This is Part Four in Jane Wells' five-part series on her experiences in Sudan, which will run throughout the week at the Huffington Post. Previous entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
In over a year working in Darfur, Eunice has heard so many stories of murder, loss, injury and desolation that I can hardly imagine how she gets through a day without weeping. I couldn’t, and when I ask her, she smiles slightly and just shakes her head. Her patients tell her their stories again and again, and one of the hardest things is how similar these chronicles are. I talk to five separate women about how they came to be living in the IDP camps, and the differences are mostly in the details. “We woke up...the men came on camels with guns at 1 a.m….... 4 a.m.... 5 a.m.” Next they heard helicopters and bombs dropping. Some never saw their loved ones again, and some saw their husbands and children killed in front of them. They all walked to the (relative) safety of the camps, some for four days, others for five. No one had food. Everyone survived by finding water in abandoned wells along the way. They all lost everything they ever had, and they are all terrified of returning to their villages and being attacked by the Janjaweed again.
Living conditions at the camps are harsh. The IDPs live in tents with dirt floors and minimal cooking and sleeping facilities. They usually have just one blanket. Often ten or twelve people live in each tent. Some take care of orphaned relatives or even unrelated orphans from their villages. One of the saddest stories I hear there is that of Zainab and her son Aziz. They were watering their animals at the well when they saw men on camels enter their village with guns and flares. She says, “It seemed like there were 20,000 men.” Zainab and Aziz hid behind the well and watched as the whole village was ransacked and set on fire. Then they heard noises from the air and saw four helicopters with lights and fire coming from them. When everything was quiet, she returned to her home and saw the decapitated heads of her husband, father and other son burning in what remained of her home. She and Aziz walked for days to reach Nyala. They made shelter in what is called a “spontaneous camp” -- ramshackle dwellings made of scraps of reeds and plastic bags, which grow up wherever IDPs gather in groups for safety. The government bulldozed this camp one night last year during Ramadan while its inhabitants were sleeping. IDPs were rounded up and put in trucks. Zainab and Aziz were shackled and beaten but found shelter in a nearby clinic. The other IDPs were relocated to Al Shereif, far from the city. Zainab now lives in another spontaneous camp.