G.I.C.H. - University of Georgia

After beginning her classes, Hardgrove
began “poking around” the UGA library,
looking for research that focused on the lives of
refugees.
“There’s been a lot of work on PTSD
(posttraumatic stress disorder) among refugees
and a lot of anthropological and ethnographic
research,” she says, “but I couldn’t find
anything about the lived experiences of refugees
day in and day out and what are their thoughts
about who they are since they’ve become
refugees.”
With the support of her major professor,
Lynda Walters, Hardgrove began planning a
research project to address those questions.
A major hurdle was identifying a camp
for her research. Not only is safety a concern,
refugee camps are frequently known as havens
for rebel groups, but Hardgrove also needed
support in identifying refugees to interview for
her project.
She discovered Buduburam while researching camps on
the United Nations website. Established 17 years ago to house
those escaping the civil strife in Liberia, it housed 40,000
refugees at its peak. The recent calming of tensions in Liberia,
however, has reduced Buduburam’s population to around
25,000.
At Walters’ suggestion, Hardgrove looked for UGAsponsored
study abroad programs to countries with refugee
camps. She soon discovered that not only did UGA sponsor
a study abroad program in Ghana, but co-director Alex
Anderson, a FACS foods and nutrition faculty member, was
very familiar with Buduburam—it’s located just down the road
from where he attended high school in Ghana.
Anderson put Hardgrove in touch with the Rev. Jerry
Kandea, who is both a refugee and a Methodist minister
living in Buduburam. Kandea helped Hardgrove find people
to interview and also provided her a place to stay during the
nearly two weeks she was in the camp. To further defray the
expenses of the project, Hardgrove received the Sharon Y.
Nickols International Study Award.
Hardgrove began her research by talking with groups of
refugee women and children.
“The focus groups gave me the opportunity to get a
general sense of how things are and to test my questions,” she
says. “The focus groups were a little more casual and there
was more collective story telling that occurred. The individual
interviews that I conducted later were more personal and could
feel slow at times. I think I was asking them to think about
things they had never thought about.”
Among the children she interviewed, Hardgrove found
an acceptance of life in Buduburam. After all, most of these
young people were born in the camp. It’s the only life they
know.
But for their parents, life is hard and they don’t see that
ever changing.
“I think every single person told me, ‘I have to pay for
water; I have to pay to use the toilet,’” Hardgrove says.
Few of the adults have a regular source of income. Instead
they “go around,” Hardgrove says, looking for work each
day. However, there are the occasional entrepreneurs, like the
woman who has obtained a freezer and makes ice to sell to her
neighbors.
Hardgrove says few of those she interviewed have any
hope of returning to their homes in Liberia.
“They may be afraid to go back or they may not see a way
to go back,” she says. “For many of them, there’s nothing left
for them in Liberia.”
Despite the daily hardships and lack of opportunities they
face, Hardgrove says the people she interviewed remained
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