A compilation of observations from International Medical Corps six-person assessment team dispatched to Darfur to evaluate coverage of the most immediate and basic human needs (such as food, shelter, clean water, sanitation and health care), lay the groundwork for a rapid response, and coordinate with other agencies on the ground to maximize impact.
As one drives to Jebbel Marra, it gives a quick introduction to the war. The conflict in Darfur may have been in the headlines for the past year, but in Jebbel Marra it has been a way of life since 1996.
Once you leave Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, the camps surrounding the city dominate the view, full of internally displaced people seeking refuge on the outskirts of the town. Then you cross the plains dominated by the Arab tribes, a sea of thorn trees and camels stretching as far as the eye can see. Each camel is worth around $800, and the average tribe has in the region of 1200 — imagine a million dollars on the hoof, and what is required to keep them there, grazing and water equaling power, and that power in turn equaling money and prestige.
Eventually you come across the dilapidated outpost of Mershing, once again a sea of plastic sheeting, the stench of humanity crammed onto a dusty field. Then the plain begins again, as does the better agricultural land, usually on the edges of the wadis. The fields haven’t been worked, however, and whatever crops there were are now overgrown or abandoned. The shattered remains of what were huts appear, broken circles of mud walls, no roofs, no life. The landscape is littered with these former villages, some looking more recently abandoned, others wiped out some time ago judging by their overgrown appearance.
The camels have taken over. They wander freely over the crops, in the walls of the former homes. It is as if they have become the new owners of the land, roaming where they wish. The potholed dirt road is relentless; back breaking, occasionally broken by a wadi or an Arab camp. Every now and then one can witness turbaned figures, dressed in white, on camel back. They seem to stay on the edge of the herd, ever watchful, never close enough to see properly but nonetheless always there, a somewhat threatening presence.
Each herdsman is armed, adding to the threat of the silhouette, always in the distance. On the rocky hill behind us, two figures watch over the plain, and then we move into the open again, heading for another hill in the near distance. The car labors on the dusty ground as we cross the final plain, through another abandoned village with two recently burned out trucks, disabled and scorched in the ghostly surroundings.
Two more kilometers and two solitary African women nervously work the fields, cowering in the corn as we passed in a cloud of dust. Finally the mountains arrive, and we stop in the burnt out village of Kidinure by what was the schoolhouse.
Two kids appear, not more than fourteen, a scarf wrapped round the head and face of one, but not tight enough to betray a mouth consisting of no more than three teeth. The other is dressed in no more than rags, has bare feet, but a couple more teeth, and ten Benson and Hedges. They stare at me like I don’t register, like I have just stepped off from a spaceship, and are trying to decide if I am hostile or not. Both have guns, both are soldiers; welcome to Jebbel Marra.
Soon, the rest of the village’s defenders appear, swaggering down from the hillside, clad in equally poor clothes, big on headscarfs and bandanas, short on footwear. All come to shake hands, then stare, their Kalashnikovs looking like they were from the first batch in 1947, the gun metal polished silver, the handles worn smaller with the passage through the hands of countless men. The bulk of them would be doing well if they were sixteen, but alas, they aren’t.
Life in Jebbel Marra is hard. It looks like it has always been tough, but now it looks extremely so. We head for the mountain community of Saban Alfgor, where most of the population has fled to escape the war on the lower plains, however a torturous three-hour journey soon reveals a very different story. The car labors on the painfully steep road/donkey track, edging from boulder to boulder, somehow sliding uphill. We pass by burnt and abandoned villages even in the remote high mountains, and once again the camels put in an appearance, the figures mounted on the skyline, ever present, ever watchful. The road seems endless, but finally we emerge in a village full of bedraggled people, the whole community putting in an appearance for our visit, coming down from the even more remote surrounding villages. The extinct volcano of Jebbel Marra towers over the whole region to the east of our position.
Saban Alfgor is grim. It has itself been attacked twice, with a few houses still bearing the scars of the attacks. Most of the original residents seem to have fled, as have all the doctors, nurses, teachers; in fact, anybody with any standing in the community. I strike up a conversation with an elderly lady, Hwa. She is the local ‘midwife,’ or to use the technical term, a ‘traditional birthing attendant,’ I ask her what people do when they are sick, and she answers, “we go to the woods and collect herbs, what else is there?”
When I ask if any women have died in childbirth, she muses over the number, the numerous lines on her face carrying the weight of the world, and answers with a shrug, “Eighteen this month, I know of, we must have lost about twenty children.”
Not exactly World Health Organisation statistics, but in a population of approximately 9,000, terrifying nonetheless. As for food, people are mixing leaves and chalk with sorghum, and only eating once a day. Another woman, Fthiya, follows after me as I walk, with a lump hidden under her scarf. She opens it to show her two-week-old daughter, with the most glazed eyes I had ever seen. The child is attached to her breast, but she has no milk. The child lets go to vaguely cry, then drifts off with no energy. It is easier to turn away than look on, the village in a grim situation, the numbers being swollen with people fleeing the fighting.
Sadya, 28, is from Kidnir, a village on the front line of the conflict. Her family fled their house in January this year, when the village was attacked. “In our neighbors’ house they killed eight children. They just opened the door and shot them,” she explains. “We ran, we have been running ever since.”
It is getting dark, and her two children, a little girl and a boy, are sitting on a donkey, looking lost. I ask where she is going, and she says, “Further up the mountain. I don’t feel safe in the town. Each evening we have to get further away.”
That evening, the temperature drops close to freezing, as we are about 6,000 feet above sea level. For me it is cold, but I have one night. Thousands were in the hills around us, minus the blanket I have borrowed.