Life here

when you first arrive in habillah it's easy to get the wrong impression. life appears to go on and peace appears to have taken root. people have set up huts, and lives, here and appear to be in no hurry to return home to their former villages. the obvious fighting and the burning of villages has died down. this is why the donors have stopped seeing darfur as the latest sexy hotspot. in reality the village of habillah, rather than being the oasis that it seems, is a prison. in talking to the staff at our hospital, and the people throughout the village, it's obvious that no one is leaving because it's just not an option. at a meeting with the staff each of them told a bit of their story, and they were all the same. their villages were attacked by the paramilitary, people were killed in such humane ways as the men being locked in the mosque and burned... labouring women and their tba's were killed in their huts....families fled in every direction, most of them unable to find each other again and to be left wondering if their children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, had survived the attack. every person on our staff had lost at each one member of their family in the attacks. the people escaped to nearby villages that were safe for as long as it took the janjaweed to finish looting the previous village, and then they were attacked at their newest location. now "safely" residing in habillah, these people can't leave the village for fear of their lives. one woman went out to search for firewood yesterday and never returned. the janjaweed patrol the areas around us and the people aren't allowed out. the janjaweed have taken up residence in the abandoned villages and aren't about to let the rightful owners return to their land. this may not be as desperate a situation as it is if it weren't for the fact that the WFP has cut the food rations in half. these villagers are unable to leave the village to plant crops, or to search for firewood, and they are entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. and that aid, while starting at just enough, has been halved. the people have no choice but to risk their lives by leaving the village to forage or to slowly starve. those most at risk are the families with no men. the children from these families are the ones that we will get to watch slowly start to starve in the next few months. those who, now, don't count as officially malnourished are living on the brink. their skin stretches tightly across their chests, with the bones of their sternums and clavicles clearly visible. their stomachs are rounded, showing the first signs of what's to come. we had an excess of high energy milk that was about to expire, so we spent today driving around to the 100 families deemed most at risk. we stopped at their huts and had them bring out a container that we poured a litre of hot milk into. shortly into the day we were being chased by a crowd of children with bowls, begging for milk as well. how do you explain to hungry children that we know how hungry they are, but that we only had enough for the very hungriest? soon enough they may all look like the 4 year old boy who we had to pour the milk into because he wasn't strong enough to hold the bowl himself. but until they are starving enough, no one will help them.