Return to Darfur

When I returned to Darfur in the summer, the newest statistics indicated that almost two million had been forced from their homes and seventy thousand had been killed. Those numbers had doubled in the short time since my earlier visit. The people of Darfur were accustomed to deprivation and misery, but not on the scale that consumed them then.

In September 2004, Colin Powell, speaking on behalf of the US government, declared that a genocide was taking place in Darfur.¹ He urged the world to act, to stop the killing, but the world was strangely silent.

On this trip, I would go first to Nyala in South Darfur, where fighting still raged, trouble still brewed, and where the refugees were in desperate condition. Many new arrivals had barely escaped with their lives, and they were living in the open, without food, shelter, or protection. IRC would be opening two health clinics, and I would be responsible for getting the larger one up and running.

A mortality study designed to calculate the death rate between June and August of 2004, carried out under the guidance of WHO, revealed an alarming trend. WHO determined that the death rate in Darfur was alarmingly high and well above the emergency threshold. North Darfur had a mortality rate three times the expected rate for Africa, while West Darfur’s rate was six times the expected rate for Africa. South Darfur (where I was headed) had a rate seven times the expected rate for Africa, all of which confirmed that the emergency in Darfur continued to unfold.²

I spent my first days in the sultry summer heat of Khartoum securing a press pass, which would ensure my ability to take pictures. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to acquire the precious pass. For a government with so many rules and restrictions, it was easy enough to maneuver around them with a smile and a nod.

The following day, I was scheduled to fly to Nyala, but that same day, eighty Eritrean refugees who were being forcibly repatriated to Eritrea from Libya hijacked the plane they were on and forced it to land in Sudan.³ The Khartoum airport was surrounded by soldiers, and we were sent away and told to return in the night. That night, the drama continued to unfold as the refugees demanded that a UN representative be sent to the scene to hear their demands. We arrived as instructed but were sent away again. The next morning, we ventured back and sat around while officials decided if they would allow us to fly. In Khartoum, things only happen if an endless number of officials and bureaucrats agree to it. The vagaries of life there are endless. After a second full day of waiting, we were finally allowed to head to Nyala.

Unlike the arid desert landscape of Al Fasher, Nyala is a soggy and damp place, and I arrived in the first days of the rainy season. That term does not even begin to describe the horrific storms. Shortly after my arrival, a dreadful squall battered South Darfur. For five long hours, the night was marked by torrential downpours, howling winds, and bursts of lightning. I was certain that all the fragile camp shelters would be blown away, but the following day, as I drove through a camp in the murky mist of early morning, I stared in amazement at the shelters that still stood, sturdy little sanctuaries against the harsh life there. The roads were now streams and gullies, and mud was plentiful, making it difficult to navigate on foot or vehicle. These people seem destined to endure one indignity after another.

My home in Nyala was a shared room in a typical Sudanese plaster house. I shared the house with several other expats from Africa, England, and Europe. We had a generator, which allowed occasional electricity. The bathrooms were another story, dirty and damp with squat toilets and water taps at midwaist. My bed was a rope cot covered by a mat. On my first night in Nyala, I threw myself onto my bed, exhausted and eager for sleep. But within minutes, it was clear that I was not alone. My paper-thin mattress was infested with bedbugs. They were voracious attackers, and within minutes, every inch of me was blotchy and sore. I sat up and tried to scratch my misery away. It became my nightly routine until, only days later, I’d adjusted and slept peacefully each night. The bugs were still there, but we had learned to coexist. There were also skinny rats and feisty cockroaches sharing our quarters. They scurried about at night in search of food. Since I had none, they never really bothered with me.

There’s always a silver lining. That was mine.