“The Beja boy is dying,” that’s what they said to me,
and they took me by the hand and led me there to see,
to where he sat on seats of grass, still and very cold,
with his face the mask of an aged man,
but he was less than one year old.
Flies crusted round his nose and hands,
He did not move, he could not move, just gazed across the sand.
With milk, with food, with tender care him surely we could save,
It seemed after all only fair, in a tiny boy so brave,
So I resolved at least to try, to save this little one,
But when I came back in a very short time, the Beja boy had gone.
—Dave Ellaway,
British Red Cross volunteer
The wheels bit into the surface of what an optimist might have called a road. The contact of tire on earth spewed a maelstrom of red dust and sand around the Toyota Land Cruiser, making it impossible even to make out the bright Red Cross and Red Crescent decals pasted on the side doors and hood.
I could not imagine how Jean could see from behind the wheel. Actually, it didn’t matter much. He was experienced in this type of terrain, and had learned long ago that a slow speed did not cushion the bumps. It was just as well, if not better, to accelerate through them.
Besides, he was fighting against time. Difficult enough during daylight, these roads became treacherous to navigate after dark. Even worse, there was always the possibility that armed bandits might choose this night to ambush us.
The noise inside the vehicle was deafening, a combination of high engine torque, the crashing as the vehicle bounced along the road and the rock n’ roll that Jean liked to blast from the stereo cassette deck.
Red Cross feeding operation for Baja nomads.
“We Are the World” may have been the number one pop song on two continents, but for Jean the music of the day was the Talking Heads. The cab of the vehicle was stiflingly hot and filled with the same dust that enveloped us. We couldn’t afford to shut the windows and use the air-conditioner because we needed to conserve our precious supply of diesel fuel.
I sat next to Jean, braced for the roller-coaster ride. My right hand tightly gripped the strap over the passenger door, my left hand hooked under the seat. My feet were jammed forward but I was cautious that I didn’t smash a knee or shin against the dashboard each time the vehicle bounded back to earth. Why they had sent us these brand new Land Cruisers without safety belts I would never know. I felt more like a cowboy riding a rodeo bull than a refugee worker.
We looked laughable. My bush hat was pulled low over my brow, and I wore the darkest prescription sunglasses I could find to deflect the glare of the desert. An Arab headdress, a kaffiyeh, was wrapped around my mouth in a vain attempt to keep the dust out. The sweat on my shirt, mixed with dust, made an unsightly reddish paste.
Jean wore tan cotton pants, a short-sleeved shirt and yellow aviator-style sunglasses that seemed to cover his face. An ever-present cigarette dangled from his lips. He might have looked like he was heading for a picnic in his native Belgium, except they didn’t have this dust in Belgium.
We were both in poor physical shape, the result of no time for meals, 14 to 16-hour work days without a break and a good case of giardia, an intestinal disease caused by drinking contaminated water. I was gaunt, having lost 25 lbs. Compared to Jean, though, I was in good health. He was recovering from a bout of malaria and had pains in his chest. Jean had also lost a great deal of weight. The loss of flesh on his skull made his eyes appear to bulge out of his head. None of our clothing fit properly. It was hard for me to imagine what Jean looked like three months earlier.
If we had been in a war, we would have been tagged as “walking wounded” by the medics. In fact, this was war, and the enemy was a ruthless adversary. Mother Nature had declared war on everything that lived in this region, and she had both time and the terrain on her side. Over and over, she put obstacles in our way as we raced to locate a nomadic group that had reportedly been bogged down by lack of water about two hours northwest of the city of Kassala.
Jean was the head of the League of Red Cross Society (LRCS) sub-delegation in Kassala. He was a male nurse with vast Red Cross refugee field experience, and was now responsible for coordinating League of Red Cross efforts at three Ethiopian refugee camps and Sudanese feeding operations in the immediate area around Kassala.
When we first received the report about this group of nomads, Jean and I were the only two people at the LRCS offices. There was no choice but to find these people, evaluate their situation and, if necessary, arrange for food and water to be trucked to them the next day.
With no portable radios available, Jean wrote a note to his second in command, a German Red Cross delegate named Franz, about where we were heading and why. Before I knew it, we were off. We started our search about 2:30 P.M., so most likely our return would be after dark.
