Dateline ACT

Chad 01/04

Providing a welcome to refugees on inhospitable land

by Bjarne Ussing, DanChurchAid/ACT International

Eastern Chad, July 14, 2004--Many of the thousands of Sudanese who have been driven from their homes in Darfur by Janjaweed attacks have been making their way west to refugee camps across the border in neighboring Chad. Most arrive with few possessions and little to survive on. The humanitarian aid organizations that are trying to help these refugees are finding that the land where they are making their new home is inhospitable in its own way.

Asisa Ateib, a 30-year-old mother and refugee, recalls the “ra-ta-ta-ta-ta” sound of Janjaweed machine guns firing on a dark February night near her village at Korney in West Darfur. With her eyes wide open, she tells of her fear during the attack. As she speaks, she leans to the side of her UNHCR-provided tent, raises her arms, and describes how the sky was lit in red and yellow from the neighbouring village that was burning. It had fallen victim to the horse-riding militia’s ethnic cleansing.

“I escaped with all of my five children, but the Janjaweed killed my two brothers, and my husband is also gone,” says Ateib.

Hadjé Simine was even more unlucky. “I tried to gather all of my children when the Janjaweed attacked our village. All of the houses where burning. Even the clothes I had on were burning,” she says. The flames burned the skin on her back.

“Three of my children disappeared. I have no idea if they are dead or alive,” Simine says of her lost sons, Abdel Karim, 10, Abdel Madjid, 8, and Nouradin, 5.

“The militia even threw up to 20 dead bodies into each well. And those who tried to drink of the water to avoid dying of thirst died of poisoning,” she says.

Today Ateib and Simine live in Mile and Iridimi refugee camps, respectively, in Chad. These are two of the three camps where Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, is supplying refugees from Darfur with water and latrines. There are 180,000 refugees in Chad, 100,000 of whom reached the camps, with 80,000 still on the move from the dangerous border areas toward the camps.

Near Ateib’s tent, approximately 80 people sit in the hot sun with their few belongings packed in pieces of cloth. They are refugees who arrived the day before. A Landcruiser from NCA arrives with tents for the new arrivals from the Mile camp warehouse.

The car has to drive a bit to the side because a donkey has collapsed and is dying in the middle of the road. While the refugees manage to survive in the camps, it has become common to see donkeys and goats dying in the camp because of lack of food – tragic for the refugees, since animals are often the only savings for people from Darfur.

Accommodating thousands of refugees in camps with more arriving regularly is a huge logistical challenge for non-governmental organizations like NCA. Supplying up to 180,000 people with clean water in a remote area, which is either an extremely dry desert or a big mud hole during the rainy season, is one monumental task. Add to that roads that are bad in the dry season and useless in the wet season, even for the former military trucks used for water and refugee transportation. On top of that, there are not enough relief workers in the field, and the ones there work long hours, sometimes 15 hours a day seven days a week.

NCA is drilling for water in the desert for 40,000 refugees. In one of the camps, Touloum, the borehole in June supplied the refugees with only 15 percent of the water they needed. The rest had to be transported on trucks from Iriba, an hour’s drive away. This is, however, only a temporary solution, which can’t be applied in the rainy season beginning in July.

“When the trucks can’t drive in the mud, we can use alternative methods like rinsing the water from the waddies [rivers formed in the rainy season] in filters made of sand,” says NCA project coordinator Tor Valla.

Even if there is not food enough in stock for the rainy season in all of the nine refugee camps in Chad, the risk of refugees dying of hunger or thirst is limited. But the lack of supplies and latrines and clean water can raise the risk of epidemic diseases spreading in the camps.

Despite the physical difficulties, NCA in Chad and other ACT members in Sudan that are working with displaced people who remain in Darfur are pressing on to overcome the challenges. Their task is not only to ensure hospitable living conditions, but to help save lives.

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