Ahead of the Shadows, page 9
She was an outsider, and wanted to learn everything. She drenched herself in new information and absorbed it all. She had never been to Sudan before, in her year of roaming East Africa and the Horn of Africa working for CWW’s regional office. She was flying into a new situation to the west of the country, a fact-finding mission of sorts.
CWW had been worried about the reports of large-scale displacement happening in Darfur, on the border with Chad. No reporters were allowed in. Word-of-mouth talked about men on horseback, called the Janjaweed, attacking people and forcing whole villages to flee. They sounded like menacing characters from a poem by Lewis Carroll, but apparently they were very real indeed. The Khartoum government, hardened by years of civil war in the south, was already deploying scorched-earth tactics in this new conflict. Satellite imagery showed that they were using these fighters as mercenaries while bombing villages from above.
It was a growing humanitarian crisis. Was CWW needed in this context? That was her job to assess. Was she qualified to do so? No one seemed to ask that question, nor focus too much on her security training or emergency procedures. Kojo taught her a few things about self-defence and identifying a proof-of-life safe word. But, of course, they prayed she would never have to use it.
She was happy being the scout. She was used to the weight of her cameras, wearing the vest with pockets for her notebook, film canisters and extra batteries. She always had more than one pen, in case one ran out of ink. She wrote notes in shorthand, which, along with her terrible handwriting, was a safe kind of code. Emergency chocolate bars and nuts for energy were also squirrelled away in that vest for when a quick energy shot was needed.
She felt strong and useful for all the time that she’d been part of the CWW team. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. She had caught it – the passion for humanitarian work that gripped people and didn’t let go.
The city of Khartoum was dusty and quiet. It was Ramadan so whatever restaurants there might have been were shuttered and closed. She was booked in at an inexpensive hotel frequented by UN personnel and NGOs. It had an alcohol-free bar draped with fake gold and moth-eaten rugs on the chairs and lining the floor. There were just take-away chicken drumsticks and out-of-date jars of tropical juice on offer. She’d chance it, she was that hungry.
The hotel was an old office block, converted without too much finery into rooms for a night. In the corridor the air conditioning units stuck out like mushrooms, heating the walkway with its walls and floors of unfinished concrete. Never mind, she was only spending a night or two there before flying to Darfur for a week. Just needed to sort out her internal visa. The government offices, normally closed, were open for a couple of hours for UN and expat staff only. She needed to be sure to be there.
Kojo
Nairobi, June 2003
Lena had been tracing a circle around a mole on his forearm while they planned the trip. They explored plans and bodies together, getting excited at both, dreaming of both, looking forward to the travel as well as the intimacy upon returning home. Kojo knew it was unorthodox – he was her manager, the planning should have been happening at a desk, not in bed. But that wasn’t their way.
‘I don’t know any Arabic,’ she said.
‘Nor me. If you find that there’s a job to do there, maybe we’ll have to learn.’
‘I’m not that hot at languages, I’m afraid.’
‘Next you’re going to tell me you’re too old.’ He glanced at where her hands were tracing and saw his veins under the surface. He stopped her movements and looked at her hands. She was fifteen years younger than him, and you could tell, from the hands. She still had some fullness there, protecting the ligaments and bone. For God’s sake. What was such a young woman with all this potential doing with him?
It was the job, really. The situation. The passion that comes from having a shared focus. He’d seen it before: with colleagues who’d had that spark, but then it fizzled out when one of them got an office job, or the other wanted to move back closer to family. Family complicated things. They got older and had weddings or christenings and tried to pull you back towards them. But unless you had children yourself, you could just ignore the call of the mundane and have your adventures. Life felt ripe and full and exciting. You felt as if you were on the edge of history, as it was being made, in real time.
People were writing articles about the wars CWW was working in. Newspapers were running Lena’s photos because they were too scared to send their own reporters. People would write books about it, but not yet. In the humanitarian phase, it was all so alive. Untranslated. Unmitigated. Raw. And there was so much to do.
In the bedroom, they unfurled the maps and tried to make sense of the terrain, the borders, the movements of people. They made lists in the air, recited them back to each other so they didn’t forget. They talked about the destinations – Nyala first, then Al Fashir, possibly Geneina after – and agreed the criteria for making future choices. He made her memorise the phone numbers of the security emergency satellite phone as well as the SOS Air Ambulance.
They were the same, really. Born so far apart on different continents, they were both destined to be this: outsiders, observing, attempting to help in a fascinating sea of humanity’s ups and terrible downs.
He loved the job. He loved Lena. He told her, as often as he could. Those were the two things he was clear about. Everything else fell to the side and mattered not at all.
Thirteen
Lena
Nyala, Darfur (Western Sudan)
August 2003
It was an ochre-coloured landscape. The vehicle shuddered with every crack in the road, weaving around potholes and gullies. The car wasn’t a Land Rover, not even a 4x4. It was an old Toyota with no air conditioning or seatbelts. CWW had no staff here, and no partners. So Lena had no friends, no allies, no base; not yet.
