Amy's Adventures in Darfur

I started this blog when I left for Darfur in June 2006. I was working as a midwife with MSF aka "Medecins Sans Frontiers" aka "Doctors without Borders" but this blog contains my own opinions and stories- not those of MSF. It is less political than I want it to be and I have been unable to post stories about certain topics due to the fact that this is on the internet and accessible to anyone. I wish I could tell you all of the stories but since I can't, I will tell you the ones that I can...

Saturday, September 09, 2006

"i never thought we would stay alive this long"

kate just sent me this next quote which, as she put it, is harsh but good. i think it is harsh but true:

"Are you dead? Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair or beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you've got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. --Al Swearengen"

i don't know why i'm including it. maybe because after this experience i've found it to be so true that reading it could have gone either way. i could have laughed or i could have cried. thankfully it caught me in a good moment and made me laugh.

things here get worse every day. media reports say that the government continues to bomb villages in their ongoing search for rebels- once again, killing the men, women and children of darfur. i watch the ways it is changing the people here. the false sense of security they once had is fading- it is still present but hanging on by a thread. we will be sitting outside the whc, laughing about something, when suddenly we will hear a slight sound and everyone freezes in terror. they rapidly search the sky looking for the source of the noise. "antonov??? antonov???". antonovs are the planes that the government uses to bomb the villages. the men in the planes open the back of the plane and roll the bombs off the back ramp. not exactly a method of precision. hardly surprising that the bombs intended for the rebels structures land on homes full of children. the other day i was sitting with one of my staff when it happened. when we realized that it was just a un helicopter she relaxed. i asked her if the people here were aware of what was happening in darfur and she said yes- they know everything. we sat there in defeated silence for awhile, then she started to speak....."i will never forget the day this all started". the night before, the paramilitary had told the army that they would be attacking a village with rebels, but no one knew which village they were going to attack. it turned out to be a village relatively close to here. when the attack on the village started, the people of habillah could hear the bombs landing and that night they could see the flames all the way from here. at around 8 the next morning they began to see the people running towards habillah. there weren't many men left, it was mostly women running with their children. the few men who remained had run into the fields and managed to escape. it was rainy season and the crops were high enough to hide in. the women of habillah had a quick meeting and decided to put everyone into one of the schools. all of the local women were sent home and told to cook everything they had, quickly, and to bring containers of water. everyone brought all of the money that they had and put it into a pot. a group was sent to the market where they bought 200 sacks of sorghum, lentils, oil, salt and dried fish. another group took the sorghum to the mill to have it ground. everyone brought their dishes to the school and divided them among the new arrivals. the people were told to gather themselves in groups of ten families. each group was given enough food and dishes to feed themselves. this went on for a month before the council finally bought sorghum and donated it to the idps. every day more people arrived as village after village was attacked. both schools filled up and local families began to take the people into their homes. WFP finally arrived and called for the teachers of habillah to help them with a food distribution. each new arrival was registered and finally there began to be some sense of order. for 6 months the villages around habillah were emptied of their rightful owners, then taken over by nomads. the most surprising part, she said, was that you weren't being attacked just by strangers. local people- people who had had their stalls beside yours in the market for your entire lives- had joined in on the attacks. the few people who dared to ask "why are you doing this? you know me" were killed instantly.
while the constant arrival of new people caused chaos here, the attacks happening around habillah were being carried out with order. the big attacks were on wednesdays. tuesday nights were a night of terror as everyone waited to find out if they were next. each area had it's own specific group attacking their villages. the attacks happened in four stages. the men surrounded the village in order to keep escapees to a minimum. the first wave of men entered the village, usually during a time when the men in the village would be praying and in one group that was easy to target. the first group of men were responsible for killing the people and emptying the village. men were the primary targets (chased into the fields and shot in the back), but women and children were not spared if they were easily accessible. once this was accomplished, the next wave of men entered and looted the huts for valuables. all of the pillaged items were strapped to the camels and taken out. the 3rd wave of men were the ones who gathered and stole the animals of the village. once they were out, the 4th and final group came in and burned the tukuls down.
the people who escaped ran for their lives. those who couldn't keep up and couldn't be carried- the sick, the handicapped, the elderly, and some of the children- had to be left behind. some died during the journey. some were killed when they tried to make it to chad- the paramilitary were patrolling the border. the dead were left unburied. if you didn't arrive at the next destination you were presumed dead- no one could go back for you.
if you had to choose between carrying your newborn, your toddler, your elderly parents, your sick sibling, your injured spouse, any of your several young children... who, and how, would you choose?
eventually it came habillah's time to be attacked, as i told in a previous story ("they say we are at peace now"). even when the government assured them that habillah would not be attacked again, no one trusted them. every sunset the people of habillah would quietly gather their things and sneak out of the village and into the forest to wait out the night. it wasn't until the ngo's arrived in numbers that the people felt safe enough to stay.
when she finished her story i begged her to take her children and go to khartoum where their father lives with his other wife and children. i would give her the money to get there. she told me she would never leave her family- and there was no room for them there. "if they kill us they kill us" she said resignedly "anyways, i never thought we would stay alive this long".

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