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Letters from Darfur
These letters were written to friends and family by journalist, photographer and humanitarian aid worker Gina Bramucci while she was in Darfur during 2005 and 2006. Gitana
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"Gina & Julie with Children"
School children in Patcho, Central African Republic |
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"Gina with Women of Riyadh"
Women in a social center in Krinding IDP camp, West Darfur |
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| Speaking with women leaders in an IDP camp in northern Uganda (this photo courtesy of Silvia Morara) |
Productions will sponsor"Faces of Darfur,"a first-time public exhibit of Gina's photography at St. Louis City Hall from April 27 through May 3, 2008. The photos, many of them portraits, capture Bramucci's relationships and interactions with the Darfuri people.
Nov. 23, 2005
This week I left El Geneina for my first helicopter field trip with the U.N. mission here in Darfur. The U.N. has two helicopters here now, which finally allows us to reach IDP camps that have been inaccessible for months due to insecure roads. What was once a risky two-hour drive has become a safe 30-minute hop in the air—a trip that carries us from the comparative metropolis of El Geneina, over dry expanses of desert, to a sprawling IDP camp with a population of more than 80,000 people. The open, circular windows of the helicopter (a 16-seater in the hands of a team of Russian pilots), look out over dry earth, burned fields and abandoned villages. These are the remnants of the massacres that took place in the past, and the signs of how conflict continues to play out today: Crops that are used as livestock feed for passing nomads or janjaweed, expanses of land still too dangerous for re-settlement, and huts dismantled by government police so the wood can be re-sold (to its original owners) in IDP camp markets.
After 25 minutes of flight the deserted land below gives way to a massive collection of huts, their roofs of plastic sheeting advertising a collection of international donors. This is Mornei, once a desert town of 5,000 people, now the largest IDP camp in West Darfur Its size and diversity has made it one of the most challenging camps for humanitarian agencies, and one of the locations continually characterized by human rights abuses on a large scale. HelpAge started working here early in the year, only to pull out later due to insecurity. Now that the helicopters can carry us safely there, our first mission was focused on explanations and apologies to volunteers and sheikhs who had expected us to stick around.
Mornei is surrounded by low mountains, making it a beautiful location despite the mess ushered in by conflict. Next time I go there I’ll have the time to walk up to the top of a plateau that looks over the camp. But this time was strictly work. I walked for hours with Khalid, one of our English-speaking community workers, trying to get a better feel for the camp and to meet with all of our previous contacts there. On the late afternoon of our first day, after a two-hour meeting with elders and sheikhs, Khalid and I stopped in a market shop for a Coca-Cola and some “raw Sudanese beans” (shelled peanuts). He spoke about cultural differences between the people of Darfur and the “education people” of the capital, Khartoum. The conversation ranged from polygamy to family planning to styles of dress, and Khalid is clearly proud to count himself among the “education people.”
As we walked back toward Concern, the humanitarian agency that manages this camp and offers us a bed for the night, Khalid and I were flocked by children reaching out to touch me, to see if I feel different because of my skin. At one point two children passed hand-in-hand and Khalid said loudly, “Oh! Look! Clean children!”
It was the most surprising part of our day. In this camp crowded with people living pressed against each other, clean children in freshly pressed clothes were the most outstanding, irregular sight. Another day of practice in extremes.
Love,
Gina
June 26, 2006
I’m resting under a tree in Mornei this afternoon. Surrounding me I can hear the songs of the rainy season birds and the voices of our camp-based volunteers in their daily English lesson. The only teacher we could find here in the camp is an MSF medical assistant from South Sudan . He teaches his adult students using the old colonialist system of recitation and repetition, so what I hear from my seat is his call and their echo: “The axe.” The axe. “An arrow.” An arrow. I had to hide my laughter when, referring to the donkeys that families are so dependant upon for daily work here, the class started with a series: “An ass.” An ass. “Two asses.” Two asses. “Three asses.” Three asses. “How many asses?”
This visit is a chance to share a celebratory meal with the community health workers that made the mobile eye clinic such a success a few weeks ago. Today isn’t market day, so we could only offer a sort of meager meal of beans and bread and tea. But our camp-based crew of staff and volunteers seemed happy, and it was nice to hear their reflections about the eye clinic and our impact here. One of the higher ranking sheikhs gave a little speech about all of the positive work of the agency over the past six months. He referred to a person’s sight as their “life and independence,” and what it means to restore a bit of that in a context like Darfur. He was quite eloquent. In the end he teased, “And the old people are happy for Gina, because she gave them water in the afternoons and learned her words in Fur and Masalit.” It took so many months and so much patience here, but it’s beautiful now to feel the people close, and to laugh alongside them all afternoon.
This will be my last big e-mail before my upcoming R&R. I head to London on July 3rd, do a half-day debriefing with headquarters, and then move on to Italy where I’ll meet Anna at the Duomo in Milan. (Anna, do you remember our meeting point? You have that memorized?) In the past weeks before my departure I’ve been working on a briefing paper for the Ford Foundation. This document is meant to address issues of human rights, security, physical and emotional health, and prospects for peace in Darfur, all related to the elderly. Over the course of several months a few key field officers—people I trust can be discreet and thorough at the same time—have been collecting interviews for this paper. I never go along on these interviews. In a country with one of the world’s largest secret service networks, the presence of an outsider asking sensitive questions could put IDPs at risk. So I collect the words and look for themes that resonate throughout. At times, in our field officers’ translation from Arabic to English, the phrases come out sounding poetic in their sadness. Before I leave for this break, I wanted to share some of their words with you. Here I’ll try to thread together various voices that seem to represent the whole. Each individual sentence is a direct quote, with only the language perhaps altered during the process of translation. They tell one of the most candid stories I know about this place and its people and its promise for a peaceful future:
“During the conflict I have been beaten with sticks and all my family was killed in front of me. I stayed two days with dead bodies…
The situation has changed for the worse in the camps. In the past we were free in terms of movement and the access to work and we lived independently; and now we just receive help from the international agencies. Everything was changed with the changing of the community and the culture and the thoughts, and because the community itself needs the support.
