Stop Genocide Now“It’s only through interaction that we learn.” Oscar is an animated and charismatic individual, but that is not what struck me most about him, Delphine, and other HCR (in Chad the ‘UN’ is dropped and they are known as ‘Hache-C-R’) workers in N’Djamena. It was their desire to connect people, and to be connected to […]
Most of our first full day in the capital was spent at the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) doing the Byzantine paperwork necessary to travel through eastern Chad. After our driver picked us up at the hotel I got my first chance to see rush hour life in N’djamena. The streets were busier […]
This is my ninth time flying to Paris. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, shopping and fine dining. Nope. Paris is just a necessary stop on our way to the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, and–eventually–the refugee camps in the East, along the Chad-Sudan border. In Paris, I only get to see the airport, which is pretty […]
Drop off the dog. Pick up the last of our food. Get a coffee. I am running the last of our errands for the trip, my sixth and Gabriel’s ninth. An American music teacher is speaking on NPR about his students at the Kabul Music Academy in Afghanistan. The reporter asks what kinds of students […]
What: A Live Webcast of Darfur Refugee Town Hall Meeting When: Sunday, December 12th, 2010 — 10-11am Eastern, 7-8am Pacific (4pm Chad-time) Where: From a refugee camp close to the Chad-Darfur border. See live webcast at: http://iactivism.org Didn’t we take care of Darfur years ago? Isn’t it more important to deal with the North-South conflict, […]
I remember being at the camps in 2006 on i-Act 2 just before the US Presidential Election Season kicked into high gear. Gabriel and I met a group of men, women and children from Darfur who had traveled with fire at their backs and no home in their future to get to relative safety and […]
After I expressed a precarious situation one day to a good friend, he said “I don’t have any answers, but I have many beautiful questions.” That assessment could be applied to my understanding of the situation in Darfur. Recently, I had the opportunity to go on The Ron Reagan Show on Air America radio, and […]
“Humanity Before Politics” was one of the first moving i-ACT statements that caught my eye when I looked at a picture of a group of Darfuri boys wearing t-shirts with the slogan. Gabriel later told me how fun it was to watch them play basketball that day the picture was taken. Basketball in a refugee […]
We have just left the camps and are now working our way back towards N’djamena, the capital city of Chad. In less than two days, this trip will be history, but its effect on me will be just starting. When I got my visa into Chad, there were a few things I had to leave […]
I am feeling a bit down today. We were up early in Guereda this morning, even though we had a little extra time to sleep in. We packed our bags, worked in the field office a bit and headed to the air strip. We didn’t have a security escort so we took big empty cargo […]