Villages Burning

Beauty – Among the Rebels – Burnt out Villages – Hope

Seeing the Beauty
It is a beautiful sunny Friday in Niertiti, my one free day for the week, and I have just returned from a stroll along the river. In the midst of the Darfur chaos, it is so essential to take time out and observe the peace and beauty that surrounds me. It is a particularly impressive time of the year now, with regular rain keeping the rivers and waterfalls flowing and the hills covered in green vegetation. As I meandered along the river dozens of men, women and children were bathing and washing clothes, the rocks covered with bright dresses, shawls and shirts drying in the sun. Smaller children splashed and jumped around in the pools, and made a particular effort to show off when they saw a khawadji (foreigner) walking past. Their smiles and laughter never fail to amuse me, and I had had more than a passing thought to throw of my shirt and join them under the waterfall today!

Among the Rebels
Earlier this week I headed out into the Jebel Marra mountains to visit two of the remote clinics that MSF is supporting. It was a great opportunity to see the area, as well as to better understand the complex social and political situation that exists and what it means for civilians from day to day.

The Jebel Marra region is home to the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), the Darfur resistance movement, and almost all the towns in this area are under their control. So as we bumped along the dirt track towards the mountains the Government of Sudan (GoS) checkpoints were soon replaced by SLA checkpoints, all manned by guys toting big guns and big smiles as they waved us on through. To this point I have been very impressed with the cooperation from both sides for our work here, and the SLA are well aware that without international humanitarian aid their people would have no health care at all.

It was market day in Kulin, one of the many small villages we passed through, and hundreds of people had loaded their donkeys and trekked to Kulin to trade and catch up. It was great for us, not only because I could procure some spices for cooking, but also because it meant we could sit down with the SLA administrators and community Sheiks (leaders/elders) to touch base and ensure their support. As we discussed our activities, the current security situation and various mundane issues of logistics and transport, I looked around and realised how surreal the whole situation was.

To my left was the SLA humanitarian affairs coordinator, a young local guy who could speak passably in Fur, Arabic and English and was constantly on the phone to representatives from various NGOs and UN groups. Beside him was an old Sheik, decked out in the traditional Sudanese white robes, a turban atop his head and an aura of respect surrounding him. A respect that had no doubt been earned in the toughest of situations – a regional resistance against far superior national government forces. Alongside him were a couple of younger guys, and a sheik from another village. My interpreter and Field coordinator completed the circle. But perhaps most surreal was looking over my shoulder to see who was providing the security. Two boys in SLA camouflage gear were perched on rocks and cradled guns that were almost as big as they were. Child soldiers! I noted how shiny the hair was, falling in plaits down the sides of their faces, and wondered what it would be like for kids like these growing up and only knowing war. War, bloody war!

Burnt out Villages
One of the enduring images of my trip into the Jebel is seeing the remains of burnt out Fur villages. Mud brick walls of houses still stand, without roofs and charred black from fire. They tell a dreadful story and my mind filled with images of raiders sweeping through on horseback, villagers fleeing, women raped, blood sprayed, bodies falling and the whole place going up in flames. The villages are now mostly overgrown with weeds, and rumours of Janjaweed ensure the villagers don’t return.

As we drove through these ghost villages my driver pointed out houses where various local MSF staff members and their families used to live. “That is Ibrahim’s uncle’s house”, he said, pointing to some domestic remains. Ibrahim told me later of his family’s flight from the Janjaweed in 2003, and how he ended up getting work with MSF to help other IDPs like his family. It is a familiar story, with most of the local MSF staff coming from the IDP communities themselves, having fled similar incursions on villages all over Darfur.

Here in Niertiti there are around 24,000 IDPs (a relatively small camp), and most IDPs arrived here in 2004 after the first big wave of violence. However, attacks have continued all over Darfur, and the last big influx to Niertiti was as recently as December 2007. In the whole of Darfur, over 2.2 million people have been displaced – accounting for more than one quarter of the world’s refugees and displaced persons! These numbers are way too big for me to comprehend. But seeing the numbers translate into real people, that is something even more mind-blowing!

In Hope
Equally incomprehensible is how people here manage to do so well! After all that they have been through and the daily struggle of survival, the astonishing thing is that people don’t just give up. Maybe it is an innate survival instinct, maybe it is the hope that things will improve, or maybe it is just the fact that they all have children/parents/friends who continue to give life meaning and purpose. I don’t know, but for this hope I am extremely grateful and very humbled.

