Action: Keep up the activism!
On our last day of i-ACT for now, we want to encourage you to stay CONNECTED through the Stop Genocide Now forum! Post and discuss the latest news, spread your ideas and Darfur Guerrilla Actions so others can join from where they are, and keep the voices of our friends in the camps alive. Darfur Olympics continues through the end of this week and we hope you will tune in!
Darfur Athlete Profile: Mahamat
Download this profile to print
Mahamat
Future Athlete
Camp Oure Cassoni
Nationality: Sudanese
Mahamat’s story is one of thousands of Darfuri children. Unless we act to return him to his home, and, as his mother says, keep a fire under Bashir, he will never know another place but the run down schools and fields of Oure Cassoni. Someday soon, his home might even be one of those whose has been swallowed by the harshness of the desert, forcing him to move once again.
The present and future athletes below the age of 18 make up 62.9% of those struggling to survive at Camp Oure Cassoni. These athletes are the future of Darfur.
Two-year old Mahamat, like many, was born in this camp, and has never seen his homeland. For him, his life has never been different from the blazing heat, idle waiting, lack of water, and a shoeless and hungry existence. He has never known a home not organized and run by an aid agency, or food not handed to his mother once a month. He has never seen his mother self-sufficient.
Last month we provided a glimmer of hope for Mahamat, and all the refugees living in Chad and Darfur. Moreno-Ocampo’s announcement brought joy and rejoice to the desert camps living at the end of the earth. But like the international peacekeeping force, the announcement and it’s response by our leaders also ushered disappointment. If you were Mahamat’s mother, how would you feel about providing such a life for your children?
These future athletes, and supportive parents, need us, the audience, to spread the word quicker than the sand takes their homes. They need us to ensure peace, protection, and justice. If we don’t, we are letting these athletes down, as we would our own children.
Share the stories of those left behind — Bring the Dream to Darfur
Games and life
The exhaustion of Oure Cassoni has caught to me. Now in Abeche, I slept almost the entire day, and slept well through the night last night. I have the privilege of retreating to another town closer to an established culture, closer to a market that sells bread and cheese, and where a restaurant will serve me an omelet sandwich. With my exhaustion, I can rest.
Our friends living the camps do not have this privilege or even the rights to resettle in a different location. They are, in the minds of the international community, refugees who must sit and wait their turn. Their next move will be determined in the international game of life, where resolutions, Security Council meetings, and money-making, back-breaking deals. Their voice is a disposable token in this playing field where our leaders have already been appointed to play a game whose winners will be determined by their accumulation of wealth and military, not by the treatment of humanity.
We must change this.
If there is nothing else that we attempt to change in this world, before we leave, it is that all voices of Amira, Izeldeen. Mohamed, Maht, Abdulsalam, Husna, Ismail, and Shephaldine must be heard. We need to urge our leaders to put down their token promises and fight for real progress in this region, for Darfuris displaced at home, and refugees across the border.
We cannot allow our leaders to play the card which says that Peace before Justice. There is no peace and no peace process right now in this region. And no matter how many leaders claim that behind big oak doors on a silver platter lies the process ready to begin, I will not believe that peace should come before justice.
Instead, I will listen to our friends.
“Justice is above us all,” he told us. And we need to be their voice.
“Why give al-Bahsir 12 months, when for 5 years we have had no peace,” another voiced.
These are the voices that need to be at the table helping to determine what cards our leaders play.
And we need to be their messengers. Even though our daily reporting is over for now, the Olympics, and the international back-door game of trading lives for money continues. We are closer then ever to bringing peace to Darfur. And we can not give up on the future of Darfur.
Please continue to stay active in your own life. When you need a voice, re-watch some of our videos, and reread their stories. When you feel we can’t make progress, remember that all night the women of Camp Oure Cassoni stayed up hooting and hollering when Ocampo made his evidence public. They still have hope, and we need to give them more.
Humanity before Politics is not just a motto, it is a way of life.
Peace, ktj
Able to go back home
Bahai and Oure Cassoni are surreal places. As we ride full speed on our Toyotas across the desert, seeing rebels racing next to us, it seems like I am in a movie. The harshness of the environment quickly dissolves any illusion. I was thirsty every minute I was out there, even though I always had access to water.
I am starting to move back to my own reality, the one I’m used to, one jump at a time—the same way we moved away from it. We are now in Abeche, in a room that has electricity most of the day and running water half of the time. Tomorrow morning we fly to N’Djamena and get to hang out at Le Meridien. It is definitely not a luxury hotel by western standards, but it feels like a five star after spending time in the east of the country.
