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Monday 21 March:
From Dakar to N'Djamena
0600: Getting from Dakar to N’Djamena via Paris represents two sides of a particularly large triangle, but remarkably this is the quickest and easiest way to cross West Africa.
My only alternative would have been to travel via Mali, spending a night there before travelling on to Chad.
1600: After a day spent largely at an airport internet café, I meet the MTV team soon after their flight from New York touches down at Charles de Gaulle.
Kirsten Dirksen is a freelance producer who will be shooting the trip with the help of film student Andrew Karlsruher; their's will be the job of cutting the documentary at the end of the trip.
Nate Wright is in his third year at Georgetown University in Washington DC. It is soon very obvious there is little he does not know about the Darfur crisis.
Wright is the founder of STAND (Students Taking Action Now on Darfur), a group which is lobbying the US government to take concrete action on Darfur. Answering his questions (or at least trying to) will be one of the bigger challenges of the next week.
Stephanie Nyombayir is a Rwandan studying in Philadelphia; this is her first trip back to Africa since heading west four years ago. She is the only member of the team to have been to the continent.
Tuesday 22 March
Abeche: last stop before Darfur
0500: We arrive at N’Djamena airport where we are met by WFP reports officer Dima Hatuqa. Quickly, we are through customs and onto a WFP plane; destination: Abeche, last stop before Darfur.
0830: Abeche is dusty desert town, for many years home to a small French garrison.
Recently it has become the base for a large humanitarian community serving the needs of some 200,000 refugees from the Darfur conflict across the border in Sudan, as well as the local population.
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Food has come from Benghazi through the Libya corridor and from Douala in Cameroon. Both routes take about a month. It's amazing anything gets here at all
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| Marcus Prior,
WFP's Abeche warehouse |
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1300: After a brief moment of peace at the end of a long journey, the team bundles into two cars and heads out to the WFP Abeche warehouse operation.
Logistics officer Denis Gravel gives the practical details as trucks are unloaded and reloaded in the sweltering heat.
It’s a massive operation – food has come from Benghazi through the Libya corridor and from Douala in Cameroon. Both routes take about a month. It’s amazing anything gets here at all.
Wednesday 23 March:
Iridimi Camp
0900: Another plane, 40 minutes north to Iriba. Chad is a vast, empty land. A brief diversion to our tented homes for the next three nights and before long we are in the office of the mayor.
 He is unusually candid and honest – yes, the refugees are a problem but (shrug of the shoulders) "What can we do? They are our brothers and sisters."
The people on both sides of the border in this region are from the same Zaghawa tribe.
1100: We head out of town, past a rusting tank, the relic of either civil war or Chad’s conflict with Libya which preceded it.
Iridimi camp is home to 14,000 Darfuri refugees. It is one of the smaller camps in eastern Chad.
As we arrive, a well organised food distribution is underway. A full basket – maize, lentils, oil, corn-soy blend, suger and salt – is being handed out through WFP’s partner, CARE.
1200: Across the way, a Medecins sans Frontieres therapeutic feeding centre is now home to only 11 children.
Since it opened in June last year, 512 children have passed through its doors. Not one has died, according to the Congolese nurse who shows us around.
Thursday 24 March:
Touloum and Am Nabak Camps
0900: We are on the road again, this time heading south to Touloum camp.
Soon after we arrive, a sandstorm whips up around us. Sand and dust are everywhere. We will shortly escape, but for the 16,500 refugees who live here, these devilish storms are a daily, unavoidable ordeal.
1030: The MSF centre here tells a different story to the one in Iridimi.
Over 120 children are on the books and there has recently been an alarming prevalence of kwashiorkor - severe protein malnutrition marked by symptoms including lethargy, growth retardation, anaemia, edema, pot belly and skin depigmentation.
Parents blame the weather – it is searingly hot – and say they need more milk for their children.
