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Life in the Camps of Darfur
By Yousef Abdallah
Islamic Relief Northeast Operations Manager

As my plane landed on West Darfur's dusty, unpaved airport runway, I immediately knew that this trip, my third field visit with Islamic Relief, would be my most memorable.

Upon first arriving to a camp in Geneina, Darfur, I assessed all of Islamic Relief's various programs. According to the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) Islamic Relief is operating great projects to benefit the IDPs, including education, water and sanitation, healthcare, women's issues, and food distribution. Additionally, Islamic Relief is also implementing an important project to help increase safety and security for women, who are often the target of vicious attacks.

 My first stop was the school in the IDP camp, which was constructed from local material and in very bad shape. There are 1,854 students divided into 28 classes, resulting in an incredibly overcrowded learning environment. There are 21 teachers in the school, 19 of which are females.

Of the more than 2.5 million displaced people in Darfur, 30 percent are school-age children. Without the prospect of education, these children will remain forever stuck in their daily struggles, which seem to have no end. Children in the camps desperately need school supplies, desks, and other basic necessities that are required for any learning environment.

As I walked through the camp, I visited the hospital, the children at the Pre-K school, and spent time with some of the IDP families. I also had a chance to see the hand pump that Islamic Relief had installed, which serves as the only source of water for families in the camp. As I met with each family, I tried to internalize their respective situations by reading their faces and spending time in the huts they live in, called tukuls; with their meager possessions laying on dirt floors. I thought about how these people were forced to leave their homes and villages where they were born and raised. They left their lives behind and moved to Geneina, looking for peace and solace. Before the camp opened, these same people slept under the open sky.

At the hospital, I met with Dr. Al Waleed, the Medical Coordinator, who told me that this is the only hospital in the camp, helping about 11,000 IDPs. The rooms are very simple, serving the basic needs of patients. Thankfully, while I was visiting, the hospital was undergoing expansion with new rooms, and six new toilet facilities. The toilet facilities were built using local labor, using manual tools - a wooden stick with a sharp edge to dig in the ground.
     
Dr. Al Waleed described the challenges of operating a clinic without electricity. In addition to treating patients in dark examination rooms, vaccines are virtually impossible to keep stocked, and samples cannot be stored in the lab. I tried to imagine treating so many patients under such poor conditions; it seems impossible, but somehow Dr. Al Waleed works with what little he has.

After visiting families in the camps, I was happy to hear that people are very satisfied with the services Islamic Relief is providing for them. They made it clear, however, that they miss their homes. Some of them were very optimistic about returning home, yet others said they will never go back in the current conditions.

At the Al-Rahma Pre-K school, 272 children attend classes in four meager classrooms. There are a total of 713 pre-school children in the camp. The children have to sit on the floor because they don't have desks; even the teachers don't have chairs to sit on.

I visited the Women's Center where women are receiving training on how to build fuel-efficient and possibly life-saving stoves. Women in Darfur often have to go outside the camp looking for wood to use for cooking and building, which makes them vulnerable to violence and sexual assaults. Having fuel-efficient stoves in their own houses reduces the time spent outside the safety of the camp.

One IDP described the terrifying situation that thousands of women face each day. "The local tribe doesn't allow us to collect wood…they say it's their land and they need the wood themselves. And if they catch us, they start hitting us and in some cases they rape the women."

The stoves Islamic Relief is training women to build reduces wood consumption by more than 70 percent. By using such stoves, women can go for a week without leaving the camp to gather wood.  Although this program does not eliminate the problem, it helps increase security and safety for many women who live in a constant state of fear.

Sayeda Ali Abdeljabbar, one of Islamic Relief's Women's Community Workers said that the week-long training program began with 40 women. Hopefully, this program will continue until every house in the camp has one of these stoves.

The need for humanitarian assistance for IDPs in Darfur is urgent and immediate. It is shocking and horrifying that some these people have had to live in these conditions for over four years. Islamic Relief is carrying out some very important projects to help this neglected and vulnerable population. Much more support from the international community, however, is needed to provide them with basic needs, and hopefully, improve their situation while they remain in the camps.

From Partnership, the official newsletter of Islamic Relief, Spring 2007