Senators and Presidential Candidates McCain, Obama, and Clinton issued a joint statement on the situation in Darfur and their commitment to continuing their current efforts to end the violence in Darfur and implement the Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Read their statement and thank them for condemning the government of Sudan. Please also urge the candidates to begin their dedication to Darfur now and make protection of innocent civilians in Darfur and Sudan a priority in their first 100 days in office by sending them a message.

This time I have not adapted well to the difference in time zones. It has been three days since I arrived, and I’m still very awake during the nights and in to the morning. My mac tells me that it’s 8:43pm back home in California, but here it’s 4:43am. It feels a lot more like 8:43pm to me.

Today, well actually yesterday, we visited Bryn and Ann at UNHCR. Visiting with Ann has been a regular stop during our last trips, so it’s a little sad to hear that she’s changing to another post, in Tunis. I’m also excited for her, though. As she said, she thrives on change and new challenges, and I know that Tunis and the whole region will benefit so much from having her.

One thing that she said during our talk is that we cannot allow the being ok with business as usual attitude creep in to our personal availability to respond to tough situations like Darfur, Chad, and the region. For some months now, I have been talking with my team and anyone that will listen about how we, the people active in the movement, cannot allow ourselves to forget the urgency of the situation that the Darfuri people are living each moment that the world allows these atrocities to go on.

I understand how hard it is to sustain high energy and intensity for days, weeks, months, and years. But, if us, those of us that feel a part of this first-ever anti-genocide movement, do not embrace the responsibility and commitment to urgent action that being aware of what is happening entails, then who will embrace it?

The theme for World Refugee Day (June 20) is “Protection.” Our team has been really focusing on that word and what it means in the context of the Darfur region. UNHCR is doing an amazing job at protecting refugees and internally displaced people. They keep them alive and provide basic services. What they do is monumental in scale, and that is protection.

From another perspective, the concept of protection is also monumental but in how absent it is. Innocent civilians see their villages destroyed. Men and boys are killed. Women and girls are raped. Families starve. Millions live in conditions that we would not accept for our pets in the United States. In this sense, protection is a huge shadow everyone sees and knows should exist but in reality no one can feel or grasp.

From my first visit to the camps, “Protection” and “Home” have been the two words that I hear the most. On that first i-ACT trip in 2005, I mentioned to the team that the concept of “Home” should be our general theme. All the people that we met wanted to go back home. Home was still so fresh to them. The girls told us of the river outside of their village and of telling stories under a tree. The boys told us of dancing and playing football. Home felt so near, but they could not get there without protection.

On our last i-ACT trip in February, home felt far. It was clear that the people we met were losing hope about returning and mentioned the need for protection almost out of habit, but nor really believing it can come. They don’t stay down for long, though. They make us feel welcomed, and they shine with energy and pride. Their children is what keeps them going and hearing about people in a far away place working tirelessly to get them back home makes them smile and sometimes cry.

I just scrolled up and saw how long this has gone, and my intention was just to write a little something that might make me sleepy. That didn’t work, but I’ll stop and see if I close my eyes for at least a couple of hours.

One last thing to those of you that also feel a part of this movement, let’s push each other to do more, be more creative, stay energized, and not let “business as usual” creep in to our movement until our brothers and sisters from Darfur have protection and return home.

Paz,
g

Frustrated, but a sugar-free Red Bull would sure help me feel better.

I did not get around to writing a journal for Day 2, so I’ll include some thoughts from yesterday in this one for Day 3. I think that the word that comes up the most yesterday from all of our team is “frustration” in all its different forms. I feel a lot better today.

There were multiple reasons for the frustration, and for me there was an intense headache that added to the theme of the day. The time difference and unavailability of sugar free Red Bull really does a job on me. The headache gets really bad in the afternoon, which is the morning back home, and it gets worse as the night falls. Here, I “force” myself to drink regular cola drinks, since there are no diets, but I drink a lot less than usual. I cannot take a caffeine pill at night because then I would not sleep even the few hours that I do. So, this very trivial caffeine issue is one that I’m dealing with out here.