I looked over at Jean and smiled: with the noise and dust in the cab it was difficult to talk. I yelled to him that with the condition his lungs were in, smoking cigarettes was not the best thing he could do for himself. Jean had one of the nicest, broadest smiles a man could possess and he used it on me now.
“Aw, come on, Paul,” he drawled, accentuating my name, “Let me die my own way.”
We both laughed. Then Jean resumed total concentration, scanning the road and the land before him. The point in this type of driving was not so much to stay on the road as to select a path of least resistance.
By consulting a Sudanese government outpost in a small village we had passed a while back, Jean had a pretty good fix on where we were going. Now it was a matter of following a crude map—and a bit of luck. We had given ourselves until 5:00 P.M. to find the group. If we had no luck we would return to Kassala and try again the next day, this time using two vehicles.
The lyrics from the cassette blasted at my ears: “This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around62.” So true to our situation. I could not believe I was back in refugee work. And, of all places, I had chosen Sudan. Again. But this time was different.
I reflected on the situation that had brought me here and how I had been dealing with it over the past few weeks. I had decided by the fall of 1984 that I had to join the “professional” world. I had completed my research and background studies on refugees for a book I wanted to write about my experiences in Singapore. I had been working part-time with the Lutheran Immigration Services on resettling refugees (from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Eastern Europe) in Rochester, New York. I also toiled as a house painter to earn enough money so that Kate and I could survive. Her teaching salary was not enough.
Still, I wanted to use my education and my international experience, so I began to send out resumes in November of 1984. I got the call from the American Red Cross in early December, asking if I’d consider a posting in Sudan.
Refugee work in Sudan had beaten me badly in 1981. I had gotten a severe sinus infection that took months to heal, and now I was being asked to climb back into the ring. I learned that the League of Red Cross Societies was desperately in need of people with field experience in refugee relief—and especially those who had field experience in Sudan. It was to be a six-month assignment. My wife could not accompany me. They wanted me to leave as soon as possible. I told the person on the other end of the line that I wouldn’t make such a decision without consulting Kate. This would be as much her decision as mine.
I hung up the telephone and sat for a long time. Why Sudan? Why refugees? It was almost as if God was calling my bluff. I had been researching my book and trying to get my thoughts down on paper. I am not a particularly religious man, but I believe that privileged individuals and governments have a moral duty to come to the assistance of those less fortunate. The international laws on refugees actually defines it and mandates action to be taken by governments.
I had read the newspapers; I’d seen the reports on TV about the suffering in Africa. Every awful thing that I and others had predicted back in 1981 when I had last worked in Sudan—about the potential for catastrophe if not cataclysmic events there—started coming true in 1984.
I knew the terrain. I knew the government of Sudan. I knew all the refugee agencies and I knew I could help. I also knew what Kate’s answer would be, “A person must do whatever is right.” So one snowy day in mid-January of 1985, I kissed Kate goodbye for six months. A friend drove me to the airport to begin a journey that would take me to the American Red Cross offices in Washington, D.C., then to the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS) headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and finally to Khartoum, Sudan to join the LRCS field delegation.
Remembering it all as I sat in a bouncing Land Cruiser, covered in dust, I thought of the Phil Collins song “One More Night.” It had been playing in the background as I said goodbye to Kate. How I wished I was home at that moment for “one more night.” I was sore, dirty, lonely for Kate and hungry. I so missed my wife. But I had to focus on trying to save lives.
This time, the experience in Sudan turned out to be positive. Although my time in Singapore had gotten me off track, I was now able to reconnect with why I had become involved in public health work in the first place. At its essence was the simple desire to help people, but what truly made a difference was the opportunity to be effective. What separated the professional from the “humanitarian” was an ability to make crucial decisions in a professional manner. I had proven I could do that.
The big difference about being in Sudan this time was the Red Cross and Red Crescent badge of the LRCS pinned onto my shirt. That badge said that I was neutral. I was with an organization with no governmental or political strings. The Red Cross had the funds and personnel to act quickly.
By this point I had become convinced that organizations like the Red Cross, the United Nations, the European Economic Community and some of the apolitical voluntary organizations (such as British and American Save the Children Foundation, CARE, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam or Doctors Without Borders) were the answer to this type of work. LRCS had the speed, the human resources and the funds to react quickly to the drama unfolding in Sudan. So did the U.N. and some of the larger voluntary agencies.
