Culture
Refugee for Life: My Journey Across Africa to Find a Place Called Home
Innocent Magambi's 2015 memoir of spending his first 27 years across five refugee camps and of the experiences that led him to establish There Is Hope near Dzaleka.
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Memoir
Innocent Magambi was born to Burundian parents in a refugee camp in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Refugee for Life recounts movement through five camps in four African countries during the first 27 years of his life.
The memoir combines Magambi’s recollections with the voices of other displaced people and advocates. It covers loss, daily camp life, education, faith, and the long-term effects of being treated as temporary while displacement extends across decades.
Dzaleka and organisational work
The later part of the narrative is connected to Malawi and the establishment of There Is Hope. Magambi founded the organisation to support refugees and nearby Malawian communities through education, vocational training, and employment. He led it for fifteen years and later founded Inua Advocacy.
The book is therefore relevant to Dzaleka both as memoir and as an account of the ideas behind institutions that continue to work around the camp.
Edition history
The International Association for Refugees published an edition in 2015 with ISBN 9780988735637. International Teams published another 240-page paperback edition in 2016 with ISBN 9781526205445.
Retail records sometimes attach a third ISBN, 9780692536391, to the title. This entry lists the two editions for which publisher, date, and pagination could be cross-checked in the sources above.
References
Sources
- 1Our story
Inua Advocacy
Author biography and the relationship between the memoir, There Is Hope, and Dzaleka.
- 2Refugee for Life: My Journey across Africa To Find a Place Called Home
AbeBooks, 2015
First-edition ISBN and publisher record.
- 3
- 4Refugee for Life
Premier Christianity, 17 February 2017
Related entries
People
Innocent Magambi
Refugee-rights advocate and founder of There Is Hope, whose work grew from his experience living in Dzaleka and other refugee camps.
Institution
There Is Hope Malawi
A Malawian non-profit organisation founded from Dzaleka experience that provides vocational education, enterprise support, scholarships, and other self-reliance programmes for refugees and host communities.
Institution
Inua Advocacy
A refugee-rights organisation founded by Innocent Magambi that works on legal assistance, policy reform, accountability, emergency support, and public understanding of refugee life in Malawi.
Place
Dzaleka Refugee Camp
A long-established refugee settlement in Dowa District, Malawi, opened in 1994 and now home to a large, multilingual community from the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa.
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