Darfur Refugees: Don't Press-Gang Our Sons

A Desert Refugee Camp On The Sudan/Chad Border, One Hour Away From Nowhere

Bakoye, my Sudanese interpreter, and I, step into the unrelenting heat, assaulted by the smells of dust and firewood. I can never get used to the endless sea of tents.

“How many refugees are here now?” I ask.

“Around 20,000 in this camp,” says Bakoye (all names in this account have been changed in order to protect the innocent).

“I notice there are a few more traditional huts than last year.”

“Yes,” he says. “After more than four years of fruitless hoping to return home to Darfur, some refugees have started building their own homes, baking bricks from sand mixed with straw. It brings them some sense of normalcy. Ah, here comes Suleiman.”

“Anna , Bakoye, el Hamdul’Allah!”

“It is good to see you again, el Hamdul’Allah, praise God indeed,” I reply as we clasp hands and arms. Bakoye, who lives in the Chadian capital, exchanges the latest news with the other man.

“Come quick, both of you. We find somewhere quiet; we must take care.”

“Suleiman, what is it? You look very worried.”

“Later, later. Now we hurry before people see us.”

We snake through the maze of tents and alleyways, the sand scraping our feet, the unforgiving wind whipping millions of tiny grains into our hair and skin, like Lilliputian soldiers pricking us. Even our head-wraps don’t protect us from the invading sand troops.

“Here, we go inside, there is small room behind. Is private.”

A handful of ragged refugees—feet cracked and caked with hardened soil for lack of water—sit on mats, drinking tea or finishing a meal. Their long jelabiyas, in various degrees of shabbiness, drape their undernourished bodies. Dark faces wrapped in greyish white headdresses peer at us as we pass.