I was recruited as the LRCS coordinator for all operations in Sudan. This involved not only the care and feeding of Ethiopian refugees but of drought-affected Sudanese as well. Originally, during my briefing in Geneva, I was told that I would be coordinating the activities of 17 Red Cross delegates and that we would be feeding 60,000 people. Before the operation was over, I was coordinating the activities of more than 70 Red Cross delegates from 17 countries.
We had at least 55 vehicles and were utilizing the services of four and sometimes five C-130 military aircraft that had been donated by European air forces. LRCS was feeding an estimated 240,000 Ethiopian and Sudanese. At the time, it was the largest such operation in the world. LRCS had field teams all along the eastern border of Sudan and a major team in the west. Khartoum and Port Sudan served as distribution points for food, fuel, medicine and other relief supplies.
The Red Cross had maintained a consistent feeding and support operation in Sudan during the early 1980s. Nevertheless, not even they were prepared for the devastation that would befall the area. Drought, famine and conflict had engulfed the land. From the air, the land looked as if an atomic blast had been detonated there. The earth was barren as far as the eye could see. Sometimes you could spot what used to be a farm by the fence outline, now covered by sand or dust.
One day, flying over the southeastern region of the country near Shuwak, we spotted a moving mass of people. As the plane banked to give us a better view, what I saw were hundreds of people digging in the sand attempting to find the smallest drop of water in a dry river bed.
While the media focused on the plight of Ethiopia, by 1985 the drought had caused widespread famine throughout Sudan, as well. The battle with Mother Nature recognized neither political nor geographic boundaries, and people like me were thrown into the breach.
At times, I felt like a combat commander trying to hold the battle lines. We needed to keep the Sudanese people in their homes and villages, as opposed to migrating towards larger cities and forming “internally displaced” camps. Such camps would only contribute to the spread of disease and, if the drought ever did break, we wanted them in a position to resume their livelihoods.
The trick was, keeping the Sudanese in their villages meant that the Red Cross had to travel to the people to deliver relief. We had to try to locate whoever needed help, estimate their numbers and needs, and set up food and water distribution points. At the same time, the number of Ethiopians crossing the border was increasing by the thousands every day.
New campsites were being selected by the Sudanese government, usually in remote locations. I had learned over time, though, that there is no perfect site for a refugee camp. All the “perfect sites” are already inhabited.
The Red Cross and other NGOs rapidly deployed medical, administration and logistical teams to these border refugee camps. Our supply lines were overstretched and our volunteers went stoically into the field without many of the bare essentials for survival. The Red Cross teams literally lived off whatever they could purchase from local markets. I would send young, strong, able individuals out to do battle with disease and starvation—and while many would return weak and sick, they did this work time and time again, rarely with any complaint. No one quit. I would often lie awake at night wondering what motivated such extraordinary people and where they came from.
Our battle to save lives was much like the tank battles conducted in the same region during the Second World War—supplies were essential to achieve victory. The western border was in desperate need of food, and there were no paved roads in that direction. There was, however, an old airfield that had been used by Allied bombers against the Axis at Al Fashir. It was now used occasionally by Sudan Airways, the Red Cross and other agencies. Still, we knew that an air bridge of food could not possibly supply the thousands of tons of supplies needed in the area on a weekly basis. Planes can’t carry enough cargo.
Besides the roads, the only other option was a single rail line. This actually connected the city of Kosti, due south of Khartoum, with Nyala in the Darfur region to the west. The newest part of the rail line was more than 40 years old. Since it had been built by different companies from different countries over a long period of time, it was actually made up of several different gauges of track. Rolling stock had to be transferred from one gauge track to the other. Equipment was old and in disrepair and service was, at best, sporadic.
Despite all this, the U.S. government aid program, USAID, determined that this rail line could serve as the sole lifeline for food and medicine to the Darfur region. Just about everyone else I knew disagreed with that opinion, including myself. The U.S. government began to give the Sudanese large sums of money to purchase railroad equipment. Because it would take months to purchase and install the new equipment, however, this was not an answer to the immediate problems of food and medicine distribution. The other issue was volume: the sheer weight of that much new rail stock on a daily basis would cause a great deal of wear and tear on those ancient tracks. The tracks could not be repaired quickly enough to maintain service.
