By Juliette Dominguez
IMAGINE, if you will, sitting alone in a simple shelter, fashioned from a latticework of straw. You’re exposed to the desert elements, and the wind is swirling up a mixture of dust and fetid debris.
It’s a hundred degrees, your clothes are soaked in sweat, and your nostrils are clogged with a strange stew of smells; goats, chickens, decomposed animal flesh, curry spices, and burnt wood. Outside, the sandy ground mirrors the washed-out sky and the mud dwellings that dot the landscape. The only sound is the braying of the ubiquitous donkeys, and the occasional riot of children’s laughter as they swarm past.
You’re far from home, in a desolate location on the Darfur/Chad border, and your only escape from marauding Janjawiid bandits (devils on horseback) is an old Toyota Land Cruiser—if you reach it in time. It’s a frightening locale to be in, yet it’s also the most life-affirming place you could ever hope to find yourself. And that’s exactly how I felt—blessed—as I waited for my former Darfuri sex slaves in this clandestine spot. Because the journey to find these courageous women changed my life forever.
I was sent on a magazine assignment to the Darfur/Chad border to investigate reports of sex slavery at the hands of the Janjawiid. Reaching this remote UNHCR refugee camp—named Goz Beida, and chosen for this particular mission by our collaborators, UNICEF--took months of preparation and two days’ travel through the African bush. This is the story of that trip...
WE ARE BOOKED to fly out of Abeche–a pockmarked, corrugated iron shack of an airport--on a World Food Programme flight to Goz Beida. But because of the monsoons that come yearly, all bets are off. These are not great Boeing 747’s but tiny, twin-propeller planes that carry twenty passengers, little in the way of luggage, and bounce alarmingly at the first hint of turbulence. It is pandemonium at the UNHCR HQ in Abeche.
No one knows when the next flight will be scheduled. There are aid workers stranded on both sides, praying to get to Goz Beida, or equally desperate to get back to Abeche.
Only the previous day--when there was still hope of a flight--we were told it was far too dangerous to make the six-hour drive through the bush from Abeche to Goz Beida. There had been bandit and Janjaweed activity recently along that route; two UN-related workers had been killed and many others injured. A week earlier a UN aid worker–a woman–had driven out of the UNICEF Abeche compound after the 5pm curfew without the required escort, and was mugged. She was lucky to escape with just a bullet to the shoulder...
BUT it’s monsoon season, so all WFP flights are grounded.
Driving there is our only option. It’s with trepidation that we— my photographer Tara and our UNICEF officer Cornelia—agree to depart from Abeche in an unarmed convoy. Each Land Cruiser
displays a large sticker of a machine gun with a red stripe through it. No guns inside. Hardly a convincing deterrent, but it’s all we have in the way of protection.
We wake before dawn. Heading out, I wonder how the locals can eek out anything from the unforgiving earth surrounding our convoy. It’s a moonscape of strange boulder formations and termite hills bursting out of the ground like skyscrapers. There are random sights that surprise us. A group of Arab camel herders seems to appear from the ether, and they examine us coolly as they sway in time to their camel’s lope. Young, gawky camels—all legs—gambol behind them, perfect miniatures of their parents. Some of the load-bearing camels have cage-like structures strapped to their backs, the tribe’s women perched inside like decorative birds.
We are forbidden to film them, in case of reprisals from the men. It was the same in Abeche, where we saw child soldiers crammed into the backs of pick-up trucks, proudly toting rifles and camouflage gear and expressions of blank aggression. There, too: No pictures, enforced by UNICEF. I have to remind myself they’re just children.
For hours we ricochet through the bush, the radio blaring Arabic and Western music, our bodies and backpacks levitating with each hard thump against the ground. There are no roads. We’re guided by the dirt tracks of previous vehicles. They’ve left deep gouges in the soil and treacherous mud-pits several feet deep.
We follow Sam, who’s driving the lead vehicle. Sam is far less experienced than our driver, Elvis, who could win the Dakar Rally. Racing around a dry stream bed, we watch as Sam guns it forward through a steep ravine – and rams straight into a mud pit. This is bad news; we’re still four hours away, in the wilderness, and the sun has reached its apex.
To our dismay, there’s no winch, either–a simple piece of equipment which should be mandatory here. There’s nothing to do except dig the car out–not easy in sweltering, bug-infested heat, with a couple of ancient shovels and a pick-axe.
And there’s the constant worry that, at any moment, we may
be discovered by bandits. Or, worse, that we have to abandon the vehicle and return to Abeche.
But an hour later we’re free, having released the front wheels and pushed the Land Cruiser backwards out of its temporary grave. We all whoop with delight. The setback hasn’t deterred Sam, who drives as recklessly as ever. We reach the first wadi (river) and make it across with a prayer, all of us mesmerized by the ten-foot high arcs of water created by our passage through. To stop at any point in this crossing is to get stuck--indefinitely.
