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August 8, 2004, Scotsman RAINS ONLY ADD TO REFUGEES' MISERY Gethin Chamberlain FIRST comes the crash of thunder and then it starts. Rain, pouring, hammering down, torrents of water falling from the sky, so hard it bounces up again a foot or more into the air. The ground, a moment ago dusty, is awash. In the makeshift shelters by the sides of the roads and around the edges of the town in South Darfur, it pours through the brushwood roofs and washes over the ground. Among the raindrops mosquitoes dart. They skim backwards and forwards above the ground, too high to be caught by the rebounding raindrops, just low enough to attach themselves to anyone unlucky to be outside in such conditions. Across Darfur they feast on hundreds of thousands of people who fit that bill, spreading the malaria that is endemic in this region of Sudan, weakening those already desperately weak. The sky has been dark for the past hour, thick black clouds edging closer and closer. It is 6pm and the countryside around the main city of Nyala is transformed from a place of baking, bone dry heat that saps the strength to a world of water. It rains solidly for 45 minutes and then the thunder rolls across the sky again, choreographing the show. The rain begins to ease and the sky lightens. It does not stop but it is less intense now - what in Britain might be called a torrential downpour replacing the tropical storm that went before. In their shelter in the town of Kass, Omer Ibrahim Abdul Wahab and his family are trying to shelter. He has 10 children and a wife. All are trying to take cover beneath a thin plastic sheet stretched across walls woven from sticks, enclosing a space no more than 10ft square. To the right of the entrance to the shelter is a single metal framed bed. Some clothes hang from the sticks that criss-cross the roof, and on the floor there are a couple of pottery jugs and two metal cooking pots. Omer spends the night standing up, the children crammed into the tiny space. Their clothes are wet through and the blankets that cover them have soaked up the rain that leaks in, despite the plastic sheeting. The people here say that August is when the rains are heaviest in South Darfur; in Kass alone there are 40,000 people exposed to the elements. Some have taken refuge in the former school buildings, others have placed what few possessions they have inside their stick shelters. Among the huts and mud brick buildings, more shelters are springing up. Few people feel safe in the countryside outside the towns. Only a couple of days ago, according to reports reaching aid agencies in the area, there was a fresh bombing raid by government soldiers south of Nyala, the main city in the region. In Nyala itself, thousands more refugees have set up home. In the camp at Al Geer there are 5,000, packed densely together, their shelters hemmed in by the houses around them. There is no aid agency present in the camp, no water and no sanitation. In Al Geer, they do not even have the protection of plastic sheeting. They use twigs, sacking, grass and straw; nothing capable of keeping out the pouring rain. Out on the roads to the airport, the camp at El Riyad is in a worse state. More than 20,000 people have squeezed into a place where there is enough water for 1,200. UNICEF, which has surveyed the camp, estimates that there that an average 625 huts are crammed into each 100sq metre. Even inside these makeshift camps there is little security. Women are still reporting that they are being raped by Janjaweed soldiers when they venture out to find wood for their fires. Omer and his family took refuge in Kass five months ago, walking for three days from Karlic village 30k away. "I left the village but most of the people were killed," says Omer. We came without anything and the people from the UN gave us some cover. I lost everything in the village." Omer was a rich man but now he is poor. Of his 10 children six are in school but his wife must go out to work to get money for the children. She takes labouring jobs, sweeping and washing. The Janjaweed attacked the village without warning. "We were sitting in our homes after dinner and the government and Janjaweed people came and surrounded us. They rushed to the village and opened fire on us. I gathered up my children and carried them to the mountains," Omer said. His daughter Asha Mohamed Sadig was whipped by the Janjaweed when she told them there were no weapons in the village. "They forced me to show them the fighters, if there were any fighters in the village, but there were no fighters in the village and I did not know what was happening," she said. "I saw many people killed. I was lost wandering four days in the mountains and at last I came here. We went back to the deserted village and lived there for eight days without food. We ate seed crushed with stones. They forced many girls to make sex with them. They took them to the wadi far away to rape them." Even now she says the women are still in danger when they venture outside Kass to get wood. "If they go outside they are captured. This has happened to some of the women living in the camp. They let them come back at sunset." Omer shakes his head: "We feel very shameful and want to free the women but we have no weapons and we fear to go to the police. They say they have no force to do anything. We want to go outside but the Janjaweed shoot at us."
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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