Eventually, a consensus was reached between the American government and the chief delegate from the LRCS. We would use the rail system, but we also secured alternative sources of transportation, which enabled us to diversify our transportation planning. We used rail, trucks, planes and even camels. Our operations were not dependent on one system to re-supply the western or eastern borders. It was comforting to know that the Red Cross had the power to make its own decisions and not be influenced by a single government entity.
Although the roads to the west were poor, there were a considerable number of lorry drivers in Khartoum who could help move significant volumes of food and medicine in that direction. These drivers were skilled in desert driving and often knew alternate routes if there were problems with the main roads. It was a case of using locally available resources to solve problems. LRCS, along with other groups like British-based Save the Children, successfully moved supplies this way.
As everyone predicted, there were difficulties with the rail system from the beginning. Because a number of agencies besides the U.S. government were involved in using the trains, there were problems in scheduling and prioritizing shipments. The flow of commodities, even when the trains were operational, was disjointed. Mountains of food began to stockpile at the railhead in Kosti. This eventually led to food riots in that city. The poor residents of Kosti, it seemed, did not understand why they could only gaze at such large mounds of food that were being sent to Darfur for free distribution. The people in Kosti were starving, too.
The U.S. government eventually agreed that distribution by rail was not effective, but the delay had made the alternatives more costly. The local lorry drivers knew how badly they were needed to move the stockpiles, and their fees rose. Companies were hired from abroad. A huge contract was signed with the Transamerica Corporation to move supplies to the west by land and air. My thoughts about all these events leading up to my ride in this dusty Land Cruiser were interrupted by Jean’s yell to “Hold on!” I looked up to see a large drift of sand that stretched across the road. It was about one meter high and bracketed the road for twenty meters in either direction. There was no missing it.
The wheels hit the outer edge of this wave and ricocheted off. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as we left the ground. I thought to myself that if this metal box had wings we would be flying. As we arched upward I noticed that Jean was trying to keep the wheels straight so that when we hit the ground there would be no chance of snapping an axle or breaking off a wheel. The front wheels hit first. Then the back and then the front wheels again. The engine stalled and died. Even Jean’s music abruptly stopped. We sat still, quietly inspecting ourselves, taking a physical inventory and waiting for the cloud of dust behind us to catch up. Other than a bump on the right side of my head, I seemed to be all right. I knew Jean was okay because he started to laugh.
I took off my bush hat and hit Jean over the head, succeeding only in raising more dust. I knew it wasn’t his fault but I couldn’t resist the chance to give him grief.
“Jesus H. Christ! I got through two tours of duty in Vietnam and the evacuations from Iran only to be killed by a Belgian cowboy in North Africa. Do me a favor. Die from either old age or smoking, but don’t take me with you.”
This made Jean laugh all the more.
“Aw, come on, Paul,” he dragged out in his Belgian-French accent, “that was only a little bump.”
We sat in silence for a moment more. Jean grabbed the water bottle and got out of the vehicle to stretch. I joined him as he leaned against the front hood of the Toyota. The vehicle had come to rest near the dried-up carcass of a cow. We had seen a number of dead animals over the past hour. Most were cattle or sheep, although occasionally we saw the remains of camels. If the camels were dying out here, I mused, what must be happening to the human inhabitants of the region?
My eyes went from the animal carcass to Jean, but I said nothing. He read my thoughts.
“Don’t worry, my friend, we’ll find them,” he said.
We climbed back into our vehicle. I was beginning to realize just how sore I was. My right hip ached with a new intensity. If I was sore, I wondered how bad Jean must feel, since he was a great deal weaker.
Jean keyed the ignition. The engine started and died. He tried again, and again it started and again it died. On the third try it finally caught with a loud noise as diesel smoke billowed out of the exhaust pipe. Jean howled with delight, readjusted the volume on the cassette in the tape deck and yelled, “The Belgian cavalry to the rescue!”
As tired as I was, I had to laugh.