Through a colleague in Nairobi she had contacted a small medical NGO who arranged a driver to meet her at the local airstrip. As they drove, windows down in the heat, Lena was coated with layers of sand and dust. She wore a light white shirt with long sleeves that fluttered in the wind. Even through her khakis, her legs stuck to the plastic seats. She didn’t dare drink much water, in case there was a limited supply ahead. Despite sunglasses, she squinted with the overwhelming brightness of sun on thirsty and cracked land. It felt wide open and exposed, this corner of Sudan.
And it was hot, over 40 degrees. On the edge of the Sahel, the desert was never far away and could easily extend its grip further. Despite the temperature outside, the driver kept the heating blowing in the car. There hadn’t been time to arrange an Arabic interpreter, but Lena soon worked out what was going on through gesture and the few words she and the driver shared: they needed to keep air flowing over the ancient engine, which rattled and jumped unpredictably. It was clear that no one would want to have the car break down in this heat.
When they came into built-up areas, he gently put his hand over the opening of her camera bag. ‘No here,’ he said. ‘No good, no photo.’
She nodded and tried to understand what was unspoken. In the towns, people turned to see the car drive by. If they recognised the vehicle or the driver, they showed no sign. Donkeys moved to the side to let them past; women pulled cloths over their faces, disguising their expressions. Did they want to hide, or were they just shielding themselves against the sand and the dust? It was hard to interpret, in a place where she was so ignorant of both the language and the history.
It was a new and different feeling, being in the field ahead of the team. Everything needed to be negotiated and navigated very carefully. What steps she took or offences she accidentally made would ultimately reflect on CWW’s ability to set up and work here.
She met with members of the medical NGO and arranged for a translator the next day. She stayed with the team at their compound, a broken-down former family home on the edge of Nyala. The building had hard edges of concrete blocks, unprotected against the encroaching desert. No one had painted it or cared for the premises in a long time. It had a rooftop for relaxing on after sunset, but perhaps since alcohol wasn’t allowed, there wasn’t the easy social atmosphere she was used to. The colleagues running the medical programme – a French logistician, a Kenyan doctor and two German nurses – seemed guarded, and they each ate dinner alone in their rooms.
In the morning, lingering over coffee, she managed to get one of the nurses to speak to her in some detail. Petra was a large white woman, with short hair that she might have cut herself in front of an imperfect mirror. She shifted in her seat as she spoke, and her skin was dark red along her collar where sunburn touched. Her lips were peeling from the dryness, and she kept biting them. She spun her spoon in her coffee cup with a vigour that threatened to chip the mug.
‘I’ve worked in Indonesia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda... lots of tough places,’ Petra said. ‘I can take the restrictions, the curfews, the double-speak when the government says one thing, but then armed men do the opposite. I’m not a wimp. But it’s so bad here, I don’t know how long I can take it.’
Lena sat back and listened to the grievances that occupied Petra’s mind. No water for showers, just sponge baths. No running toilet. No freedom to walk alone as a woman. Restrictions on where and when she could see patients. Soldiers knocking on the door at odd hours of night, threatening but then backing down. Patients arrested while standing in line to see the nurse. Flights of relief goods circling then failing to land. Airdrops of vital medical equipment dropped in the wrong location and smashed; relief supplies tampered with so they were useless when they finally reached IDP camps.
Underneath the stories, it seemed like an ongoing pattern of disruption and intimidation. The reasons behind the fighting and government crackdown in Darfur were known, but everything else seemed to be masked by layers of deception. She knew about a new rebel group rising up and attacking an army barracks last month. This was a humiliating defeat for the government in Khartoum. Not risking any more casualties, they counter-attacked from the air, bombing villages accused of harbouring the rebels. Then they also contracted the Janjaweed.
Lena wanted to know more about this mysterious army of men on horseback. Did they really exist?
Petra was adamant. ‘I have seen them with my own eyes. We got a message from the army not to go to Geneina the last week of April. I felt imprisoned in the compound so I went to the rooftop in the early morning, before the sun was too hot. I could see in the distance these lines of men on horseback. They looked like a medieval army, advancing confidently with nothing to stop them. They kicked up so much dust you couldn’t see the ground. They had scarves wrapped around their faces because they ride through the desert, and they never take them off. So, there’s no identification, no retribution for their crimes.’
Petra paused to drink more coffee, still with the spoon inside, which came dangerously close to her eye. ‘They are scary as hell. Rumour has it that they are mercenaries brought in from Chad. They don’t speak the local language, and show no mercy. There’s no reason to; they have no ties to the communities. It’s not their mothers or sisters they are trampling with the hooves of those beasts...’ She stared into the bottom of her mug.
Lena left a silence, to see if she wanted to say more.
‘The people think they are ghosts,’ Petra added. She cocked her head to the side to see if Lena would mock her. ‘Phantoms or something. I think they are, or close to it. Angels of death, that’s who they serve.’
Lena wondered if the woman had lost her perspective. No rational person would believe in ghosts.
