We Cannot Go Back Home

June 2004

by Lynn Heinisch. Like some Sudanese Muslims in Darfur, Kahouma Abdelmula Abdalla wears a leather necklace with five small boxes containing verses from the Koran. The necklace is meant to protect the wearer. Hers also holds two keys – to the house where she and her family were living when the militia destroyed her village. Her husband, shot by the attackers, wore matching keys for the house that his killers burned that day.

Now that her husband is dead, and she has fled far from home, Mrs. Abdalla is left to raise her children, aged 7, 5 and 4. Fifteen members of her family share two small mud tents with thatch roofs. Hers is the size of a two-person camping tent, and stands just four feet tall. Inside, there is one straw mat, a couple of cooking pots, a string holding a few pieces of clothing, and two tablets with verses from the Koran. The family acquired these items in the six months they have been camping in the town of Zalingei, with a reported 48,000 people who sought protection there.

Mrs. Abdalla is one of the hundreds of thousands of people scattered throughout Darfur, a region the size of France. Others fled into neighboring Chad. Most in Sudan are not in designated camps – they have clustered near towns, where they feel safer. People are moving around, as they seek their best place for survival.

by Stefan Pleger. The Abdalla family received food distributed by CARE in mid-June. She woke before sunrise and got in line, with a plastic motor oil container, a small plastic bag and two large burlap sacks. She waited her turn and slowly worked her way through the process of having her name confirmed, and moving from one station to the next for her rations. At 11:30 a.m., she returned to her tent with nearly 3 litres of oil, 40 kilograms of wheat, 4.5 kilograms of lentils and a half kilogram of salt. There are 15 in her family, but she said they are authorized to receive food for only three people. She doesn’t know why, but she knows the food will not last until next month’s distribution.

Mrs. Abdalla, 22, and the other adults earn money by making mud bricks and selling them in town. For 1,000 bricks, they receive 100 dinar (about 21p). It takes them three days to make them. With this money, they buy water for drinking, cooking, bathing and cleaning. Mrs. Abdalla is wearing the same “toab” she wore when she fled her home. The fabric that Sudanese women wrap around their heads and bodies has faded and torn, the once yellow-and-red football pattern filled with holes. She ran barefoot that morning, but relatives in Zalingei gave her a thin pair of green plastic flip-flops.

“We will stay here as long as there is insecurity. We are depending on outsiders to give us a little food to keep us alive,” she said in Arabic. “If the situation doesn’t improve, we will move again. We cannot go back home. They burned everything.”

Her village of Sura was home to 300 families. All buildings were destroyed in the attack, she said, and 250 people killed. Throughout Darfur, abandoned mud pods are testimony to once-thriving communities where straw fences surrounded compounds, and thatch lean-tos sheltered markets. Silent patches of dirt are marked by dozens of circular mud walls missing their thatch roofs, like fields of mushrooms ripped of their caps. An occasional shoe or shattered ceramic bowl lies buried in the ashes and dirt.

Because of the large numbers of people, the vast distances, a lack of supplies, bureaucratic hurdles and insecurity, aid agencies have been unable to reach everyone. The United Nations estimates that 49 percent of displaced people lack food; 88 percent lack shelter; 67 percent lack water; and 93 percent lack sanitation.

by Evelyn Hockstein. CARE will distribute food to nearly 400,000 people in South and West Darfur up to the end of the year, and provide water and latrines for 65,000 people in South Darfur for at least five months. CARE is delivering items like blankets, water cans and plastic sheets for shelter, which aid agencies are distributing throughout Darfur. CARE intends to begin offering mobile health clinics, psychosocial counselling and reproductive health services. In Chad, CARE is managing three camps and providing food and essential items for some 20,000 Darfur refugees.

Even once the area is secure and people return home, they will need continued support. Their villages have been burned, their animals and belongings stolen, and they will miss this year’s planting season.

Like many of the victims, Mrs. Abdalla was a farmer. She grew sorghum, groundnuts, okra, sugar cane and mangoes. Now, she is reduced to receiving handouts.

“How can we grow food? We don’t have land here to cultivate. We don’t even have a place to stay,” she said.

Villagers have been generous, when they can, providing food, clothes and other items. But the numbers of people camping in their towns are sometimes equivalent to the numbers of residents, stretching their capacity to assist. The assistant commissioner in Zalingei said when people arrived six months ago, they were welcomed warmly, but now residents are concerned about public health problems, pollution and lack of water.

Outside the town of Nyala, the capital city of South Darfur, some 8,000 people have sought shelter in an informal camp called Mosay. There, 27 families from the same village share two igloo-shaped huts they built from straw mats they were given. They sleep outside for space and for relief in the 90- and 100-degree temperatures. When it rains, women and children go inside. The families fled their homes on 5 May. They give differing answers as to who attacked them, saying some wore military uniforms, some rode on camels and some came in LandCruisers. During the mid-day heat, they sit in two groups – women and children under one tree, and men under another. A handful of women wear white, indicating they were widowed in the attack.

“Before, none of us had any problem. If anyone came to the village, we could give them some help. Now, we are looking for grain,” said Ahmed Adam Ahmed.

A teacher, Ahmed put his hand on the shoulder of a boy who speaks some English.
“He was a student. Now, he has lost his chance at education and is living in a camp,” Ahmed said.

The rainy season has started, bringing blinding sandstorms and heavy downpours. It will last up to four months, during which time it will be difficult for aid agencies to transport provisions. Conditions will be grim, as the much of the land on which displaced people are staying will turn to mud.

As Mrs. Abdalla tells her story, a tear rolls down her face. Asked whether she will return to Sura, she abruptly turns her head, averts her eyes and swats her hand rapidly as if flicking away a fly.
“No. Only if the Almighty God changes the situation, then I will go back,” she said.

Source: www.oneworld.net