As Jean got us back on course, I tried to regain my train of thought. I began thinking about my run-ins with representatives from the U.S. government, one of my favorite topics. And there was my one and only encounter with the Reverend Jerry Falwell.
One day, I had traveled across Khartoum in 120-degree heat to meet with a Red Cross colleague. It was always odd, walking into the air-conditioned lobby of the Khartoum Hilton. The hotel was a mecca of efficiency in an extremely inefficient land, and just being in that building made me feel guilty. In a country where people were dying of starvation less than two miles away, the Hilton’s $155 a night rooms seemed incredibly decadent.
I didn’t hold the hotel responsible, though. It was expensive running an operation such as this in North Africa. The Hilton staff and management had done me and other refugee workers many kindnesses. The hotel had even let refugee field workers stay free of charge for two nights to give them a rest.
I had heard that Reverend Falwell was in Khartoum, and it was no surprise to learn that he and his entourage were staying at the Hilton. Most relief workers were staying in far less luxurious accommodations.
My search for my Red Cross colleague in the lobby failed, but then I noticed a gathering in front of the conference rooms just off the main lobby. That’s where I saw the leader of America’s “Moral Majority.” The Reverend had just finished a press conference and was answering some questions from the press corps.
Reverend Falwell was expounding on his plans for bringing Christian relief to the starving people of the region. When he mentioned the Red Sea Hills, my ears perked up. The Red Sea Hills is a barren region that runs north to south from Port Sudan to Kassala along the Red Sea in eastern Sudan. It is populated by subsistence farmers, herders and nomads.
As part of a coordinated effort between the Sudanese government and the assisting international relief agencies, this area had come under the responsibility of the LRCS, Save the Children Foundation, the World Food Program (WFP) and a small group from the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society. WFP was primarily responsible for supplying food. Save the Children and the Saudi Arabians were conducting some feeding operations in refugee camps along the Port Sudan-Kassala highway.
LRCS had overall responsibility for this area. We managed most of the refugee camps and had a very effective food distribution system targeting Baja nomads in the mountains. At the time of Falwell’s press conference, the Red Cross had feeding and blanket distribution operations based out of the villages of Sinkat, Haiya and Derudeb in the Red Sea Hills. Our mission was to utilize local government officials to travel by four-wheel drive trucks, locate starving people and establish feeding points.
At this point, our main concern was that only the healthy individuals could come down from the hills to pick up food, water and medicine. The less able were marooned up in the hill areas waiting to die, despite the often superhuman efforts of Red Cross volunteers who risked life and limb to locate those in need.
In his media event, Falwell had suggested the use of ultra-light gliders to send food into the Red Sea Hills. His idea was that a fleet of these metal and canvas mechanical angels would quickly and efficiently bring supplies into this isolated terrain. I could only imagine the thought of celestial, Christian, mechanized angels going forth to feed the backward Muslim peasants.
What a sales pitch the Reverend could make to the faithful of the electronic church back home!
However, it seemed that Reverend Falwell was long on salesmanship but woefully short on aerodynamics. I had crossed this area several times in twin-engine Cessna’s flown by veteran pilots. A Cessna is huge in comparison to an ultra-light glider, yet I remembered that all my experiences in flight in this area were at best “uplifting.” The problem was the principal of heat rising. The sun in these hills is merciless, baking the region in 120 plus degree heat. The heat rises vertically off the desert sands and shoots skyward in tremendous gusts of wind.
Flying in a Cessna, I would often find myself being uncontrollably forced against the ceiling of the plane as we entered a thermal updraft and back down again as we passed out of it. I often feared that the wings would snap off or that wind shear would force the plane against the cliffs below us. Even flying at 20,000 feet in Sudan Air 727 passenger jets, the pilots occasionally fought for control and passengers were bounced around brutally. I had no doubt that Falwell’s fleet of angels, not unlike Icarus, would have their wings shorn off for flying too close to the heat of the Red Sea Hills. Oh yes, and the bonus question that no one thought to ask the Reverend at the press conference, “How much food could a single ultra-light carry?”
Amused by the Reverend’s uninformed plans, I turned and walked out of the conference room, feeling relieved that these ludicrous dreams would never be put into action. Although this brief encounter with televised religion was strange, I knew that the checks and balances that allowed refugee assistance agencies to operate in Sudan were sufficiently in place by the Sudanese government to prevent Falwell’s people from working in any area without government approval.
