Helena Christensen Meets The Models Changing Stereotypes In A Rwandan Refugee Camp

Helena Christensen, a longtime supporter of the UNHCR - the UN Refugee Agency, recently visited the Mahama camp in Rwanda to meet refugees who have fled violence and persecution in Burundi. While there, Christensen photographed models who want to break the global media's stereotypes of being a refugee, and took part in a fashion show at the camp. Here, she writes about her visit.

by HELENA CHRISTENSEN
2 days ago
 
This is surreal. But amazingly so. I’m on a catwalk. Concrete floor, corrugated iron roof, music blaring, whooping crowd. I’m wearing a beautifully fitted, heavily patterned dress and a brilliantly clashing headscarf. This could be a show in a warehouse in New York’s Meatpacking district, or in one of London’s old covered markets. But it isn’t. I’m in a community centre. In Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda.


UNHCR/HECTOR PEREZ
I’m walking with fellow models – all refugees from Burundi – all members of TFM – Top Fashion Models agency. And they’re good. Better than good. They’re great. Full of attitude and oozing confidence. They’re sassy and sexy and fierce. And they completely debunk the stereotypical image of refugees being one monolithic mass of ‘the needy’. There is a strength and there is a power that belies what must be bubbling somewhere beneath – an enormity of grief and loss and trauma.

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Earlier in the day I sat with the impossibly gorgeous Gisella - 21 years old and the co-founder of TFM. She told me how, in 2015, political unrest in Burundi took a deadly turn and street protests led to violent clashes. Hundreds of thousands of Gisella’s fellow countrymen were forced to flee their homes and seek safety in the nearby countries of Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and here in Rwanda.