Petra read her thoughts. ‘You think I’m crazy, but you spend a few months here and then see what kind of mental state you are in.’ She stood up abruptly, taking her coffee cup to the sink. ‘We’re all just one pace ahead of the shadows here. If you’re not careful, they’ll catch up with you, in the end.’
Over the course of the week, as Lena met with the other members of the team, the humanitarian picture started to emerge. Towns thought to be disloyal to the government were being attacked and razed. Camps for displaced people were assigned and villagers being pushed to go to them; yet it wasn’t clear if there was any water, food or other services waiting for people in these camps. Perhaps they were being sent there to starve.
It took weeks and an inordinate amount of pressure on the authorities for humanitarian workers to register for long-term visas, which could be denied or withdrawn at any time. Petra and the others desperately wanted other agencies to come out too, to provide more services and to bear witness to what was happening. They felt raw and exposed, being the only international faces in what had turned into an active conflict far away from television cameras and the rule of law.
CWW could have a role to play in installing water and sanitation in these camps. But they wouldn’t be able to work alone. Agencies needed permits to bring in food and nutrition supplements, and proper medical equipment. The terrain might call for deep-drilling equipment, and Lena knew from other assignments that this could be very costly. Even if they could free up the equipment from other missions, they could lose a lot of time trying to import it into Sudan. What other solutions had she spoken to the logistics team about? She racked her brain – she needed to speak to Kojo. Water bladders? Filled up from the wells in town and then trucked out to the camps? Could they hire lorries out here? Or maybe something more basic, like donkeys, could do the trick. Some kind of water-caravan? She liked the idea.
But what were these IDP camps? Were they holding people, protecting them from military operations, as the army said? Or was it something more sinister? She couldn’t afford to be naïve here. If she was going to make recommendations for CWW to take risks, and invest time, people and money in coming into Darfur, she had to get the analysis right.
She still had the feeling that she was missing the real story. She was making this up as she went along, this job of photographer/communications expert. But in a place like this, she hadn’t felt comfortable taking many photos. People seemed to be suspicious of the camera, as if they knew something Lena didn’t about the uses and abuses of images. Her vague promise to bring in more help meant little, compared to their certainty.
Kojo
Nairobi, September 2003
He took the satellite call from Lena in Nyala. He heard how upset she was and let her talk, even though it cost four dollars a minute.
He knew he had taken a risk, sending her out to scout ahead. But he didn’t have many staff members, and he trusted her powers of observation over anyone’s, possibly even his own. He’d tried to teach her the basics of CWW operations and the principles of water and sanitation; they worked in the intersection between water and simple measures of public health. She learned everything, forgot little. He was constantly impressed and a bit envious of her ability to dive into these subjects that were very different from anything in her previous experience. She always had the unconscious confidence of someone in the flow of action.
She told him about the camps in Darfur: that despite the announcements from the government, they were not really established. There were nearly no NGOs, the UN was restricted to just the big cities, and the water and sanitation services were non-existent. The medical NGO was very concerned about the potential for disease to break out and spread with the movements of large numbers of people into these unprepared camps. There were protection issues too: women had to walk long distances to fetch drinking water and firewood, leaving behind their children in flimsy shelters. The women were putting themselves at risk of rape or worse, but they had no choice. In their absence, the children could get recruited by the rebels, or killed or kidnapped by the Janjaweed.
‘I think they’re being rounded up, Kojo,’ Lena said.
‘Are you in a safe space, Lena?’
‘Why, no one can tap a sat phone, can they?’
‘You could be overheard.’
‘I’m back at the compound; no one is around but the cook.’
‘Make sure he doesn’t listen in. Sudan is notorious for sub-context.’
‘Kojo, you should have seen these women. Most of them were too scared to talk to me. They refused to have their photo taken, too scared to have any proof that they were speaking to me. Petrified. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Now that he heard her voice, satisfied that she was alright, he wanted to get her off the expensive phone call. ‘Well, it sounds as if you’re doing the job we set out for you to do, Lena. The team will be pleased to have such detailed observations.’
‘I’m not finished yet. The team I went with, you know, from MedRef? They’re scared too. At the last camp, they wanted to stop my attempts at interviewing, and pulled all the staff into a meeting without me.
‘I can understand where they’re coming from,’ she continued. ‘It’s a delicate balance here to be seen as impartial and neutral, and people are afraid I’ll mess it up. But I have never seen people so on edge. Not in Angola, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda... and there’s more. There was also this feeling of aggression rising up. Anger at something. The idea that the NGOs could abandon them? Or something else, I don’t know.
‘Some of the men in the camp started posturing and pushing near a group of women I was talking to. Then the men circled around all of us women, and started chanting something. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, but definitely there.
‘The interpreters said a few quick words to finish the meeting off and then all the ex-pats jumped into the cars and fled. My driver nearly left without me. The car was already rolling when I jumped inside.’
‘Did they explain what was happening?’
‘Apparently they thought we could be government informants. But I don’t think that was the whole story. There was real hatred in their eyes. It was like I didn’t matter; my foreignness, my presence was just dangerous or alien.’