What I did not know was that behind-the-scenes politics were in play. The Vice President, George H. W. Bush, arrived in Khartoum on a fact-finding mission at the very same time. In politics, very little happens by coincidence. By 1985 it seemed to many that the Moral Majority was positioning itself to become the religious representative of the American government—and, indeed, the Reverend Falwell’s arrival in Khartoum on the heels of the Vice President’s trip seemed to juxtapose his organization with presidential politics. I later heard unproven rumors that Falwell had actually joined the Bush fact-finding mission.
Everyone was much too busy in our frantic food distribution efforts to pay much attention when Falwell and his people showed up at the remote village of Derudeb. Their intentions were obvious. Falwell arrived with a film crew and began to shoot a promotional video in front of our staff working in the area. The video appeared to be a fund-raising tool to share with the folks back home in America. It seemed to me that the Reverend had smelled the money and prestige famine relief could bring and had jumped on the bandwagon to save the starving in Africa and fill his pockets with gold.
Most professional refugee workers tend to be a bit skeptical about trying to feed starving people with food in one hand and a Bible in the other. I had seen the wealth that organized religions had often accumulated but somehow neglected to distribute to the faithful in developing countries. During my war, I had heard of incidents in Vietnam of wounded Buddhists being refused treatment in “Christian” hospitals.
Still, had Falwell and the Moral Majority come with a plan for relief assistance, brought in experienced workers or offered their assistance to join forces with one of the established relief organizations, they would have been welcomed with open arms. The drought had taken a toll far worse than anyone had envisioned. Our organizations were spread thinly, and there were many regions in desperate need of volunteers and extra hands.
But Falwell did not seem to be placing the needs of the local people or the refugee organizations above his own. From what I had heard from my field officers, the Reverend and his people were targeting a specific site in the Red Sea Hills where they wanted to set up a Christian relief community. The site was a stone’s throw from Red Cross and Save the Children offices but neither he nor his acolytes made any effort to coordinate with them.
No one knew why Falwell had selected this area. The staff he brought with him had no relief or international experience. They were kids, really, and probably had not a clue on how to conduct even a basic needs assessment. Perhaps he saw Derudeb as a unique opportunity for fund-raising. After all, the Red Sea Hills region was newsworthy. Senator Edward Kennedy and other VIPs had visited the area. The site itself offered conditions ideal for recruiting volunteers.
At Derudeb, there is an abandoned Italian road construction camp. Although it was pretty rundown, many of the construction bunkhouses and warehouses were still inhabitable, and the Red Cross and Save the Children were using some of them. I was told by those who witnessed Falwell shooting his promotional film that the camp was to figure predominately in the video.
Derudeb gave the Reverend an amazing public relations opportunity. Not only could he show the world starving refugees but the abandoned Italian construction camp was an excellent recruitment tool. It had houses, a sand filled swimming pool, an outdoor theatre and a recreation center. All in disrepair but very photogenic.
We heard that Falwell had plans to renovate the site. It could be a North African theme park just slightly warmer and dustier than Jim and Tammy Bakker’s Heritage U.S.A63. Of course, this would take money.
Some relief workers started referring to Falwell’s people as “Jerry’s Kids.” The group of Falwell workers consisted of about 20 college-age volunteers. From what I gathered from my team’s reports in Derudeb, almost none of Falwell’s volunteers had experience in refugee relief operations or feeding programs. The humor of Falwell’s Folly had suddenly ceased to amuse me. He was willing to put lives on the line, both his own volunteers and the refugees they ostensibly intended to serve, in order to fill his bank coffers.
During those desperate months when we were over-extended, even the Red Cross had put volunteers in the field with minimal refugee relief experience. However, inexperienced volunteers were always paired and mentored by highly experienced pros. We would never field an entire team with so little field experience. The resumes of many in the Red Cross delegation read like a history book of disaster relief operations spanning the past 20 years. Delegates in our group had relief experience in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Angola and Lebanon. Others were trained in desert operations; still others were skilled in dietary feeding. The Red Cross and other agencies had been working in the region for years and knew their stuff.
