This story is part of our series Uprooted: Family Stories of Climate Migration, produced by Moms Clean Air Force’s Latino engagement program, EcoMadres, and coordinated by Danielle Berkowitz-Sklar.
“Living in Maroua in the Far North region is extremely difficult,” says Patricia, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. During most of the year, Cameroonians living there face scorching temperatures and bone-dry conditions. People sleep outside at night because most households cannot afford air conditioners. Families must make impossible choices, rationing very limited water for cooking and bathing.
Then during the rainy season, from mid-May to September, come brutal rains, winds, and flooding. Standing water serves as an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos to spread vector-borne diseases like malaria. Cholera and meningitis are common as well. Global warming has direct effects on infectious diseases. These climate impacts happening now in Cameroon are only expected to worsen in the future.
Tell Congress: Support Families Displaced by Climate Disaster
Like many of her neighbors in Maroua, Patricia had long suffered from heat-related illnesses. But her situation really became untenable when she had children. “They would fall sick all the time, most of the year,” she says. According to Debra Hendrickson, author of The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change, infants and children feel the effects of extreme heat more acutely than adults. “This is because small bodies heat up faster and cannot cool down as quickly,” says Hendrickson.
Excessive health impacts lead to relocation
When Patricia’s oldest child developed a high fever as an infant, Patricia carried her from hospital to hospital searching for the right diagnosis and treatment. “I was so desperate as a first-time mom not knowing how to help my daughter.” Her children frequently suffered from bacterial infections and painful heat boils on their faces and bodies.
Years later, Patricia almost lost another infant with a high fever. “He became so sick, and they didn’t know the cause—or if it was somehow linked to extreme heat. The doctor said, ‘Ma’am, we have given all the treatment that we can.’ That’s when I broke down and was crying,” she recalls. Fortunately, a last-ditch attempt with a new antibiotic proved successful and her son recovered.
Although Patricia and her husband had solid jobs in Maroua, health care costs ate up about a third of their salaries. Her boss complained that she was missing too much work because of doctor and hospital visits. In 2015, the family decided to relocate to an area in Northwest Cameroon with a more favorable climate.
Climate displacement—not once, but twice
After the move, life was good for Patricia and her family. “In Maroua, the children were always cranky and pale, because they were constantly sick. Once we reached the Northwest, they regained their health. They were so healthy, and I was so happy,” Patricia remembers.
But after civil war broke out in 2017, Patricia and her husband became targets because of their work as educators, and she was kidnapped at gunpoint multiple times. “After the second time I was kidnapped, we decided it was too much. It was a cycle. They kept coming back threatening they would burn us alive, burn our houses. Life became so unbearable because we were living in constant fear,” says Patricia.
Returning to Maroua was not an option, so the family decided to apply for asylum in the U.S. It worked. Upon arriving in the U.S., Patricia and her children experienced culture shock and psychological repercussions from the trauma back home, but here they are healthy and stable. “The kids are safe and comfortable. And that’s what gives me peace as a mom. I feel blessed,” she says.
How climate change drives migration
Because climate change and migration are big, complicated global issues, the relationship between the two is complex. “What’s important for people to know is that climate change alone doesn’t always lead to forced displacement or forced migration, but it intersects with and intensifies existing drivers of migration,” says Gabriela Roque, climate immigration program manager at the National Partnership for New Americans’ Climate Justice Collaborative. Those economic drivers include violence and social persecution, as in Patricia’s case, as well as poverty.
It is also critical to understand that vulnerable people typically move internally before they decide the situation is impossible and try to flee their home country. More and more families may find themselves in situations similar to Patricia’s because of a dangerous and unstable climate—and at a time when the U.S. is more hostile to immigration than it has ever been, under the current administration.
“I’m sharing my story because I want people to understand that people like us don’t migrate because they want to,” says Patricia. “They move because they are forced to move, because of climate change, because of insecurity, because of their safety. If everything was good back in my country, we wouldn’t find ourselves here in the U.S.”
Learn more about climate migration in our fact sheet.
Tell Congress: Support Families Displaced by Climate Disaster