I realise that this letter I have completed neglected the medical side of what I do here. Most of my time is spent consulting with patients, supporting the medical assistants and keeping the medical side of things running smoothly. In the past 3 weeks I have seen things ranging from the bizarre to the tragic, from donkey attacks to kids dying from renal failure, from obscure tropical diseases to the pussiest abscesses imaginable. But more on that next time…

Thank you to all of you who have written, and I am sorry I cannot give you the replies you deserve. But I do love hearing from you, so please don’t think your letters have been ignored!

p.s. You may have heard reports last week of clashes between the SLA and GoS soldiers in northern and eastern Darfur. We had varying reports of tens to hundreds of SLA, GoS soldiers, and civilians killed and many more injured. That was all on the other side of the Jebel Marra mountain range, so we have not been affected and do not have any more information than would be available to you.

Doctor in a Refugee Camp

Inside a Camp – Reality Check

It is now one week since I landed in Niertiti. I am still finding my feet here, and this letter will no doubt betray the fact that I have teetered on the edge of being overwhelmed by the situation here. There are three obvious reasons for this. Firstly, the clinical side of things is insane and the resources so very limited. Secondly, this is Darfur and the recent (and ongoing) atrocities are evident everywhere. And thirdly, perhaps most significantly, I have a warm home and secure life to return home to in 6 months time regardless of what goes down here. For the 33,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), the ‘security’ of the camps here and the skeleton services provided by humanitarian organisations is all they have – and even that could be ripped away at any minute. This stark reality was beaten into me on day 1 and I don’t think I can ever really reconcile how these two worlds can co-exist.

Inside a Camp
I’d always wondered what it would feel like being inside a refugee camp. Sure, we have all seen the pictures on TV, but what is it really like. After touching down in the helicopter one of the first things I did was walk through the camps with a local MSF worker, an IDP herself. This was not only informative, but a encouraging start to my mission!

The camps are rather haphazard, poorly defined affairs, emerging from the edges of the town itself and extending out into the plains. Most residents have been here for at least a few years so the dwellings are quite impressive little mud-brick homes, with an average of 8 or 10 people staying in each (somewhat more crowded than UN/WHO recommendations). The pride the people take in their homes is impressive and I was really amazed to see how liveable such a situation could be made. I ducked into one residence and was introduced to the four generations housed within. The feisty great grandmother pulled me inside to point out her small wood-fired cooking pit and the jumble of pots and blankets that constituted their entire estate. There was no shame; and nothing to hide; just smiles, openness and profuse thanks for being there (not that I had even done a single thing for her to thank me for yet).

Bore wells have been installed at points throughout the camp with communal clothes washing areas alongside. Pit-latrines are shared, one between about half a dozen households. At the edge of each ‘block’ is a kinda carpark – only it is for donkeys not automobiles. And from what I can see donkeys are driven hard, being the grunt behind the transport of everything from food rations, to firewood, to families.

As I left the camps I felt really uplifted and affirmed, as the world had just confirmed to me that this is exactly where I was meant to be!

Reality Check
The next morning seriously brought my elation down to earth. Overnight there were gun-shots in the camp north of town and I awoke the next morning to find the bullet-ridden corpses of two young local men lying in the hospital morgue. Apart from the personal horror of murder, this shooting within the IDP camp itself shook the whole community – who have all left villages to escape precisely this wort of insecurity. I am assured that this is a rarity, but as I lay in bed the following night thinking of the crowded mud brick houses of the camp residents I realised what it meant to be truly vulnerable.

Since then I have seen dozens more reasons for both elation and dismay. If vulnerability is the defining feature of displaced persons then their response to this surely shows the depth of the human capacity to survive. So while my hospital round each day is full of kids and adults who have tipped over the edge of vulnerability; it is also full of survivors against all odds. I see seriously sick kids and adults make amazing recoveries, and know that this is mirrored in their families and communities who seem to bounce back from almost every assault.

I suppose as a fresh medical aid worker this paradox is the most important thing to hold on to. To see both the suffering and the joy; the trials and the survival; the sickness and the life. I will no doubt need regular reminders of this, so pray that in another few months I will not be either calloused or broken.