Tag: chad

Hunger and waiting

We’re more than half way through the Global Hunger Challenge and are gaining some powerful insights about how we approach and think about food. First on our minds: snacking. We’re not doing any. And we miss it. There just wasn’t room in the budget to factor in snacks beyond the three meals a day we planned in our $34 budget for the week. It’s amazing how much food is offered by others in our culture too. At least five times this week I was offered a treat or something to drink by generous friends, which made it very hard to refuse.

A woman tends a fire for cooking in Chad.
Pots heated over a fire for cooking in a refugee camp in Chad.

Over the weekend I made soup in my crock pot, not thinking about how hard it would be to smell it cooking all day and having to wait until dinner time when it was done. The aroma definitely intensified the snack cravings. It made me think about those who live in some of the places where World Concern serves, and how much of their day is consumed with gathering, planning and preparing food. I’ve also never been so thankful for food when meal time does arrive after an hour or so of my stomach grumbling.

In parts of Africa where we work, three meals a day is not the norm. The two “meals” (which are not even close in quantity to our meals) take most of the day to prepare. Pounding whole grain, such as maize, millet or sorghum, with a mortar and pedestal expends an incredible amount of time and energy. Someone gathers sticks for a fire from a few distant trees. The grain is then cooked in water and possibly fried if there is oil available. Aside from seasoning it with some onions or garlic, or being blessed with a seasonal green as a side dish, most families eat the same food every day. A piece of fruit is considered a rich dessert on a special occasion.

Imagine the patience involved in plowing hard, dry soil, planting seeds, hand-carrying water from a stream or well miles away to irrigate your meager crops, then waiting for signs of growth. Just when sprouts of green begin to push through the cracked soil, all your hard work is washed away by a flash flood. It’s hard to fathom the disappointment parents feel, knowing their children will have to wait even longer for food now.

A woman plows a field in Chad
A woman plows her field in Chad.

It’s exhausting to think about, isn’t it? This week’s Hunger Challenge has given us a tiny glimpse into what millions of people experience every day of their lives. Hunger. And waiting.

Join us in making a difference.

Lost Freedom in Eastern Chad

Ache stands inside a hut in Chad.
Ache faces a daily struggle to survive in the Djabal refugee camp in Eastern Chad.

Ache is a strongly built woman. The skin around her eyes is smooth in spite of the graying braids that lie half hidden under her head covering. Her face wears a look built out of determination and survival and years of waiting. She has been in this camp in eastern Chad since 2004. She knows she may never go home.

In Sudan, she tells us, she lived in a large and prosperous village. She had a beautiful life: fields of millet, sorghum and peanuts along the wadi, gardens rich in choice, and an irrigation pump to lighten her work. Her three children were free to go to school, and together the community built a preschool so mothers could have time to rest and socialize.

Her house was made of adobe, with a metal roof: safe from fire, a good place to store her dowry chest and gold jewelry. She would travel to weekly markets in nearby towns, selling grain or vegetables and bringing home clothes, shoes and school supplies. Her husband traveled to the big cities and returned bearing sacks of sugar. In Sudan, Ache was free.

And then, everything changed. Ache’s face goes still and hard as she thinks about the hate campaign that started the troubles.

“The janjaweed came to our village with guns and fire. They stole our cattle, slaughtered our donkeys and burned our fields. As they broke down our granaries and houses we ran for our lives, scattering into the bush, I in one direction and my husband in another,” she said. “So many of our neighbors and our family members didn’t escape. Men and women, elderly and babies; their bodies lay untended, unburied for days. When the janjaweed finally left we buried the dead in pits and mass graves. I had only my clothes and my children. I had only the hope of reaching some other village before we were lost to hunger and thirst.”

Eventually, trucks came from the NGOs. They rounded up batches of refugees and drove them several days to the camp. Bewildered and traumatized, Ache’s family waited under plastic tarps. “But there were no guns. There was peace, and a place to rest,” she recalls.

When they first arrived in the camp they were lent a small plot to farm, but without access to water it failed. Now her husband spends most days looking for day labor in town. Sometimes he is lucky. Sometimes they resort to selling part of their daily ration. Her 16-year-old son has left the camp to look for work somewhere unknown—probably back in Sudan, although at last news he was still in eastern Chad. One day she will find him, if she can get the money to travel after him.

She focuses on the blessings in the camp: her daughter spreading sorghum from the distribution rations to dry in the sun; the gate into her neighbor’s yard and the gourd plant that reaches over it. She wonders whether she will ever again have the chance to plant and reap her own fields.