The bigger frustration was not being able to get out of the capital. It is the one obstacle that I dread the most, since our mission is to be with the refugees, so we can help get their voices out. We are only here for a very limited time period, so any days that we cannot be in the camps feels a little like those dreams where you can only move in slow motion when you want to run.

In general, I am a very patient person, and I try to make the most of bad situations. My personal disposition makes Chad not as bad of an experience as it could be. That said, I do feel pressure and responsibility to make the most of the opportunity to be out here and be witness to the results of the brutalities occurring in Darfur. This has an effect on me, combined with the caffeine deficiency, and I get a little more serious and quiet and try to find ways to get moving.

It has helped so much to have other team members that are positive and have a good sense of humor. Today, we showed the video from February, when the hotel is attacked, to Le Meridien staff. Abakar, one of the wonderful staff that stayed with us and kept taking care of us, even as bullets flew, watched with other staff, and they all laughed. Katie-Jay and I also laughed. It is not because we are belittling what happened, on the contrary. A sense of humor is such a great defense mechanism for our sanity. In a place where things rarely go as planed, laughing is the best therapy.

Colin and Scott have been great company. I feel bad that they have only been in this capital. They stay positive, and they laugh with us. Tomorrow they get in a little plane and fly east over the Chadian desert. Then, the real work begins.

Our schedules become hectic and demanding. We wake up early and head out to the camp. We spend hours with the people. If lucky, we get to play some football with the kids. We then drive back to the compound and begin downloading pictures and video, writing journals and responding to comments, and editing the many hours of interviews and stories from the camp. This usually goes in to the middle of the night, when we begin uploading the video, shooting it up to a satellite and then to some virtual place, where our team back home grabs it and posts it at our site.

The next morning we go again.

I wish the horrors of Darfur did not exist and I did not have to be out here. It does exist, so I feel blessed at having the opportunity to be acting and standing, representing all of you, with the victims.

Paz,
g

Energized. Positive. I am ready for a new day after a full night’s rest. I checked my watch at 9am, but rolled back over, thinking to myself, today will be the last day to sleep in for a while, enjoy. Once up, I slip into my flip flops, and slowly walk towards Le Meridien for wifi and an omelet sandwich. Scooters and cars buzz by racing each other to get ahead. This morning, I am confident in my French, that is, until my omelet sandwich comes with ham instead of mushrooms. Hmmmm. Better luck next time, perhaps pointing at the menu might help.

Good news comes quickly with a phone call from a good friend in the East. All four of us are on a plane tomorrow morning, and same day, headed to a camp! All with a grain of salt, but better news than yesterday, and better tasting than my sandwich. I begin to read your comments, not only to the team, but the thoughts and prayers you have sent us to share with our friends here. I am more confident than ever, that there was no question about returning, it was just a matter of when. And even though we have faced Chadian obstacles, they are only opportunities to be creative, and I feel like now is the right time to be here.

As the evening begins to cool, we grab a taxi that smells of Chad: gasoline and cigarettes; it reminds me of the Ford Explorer and our luggage from i-ACT4. Before too long, our driver pauses, gets out, opens my door, and uses his hand to push down on the glass, allowing air to cool us in the back seat. We pass women selling African clothes and men standing by makeshift stalls with cigarettes and wine bottles of gasoline. We approach the familiar blue UNHCR gate, the first of many we will see on our journey. Welcomed by hugs and smiles, we meet with a few friends to talk about Chad and connect personally. Listening to Ann Maymann speak about her motivation, and the change that is possible because of actions that you and I take, remind me that what I am doing here is not a job. It is my way of life and my beliefs that have brought me here.

We ask her about development agencies, and their relationship to UNHCR in Chad. Her response describes the hope that one day the work of aid agencies will be the seed for sustainable, long-term solutions. How do we make this possible? How do we ensure that aid does not just keep people alive, but that it prepares them to return home more empowered, and more prepared to protect the life they want to live and rebuild a new one? I am not sure how we do this, but I do know that it takes a community – the global community – to seek and try innovative solutions that will make this a stronger world. We are part of this solution.

As I close my eyes to rest for the last night in N’Djamena, I know tonight I will dream about our friends in the camps. I will dream about passing on your messages, and experiencing their responses. Tonight is a night for images about what is possible if we stand together to make a stronger world for our community.