Still, this was dangerous work. Even with our field experience, our personnel had some close calls. Often, I would have to ask the delegates to live and work under the most difficult conditions. The 17-person medical/logistics field team at the Ethiopian refugee camp at Girba North was living in conditions far below what American GIs lived on firebases in Vietnam. But the delegates were professionals. To save lives they were willing to take risks. In my professional opinion, it was pure negligence on the part of Falwell’s organization to send these kids into the Red Sea Hills without the proper training or backup.
And what of the refugees themselves? It takes more than good Christian intentions and a little bit of food to save starving people. You have to be careful about what food and medicine is given to a person who has been weakened by disease and starvation. The wrong combination or concentration could do more harm than good. Food delivered to the wrong areas could create friction between groups of desperate people.
I had been told by the Red Cross delegate in Derudeb that “Jerry’s Kids” had come to him to ask how to set up feeding operations. He had to tell them that there was simply no time for him to begin to teach novices the elements of science-based nutritional feeding and food distribution. Eventually, the Save the Children group did give Falwell’s people some training support. I praised Save the Children for their efforts. Their operations were in fixed locations inside refugee camps. Falwell’s people could come to these sites for instruction.
I was very disturbed that the system of checks and balances had been by-passed on how refugee relief sites were allocated to incoming relief agencies by the Sudan government. I went to the official in charge of the Sudanese Office of Drought and Rehabilitation and asked him how a group of people could come into Sudan with no credentials and establish themselves in feeding operations. I asked what had happened to the coordination procedures established by his government. The rather solemn official explained that his government had received “unusually strong pressure” from senior officials within the American government.
The request had been made during a recent visit to Khartoum by officials from Washington. He mentioned no one by name but it made me wonder about the rumors of a Falwell-Bush rendezvous in Khartoum.
Luckily, “Jerry’s Kids” would be removed from Derudeb by the Sudanese government because of their striking ineptitude. Still, once again, I asked myself about the U.S. government’s involvement in this dangerous game. Was Vice President Bush foolish enough to support such a thing? He may have helped to unknowingly unleash a group of kids on Sudan who could have harmed themselves and others. Could a man running for the presidency in America be so influenced by conservative splinter groups? That in itself was frightening.
I am a strong believer in the separation of church and state. I was evacuated from Iran and the mess created by a pure Islamic state. There are too many examples currently and historically of what happens when politics and religion mix. If George Bush and Jerry Falwell were conspiring in far-flung Khartoum, what were they plotting in the U.S.? To think that Americans back home could be so easily drawn into and used in these political maneuvers greatly concerned me.
“I think this is it, Paul,” Jean said to me, as he downshifted gears.
I was not sure how Jean had determined this. All I could see were a couple of men near a thicket in the barren landscape. Jean drove the vehicle slowly towards them.
The two men approached. They were tall with very dark skin and tribal scarring on their faces. One had a hand-made wooden comb stuck in his afro-style hair. They were dressed in the traditional loose-fitting white garb worn by nomads. The only other distinguishing thing about them was that they both carried very long double-edged swords sheathed in leather cases.
I jokingly told Jean to keep smiling. We knew that these people were not shy about using the swords. Jean went toward the elder of the two and gave him the Arabic greeting, which was returned by both words and smiles. I relaxed a bit. Jean inquired if there was one among them who spoke English. We usually had an interpreter with us but we had been told that there were one or two men with the nomadic group who did speak passable English. After a discussion between our hosts, the younger of the two turned and ran back into the bushes. In a moment he returned with an even younger man in his late teens. This man knew a bit of English.
We asked to be taken to the group’s leader. Jean and I were led on foot through the thicket to a clearing where five or six men had gathered, sitting near a few dehydrated camels. After identifying the leader, we asked about their situation. They related a story that Jean and I had heard many times. About 60 percent of their herd had died. The old and the very young were getting weak; some had died. With the herd dying off and so many people sick, these nomads had lost their mobility. They were using their few remaining camels to send men out to their next watering point to bring water back. It was a 12-hour round trip.
From the appearance of an old camel, a few feet from me, I speculated that their treks for water might not last much longer. They had notified the Sudanese government of their plight by messenger. The government promised to send help. That had been more than four days ago.
