The dust never really settled in Darfur. It was part of the climate, but when it did, the sunflowers in the tiny garden of a mud house in Abu Shouk camp swayed regally under a cloudless azure sky.
Khadijah Ibrahim, 54, tended to her prized sunflowers in the little compound of her house, while Al-Fateh Hassan, the youngest son of her husband's second wife, played among the towering flowers.
Tucked within the maze of narrow passages where 50,000 displaced people now live, Khadijah had long accepted that this was her life now, and she would not waste her time thinking otherwise.
When war broke out in Darfur six years ago, the camp housed about 83,000 people from the villages surrounding Al-Fasher, the capital of north Darfur, including Tawila, Kakabiya, Kuttum and Jebel Marak, bordering west Darfur.
Many have returned to their villages in the past year, but others have chosen to rebuild their lives here. The mechanics run workshops, the teachers teach, the professionals go where the projects take them.
But it's the farmers who miss their land the most. Adjusting has not been easy for Khadijah's husband, Hassan Abdal Bakhur, 70. "I have nothing to do here," he said.
Hassan was from Tawila, some 130km from Al-Fasher. He used to have 17 goats and five donkeys and cultivated grain, vegetables and tobacco on his land, but all was lost to the "mountain robbers".
("Robbers, not rebels," he stressed.)
Since time immemorial, Hassan said, the "mountain robbers", or Jenjawid, have pillaged and robbed the people of Darfur, but they had always lacked weapons. Tawila became a killing field when the robbers acquired guns and waged war on both villagers and government forces.
Hassan now lives in Abu Shouk camp with his wives Khadijah and Hawa Ishak Mukmin, 38, and their 19 children and 23 grandchildren. His children all survived the fighting, Hassan reasoned, because they had evacuated the village early.
"The village is a lot safer now," Hassan said. "Hopefully, the
government will chase away the robbers for good."
Two of his sons had returned to Tawila to work on the family's land.
"Better to work and get money than wait for help," Hassan said, referring to the special food allowance given by the government and aid agencies.
Since the Sudan government's recent expulsion of international aid agencies, allegedly for spying, the primary healthcare centre at the camp had lost its volunteer doctors.
Insaf Ibrahim, 25, who used to work with the International Rescue Committee as house visitor at the camp, said the gap should be filled immediately by the Health Ministry. "It is vital to maintain the people's health in the camp," she said.
In such a concentrated population, any outbreak of disease could easily reach epidemic proportions and be difficult to control - but Insaf is most concerned with basic hygiene. Her job requires her to visit camp residents to talk to them about health and basic cleanliness.
Insaf's own kitchen was basic but immaculately clean: a cotton dustcloth spread over plates and glasses; pots and pans and cooking utensils lining the wall; the wood stove without ash.
Insaf's wages from the IRC weren't much, but when the organisation left, she lost crucial income for her household.
Her husband, Muhamad Musa Abu Bakar, 30, teaches English at a secondary school in Al-Fasher. He is critical of the charity workers who he believes came to camps with hidden agendas. "Some of them tried to exchange our Quran with the Bible by offering us money," he said.
"It was insulting. If they were sincere in their efforts to help us, they would not have asked us to convert to another religion."
His anger was shared by Ibrahim Al Khaled Sheikh Adid, the director of the camp's Interning Displaced People programme, who said residents had complained of missionary activities by certain aid organisations.
"We have evidence that some of them distributed Bibles as part of their charity work," Ibrahim said. "Darfur is 100 per cent Muslim and their act was clearly insensitive and insolent to the people in the camp."
Al-Fasher Hospital director Dr Nor Aldeen Mobarak El Noor said Sudan's health ministry had recently dispatched doctors to the camps. There are three hospitals, four clinics and a specialist centre in Al-Fasher, providing health services to the three camps, Abu Shouk, Assalam and Zam Zam.
"Within a year," Nor Aldeen said, "the government plans to completely take over the health centre from all international charity organisations in the camps."
More than 4,300 babies were delivered in Abu Shouk last year, with only 300 cases referred to the hospital, and 15 stillborn.
Mohamed Al Said Khayyam, a medical assistant at Abu Shouk Primary Healthcare Centre, said there had been significant improvements in the general health due to increased awareness of hygiene, but the growing amount of rubbish in the area, especially around the marketplace, was creating another health hazard.
Outside their homes, children untouched by fear of disease or strangers played freely. Some chased the donkeys carting fresh water from the hand-pumped wells in the camp.
Troops were still on alert outside the camps, but on the streets, life was abuzz: peddlers trading handwoven baskets, kettles on the boil at the tea stalls, cobblers stitching snakeskin into loafers, electronic shops stocking digital cameras and other gadgets.
It has been months since Al-Fasher or Nyala in south Darfur were attacked by armed bandits. As the sunflowers swayed in the desert under the baking sun, Khadijah remained hopeful that one day, she would return to her village.
For now, she was content to watch her tiny garden grow.
New Straits Times, March 22, 2009
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