Together we stand. Forward we move.
ktj

Another slow day in N’Djamena today. We’re all incredibly excited to be on the UNHCR flight tomorrow morning with our permits ready to go. With any luck, we’ll even make it out to Goz Beida in the afternoon instead of staying the night in Abeche. From Goz Beida we’ll be able to access the refugee camp called Djabal where we’ll spend the majority of our time.

Fortunately, we’ve had a bit of internet access here so we’ve been keeping ourselves busy. I stumbled across an op-ed in the New York Times today by Madeleine Albright in which she commented on the Burmese government’s “criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone.” Albright, however, clearly recognizes that the Burmese government’s actions are part of a disturbing trend worldwide including Sudan and Zimbabwe among many others.

She points out three distressing realities of today’s world: “totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground.” Sudan’s government is certainly alive and well, with a GDP that has actually risen since 2003. Sudan’s neighbors have been relatively quiet (many are silent) in pressuring for change. I consider the US a global neighbor in that we still maintain political ties to the government, and despite our declaration of genocide, have failed to take a strong enough stance against its behavior. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, its national sovereignty is putting the lives of millions of Darfuris at risk. UN resolutions regarding Sudan have given the government far too much say in how and when a peace force should be deployed. The stipulation that they must agree to the force in the first place, along with the toleration of the government’s refusal to accept non-African forces are just two examples.

Albright concludes by asking if the international community is “just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?” The truth is, the international community, be it the UN, AU or NATO or any other body, is only as strong as the countries that make it up. That’s where all of you come in. We need to force the US government to become a real player in international community, to set precedents, take risks, and make a stand. Otherwise who knows how long it will be until we can tell the refugees in Djabal that they can safely return home.

Check out the article!

Looking forward to giving you some of the thoughts of Darfuri refugees in the coming days, rather than just my political rants :-)

So tomorrow we’ll be out of N’djamena, finally! We’re all excited to get out here and finally get to the camps to see the refugees. I am sure their stories are going to be incredibly impacting, demonstrating the need for both us, as individual citizens, and the international community to do more about this ongoing crisis.

One thing I do want to comment on, though, is that our trip to visit and hear stories from the refugees is but one part of the puzzle. To be trite, this conflict is incredibly complex, spanning decades and now encompassing much of the horn of Africa region. Even when peacekeepers hopefully are capably and fully deployed to permit the safety and repatriation of refugees, we’ll need a long-term peace agreement, as well as a solution that involves the entire Sudanese country, made apparent by the recent strife in the South, and specifically, in the oil-rich area of Abyei. We need to keep up the urgency, but at the same time, we need to realize that even when protection exists, this conflict is not going away in the very near future.

The reason I say this is not to diminish the stories we will be sharing in the coming days. We’re here for these refugees, and we need to increase our urgency in order to provide for their long-term safety and livelihood. But if we’re serious about this endeavor, we need to tackle the issue from a multi-faceted angle. We need to educate ourselves on the complexities of the larger Darfur and Sudan situation, the strengths and limitations of the United Nations force, and the overall environment of the international community. Engaging in a serious dialogue about these difficult questions will allow us to come closer to peace in the region. But we’re not there yet.

So I’m excited to meet the refugees because it’s a piece of the puzzle that has been desperately missing from my advocacy. I read up on the issues, but have been unable to engage with the actual people being affected by the crisis. I hope to gain some perspective from them, and pass it on to the larger community to enhance and improve our larger advocacy. And I encourage you to read these stories and learn from them, but at the same time, educate yourself further on the Sudan conflict, ask the tough questions, and connect all the dots. We’ll be telling the human story, but we need the other chapters in order to provide a peaceful ending.

Your messages of love and activism that we share with refugees often bring tears and smiles to the faces of our friends who have suffered for five years. It is your words and images that provide them with the essential human connection that gets lost in the isolated desert. Without your messages, they would lose hope all together.Please leave a comment below for our friends in the camps, and we will pass them on each day. Our field team will check back daily for message to share with the refugees they meet.