We are told we have to be up by 6.30am. This invokes instantaneous scepticism based on numerous previous occasions when we absolutely definitely postively indubitably HAVE to be up by such and such a time, after which we spend an inordinate amount of time waiting somewhere else for something or someone, moaning about how we could have had another hour in bed or a second cup of coffee.
This morning was one of those mornings.
Today the four of us split up into two groups – Jeremy had headed down to the relative greenery of the regions surrounding the Goz Beida refugee camps, and I’ll try and post his blog from there later this week. The other half (including me) bounced along the Trans-Chadian superhighway towards Sudan/Darfur. This is the same road Jeremy and I travelled in May, one a lighting visit to the refugee camp at Ga Ga. On that journey our progress was slowed by a lengthy convoy of the Sudanese Rebel Army (JEM) coming in the opposite direction. This invoked a certain amount of nerves on the part of our UN colleagues, who respectfully (as is the policy) pulled over until they went past (which given there were 60 odd vehicles took some time) but Jeremy, on the other hand, was in his element “Look at the Mortars on that one…now THAT anti-aircraft gun could do a lot of damage.”
Today there were no incidents, although we had to negotiate large pot holes and still-running water in the wadis. After two hours we arrive at Farchana. The UNHCR guest Houses (small purpose built African style huts called rondavels) are full, so we amble over to the neighbouring World Food Programme compound where they have space – we dump our bags and head out to meet some of the local villagers. This is something we have been trying to do now for some time, as getting their perspective on the refugees is extremely important. They tell us how difficult it is now that they are both competing for resources. How little veterinary care they have access to and how much they would value it if somehow we could put together a plan to provide it. Sitting under a shady tree with them beside a dry wadi they tell us, strangers just half an hour ago, how much they appreciate our seeking them out and bothering to ask about their lives. Their lives were undoubtedly hard before the refugees arrived and now they have got that much harder. The plan we draw up will address their concerns as well.
Barely an hour later we’re in the Farchana camp itself. Perhaps it's because WFP are today on Day 3 of the October food distribution programme, there is a palpable good humour about the place. Unbelievably, a man comes up to me and starts talking in very good English. He was a farmer in Darfur, who took English classes at night school. The pride he has in this is clearly evident and I regret not having more time to talk to him, but we are being pressed by a growing throng to take their pictures, and then to meet the village elders or Sheiks, so I regretfully shake his hand and say goodbye. And good luck.
Like everyone else, the Sheiks are eager to find out about SPANA and one of the younger ones, a tall, handsome Darfuri refugee has even better English than the farmer. Like the villagers, the Sheiks tell us just how important their livestock are to them, and just how hard it is to find food for these precious animals when they are competing with villagers for limited natural resources like grazing and water. And like the villagers they take the trouble, in a measured and powerful way, to thank us sincerely for bothering to come and ask them about their world and the difficulties they are facing. Despite all the horrors they have been through, and we can only guess at some of those, there’s absolutely no cynicism from them. It’s quite a humbling experience.
And so now we are back in the compound and we are in for an interesting evening. It's been quite humid all afternoon, and around 4pm we noticed some very dark clouds making their way from the East. Every now and then the wind gets up, and blows a dervish-like dust-devil through the compound, which sets the metal doors off crashing like cymbals and throwing clouds of sand into our faces. A downpour tonight is expected, but that could set the rivers off again, and we must have crossed 30 or more of them on our journey. Water is what everyone wants here, but tonight, just for once, I’ll be hoping the rain stays away. If I post a blog tomorrow, it will probably mean that we’ve been stranded!
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
UNHCR Compound, Farchana - The Rocky Road to Darfur
UNHCR Compound, Farchana
Slight gap in our blog here - It's an oddity of the UNHCR that they have excellent wi-fi facilities in all their regional offices, but not at UNHCR HQ in Abeche. So I'm playing catch up here:
We are now in Farchana, about 2 hours drive due east of Abeche and close up against the border with Darfur. It's Wednesday evening, and our group is now in two parts, with half going "down south" to Goz Beida (Jeremy will update on this later in the week) and I'm with the other half down in Farchana. Today's blog will be posted separately, but here is yesterday's.....
On Monday evening we had a de-brief with the head of the UNHCR mission in Iriba – we finished about 7pm, upon which he learned that Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) had just lost one of their ambulances, hijacked barely 50 yards from our compound. It's another reminder of just how difficult a job it is for aid agencies to work in environments like this. The UN and its agencies come in for a lot of criticism at times, but I’d defy anyone to have seen the job they do here, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and fail to be impressed by it.