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After a 'soft' start, today the real consequences of the war in Darfur have been painted in stark, even violent colours
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| Marcus Prior , Am Nabak refugee camp |
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1100: The team’s translator, ‘Caddy’, himself a refugee from the war in Darfur, suddenly becomes very emotional and has to step to one side for several minutes to regather himself.
It turns out that the woman the students have been speaking to is a distant relative of his. Her young daughter is seriously ill.
The woman herself tells a familiar story of being chased from her home in Darfur when militias arived in the early morning on horseback.
She speaks of a life lost to the ravages of war.
“I used to be pretty; used to take care of myself,” she says, gesturing to a face now drawn and creased by who-knows-what she has seen and experienced since running from her home.
1400: Am Nabak is 30 minutes further down the road. Here, Dima meets a group of young women who are surprised to hear that she comes from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“When we were at home in Darfur we used to see what was happening to your people on television. We never thought we ourselves would end up in the same situation!” one of them tells her.
Meanwhile, the students have been surrounded by a group of young children, fresh out of the nearby classroom.
They are waving single sheets of paper torn from exercise books covered with drawings – of men with guns, planes dropping bombs, helicopters firing rockets. It was to be a recurring theme.
After a ‘soft’ start, today the real consequences of the war in Darfur have been painted in stark, even violent, colours. We drive back to Iriba with barely a word passing between us.
Friday 25 March:
Am Nabak Camp
0800: Breakfast at the UNHCR compound. I notice a piece of printed paper on the table entitled "Information for Visitors". Under "recreational activities" it says simply "none whatsoever".
 How true. People come here to work...
1000: We head back to Am Nabak. The students want to speak to more people their age to try and gauge just what life back in Darfur was like.
Slowly a picture begins to emerge. Favourite singers included Bob Marley and Craig David. The young Darfuri refugees used to have girlfriends and boyfriends, go for picnics, put on plays, celebrate weddings and other festivals.
“Now the only events we take part in are funerals,” says one young boy.
It strikes me that everything the students are hearing is an infernal echo of what I heard last year from within Darfur itself.
It is as if some diabolical DJ is playing the same record over and over again – of brutality, dispossession, destruction and death. Adults speak it; children draw it.
Saturday 26 March:
The road to Farchana
0900: Back on the plane to Abeche and then into cars for the lengthy journey on to Farchana, the hub for operations in the Central Zone.
1900: As we sit and discuss what we have seen and heard so far, Andrew thinks out loud.
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What has struck me here is how much is being done by the UN and NGOs - and that whether it is a genocide or not is really not that important
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| Andrew Karlsruher, on the road to Farchana |
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“People in the US have really only heard that the UN has not called what is going on in Darfur a genocide," he says.
"What has struck me here is how much is being done by the UN and the Non-Governmental Organizations – and that whether it is a genocide or not is really not that important.”
Sunday 27 March:
Farchana and Breidging Camps
0900: Our final day in the camps. In Farchana, we are introduced to the camp elder. Suddenly the meeting turns into an impromptu parade of wounds and injuries as refugees come forward to show us the physical scars the war in Darfur has left on them.
 One man has an arm amputated at the shoulder, another is on crutches after a bullet passed through a leg.
A bullet wound has left a third with a grotesquely distorted upper arm, and a fourth man lifts his clothing to reveal a huge scar across his stomach, again the result of a bullet wound.
1130: We are now in Breidging camp where the students visit a school, where pupils sit outside in the sledgehammer heat and listen to teachers standing in front of blackboards propped up in the dust.
Class by class, the young people began to sing, until the whole school is on its feet. The song is a lament, remembering homes in Darfur where there was "always enough shade, always enough water".
In a direct reference to the rebel forces fighting across the border, the pupils call on the "black lions of Darfur" to win them their freedom.
It was another quiet drive back to base.
Monday 28 March:
Back in N'Djamena
1300: Back in N'Djamena and the comfort of a hotel room and a decent shower. None of us wastes any time in washing off a week of desert sand and grime. But we will never wash away the memories.
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