Sophie Orr spent a year working with the Red Cross in Zalingei, west Darfur from 2006 to 2007. Sophie, a British Red Cross delegate seconded to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was the deputy head of the sub-delegation in Sudan.
©Info“I had a fantastic experience. It was obviously challenging. The security situation was bad, so the main stress was dealing with security every day. The Sudanese were wonderful people, though, and that made it a better experience.
“Everyone was very hospitable. If you stay with the Arabs, they’ll slaughter a goat for you, which is an honour that you almost don’t want to accept because you know people don’t have much.
Varied
“The work was also quite varied. Sometimes we were sleeping in the bush under mosquito domes. The skies at night were amazing. It was very atmospheric. There were lots of donkeys, frogs, chickens and dogs. You don’t get a good night’s sleep because it’s like being in a zoo.
“In the rainy season we spent three hours digging two trucks out of the mud, so logistically it was quite tricky as well.
“The Red Cross works mostly in the isolated rural areas of Darfur, with the exception of Gereida camp, while other organisations work mostly in the towns and camps for internally displaced people (IDPs). Wherever we go in these isolated areas, people say: ‘You must come back because it makes us feel protected when you’re here. It makes us feel secure to know people are thinking about us.’"
Flexible
She described the work of the ICRC in Darfur. “The range of our activities is very wide and flexible, so we can respond to communities’ needs. That is necessary because the environment changes so quickly, so our programmes need to be flexible. If we can’t get to a location for two months, we need to know the projects will continue without us being there physically.
“We have small livelihood projects. For example, we give donkey carts to villagers so they can transport food or ill people.
“We also give manual irrigation pumps to women so they can irrigate small plots of land, and we repair hand pumps so people can have access to water in the dry season.”
Health
The ICRC also provides vital medical care to people in Darfur. Sophie explained: “We have a vaccination campaign for the most isolated areas. We give basic vaccinations, such as polio vaccinations for children.
“We support two public health centres in rural areas. We pay the staff and give them medications, vaccinations and materials such as mosquito nets for pregnant women. One of the centres is on the government’s side of the front line, and the other is on the rebel-held side because people can’t necessarily cross the line to get health care.
“I was also the head of protection, a big part of which is our tracing and messaging service. Four years after the conflict began, we are still tracing and reuniting families. That was a really nice part of the job. There was a slow but steady stream of reunifications.
Reunited
“There was a 14-year-old boy who hadn’t seen his family for three years. His village had been attacked and he had fled to Chad, where he lived with a relative in a refugee camp.
“We have a database of children who are separated from their parents and are living in camps. The boy’s parents put a tracing message in, and we found him and brought him by car to Al Geneina in Darfur, just across the border from Chad, then by plane to Zalingei.
“He had never been in a plane before. It was really sweet; he was very excited when he arrived. We usually take the children straight to their parents’ village, but because of the bad security situation at the time, we couldn’t leave. His father offered to come to Zalingei by public transport, along with some other men.
Thankful
“When the boy and his father saw each other, they shook hands and then they formed a circle with the other men, put their hands out, and prayed a prayer of thanks.
“We gave them some clothes, sandals, and a hygiene kit. The boy and his father started to chat and you could see they were becoming closer. I’m sure his mother was really emotional when he arrived home.”
She also described the emotional reunion of a teenage girl with her family. “There was also a girl who was about 14 and had been living with a host family in Zalingei. Her mother had fled to al-Geneina during an attack on their village three years earlier. The girl flew to al-Geneina with a delegate. I went to the airport to see her off, and it was quite sad because around ten women from her host family had come with her, and they were all crying. They wanted her to be with her family but they knew they would miss her.
Lifeline
“The Red Cross message service was really used. There is no postal service in Darfur, so the messages provide a way for people to stay in touch. Our office has been processing 800 to 1,000 messages a month.
“We have a family news centre in the IDP camps and 30 Red Cross volunteers in our region. People come to the centres to write messages. The message is put in a pouch and sent to another ICRC office. A plane goes three times a week. People write to their families in Chad, Khartoum, and sometimes even abroad.
“When people get replies to their messages, the volunteers find them and give them an opportunity to write a reply back.
“We usually deliver messages within two months. We have to rely on the security situation being right for the message to be delivered."
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