The cockerel woke us all up again this time at 3.30am – We think this was his way of getting revenge on us for singing “I feel like Chicken Tonight” ever time we passed him. His cacophony, at painfully regular intervals, was interspersed by the winner of the “Noisiest Cleaner in the World” contest who decided to drag all the chairs across the dining room floor, drag them back and then, having decided that this was simply too much fun, really went to town dragging the table about as well. This was at around 4.30am.
We were all up and about ready to head back by plane to Abeche at 8am, but got word that the plane was delayed. In true “Spirit of the Blitz” style we broke open the packages of table tennis gear which we had been eyeing curiously for some days lurking beneath the coffee table. I’m not sure that a low coffee table conforms to international table tennis standards, and I’m fairly sure that on the limited number of occasions I have watched the sport on TV, I’ve seen players standing up, not seated in armchairs, but it whiled away the minutes.
Eventually we got the call to move, ride out to the airport and it's goodbye Iriba. And within a few minutes we landed at Guereda, although not before we’ve spotted lots of animals in the landscape below, many drinking at some of the fast-drying patches of water resulting from the rains.
30 minutes later and we are back in Abeche, and re-acquainting ourselves with the novelty of running water at the GTZ guest house. Pictures of the Rhine-Rühr coalfields on my bedroom wall seem a little incongruous but I’m clean for the first time in days and there is a beer in the fridge. All we have to do now is wait for the generator to come on and it might even begin getting cold.
Monday, 1 October 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
Now about to start our fourth day without running water – which leads to all sorts of interesting ‘economies’, such as shaving in the bottom half of a plastic bottle, and other exciting ‘boy-scout’ remedies – don’t even think about the loos! I suppose, looking on the bright side, at least we should have no problem getting plenty of space on the plane home next Saturday.
And talking of brightness, after a week of relentless African sun, I’m doing a very passable imitation of a conker. During one of tonight’s inevitable power cuts, I was able to sit at the head of the table, glowing quietly like Three-Mile-Island, and allow everyone to finish their delicious meal of chopped mambo leaves and hominy grits with a subdued Ikea-like illumination.
Today we went out to Amnabak, a refugee camp only about thirty miles from the Sudan border. With about seventeen thousand inhabitants, it is one of the poorest we have visited – no wells or permanent water at all – it comes in everyday by water truck. Lots of small animals though, sheep goats, and of course, hundreds and hundreds of donkeys.
Despite the extremely unhelpful military guards, we were eventually able to enter the camp, and gradually people arrived in the community ‘hut’, to hold a meeting to discuss problems and possibilities with their livestock.
We are now quite used to these – they seem to follow the same pattern. There is a front row of ‘the sheiks’, or at least men who think they are important. Then at the back sit a couple of rows of women – all dressed in dazzling coloured veils and robes, and often with babies secreted underneath who emerge squalling from time to time during the meeting.
The men usually start of with same tactics – please give us more water, more food and more (free) veterinary medicines. Then we ask them about diseases, and we get a list of symptoms that is often very hard to pin down. But while this is going on, the women at the back gradually start chipping in, usually with more pertinent suggestions. After all, it’s normally they who actually do the work of looking after the animals on a daily basis. I mean, in a community like this, just who do you think will have to carry the water home from the water-point? They gradually grow in confidence, and even start arguing with the menfolk.
They then took us around the camp – visiting the market, and the shacks and huts they’d managed to build. How on earth do the women manage to have such clean clothes in conditions like that – and with water rationed to just a few litres per head?
As we came back the World Food Programme lorry arrived with the month’s rations.
A huge crowd (of mostly women and children) quickly gathered to receive their dues.
It was sobering to think that this grain had probably been flown across the Atlantic in some super airliner, or container ship, then trucked across the desert in huge road trains – but finally, it’s loaded on the back of some placid old donkey – lowest of low tech, but it works a treat!
Jeremy Hulme
PS - Tomorrow we head back to Abeche, at which point our wonderful wi-fi access is start to end. We'll update the blog as and when we can, but it may not be for a few days!
Sunday, 30 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
One thing we are continually being told is just how important water is here. On the flight up to the North last week, the pervasive Sahara became more and more evident, and today we saw just what an all-consuming task the search for water is.
