On the Move
FLIGHT
I’m somewhere high over the Atlantic, on my way to Chad via Paris. It’s my thirteenth such trip, the first one being in 2005, which seems a lifetime away. I’ve been staring at a blank document for over an hour, not knowing what to say. It feels like I’ve said it all—too many times.
Sudan is spiraling out of control into what could be the bloodiest African war of the decade. For Darfuris, another year has gone by, and millions remain displaced with little to no hope for a better future anywhere on the horizon. I’ve said something similar to this on each of my previous twelve trips.
This trip is different.
N’DJAMENA (NDJ) AIRPORT
I have four big duffle bags, filled right up to the weight limit, something we’ve become experts at doing. They have all the travel gear for our players, plus my food, clothes, and tech gear. Everything arrived at the NDJ airport, and I’m feeling well. The feeling did not last long, as we try to make it out of the customs area…
Ah, Beautiful Paris . . . Airport. On Our Way to Chad!
This is my ninth time flying to Paris. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, shopping and fine dining. Nope. Paris is just a necessary stop on our way to the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, and–eventually–the refugee camps in the East, along the Chad-Sudan border. In Paris, I only get to see the airport, which is pretty nice, by the way.
Nine times to the camps! It’s hard to believe. I really thought that the first trip, back in 2005, was going to be my only trip. It wasn’t imaginable to me, as a beginning activist, that the people we met way back then would still be living in those same camps, as we get ready to move in to 2011.
In reading about the displaced from Darfur living in camps (somewhere in the 3 million range), both inside their country and in neighboring Chad, I often hear the words “stable,” “non-emergency,” and “livable.” Of course, the people writing those reports do not live in the camps. Their children do not live in the camps. They make a quick stop and then go back to their very livable homes.
Those reports, in many ways, are right. The camps that we visit on the Chad-Darfur border have been life-saving since they started opening in 2003. The challenge encountered by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) during those first months and years of the crisis were monumental, and the job they did was and is as close to miraculous as anything can get.
People in the hundreds of thousands poured in to the border area, to places that are the definition of remote. Think of the logistics of moving food and shelter, providing water and health care, and creating tent cities in the middle of the desert. Refugees have told us that they felt like in a dream, when they saw the tents and found out that someone cared about them.
The refugees are now about to begin their eighth year living in those camps. Generations of children are growing up not knowing their homes and not learning the skills that have allowed Darfuris to live in an area of the world that can be unforgiving and difficult. This kind of stability is not necessarily a good thing. To the parents of the children, it is an emergency situation and one they wish to get out of.
All I hear is that they are grateful for the care they receive in the camps, for the organizations and the people that work to keep them protected, for the world sending grain, sugar, and oil. They also say that they would go home immediately, if it was safe.
It is complex, but it is also simple. The camps have offered refuge to millions. Every person has a right and a longing for home.
Maybe someday I’ll get to see more than the airport in Paris. But, I go on these journeys, and then I get to go back to my very livable home.
G
