What It's Like To Be Expelled From Darfur, Part 2

by Michael Bear · 2009-04-04 09:59:00 UTC
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Reuters AlertNet has just published a second blog entry by an anonymous aid worker expelled from Darfur - in this post, the aid worker describes the situation in the camps a month after the expulsions.

The blog is titled A month since they kicked us out of Sudan:

"Almost exactly a month ago, we were expelled from Darfur. Since then we have spent most days trying to get in touch with friends and colleagues there, hoping to find out what is happening in the communities which we had to leave behind. The reports we are getting from the camps are increasingly alarming.

Over the past six years, people living in the camps have been bombed, raped, robbed and forced from their homes. They have been through suffering that I cannot even imagine, and have had to rely on aid agencies for basics like food, water and shelter. Now even that is being taken from them.

Zam Zam camp in North Darfur has virtually doubled in size in the past two months. 36,000 people have arrived there since the end of January, fleeing fighting between government and rebels.

They are homeless, hungry and desperate, and urgently in need of help. Many are women and children.

Helping so many new arrivals would always be an enormous challenge, but with many of the biggest aid agencies now gone it is going to be nearly impossible.

As a result, these families are not receiving the food and water they need."

To read the rest of the entry -  and get a sense of what it was actually like on the ground - please see here.

For the anonymous aid worker's first post, describing what it was like to be forced to suddenly leave Darfur, see here.

[Photo of Zam Zam camp from the LA Times]

Michael Bear
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