“What I wish for,” she says with a trembling voice, “Is a chance to work. Last year, when World Concern was here, I worked on the rock lines. I had money to buy a pot and meat to share with my neighbor. We are not the same tribe, but we live together. We shared out my work days and the money.”

“Thank you,” she says, “for coming so far, for leaving your families and coming to help mine. Surely God will bless your generosity.”

Story by J. Gunningham, World Concern Program Support Officer, Djabal, Chad

Help Wanted: Darfur Refugees Find Work

Chad refugee
Mohammed, a 21-year-old refugee from Darfur, works in World Concern's Cash for Work program.

Stone by stone, 21-year-old Mohammed builds back a bit of his dignity. The tall, lean young man works with several hundred other refugees in 100 degree heat in Eastern Chad, picking up rocks, and dropping them into rows.

He joins other men, and many women wearing bright traditional dresses, to build these low rock walls on hillsides to reduce erosion.

The task: simple and exhausting. The outcome: dignity and freedom.

What I saw today was amazing. Darfur war refugees had an opportunity to work.

“This I like,” Mohammed tells me in English. “I buy clothes. I eat. It’s for my family.”

Mohammed left his home in Darfur, Sudan, seven years ago. He says Janjaweed rebels killed his father and many other family members, shooting rocket propelled grenades into his village.

Since he fled, he’s been living near Goz Beida, Chad. He’s in one of several camps here. In spite of his current life, he does not want to return to Sudan. All told, more than 400,000 people are refugees or   internally displaced in Chad.

Because Mohammed and thousands of others are not at home, they have seen that finding work is an incredible challenge. Because they can’t work, they can’t provide for their families beyond what they are given.

World Concern’s program, called Cash For Work, allows them to earn an income, giving them some financial freedom again, while also improving their environment.

The low walls, called bunds, slow the rain runoff down hillsides. This encourages water to soak into the ground, raising the water table. Within a year, it will be a good place for farming and a better place to drill a well.

The influx of refugees has exacted a toll on the local environment, as they have torn down trees to burn for firewood. The rock walls – and tree replanting – are helping to heal the land.

For Mohammed, he treasures each opportunity to earn money. He enjoys learning, and says he likes America. His future remains uncertain, but he now has more of a chance to direct it on his own terms.

Learn more and take action: www.worldconcern.org/darfurcrisis

Like Doublemint Gum, Except Bad

It is too common for children to see child labor in Chad. The country has an overall literacy rate of 26%.

You know the old commercials for Doublemint gum? Two unusually beautiful twin sisters or brothers pop out from behind a cabana, or do a spread-eagle on a ski slope, grinning with their white teeth and minty fresh breath? Double your pleasure, double your fun? I had a realization like that today, except less minty.

So I’m in Chad right now. Some have called it the “Dead Heart of Africa.” Don’t read into it, other than it’s in the middle of Africa. I’m in Ndjamena, the capitol, and will catch a UN flight in the morning to World Concern’s project area in refugee camps on the far eastern part of the country, near Sudan. That’s where the Darfur war has been going on.

I’ve been researching some basic data on the country to prepare for this trip, and I found:

  • One in 10 children die before the age of five here.
  • 62% of people are in extreme poverty, making less than $1.25 a day
  • Only one in four people can read and write

Pretty mind-boggling stuff, right? And then I realized that where we’re working, these figures are generous.

Jane Gunningham, who helped start our humanitarian relief work in eastern Chad, tells me illiteracy there is more than double the country average. She said:

“Literacy in the eastern zone is about 10%. Virtually no women are literate in the east.”

And as for incomes, also worse than the country average. But perhaps the most startling, is that instead of one in 10 children dying before the age of five, it’s one in five kids. Double the number of child deaths.

Really? I wish it was not true. It’s tough enough here. It’s no wonder, though. Introduce a war that impacts families already living on the edge, sending 400,000 refugees or displaced people to camp within Chad, and it should be no surprise these figures are far worse.

There is a ray of hope, though, as I prepare to fly out in the morning to see the camps. Jane says the work we’re doing, is making a real and noticeable difference. Whether it is help with farming, with temporary employment doing community service, or it is in small savings and loan groups – these small interventions bring big results.

“The whole economy across the board is struggling to get by,” Jane told me. “It takes only a small input to increase a family’s survivability.”

I’m looking forward to seeing first-hand how this is working.

Learn more and take action: www.worldconcern.org/darfurcrisis

School Supplies For Darfur War Children

Children in refugee camps in Chad need school supplies.
Children in refugee camps in Chad need school supplies.

