Abu-Shok

The move from Al Mashtel to Abu-Shok was initially scheduled for early April, but the details of the new camp had not been worked out. Finally, after rounds of new meetings, the move was scheduled for late April. IRC, ICRC, Oxfam, the UN, and other NGOs worked furiously and dug latrines, drilled for water, and designed simple shelters constructed of plastic sheeting so that the residents of Abu-Shok would have the basic necessities of life. A small village was springing to life and bursting through the barren desert landscape. In the months ahead it would grow far beyond capacity, unable to hold all those who needed shelter.

I worked with Adam and Viktor to get our clinic constructed, stocked, staffed, and ready for our first patients. The clinic was ready for the move, with Halima at the registration desk. We saw almost fifty patients on moving day. The daily patient census continued to grow as more IDPs flooded into Abu-Shok. A second clinic was constructed and staffed, and it, too, became well utilized, each clinic seeing over three hundred patients a day. As we expected, diarrhea and malnutrition were the commonest complaints.

Action Contre La Faim (ACF), a French NGO, agreed to undertake a nutrition survey in Abu-Shok and discovered that the malnutrition problem was growing and reaching crisis proportions despite the food rations and medical care. They opened feeding centers to provide vital nutritional support to starving babies and children, but for adults and older children, the options were few; they relied on the food rations supplied by WFP. Most people here suffered some degree of starvation; some would die, and, as I’d seen so often around the world, many others would linger, their bodies slowly wasting, their hopes fading. Starvation remains, to this day, the toughest disease to treat.

Fuel became a problem as well, for there simply wasn’t any. Women and children went out beyond the camp’s perimeter and foraged for scraps of brush or sticks of wood, but it was then, when they were alone and most vulnerable, that they were often targeted for rape and violence. There was some semblance of protection within the boundaries of the camp, but just beyond its unseen walls, danger lay in wait.

Abu-Shok offered at best an austere existence, a fact that made it easier for the government to coerce these desperate people into returning to their own villages. Although the government promised protection, these were the same thugs who were in cahoots with the cowardly Janjaweed. The IDPs’ terrifying experiences made them wary of the loose and empty promises of the government, and most simply stayed put. Abu-Shok would not be closing anytime soon. It actually quickly grew to hold more than we had originally anticipated. This tiny camp-village that had sprung from infertile earth was bursting. Without a solution to the Darfur crisis, a solution that would allow these haggard people to return home, another camp could well be needed.

We had been instructed by the government, even threatened, that under no circumstances were we to speak with the refugees or take pictures. We could be expelled, they warned, or jailed, if caught doing either. But how else to tell a story, to get the international community involved without the words of the victims and the devastating pictures that truly tell the story? I was determined to do both, and I was often in trouble for my attempts.

I did manage to speak with many refugees, for it was only through their words that we could know the horrors they’d experienced. Pictures would prove to be far more difficult, but I resolved to at least try. I practiced holding my camera under my baseball cap and snapping pictures through the opening in the back of the cap. After many attempts and pictures only of the lining of my cap, I finally mastered the technique. I thought I was pretty ingenious, ready for anything.

One morning as we walked through the new camp at Abu-Shok, I was struck by the desolation of the scenes and the hopelessness on the faces of the refugees. I surreptitiously took my camera out, turned it on, and had it cupped in my hand when a local government official approached Adam and me. It was clear from his purposeful stride that he was angry about something, so I hurriedly stuffed the camera into my shirt pocket and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

The official proceeded to berate us for a series of imagined infractions, the worst of which was that we had brought a “foreign woman” in to speak with the refugees. None of this, at least this time, was true, unless he meant me. As he continued his tirade, I began to look around at the heart-wrenching scenes and wished he’d just wrap it up. I had things to do.

Suddenly, without warning, the unmistakable whir and click of my camera going off filled the air. My eyes grew wide as I glanced in horror at my pocket. Adam’s jaw clenched and his eyes flashed as he cast a sideways glance at me. My stomach churned. I waited for the inevitable threat from the government official. And waited. But our visitor kept right on talking, with nary a glance at me. And then I realized that he was so enamored with the sound of his own voice that he hadn’t noticed my discomfort or Adam’s anger. We might not have been standing there at all. I felt such relief, I started to smile, and then to laugh. Adam raised a brow, and I coughed to cover my laughter.

How lucky was I? Another bullet—so to speak—dodged.