I don’t believe that there will be peace in Darfur . If there is peace I will return back to the village when the janjaweed put down their guns, but if there is war I don’t want to return back to the village because all my animals and all my goods were stolen and my home was burned. And still, every day I hear shooting by guns in the camp very near my shelter so I cannot sleep quite well.
Which role can I play in the community when there is no peace? I’m unknown for the community in the camp, so I can’t have any role unless I go back to my home. In my village all the people, young and old, they knew me. But in the camp we come from different villages. Living in the camp is like prison. All night I’m just thinking about what we lost and what situation we faced. If I have a role in the community who can listen to me now?
Before the Darfur conflict we always took time after supper for chatting at midnight; but in the camp we’re always surrounded by janjaweed and there’s no security. How are we to share stories? During the day we only talk about war and the things we lost. But sometimes we gather after sunset and talk about our conflict and all that was looted from us, so we cannot forget unless I die.
We hear people talk about peace, but how? I have a dream that peace will come to Darfur, but not soon. It will take more time. If the peace comes I’ll go to my home and cultivate my lands and live freely, depending on myself. I will go back because I am always remembering my land. I can’t forget my home and lands.”
Sept. 13, 2006
Mom and Pops…
I’m surprised if you didn’t hear news about El Geneina somehow, but then, we saw some CNN-International last night and the story on a new discovery about Princess Diana’s death ranked before the story about thousands and thousands of protesters surrounding the government in Lebanon. And so it is in love and media…
We’re back in El Geneina and all has quieted down, but this was quite the mess for the African Union. As I already wrote, two days ago some armed men with an RPG opened fire on a lorry carrying 35 civilians. For those that didn’t die in the blow, the perpetrators (presumed to be janjaweed / Sudanese government) left them to burn to death in the vehicle. Or, some speculate, some of the victims were executed. The bodies of the dead—some from El Geneina and some from the destination camp, a place called Sirba—were brought back to town, where their families received them. The following day (yesterday) people in the IDP camps near El Geneina were mourning and, at the same time, full of anger. They organized a demonstration and planned to march to the African Union to protest the AU’s lack of protection for civilians in Darfur. As they neared the AU base, just half-way between the town borders and the airport, three armed men (appearing to be janjaweed) came out of a neighboring elementary school where they’d been taking shelter. The janjaweed opened fire into the crowd of IDPs, who forgot their protest and started running toward the AU gates for protection. The AU guards had missed the source of all of the confusion and came out, already nervous because they had heard a protest was happening in town. Then, mirroring the janjaweed, the “protection force” guards sprayed the crowd with bullets and killed three civilians. What a sad mess.
Anyway, we're safely back from Kerenek and had a good final field mission. Warren arrives in El Geneina today. On Friday we have a lunch with all of the staff to say good-bye, and I fly out of El Geneina on Saturday.
Can't wait to be home.
Love you.
Gina
Dec. 19, 2006
As I write this I’m thousands of feet in the air, somewhere between Khartoum and London , somewhere steadily inching closer to home. Some of you know this, and some of you I’ll see very soon, and some of you I just haven’t written in a long time, and felt like this might be a good moment…
I’m relieved and happy to be heading to Oregon . And at the same time I’m tired and sad and my stomach is in knots as I leave Darfur behind. I don’t have any sense of what news reaches the United States these days. These final weeks in Darfur were tense ones—the region at the edge of an implosion, all armed groups playing their part. Eight vehicles were carjacked at gunpoint in the space of two weeks, including one of ours. Hundreds of government troops have made demonstrations of their strength by racing through our town firing their weapons in the air for hours at a time, spraying stray bullets into the air and through the walls of homes and into a few unfortunate civilians who didn’t take cover in time. The government of Chad has threatened to attack western Darfur unless Sudan stops harboring Chadian rebels. The United States and the U.K. announced part of their “Plan B” for Darfur to the press, making the possibility of a NATO or U.S./U.K.-implemented no-fly zone over Darfur a BBC headline. (What we don’t know is the next phase of “Plan B” and, more worrying, how the government of Sudan will react to this kind of foreign intervention.) So we started packing our bags and closing our offices, sending our staff home and telling them to stay with their families until humanitarian workers are able to return in January. The U.N. is not officially calling it an evacuation, not even a relocation, but every NGO in West Darfur is basically halting operations and sending out all non-essential staff. My already scheduled December flight coincided with the mass departure of colleagues and difficult good-byes to those that we leave behind. The government has warned us that those who choose to leave now will not be allowed back into Darfur later to provide humanitarian aid. And yet, we have to go. We can’t deliver the aid we are meant to provide, we can’t reach the civilians we are meant to help. We serve as witness, powerless, and then say good-bye.
I’m not really sure why I write all of this today, after leaving it all behind. But I think it’s because I’m frightened for what will happen next in Darfur . At least some people out there should know how quickly things are unraveling.
Today I noticed that despite continued scrubbing in a Khartoum shower yesterday, there’s a patch of skin on my index finger where the dirt got deep in the crevasses, and the darkness has barely faded. I’m starting to understand that Darfur will be the same—a mark someplace inside that won’t easily wash away. And I know that despite this weight, I’m grateful even for this.
Love,
Gina
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