We set off on a 5-car convoy, led by our new friends from the army (we have taken individual posed photos of them all, shouldering arms, looking mean, and one even on the back of a camel...all at their request). Today's itinerary is designed to give us an idea of how local animal owners cope in this harsh environment. And so we drive miles out over bleak arid plains, temporarily (at least) transformed by the rains into seemingly endless acres of waving grass. Criss-crossing the plains are broad dry river beds, or wadis, which sustain magnificent and ancient old trees, and in places verdant patches of greenery and even permanent bodies of water at which hundreds of animals are being watered. The villagers we met seemed content and peaceable. Their ways of life have changed little in centuries, and yet they have to be versatile to cope with bad seasons of rain, or outbreaks of disease amongst their cattle. The SPANA mission is one they are genuinely interested in, and we are overrun at nearly every stop.
We get back to Iriba with a fuller picture of how a livestock owner copes in this environment. We also discover that we have a water issue ourselves - there isn't any. If fact there hasn't been any since Thursday evening. Beer is really the only alternative but even we can't wash in beer (although I did once know someone who did just that).
Thankfully our colleagues at Oxfam, with whom we share a table at mealtimes, offer us access to their bowser, so we make a short journey cross town in their car in total darkness, fill up buckets and empty bottles and begin a very slow journey homewards.
It's impossible not to think of Stuart Hall and Eddie Waring commentating on "It's a Knockout" as the water sloshes around, but we have enough to wash and clean our teeth with. Quite an easy task compared with what we'e seen today - donkeys being loaded up with water barrels and buckets by small children, who have first dug holes in the sandy bottoms of dry rivers. They do at least have their donkeys to help them home.
Saturday, 29 September 2007
UNHCR Compound, Iriba
We woke nice and early this morning, about four o’clock to be precise. Some blooming cockerel was courting his lady friends, just outside the window. I know SPANA is meant to be all about protecting animals, but I swear, a couple more hours of ‘Little Red Rooster’, and we’ll be enjoying roast chicken for dinner.
But at least it got us up and away nice and early, off to see the refugee camps around Iridimi.
Of course you have to have a detachment of the local Coldstream Guards along for ‘security’ – which means a lot of hanging around and gesticulating, handshaking and kissing before we finally hit the road.
The landscape is a little softer here, more trees and more grass on undulating terrain – with occasional flashes of vivid colour as bee-eaters, ‘superb starlings’ and other unnamed jewels dart amongst the brush on either side. There seem fewer villages as well – yet every so often we pass a herd of sleek, shiny goats, knee-deep in thick grass, while the goat herds wave enthusiastically at our trucks.
Then finally we’re in Iridimi camp, bleak and desolate, yet with striking images as women in fabulous coloured robes struggle to move their livestock or ride donkeys through the swirling sand.
The wind is a real curse – modern cameras just do not like being filled with fine, wind-blown dust, and when one can taste it, and feel it in your eyes and nose, it’s scary to think what it must be doing to all those tiny little motors and moving parts. Yet, it’s impossible to resist trying to film small, laughing children playing in front of their shacks and donkeys…
Then we have a meeting organised for the ‘sheiks’ of the camp – back in their homes in Darfur they would have been the village headmen – and other members of the camp committee – mostly women.
With quiet dignity they told us of their problems, particularly about their animals, reinforcing, if it was ever necessary, the fundamental truth that these people absolutely rely on their animals. We gently pry from them the symptoms of the many deaths they have suffered. Anthrax is common, but also PPR and Sheep-pox, similar to Smallpox, and just as deadly.
Gradually a picture emerges. They say they are short of water, grazing and firewood, and of course veterinary help when problems occur. But perhaps more worrying, for the first time we are hearing about problems with the local villagers – sometimes ending in violence, and usually aimed at the women.
Afterwards, we head for Touloum, slightly bigger than Iridimi, but with the same sort of problems.
Meanwhile, Simon, who had been eating all sorts of strange things recently, but certainly not fish, gradually went green around the gills and was forced to leave us very suddenly, and was last seen heading rapidly towards the horizon looking for a nice, thick, friendly bush to hide behind.
Once again we heard from the headmen and women the usual list of complaints: water, firewood, animal feed etc. But again, and this time even more vehemently, they complained of the growing hostility from the local villagers. One woman complained that she had been cutting grass to bring back to the camp, when she was attacked, her grass taken, her sickle stolen, but worst of all, they took her beloved donkey.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised – many villagers feel all the aid goes to refugees, while they lose a lot of the best grazing – yet in the midst of all the problems and misery, it is just one extra burden the world could do without.
Jeremy Hulme, CEO SPANA