Did you ever want to have a direct impact on children in Africa? You can make a big difference right now by donating school supplies. Even used supplies would be great!

As kids around here are going into summer break, World Concern is planning for a big shipment of school supplies to Chad, Africa.

You may have heard about all of the craziness in Chad with news about the ongoing war in the Darfur region of Sudan, which is the country just to the east of Chad. The poor families in this region have been burned out of their homes and chased from their villages by crazy men with guns. These families are ending up in Goz Beida, Chad, where World Concern is playing a key role in keeping these families alive and healthy.

So – here’s what we need. We’re looking for anything relatively small, but especially notebooks, paper, pencils, pens, rulers, scissors, calculators … if you think it would be useful for learning here … it will be a huge hit in Chad.

The main purpose of the shipment has been to send furniture and computers to equip a classroom. But a we’re getting this all together, we’re seeing that there is still a lot of space for these school supplies. We want to fill the container!

If you want to help, drop off or mail your supplies to us here at World Concern in Seattle. It would be good to get it to us by this time next week (June 18), if possible, so that we will have time to sort it out.

Here’s where it should go:

Susan Talbot – Gifts in Kind
World Concern
19303 Fremont Ave. N
Seattle, WA 98133

If you have any questions, feel free to email Susan at susant@worldconcern.org

Darfur Crisis: How I Plan Disaster Relief

World Concern works with refugees and displaced people in Chad. Using innovative techniques, we include them in the discussion as we plan our future disaster relief.
World Concern works with refugees and displaced people in Chad. Using innovative techniques, we include them in the discussion as we plan our future disaster relief.

One of my responsibilities with World Concern is to make sure our programs are of the highest quality possible.

Sometimes this means helping our teams figure out the best way to do something.  Sometimes it means training people.  It surprises me that I really like teaching, but I really do, especially when it makes a difference.  And I’m usually as much student as teacher.

Most of the people receiving disaster relief here in Chad are refugees or displaced people from the Darfur crisis. They have had absolutely no education and are not used to thinking in abstract ways, so sometimes it is hard to communicate even when language is not a barrier.

Our latest exercise was to find out people’s priorities beyond tomorrow.  On the first day I sat with our key staff and trained them on a technique, and the next day we tried it out for real.  We wanted to know what people value most in their communities so we can plan our programs accordingly.

Our first step was to sit down with small groups of only men or only women because women here won’t give their opinions in front of men.

In the US, people are so closed up in their homes that it takes actual scheduling to get a group of Americans together.  Here though, my translator and I just wander through the disaster relief camp until we spot or hear a women, plunk down on a mat in some sliver of shade, and start talking.  Curious neighbor women soon gather and we have our group.

For this exercise, we started with a simple concrete question, “If you had a salary of $40/month, what would you do with it?”  As they listed things, I’d draw simple pictures of it on a big piece of paper, grouping similar thing, as we all laughed at my lack of artistic ability.  If they were used to pens I would have let them draw the pictures themselves.

Finally, I draw circles around the groups of pictures to make categories – staple foods, other foods, clothes, kitchen utensils, debt, animals, education, housing…  Then I pass out beans, explaining through the translator that each is worth 500 francs (a bit more than $1) and the paper is the market.  To give them an idea, I go first, then collect up my beans.

By now, the women are really getting engaged, crowding around on the plastic mat, chattering with each other about what to buy, explaining the game to those who are slower in getting it.  Babies are shifted out of laps to get at the paper.  Now we’re laughing and teasing each other.  Some of the wiser, older women quietly make their points and purchases.  Young teen-age mothers are more timid, looking to others for approval of their choices.

One by one, the women naturally take turns, carefully placing their beans on their purchases with the thoughtfulness as if it was a real purchase.  Rough, calloused fingers, thickened by years and decades of hard labor fumble and drop beans, quickly snatching them up again.  Finally, all the beans are down and we count them.  48 beans for staple food, 20 beans for chickens, and so on.  Then we talk about their choices as a group and why they chose what they did.

Now that they understand the game, I ask a harder question, “Make a picture in your head of your home village as you would like it to be.  What do you see?”  We go through the game with that question, then the final question, “If the war goes on and you are here for another 5-6 years, describe how you would like to see this community here in the camp.”

As they name the things I draw them out.  Then again, they vote.  Now the stakes are higher.  The jokes, joshing and laughter continue, but now there is an element of seriousness.

They know that their answers may influence what programs we plan for disaster relief.  This is exactly what we want.  They are now a part of determining their own future.

Merry Fitzpatrick is World Concern’s director of technical support.

Read more about her journey to Chad.

Learn more about World Concern.