We arrive then at the second wadi. It’s the width of a city block and the water on the far side where the current runs is chest-deep. The sky has darkened to an angry plum color. The monsoon is approaching, the wind is picking up, and suddenly we seem all out of options: this is, after all, the middle of the African bush—there are no bridges and there’s simply no other way to get to the camp.
But Cornelia has thought to radio ahead, and—less than an hour before the UN-mandated security curfew—we spot two replacement UNICEF Land Cruisers on the opposite bank.
They attempt to cross the wadi to retrieve us— as the river bank is less steep on their side—but they still fail, the lead vehicle in their convoy partly submerged in the fast-flowing river. It takes another hour for twenty men to push it back onto land.
Cornelia also informs me the wadi is about to be flash-flooded by the monsoon. I’ve been told of certain horrors in those waters--river blindness, worms that burrow into the flesh, parasitic flukes, and water snakes. It’s crazy but there’s no doubt in my mind—we have to swim across to reach the waiting vehicles, and just take our chances that we won’t catch something from the waters. (I do escape bug-free, or so my doctor back home assured me, after a raft of blood tests)
So, within a minute we’re sliding on foot down the ten-foot high bank, mud up to our knees, gear strapped around our bodies and on our heads, and into the blood-warm, infested waters.
Several times the strong current pushes me off balance. Floating past are goats and calves, bleating as they head, down river, to their deaths. We thrash our way to the other bank, which seems hellishly far. The bank looms ahead, a ten-foot high mud slide that would defy anyone. But, once there, I look up to see a plethora of smiling faces and waving hands, all reaching down to help hoist us up the steep bank.
The rains, as if on cue, pour down. We throw our bedraggled selves and sodden gear into the back of a Land Cruiser. Elvis and Sam have remained on the other side–they have to stay the night at a nearby village, as it’s too dangerous to return to Abeche in the rains and after curfew. And the dirt roads on our side now resemble paddy fields, so we’re not going anywhere either. So it’s a stay for us overnight at a nearby African village, with the vague hope that the rains will have cleared by dawn.
We arrive and the village is a collection of circular mud walls adorned with pointed straw hats. There’s no one around–it’s getting dark and the monsoon is unrelenting. We drive to a small compound that contains a dozen aid vehicles and a local UN officer. He greets us warmly, and shows us to the hut where I, Tara, Cornelia and Zahara will sleep. There’s no electricity or washing facilities–all we have is one bottle of water each. Mindful of river-borne parasites, Tara and I strip naked outside, obscured from view by a flimsy straw wall. Laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, we attempt to rinse ourselves of invisible terrors.
Dinner is just a hunk of baguette, but we’re beyond caring–all we want to do is collapse. Curling up on our mats, we doze; it’s too hot and airless to sleep. The village donkeys scream all night. By the time dawn comes, we’re relieved to be on the move again.
We reach Goz Beida the following day, after a night spent in a makeshift camp somewhere in the desert. The camp looms on the horizon. It’s a permanent city of temporary structures, pieced together from mud, straw, plastic, UN tarpaulin sheeting and rope. It’s a vast refugee camp of 200,000 people, its pop. includes the adjacent IDP camp, Djabal, which houses 15,000 Chadian refugees. It sits on the Darfur border, and so falls into the red “very high risk” area of the UN’s security advisory.
There has been recent unrest here–not just from the Darfuri refugees demanding more basic supplies, but from repeated attacks by bandits and Janjawiid, especially on women and children who have to travel beyond the relative safety of the camp to collect firewood. They risk being beaten or raped on every excursion.
It’s a hellhole.
But, to my surprise, this place has a certain poetry to it
—poetry that shines from the beautiful, inquisitive faces of its people, their resilience amid circumstances that would fell most of the rest of us, and the glorious colors they adorn themselves with— regardless of their extreme poverty— colors that are bright extensions of their proud spirits. I thought—wrongly—that the Darfuri people would be melancholy, cowed, silent—a crushed nation. Not so.
On a visit to the market, I am astonished by what greets me; transcendent smiles, women and children laughing, bashfully covering their mouths with long-stemmed fingers, and a collective generosity of spirit that makes those worries of my concerned friends vanish. These brave people don’t need my Western-hued pity—they just want the respect that should be accorded to survivors of the worst kind of evil human beings can inflict on each other, when the moral boundaries are removed.
And, interview after devastating interview, I discover that, even though my subjects live thousands of miles away, and our cultures are polar-opposites, there are certain similarities; we are young women, and driven by the same fundamental desires—to enjoy loving relationships with our families, our close friends, and our communities. And to have the freedom to live our lives the way we choose.
Except that, for these women, their freedom to choose has been taken away, their beloved community destroyed by war. We in America have much to be thankful for, and I am reminded of this as I sit here in this simple mud hut. It took this trip to make me realize how blessed I am, and that true freedom isn’t something to be taken for granted.
And it was a lesson in how We Are All One.
