The child’s skin is taut against her minute frame, unable to hold the weight of her own head. Her body is slumped against the bent knees of her mother’s weary legs.
But it is this frail child’s eyes I’ll take with me forever. She is dignified and calm, yet there is despair in the dark shadows of her eyes. It is not death, however, that is torturing this child’s soul. It was its predecessor — anguish.
This broken family, or what remains of it, has been violently displaced in recent fighting, which saw their village burnt, their neighbours murdered and raped in the pure terror of specific targeting by brutal armed militia.
Her father’s fate is unknown.
There is a slim chance that for this child, the breaking of a new dawn through the dusty smell of grass and straw-mat clinics may bring mercy in its stifling wake.
Like hundreds of thousands of others, this mother and daughter had turned from their self-sustaining lives and fled to the refugee camps in search of security and assistance.
Darfuris’ suffering comes from political power plays and the ensuing violence. One man’s fight for control is another’s burnt hut, dead child or raped wife.
More than 3,6-million people from this region rely on aid provided by the humanitarian organisation programmes. In parts of Darfur, clinics and schools have been reduced to rubble. After an NGO’s evacuation from a particular area, one local nurse remained.
With no supplies or support, she travels on donkey carts with sick and often dying women and children to deliver them to the nearest standing clinic. Her sense of compassion extends to risking her life for those who needed her.
”We have no water.” The community leader remained calm and proud. It was not until I witnessed 400 children on a playing field of dust, sharing one barrel of festering hot and contaminated water placed near the overwhelming stench of dilapidated and overflowing latrines that the community leader’s desperation resonated. ”We have no water.”
While nowhere near comparable to the refugees’ circumstances, working in Darfur is a daily challenge.
In a context of escalating violence, the team of which I was a part lived momentarily through the harsh conditions of Darfur’s most under-served camp of about 120 000 people. Our efforts to establish a health programme were framed by a lack of latrines, safe drinking water and food, and the nightly echoes of gunfire in the background.
Where does one start in a place where the suffering fills the air with a stench of sickness and desperation? A fellow aid worker told me on a particularly difficult day on which I had felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of Darfur’s problems, that if she could make one child smile as a result of her work, she would know that it was all worth it.
These inspiring co-workers are not modern-day heroes — just a group of people prepared to live in a war zone with the daily satisfaction gained from that one smile of hope.
My personal involvement originates from suffering a stroke at the age of nine. I was bedridden for two years and had to learn to walk and write again. This gave me the privilege of viewing the world through a unique lens. This perspective, coupled with growing up in South Africa, has inspired me to get involved in aid work.
Jonathan Whittall is reading for his master’s in humanitarian studies at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine so that he can continue working to help make a difference
