‘My children cry all day from the heat’: Life in Gaza’s tent camps
Al Jazeera
Displaced mothers share how they try to help their children cope with sweltering, unsanitary conditions.
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – It is around 7:30pm and the sun is setting when Nimah Elyan and her four youngest children return home – a beige-coloured tent in a temporary camp in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza – after trying to escape the heat by going to the beach.
“The tent in the summer is hell,” says 45-year-old Nimah as she uses a sponge and a bucket of water to wash her children who are under the age of seven. “We cannot stay inside the tent for even five minutes during the day. The heat is absolutely unbearable.”
To escape the sweltering conditions during the day, Nimah takes her children to swim in the sea, which lies a few kilometres away.
Her children look sleepy as they pull off their clothes, their skin reddened from being outdoors all day. Nimah’s four-year-old daughter sits on the ground eating fava beans, leftovers from last night’s dinner.
“My children cry all day from the heat,” she says, explaining how their skin suffers from constant exposure to the sun, a lack of hygiene products and water scarcity. The water they use to bathe and drink is collected by her children from the nearby hospital.