It would be speculation on our part as to why the government had not sent out immediate assistance. Maybe they had no food or medicine in local government warehouses, a fact not hard to believe.
There could have been a breakdown in communications. The request for assistance could still be sitting on a desk in the province headquarters in Kassala. Or it may be that we were the ones who were asked to provide aid. We had never identified the messenger who brought us news of this group earlier in the day. It didn’t matter now. We knew these people were in trouble. Our Red Cross field office would come to their assistance until Jean could get some government support for them.
We asked to see the village. We wanted to assess what medical and food issues we would be facing. This triaging would determine the number and types of staff we’d need to send.
The village was little more than rudimentary. The nomads had created makeshift shelters by laying grass mats over tree branches. Possibly they had lost or could not carry their own equipment when the herds began to die. Hopefully this vital equipment was safely stored somewhere.
As the village elders had told us, the old and the young were in rough shape. Jean found one baby that nearly fit in the palm of his hand. Some of the children were reduced to skin and bones. Their skin was dry and leathery to the touch, signifying severe dehydration. Their stomachs bulged, which indicated starvation. This was both sad and frightening. We gave the village elders what little supplies we had brought with us and told them that the Red Cross would return the next morning with food, water and other supplies. We gave our respects, jumped into our vehicle and headed back to Kassala.
Jean holding nomad baby.
ean was silent for a very long time. He didn’t even play his music. Finally, as if he wasn’t really talking to me but to himself, he muttered, “Where am I going to get extra staff and equipment to come out here?” I had no answer for him. We had no reserve staff at headquarters back in Khartoum.
He went on, “The medical team at Girba North is working seven days a week. They worked 12- to 16-hour days, and those are the good days. Because of water shortages they are permitted to bathe once every three days. Have you ever spent three days covered in sand in 120-degree heat? They are lucky if they get two meals a day. They have to contend with unrelenting heat, sandstorms, scorpions, venomous snakes and camel spiders the size of your hand. The camel spiders are the worst. They crawl onto your skin at night and inject something akin to Novocain. You can’t feel them. Then they would commence to eat your flesh.
“The group at the refugee camp at Kilo 26 is in a similar situation,” he said. “Most of them are covered with sand flea bites. All have gastrointestinal problems. We are using all of our vehicles to re-supply these two groups along with the Swiss Red Cross team working at the refugee camp at Wad Sherife.”
Calm came over Jean’s face. I knew he’d been desperately deciding how he could rearrange staff to accommodate this new emergency.
“Don’t worry, Paul, it will get done, he said, “but you need to get me more supplies and staff ASAP.” I told Jean I would do what I could. This encouraged a smile. “Another case of the Belgian Cavalry to the rescue!” he yelled out.
Heading back to Kassala that night, I relied on the capable driving of Jean and decided to sit back and relax. I was too tired to care if we got into an accident. Yet I felt somehow renewed. Sitting next to Jean and experiencing what I had today I knew why I had become involved in this type of work. I had met so many good people, people who cared, who had compassion for other beings who shared the planet with us. At that very moment I knew that there were men and women throughout the Horn of Africa and in other lands going beyond their limits to save lives.
—Liliane De Toledo
The face of cholera.
I found in the heat and shifting sands of Sudan a dignity in humankind that is often overlooked in our “modern” world. I saw it in the face of an elderly Ethiopian refugee being helped across a camp to a medical aid station. One night in the Girba North refugee camp, I saw a three-year-old child triumph after a night long fight with death during a cholera epidemic. Both the elder Ethiopian and the child and others I had witnessed had lost almost everything. Yet they still maintained a measure of pride—and a will to survive.
Man helping father walk.
It is easy to criticize governments and organizations for their policies, their narrow-mindedness, their arrogance, and their bureaucracy. I drew my strength from the survivors and the caregivers. I could return home and renew my own life from what I had seen in those unforgiving months in Sudan.
When I got home to Rochester, I wanted to impress Kate with the tan I had. I took off my shirt and when she saw the skeleton I had become, she cried.
62 Lyrics from the song “Life During Wartime” from the Talking Heads album “Stop Making Sense”
63 Heritage U.S.A. was an American Christian theme park, water park, and residential complex built in Fort Mill, South Carolina by PTL Club (short for “Praise The Lord”) founders televangelist Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker