Tag: darfur crisis

A long way from home

“Some people don’t even have a home, mom!”

This was the response scribbled by my 19-year-old daughter on a note I left asking her to clean up the house.  I had written, “This house has been such a mess, I’m starting to dread coming home,” scolding my family for not being tidier.

Hard to believe she had to remind her humanitarian-aid-writer mother that I should be thankful just to have a home. But she’s right. In fact, millions of people don’t have a home; many through no fault of their own.

Refugee mom and daughter.
A mom and her daughter wash dishes outside their hut in the Djabal Refugee Camp in Eastern Chad.

Today is World Refugee Day, and it’s an opportunity for all of us to think about those who had to leave everything behind and start over in a new place – usually in very dire circumstances.

World Concern works with thousands of refugees who are trying to begin a new life in a foreign land. They live in camps, often for years, before their lives are stabilized enough for them to think about the next step. We help provide food, access to clean water, health and hygiene training, education, income generation and more.

But what’s the ultimate goal?

“For them to be able to go home,” says Chris Sheach, deputy director of disaster response for World Concern.

Many of those who fled Darfur during the war, for example, are still living in camps in Chad, where World Concern works. Their homes and villages were burned. They would love nothing more than to go home, but there is nothing for them to return to.

“If they can’t go home, we help them integrate into a new society,” says Sheach. World Concern’s Cash for Work program in Chad has enabled families to earn income to support themselves and contribute to the local economy, thereby reducing the risk of creating conflict in their host community. We also assist them in obtaining land to farm, and provide seeds and farming tools to grow their own food and earn income.

In an ideal world, situations wouldn’t escalate to the point where people had to flee their homes for survival in the first place. Sometimes they do go home, such as in Somaliland (northern Somalia), where returnees from Ethiopia and other areas are settling in camps in their homeland. Their hope is that they’ll be able to find a new home. But 96% of them are dependent on food aid. We’re teaching them to plant vegetable gardens to feed their families, and hopefully improve their diet beyond the staple grains they receive from aid agencies.

A bricklayer in Chad.
Paying cash for labor is one way World Concern helps refugees support their families.

Nearly every parent’s desire is to provide a better life for their children. A home is the foundation that provides the stability kids need to pursue their dreams. I’m blessed to be able to provide that for my kids (despite it being a bit messy at times). The circumstances refugees find themselves in today is one of those things that makes me want to scream, “It’s not fair!” And it’s not. But we can stomp our feet, or we can do something about it. I’m proud to be a part of an organization that’s doing something about it.

Rather than fostering any hint of a global pity party, we’re empowering refugees by giving them the the tools to move forward. Whether or not they can return home, we can help them focus on the future and the hope of having place to call home.

For more information on World Concern’s work with Darfur war refugees in Chad, visit http://www.worldconcern.org/darfurcrisis

 

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

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.