Disaster Relief Journal – High Security During Travel

World Concern travels to hard-to-reach places to provide disaster relief. This often means many hours on difficult roads to reach people in great need.
World Concern travels to hard-to-reach places to provide disaster relief. This often means many hours on difficult roads to reach people in great need.

The most common element in all our program fields is the difficulty in just getting there.

This past week we ventured into a new area, just north of our current program area in eastern Chad.

Although it is only about 150 miles, it took us about 12 hours and a couple of days to prepare.

In the whole country of Chad, there are only 2 paved roads outside the capital, N’Djamena, neither of them terribly long.  Around here, we mostly follow tracks in the sand.

The short 3-month rainy season is intense, creating many wide sandy river beds called wadis.  These fill quickly with water during the rainy season.

In the dry season, you can easily get bogged in the deep soft sand of the wadi.  In the dry season, the main problem isn’t the wadis, though, it is the militia.  They find NGO vehicles soft targets.

Not long ago in an area not far from our destination the director of another NGO was killed in an ambush while attempting to provide disaster relief.

We take security very seriously, traveling in as large convoys as possible, carrying radios and satellite phones, checking with locals along the way about the road ahead.

We were supposed to meet up with a convoy of 4 vehicles at a town part-way there, but the government had declared that day a national holiday the night before.  So we arrived at the meeting point only to find that the other group wasn’t traveling due to the holiday.  We had 2 vehicles of our own, the minimum required for that road to avoid an ambush and plowed on anyway.

The drivers are used to sand, so were able to slip into and out of 4-wheel drive as we would fourth gear on a highway.  They were great and never let us bog down in any of the wadis, though it was touch and go a couple of times.

Our lead drier was from that region and hadn’t been there for a year or more, so every now and again we’d suddenly stop while Isaaka ran out into some seemingly random field, falling into an embrace with someone out harvesting their millet.  Then we’d be on our way again.

Although we arrived at our destination at around 2pm, we were sent onwards to meet the Chef de Canton (like the Mayor) and Sous-Prefet (like the Governor) in Hadjer Hadid, another 30km (18 miles) up the road.

It took about an hour to get there, then another 3 hours to find the Sous-Prefet, wait for him to decide to meet with us, then meet with him, then repeat the process with the Chef de Canton, all the while drinking sticky-sweet, scalding hot tea in 90+ degree weather.

All the formalities done, we were able to trundle back to Arkoum, our final destination, arriving much later than we really should have been on the road.  Within 15 minutes of arriving, we were setting up camp in the dark under a thankfully bright moon, eating a meal of rice and canned sardines.

It took us about 12 hours to get 150 miles, and that was without any problems at all with the vehicles or the road.

Disaster Relief Journal – Visit to Church – Part 2

Ayamba, our Congolese logistics officer surprised me today.  He was the preacher of the day.  He said he preaches at the local church about once every month or so and this was his third time preaching there.

About 6 months ago there was a general assembly meeting and the attendees were broken into groups for a debate.  The topic was whether or not just giving the tithe is enough.  He spoke for his group and the church leaders were so impressed that they asked him to be a regular guest speaker.

Ayamba and I have worked together off and on in disaster relief for over 10 years, yet he still manages to surprise me with stuff like this.  He spoke very well, being funny without intending to.

Ayamba is a short, stocky fellow with very large, emphatic gestures.  Many people, when they first meet him completely underestimate him and a ken perception hiding behind a very simple, unsophisticated, humble demeanor.

He really engaged the congregation, held their attention, and pointed out to them a real problem they have with the way they treat adultery.

As most of the congregation is married, but with their spouses far away in safer places, it was an important topic.  Most sermons would have come across very heavy-handed, but he was able to get them to see how ridiculous they are being in pretending they aren’t doing what they are doing, as well as just considering it wrong on the woman’s part, not the man’s.

Today, I was pleased and proud that my friend should have given such a sermon as he did today, that this first time working outside of his own country, he should have landed so solidly on his feet.

Disaster Relief Journal – Visit to Church – Part 1

Attending church in other countries is always an experience.  You are an observer and an observed, but you are also an equal participant and become a part of the local life, if only for a couple of hours.

Goz Beida is in a Muslim region of Chad, but Chadians come here from Christian regions looking for work or with the government or army, often related to disaster relief.  A church has sprung up here to serve these workers.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched the congregation grow from a small handful to more than 200.  The original collapsing, melting mud and thatch building has been gradually replaced by a solid tin-roofed structure 3 times as big and with a cement floor.  It is all very clean and tidy now.

