Jane Beesley's Darfur Diary
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DAY 4: KALMA
Jane Beesley, a communications officer for Oxfam Great Britain, took a reporting trip to Darfur, Sudan, in the end of April and the early part of May. She visited camps and towns where tens of thousands of displaced people are now living. Here is her diary of that expedition.
We are now in South Darfur. The drive to Kalma camp, one of five near the town of Nyala and one of the region’s largest with nearly 100,000 people, takes just over 25 minutes. En route we have to pass through several checkpoints where we have our travel documents examined.
The scene as we approach the camp is remarkable. Intensive brick making has created a dark and pitted landscape. Some pits are now so deep they nearly swallow the people working within them. Large, neat mounds of wood, consisting of logs from both mature and young trees, give way to the heat and the smoke of the charcoal makers. Once again we see that as the conflict drags on and the camps become more permanent people living in them seem to have little opportunity for any kind of income, other than activities that deplete the already scarce surrounding natural resources.
Before leaving the office we have been given strict security guidelines. There’s frequent tension and insecurity in and around the camp. When walking around we are told to keep the Oxfam vehicle in our sight—just in case we have to leave the camp quickly.
The most disturbing thing I see today is a pile of drawings from children with whom Oxfam is working as part of its public health outreach, who Oxfam is working with as part of its public health work. As I leaf through the pile I notice that virtually all the children have drawn pictures of guns, people being shot, homes and villages in flames.
As we leave the camp the people I’ve been talking with point up to the sky…lots of clouds are gathering: “The rains are on their way. We desperately need plastic sheeting. Our shelters won’t withstand the coming rainy season,” they say.
When the rains come, living conditions in the camps throughout Darfur will certainly be miserable. And the ingredients are already there for outbreaks of life threatening diseases like cholera and malaria. There is a very large cloud over the whole of Darfur.
