalia is causing families to flee their homes, with thousands arriving at refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia every day.
Each day, teams from a range of organizations go out to identify and mark suitable sites, erect tents and ensure there are adequate water and sanitary facilities.
20,000 refugees
Schaafsma’s ShelterBox team has been working in partnership with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to provide shelter for up to 20,000 Somali refugees at the camp in Dadaab.
More than 1,400 refugees a day have been flooding into the Kenyan refugee settlement of Dadaab, and aid agencies have been working hard to keep up with the need for food, water and shelter.
Tens of thousands of refugees are still waiting to be registered and relocated from transition shelters outside of the camps, which mostly consist of sticks covered by clothes, blankets, tarps and any other materials the families can lay their hands on.
Before he left for Kenya, Schaafsma said, “The conditions in the field will be challenging, but helping families move into their new homes [ShelterBox tents] and rebuild their lives will be very rewarding.
“There is a dire need for emergency shelter in East Africa, and I’m honored to be a part of a team that can assist the effort,” he said.
The recent months have been busy for ShelterBox, with deployments to six countries involving dozens of ShelterBox Response Team members.
In just the past few weeks, ShelterBox has deployed disaster assessment and response teams to six countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, the Philippines, South Korea and Senegal.
The teams have delivered aid to tens of thousands of people whose lives have been torn apart by drought, famine, tropical storms, flooding and conflict.
Since 2000, ShelterBox has provided shelter, warmth and dignity following more than 150 disasters in more than 70 countries.
ShelterBox instantly responds to earthquake, volcano, flood, hurricane, cyclone, tsunami or conflict by delivering boxes of aid.
ShelterBox’s American affiliate, ShelterBox USA, is nationally headquartered in Sarasota, Fla.
Individual tax-deductible donations to ShelterBox USA can be made at www.shelterboxusa.org, 941-907-6036 or via text message by sending SHELTER to 20222 for a one-time $10 donation. Location- and time-specific donations cannot be accepted.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