On Sunday we squeeze butt-to-butt on simple wooden benches.  Men on the left side of the room and women on the right.  The choir, in blue and white robes, sits up from with their drums and such.  Everyone has cleaned up and dressed up for the occasion, especially the women.  The women wear an assortment of bright dresses and some unbelievably complicated head-dresses.  All the women wear something on their heads while all the men go bare-headed.

We start off with about an hour of singing while the sanctuary gradually fills.  Some songs are in French, some in local languages.  The choir thumps away on gourds and drums.  Some people clap and dance.  A few women really get into it.  Finally, we all settle down onto the benches.  The sermon is in French and translated into local Arabic.  Most of the elementary-age children are elsewhere.  Little ones wander in and out at will.  Babies nurse unabated.  At a signal, a young man with a bucket of drinking water will bring you some water in the communal cup.  important in such a hot, dry place.

After the sermon is the collection – a big deal.  The treasurer places out two large bowls and lines them with a white cloth.  Ushers indicate rows of people in turn to come forward and place their offering in the bowls.  Singing accompanies the ceremony.  And then, sometimes for some reason, a second round.  More singing and dancing.

Finally, the announcements and introductions/travels.  A Congolese man who’d gone home for a visit had run into a man from this church and carries his greetings.  Another is in the military and has recently arrived.  Others may also be part of disaster relief. And so it goes…

With the final hymn, people file out very orderly through a side door, each stopping in a line to shake hands with those that follow.  So if you are half-way through the crowd going out, you shake the hands of those ahead of you in a sort of reception line, then take your place at the end of the lin to shake the hands of those who follow.  Everyone ends up shaking everyone else’s hand.

Some people scatter quickly, but a surprising number clump into groups, standing in theshad of a tree to chat, as if to stretch out the precious weekly ceremony.  Gradually, people wander off in colorful clumps, down hot sandy lanes in the glaring, baking sun as Muslim children stand and gawk, wondering what it is all about.

Disaster Relief Journal: Day 5

Disaster relief workers
Disaster relief workers

I’m battling a round of the flu.  After so much traveling, I finally got out to the field today and was dismayed to feel myself coming down with an aching fever and a very sore throat, taking away much of the enjoyment of the day.

We work in 3 disaster relief camps for Chadians who’ve been chased from their homes.  They official term for them is Internally Displaced People or (IDPs).  We are also starting working in a camp for Sudanese refugees.  So we spent most of the day looking at the various physical structures we’ve built, discussing successes and failures, what more needs to be done, what’s worth investing more in and what’s not…

Pretty much everyone has heard of the Sahara Desert, but few have heard of the Sahel.  This is the band along the southern edge of the Sahara that transitions from desert to the greener “sub-Saharan Africa” that most people picture when they hear the name “Africa”.

The continent is amazingly varied, both by climate and by traditions.  Each country is very different from its neighbors.  The Sahel is where the desert “Arabic” cultures meet up with the more “African” cultures.  It is also where the Muslim and Christian worlds meet.  Goz Beida is right on the line between these two worlds and is where I’m doing my disaster relief work.

Not far north of here, it is mainly Arab animal herders (pastoralists).  Not far south, it is majority Christian farmers.  Here on the line, people depend usually on a combination of farming and animals though their animals were stolen as they fled their villages and they now have very little access to their farm land, risking rape and murder just to farm their fields.

A water catchment system outside of an IDP camp
A water catchment system outside of an IDP camp

We get rain here pretty heavily for about 3 months of the year, and then nothing the other 9 months.  It is a very fragile environment and can only support a very scattered population, so when wars create concentrations like these IDP camps, it really stresses out the local environment.  Much of our work is designed to keep people alive while protecting the environment.  We’re building large rainwater catchment systems to add to the water table and to water the animals that haven’t been looted, helping to reforest (to counteract the huge amount of trees being cut for firewood) and similar stuff.  Disaster relief is hard on a lot of things.

Because we’re so far out in the middle of no-where, farming and herding animals is about the only way for most people to earn money or get food, but this is almost impossible when there are so many people living in one such remote place.  So we’re also working to build up the local economy and help people get work while cutting back on their expenses.  One of the things we’re doing is to help install mills to reduce the cost of grinding their grain into edible flour.  We’re doing other stuff too, but these were the things we were visiting yesterday – the mills, rainwater catchment systems and reforestation projects.

I helped to get this project started last year and hired most of the initial staff, so I already know most of them.  It was great to get to know them again as they proudly showed me all they’ve accomplished, which really is impressive, even to a skeptical, jaded soul like myself.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Read other disaster relief journal entries