That same night, we get in to an Air France flight. The seating is cramped , and the food is, well, airline food, but it will feel comfortable, and I will eat everything they give me. It is all relative.
I am going back home. I have the privilege of doing this. I get to see my children again. I miss them so much! I get to eat all that I like again, and the problem is deciding what to eat . What a problem! I go back to not worrying about unpredictable things like rebels, extreme weather, and availability of water. I am truly privileged.
As this trip comes to an end, I again want to challenge myself to find better and different ways to make a positive difference on the people we met. We have to be creative and more daring in our actions. We have very little to lose. They have nothing.
Paz,
g
Pictures from Day 10
Action: Help the World Food Program
Humanitarian organizations want to be giving the people of Darfur more food, and quicker. With the rough economy, rising food costs, and insecurity, they need your help to do so. We know that our own economy is not doing so well, but we all still eat enough food. Please donate to Friends of the WFP today. Use the designation drop down box, and click on Darfur, Sudan Crisis.
Click here to donate to the Friends of the World Food Program
Many of us have joined this movement because we feel we have a moral responsibility to act upon the knowledge we have gained about Darfur. We need to share this with our communities. Many of you are part of a religious community, and this coming Sunday, we urge you to share your knowledge, and the voice of a Darfur refugee with at your place of worship. Bring copies of the Darfur Athlete Profiles to share, lead a prayer for Darfur, and make a commitment to actively end the violence. Don’t have a place of worship? We then challenge you to bring their voices to your community gathering place within your community.
Darfur Athlete Profile: Husna
Husna
Head of Household
Camp Oure Cassoni
Sudanese
Husna carries the blue UNHCR card which states how many family members are registered, and therefore, how much food they will recieve this month for 5. Who knows how many unregistered people she has to feed.
Every month she lines up with her empty oil jug, and several reused food distribution bags from the past. She must patiently wait at the start line, until her name is called and she she signs with her finger print. The race for food, and life, begins.
Only one women per family is allowed to go through the line, so she must balance the bags carefully so as not to spill what is supposed to last a month. Salt and sugar first, since they are the smallest. A large wooden box of soy-wheat cereal with a flour-like consistency is next, she holds her bag open while it is scooped inside. Women pass by, knocking her from behind and stepping very close to her bags. She hands her empty oil jug to the women with the cylinder tin USA oil. She screws the lid on tight sealing the 13oz. 5 scoops of yellow lentils into her last bag. UNHCR card punched, one more bag to collect, the heaviest of them all. Once outside the busy, tight line morphs into a larger crowd of women, children, food piles, and donkeys. Names shouted by an aid worker indicate the last pick up of the day, about ! of a bag of sorghum, dragged on the ground by Husna and other women. If they are lucky, the have a donkey to help carry it home.
When Food Runs Out at the end of the month, they drink tea, and neighbors try to share what is left. Many have traded some of their rations, in a saturated marketplace, for a little meat or vegetables. Right now they receive less than 2000 calories a day.
Share the stories of those left behind — Bring the Dream to Darfur
Per person per day
.04 cups sugar = 31
.07lbs cereal = 116
.05 cups oil = 96
.17 cups yellow split peas = 114
.47lbs grain = 660
Total: 1017
1017 calories per day is what a person at camp Oure Cassoni gets. They get that, if they do not share with other refugees that are not registered yet, but they do share, and if they don’t trade some of it to get needed goods at the market, but they do trade.
They did not get soap for this month, so they will have to trade some of their food for that. In the days before the food distribution, we walked the camp and went in to homes randomly and at different times of the day. Not once did we walk in to a home where there was someone eating.
It is not the World Food Program’s fault that people are not eating enough. They have been hit hard by the world’s food crisis and as hard by violence against their drivers and staff. Since December 07, 79 WFP trucks have been hijacked, 39 drivers are unaccounted for, and 2 confirmed dead. These numbers barely make the news.
Each person we meet in the camps is a complete being, just like you. Each day that they live they have the right to live it fully. Somehow, it all just doesn’t add up.
g
Hungry, Dependent, Stuck
We spent seven days straight in Camp Oure Cassoni and not once did we see a person or a family eating. When asked what they had eaten that day, many replied, just tea. Yet we have seen women carrying jugs of water from stations to their homes daily. We have seen two different groups of women breaking rocks, mixing mortar and building a school, block by block. We have seen children playing sports. But not once did we see anyone replenishing their energy with food.
