I recently received an e-mail from Ali, an aid worker at camps Mile and Kounoungo.  He gave me word on Ahmat, the English speaking young man we met on Day 11 of i-ACT. Ahmat is OK, working a few hours a day at a “restaurant” in the camp.  He is no longer studying English, since his teacher left for Sudan.  His father is also in Sudan.  Workers told us that “being in Sudan” many times means that they are either dead or fighting with the rebels. We do not know for sure in this case. Ahmat lives with his mother, two sisters, Mayadine and Yihad, and a brother, Moujahid.  His mother was pregnant when his village was attacked, but she lost the baby because of the traumatic event.  Ahmat’s family had many animals, but they were killed by the Janjaweed. Their 51 camels were killed.

Hello everyone,

Since coming back from the camps, I have not really been writing too much here. I’m going to change that, since I think it’s a great way to stay connected and let you know about the situation back in the camps and Darfur and about ways that you can become involved and be a par to the solution.

Here in the US, efforts for Darfur are starting to heat up in a good way. There are many groups doing work to bring attention to the crisis and create pressure to change it. April 2006 will be a national month of awareness and action. I will soon let you know of the different campaigns, including the Million Voices for Darfur, in which we will collect one million signed postcards to be delivered to the White House on April 30th.

In Los Angeles, April 7 will mark the opening of Camp Darfur, a mock refugee camp that will serve to create awareness, educate, and create action to stop the genocide in Darfur. More info to come soon!

Please stay in touch.
Paz

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share this e-mail from someone that followed i-ACT:

Dear Gabriel

I like to thank you and your team for going to see and hear the voices and show the video of your 21 days with the people of Darfur in their camps. I am originally from Darfur living right now in New York City and still have family members live over there in the camps where you visited. I spend most of my childhood traveling from village to village with my father enjoying the peaceful and lovely nature of the people in Darfur.
What happened in Darfur affected me deeply as it has effected their lives in Darfur. We companied very hard here in the US and all over to stop all the destruction and the ongoing genocide on the people of Darfur. As the act of genocide committed by evil peoples it needs real heroes to stop it and With all the information you brought more people will get involve and thousand of new heroes will emerges to erase the word GENOSIDE from the world. I appreciate and value your trip to the reign and want to thank you for all the works you have done.
I/we wish you, your family and all the people around you happy holidays.

Djudo

Hey friends, familia:
We’re back in California, enjoying the comforts of home. Besides struggling through some serious jet-lag, I’m really feeling great urgency and energy for working harder to help the people we met, and the millions more, to get back to their homes. I really missed my home and family during the month I was away, but I always knew that I was coming back. I look forward to working with all of you on making “home” for the people of Darfur a reality once again.

On Air France plane sitting at N’D airport

11:54pm

“Did you accomplish everything you wanted to accomplish?” Chris asked me.

On the field, given the challenges and our limitations, I’m “happy” with what we did. We presented the human side of the story, going beyond the numbers. Now we have some faces, happy and sad, that go along with the ungraspable immensity of the crisis. We could have done a lot better; no doubt about it. It was a great learning experience.

The work in Chad is only one side of the project. The other, very important, side is turning what i-ACT produced into clear and intense pressure that contributes to changing the situation in Darfur, for the refugees, the IDPs, and any other term you want to use to describe what they are. With i-ACT, it became clear that what “they” are is “US!” They are a part of the same humanity that we all are a part of, and their smiles, and their suffering, speaks our same language.

Please help me create this pressure. Be a part of SGN and i-ACT’s new phase. Sign up for our newsletter. We wills oon be sending out a list of specific campaigns and ways that YOU can help.

Paz

N’Djamena

8:01pm

We are down to the last few hours in Chad. I was just going over the stories we heard during our days at the camps, especially what the ones belonging to the young people. There was Muhammad, Ahmat, Farha, and Eisha.

Muhammad we found making bricks. Ahmat is our English speaking friend. Farha, at fourteen, is taking care of her home. Eisha, at fifteen, is married. They are all bright young people. Having to be men and women very early. They are the future of their communities. What will happen with this generation of adolescent Darfurians?

They will all soon reach the age where there is no more education for them at the camps. For the boys, it means doing nothing or, very likely, joining one of the rebel groups. There are not many young men in the camps. Many were killed during the attacks on their villages; others join in the only option for joining, the fighting.

For the girls, they will more than likely be married off, an arranged marriage. They will risk their lives on a daily basis, going out to collect firewood. They will work, building huts, cooking food, and washing clothes. They will also have children and take care of them.

Back in Darfur, while maybe not ideal by western standards, they would have continued with secondary education, and some could go on to college at the larger towns They are now stuck in limbo, with an uncertain and dangerous future ahead.

9:38am

It was an exciting, if unexpected, way to start the day. We thought that our flight to N’Djamena departed at 11:30am, so that we had time to leisurely get our things together. At 8:00am, the guesthouse guard came running, saying that there was a UNHCR car outside looking for us. The UNHCR staff told me that he was taking us to the airport. I asked for ten minutes to get ready and pack, but ten minutes was too long; we had to rush and do it in five.

We made it, though, and I’m right now writing from the plane, flying high above the desert. I am so grateful for the UNHCR sending a car for us. We were not expecting it, and were arranging to get to the airport on our own. The plane would have left us! I heard that all flights to N’D are booked through the 20th of December. It would have been a much extended stay in Abeche.

UNHCR’s Ginette Le Breton is who saved us. She was out of her office in Abeche on a trip to Guereda, but she left word for a car to go get us. She made things so much easier for us during our entire journey. I really did not expect this kind of support and “looking out” for us.

Speaking of Ginette and of kind people, it was refreshing to find some that had not been turned into cynics and were able to keep their hearts warm and open. The conditions out here are such that burn-out might be an epidemic among workers at the agencies and organizations. Then you find a person like Ginette, who goes out of her way to find shoes for a young Darfurian that made it to Abeche, after hearing that his mother was alive and seen in a refugee camp far from the one he was at. Sure, finding shoes for one (large footed) youth is not going to change the crisis, but it is the human touch, the person-to-person exchange, that offers a refreshing breeze of hope.

Emmanuel, from UNHCR’s Guereda office, and whom you met in one of the videos, is another example of a warm heart at work. He does not get lost in the numbers. He takes into consideration the humanity of individuals at the camps and knows that there is a lot more than just getting them the right number of calories and liters. “They need to go home,” he says.

Well, I should be home by late Thursday night. What just hit me is that I have to report to work on the following Monday. I have to start earning a salary again, something that stopped a little too long ago. So, not too much time for R&R, but I’m sure going to enjoy this coming weekend with my family!

Paz