Mayo

The government of Sudan, though loudly proclaiming their willingness to help the victims in Darfur, continued to place endless obstacles in the path of harried aid workers eager to get to Darfur to provide aid. While we waited in Khartoum for travel permits, we actively sought, much to the dismay of the government, displaced Darfurians who could provide us with the only firsthand accounts available of the atrocities in Darfur. By speaking with them, we hoped to learn exactly what the situation was and what we could do to help.

Mayo, a dusty, destitute, and long-forgotten area of Khartoum, lay far from the city center and was home to internally displaced persons, or IDPs—those who are forced to move around within their own country in search of safety—from the civil war in the south, as well as recently arrived Darfurians. The government housed several thousand IDPs from Darfur in a crumbling and dusty old municipal building in Mayo. It was a dismal place. Children and stray dogs ran together here in packs and scavenged together through garbage, searching for scraps of anything edible, or worthwhile to sell.

Jack had been to the Darfur IDP camp there and had been amazed at the number of women and girls who stepped forward to tell him that they had been raped by the Janjaweed. Here in Sudan, as in so many places, rape had always carried with it a stigma that hung about the victim like a haze announcing that she was no longer clean. As a result, victims here had hesitated to come forward; there were few if any available services, and to proclaim oneself a victim carried the risk of further victimization and abandonment. However, the prevalence of the crime and the sheer number of victims actually helped to erase the stigma, at least here in Mayo, and these women wanted people to know of their plight; they wanted help and they were no longer ashamed to ask for it. They’d eagerly raised their voices and hands to get Jack’s attention; each had a story, and each wanted to tell it. The fact that he was a man did nothing to deter them; they were determined to be heard, and they jostled for space in the crowded quarters. Unfortunately, Jack hadn’t been able to stay and speak at length with them that day, but he knew that I had plans to get to Mayo, and he promised that I would be there soon.

Days later, I drove out to Mayo with a local staff member. As we waited at the gate for permission to enter the camp, we could see the IDPs huddled just inside, peering out at us expectantly. I smiled, confident that I would be speaking with them shortly. A beleaguered-looking Sudanese official leaned around the heavy wooden gate and asked in Arabic where our papers were.

My escort answered him. “What papers do you mean?”

“My travel permit?” I asked.

He looked me up and down. “No,” he said. “You need papers now to come in to Mayo.”

“Since when?” I asked. “Jack was just here and he didn’t have any special papers.”

“That’s all changed now. You need papers, or you don’t get in.”

So we asked tiredly where to get the papers and how long the process might take.

He looked at us and sighed. “I don’t know how long, maybe a week.”

Arguing the point was out of the question but begging was not, so I tried that. “Please,” I said, “we just want to help, and to do that, we have to talk to these people. We won’t be long, I promise.”

But he was steadfast in his refusal, and finally we gave up and turned to leave. Just then, an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicle showed up, and two workers got out. I decided to wait and see if they would get in. ICRC is considered to have a universal mandate to gain access to the persecuted, dispossessed, and displaced, and if anyone could get in, it would surely be them. I hoped to sneak in right behind them. Instead, I watched as they, too, were turned away.

The ICRC delegate, a skinny, redheaded woman with a cigarette in her nicotine-stained fingers, moaned and said in a clear French accent, “Oh shit! I don’t have time for this!” She took a lazy drag on her cigarette and blew out a long plume of smoke, waving away the haze as it reached her eyes. Without ever acknowledging us, she hopped back into her shiny SUV and they pulled away, leaving us all in a cloud of dust and dirt.

It was no surprise that the government was trying to contain the news of their atrocities in Darfur, since here in Khartoum, several NGOs had arrived and we were all heading out to speak to these battered victims. But the savvy government would have none of that, so we were all turned away. But the government was way ahead of us even then. They ordered the IDPs to move from Mayo camp and either return to Darfur, or otherwise manage on their own. Twenty-four hours after our attempt to visit, authorities sent soldiers and police to clear the camp.

Word of the soldiers’ arrival and the trouble spread quickly. Many IDPs fled the camp just as they had their villages not so long ago. Some cowered in fear just beyond the gate. Others decided to resist and were joined by local university students. What happened next would never be clear, for chaos overtook the scene. Shots were heard, military tanks appeared, and a bomb was rumored to have gone off. Fighting raged through the night; fires erupted and deathly screams were heard throughout the area.

Finally in the stark light and eerie quiet of morning, the carnage was evident. There were bodies strewn about and pools of blood drying in the sun. IDPs, police, and probably soldiers as well had died here.¹ The numbers of dead and injured were disputed; some reports put the total dead at fifteen, others said eight, including IDPs and soldiers. The government steadfastly denied it all.

The following morning, when representatives from OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, were finally allowed into the area, there was no evidence that Mayo had ever housed anyone, for it was entirely bare; no furniture, no possessions left behind. It had been cleared of all signs of life. The only proof that people had ever lived, and ultimately died, here were drying pools of blood and bloodstained walls riddled with the scars of bullets, undeniable evidence that tragedy had occurred within them.

The UN finally did find some of the IDPs in the middle of nowhere, just outside Khartoum. These victims of Mayo reported to the UN that they had been rounded up on buses, driven out there, and simply abandoned. The UN angrily made the usual complaints to the usual deaf ears of the government.