During the Holocaust, there was a couple living in Germay who learned to the truth of what the Nazi regime was doing. For as long as they could, they left flyers in public places telling this truth. They didn’t know if it made a difference, but it was all they felt they could do. They risked their lives to stand up against the Nazis. They were courageous. Their flyers made history because they did reach people. Take a risk, step outside your own comfort zone.


Print 10 of these flyers, cut them in quarters, and leave them in your community. It might be a risk, but it is something we can all do. You never know who will pick one up.

As we fly from Abeche to Goz Beida, I begin to feel at ease; we are on our way and soon will be among old friends. This journey is now familiar.


Out my window in the plane, trees grow near dry tributaries that stretch across the sand like the veins of a drying country. Small circular compounds number that number no more than 15 make up villages sprinkled across the harsh desert, each next to its lifeline, the dry river bed known here as a wadi. Red sand stone and dry green shrubs contrast the neutral sand that covers most the land. As we head South, there is more vegetation and less dry open pits of the Sahara.


Once landed we quickly stop at UNHCR, many of the same faces as only a few months ago greet me with the traditional three kisses to the cheeks. A quick but causal stop with camp police that leaves us free to move back and forth for the week.


We are pressed for time to test equipment for World Refugee Day so we drive to the outskirts of the camp. Kids surround us quickly and Eric begins set up of the technical equipment. Ian, Carlos and I begin to walk the camp and of course, we are taken in by laughing, name repeating, scurrying bare feet of children and the sounds of a refugee camp.


Grain mill beating in the distance. Laughter and shrieks. “Salaam Malakam.” “Malakam Salaam.” “Humdallah.” “Akram, Akram,” as the kids point to themselves, asking for the next picture to be of them.


Singing draws us towards the teen center. Before I even enter, a familiar face and an outreached hand, Suliemen, our dear teacher friend from New Sudan school. Selma and Zam Zam are in the choir. I give Selma a big hug. I missed her on our last trip because I was sick. Another big hug, I tell her my mother loves and that I promise to find her again. Ali, Zaineb, Amouna, they all begin to gather. And as a family of old friends, we walk back towards the water tower to find Gabriel. We laugh and giggle, speak broken English and hold hands. Amouna teases me as she always has.


Once back home at our Intersos compound, I begin to feel sad. Many of the children we played with today do not know Darfur. They are too young. They only know the life of a refugee in a camp. They have not felt their culture alive in their homeland. They have not danced on their soil, nor been feed from their mother land. Their veins and blood are Sudanese, but much longer in camps like these, their entire traditional world will be like the tributaries spreading from the wadi, dried veins of a country.

We arrived at camp Djabal at about 2:30pm, which is pretty late to be starting work at a refugee camp.  Djabal is a very convenient camp, though, because it is only about a 10 minute drive away from town.  The camp looked empty, since people get away from the heat and out of sight during those impossible middle hours of the day.  Once we got down from the car at the edge of the camp, children still ventured out to meet us, and pretty soon we had a large crowd of boys and girls ready to be entertained by the weird visitors with all kinds of gadgets.


It’s hard for me to explain the feeling I get at visiting camp Djabal.  It feels very familiar, and the friends we’ve made  come running to us and give us hugs and smiles and say our names many times in a clear gesture of connection and community.  It is my third visit to Djabal.  I will be back more times, and we will stay connected, even when not here.  Our friends in Djabal know that.


It feels like home, I would say, but it is not really even their home.  We are in an interesting position, coming in as i-ACT, an independent group of more or less citizen reporters.  We want to help the voice and the face of the refugees get out there.  They have a voice.  They know what they want to say!  Only they feel that nobody has been listening for years.


When we, the i-ACT team, talk about conditions in the camp, it is in no way meant as a negative criticism of people doing the heroic–and I mean this, heroic–work of providing services in these impossible conditions.  Are refugees always 100 percent accurate in their sharing of information?  No.  Nobody is.  We do spend extended time with the people in the camps we visit.  We do not parachute in and then run out with the stories, developing them later at a safe distance.  We are there with them, sitting by their tent, seeing what they talk about, and coming back the next day.  We do not get close to walking in their shoes.  We try to get close to walking next to them.


It is a complex situation.  What we all agree on, I am sure, is that no population deserves to be brutally displaced from their homes, to have family and friends killed, to see sisters and mothers raped, and to have no say in what and where home is.


Besides all the mixed feelings that come with coming in to this complex situation, I feel privileged at being able to act.  Our little team, and you probably really have no idea how little we are and what my team mates go through to be a part of it, gets to put a face on the numbers.  We need you.  We need the people out there that will be open to listening and then will be ready to act.  Let’s simplify.  It is fellow human beings that are in need.


Paz, G