Many people didn’t need to be asked about the food situation, the just told us. Although they might be registered many have to share with refugees, who after one year, are not registered. One man said they use to get one bag of food for four people, now they get one bag for six. Another woman explained that she gets 3 bowls of food per month for her and her two orphaned grandchildren. Many people trade some of their rations for a vegetable or piece of meat. Also, if they have animals, they need to give them some food too.
Besides oil, WFP only distributes grains, beans, sugar, and salt. This month there was no soap. WFP and UNHCR aim to distribute 2100 calories per person, per day, but over the past few months they have reached between 1800 and 2000. Here in their warehouse, they only have 2-3 months worth of food left, and with the price of food rising, rations have been cut. You can watch what Husna receives in the video for today. We carefully estimated that Husna, and each family member, eat 1017 calories a day, if they don’t share or trade any of it. Except for the sorghum, she could carry all her food for the month for a family of 5 in two hands. When was the last time you used one small basket for shopping for a month?
This is not enough food, nor enough variety to gain adequate nutrition for an adult or a child. Three pounds of beans is what I cook for one week for two people, and that might only last 4 or 5 days. The flour-like substance they usually form into some sort of gummy substance, probably mixed with the sugar and the salt to give it some sort of taste. I cannot remember the last meal I cooked without spices, herbs, or garlic.
Those of us who are used to variety of grocery stores, or farmer’s markets, what would we do with these rations? How would we cope with these ingredients? What would you make? How would your energy level be? How many years could you eat this same thing?
This is a population of farmers who for generations have been able to sustain themselves from their land. Now they are dependent on what is given to them and in a desert environment, and within a camp, where their natural lifestyle of planting and harvesting is not allowed or possible. Dependency: a word that has a negative connotation in Western culture, and especially in the United States. Grow up, get an education, build a life for yourself, do well by your family. But above even the culture pressure, how would you feel if your life depended upon handouts and donations. Would you be proud? Would you have a high level of self worth? I know for me personally, I would feel horrible. And after each month that I had to line up to receive my rations, I feel would worse and worse inside, and more and more angry at the situation.
When we thank a family for sharing their story, their response is filled with gratitude for listening to them, and sharing their story. They believe that after hearing their story, you and I will do more. Not because we could ever feel what they feel, but because their words describe the what we would feel if we were in their shoes.
We are all humans, and all share the same basic emotions. Right now we need to take a moment to reach into our hearts and imagine what it would be like to be hungry, dependent, and stuck.
This compassion will be what drives our action to help the people of Oure Cassoni.
in peace,
ktj
Pictures from Day 9
Action: Thank Team Darfur!
Today is the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic games. But activist Mia Farrow and the i-ACT team have another show for you to watch: tune into the alternative opening ceremony of the Darfur Olympics, here! Although Darfuri children living in refugee and Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps can not attend, our courageous athletes at Team Darfur can. Thank them for standing up to the world, and brining our friends voices to China. Click here to send them a message, and ask them to bring one of the Darfur Athlete Profiles to the stage when they win gold!
Darfur Athlete Profile: Coaches and Teachers
Coaches and Teachers
Camp Oure Cassoni
Sudanese
The Coaches and Teachers of Darfur have a tough job. The schools in Camp Oure Cassoni are in shambles. Steel poles and wooden sticks provide the frame for each classroom. Mix matched tarps are strewn together in an attempt to create four walls and a roof. But many have holes where water floods in when it rains, and yet they are still expected to teach, and their students to learn. Many of the sides of the tents are frayed, and none are secured to the ground allowing for the wind, and rain to come through. Since the classrooms are tarps, the heat is almost unbearable and one begins to sweat immediately. How would our teachers be able to cope?
Resources for the teachers, and their students are slim to none. Only a handful of classroom tents have benches, and even then it is only two or three. Chalkboards can be found in much of the same state, scattered throughout the school, leaning against random tents.
Outside of the tents is where the teachers transform into coaches, helping choose teams, and facilitate games, when they are given a resource to do so. At one time, a humanitarian organization built a basketball court, and raised soccer goals. But they don’t have balls to practice with and their swings sets are empty.
How does a coach or teacher share his or her knowledge under such conditions? Almost everyone has had a coach or teacher that has been a role model to us, how would our role models feel if they were faced with these conditions?
Share the stories of those left behind — Bring the Dream to Darfur
