Developments seem to warrant another update on the challenges facing Team Zamzam (now in the midst of reconstituting itself and resuming humanitarian work in eastern Chad), even though the last update was only a week ago. (If you no longer wish to receive these updates—typically once a month—please reply to this email with “decline” as the message. All updates have been archived on my website.)
Four more members of the Team are now traveling from El Fasher and Tawila to the Tiné area on the Chadian side of the Darfur/Chad border; they will join the Team members already in the area and resume as fully as possible their humanitarian efforts.
Some of these have already begun, as in this photograph showing the provisions of food to hungry refugees.
The Team hopes to begin soon providing psychosocial counseling to girls and women who have been victims of brutal sexual assault by the Rapid Support Forces and their allied Arab militias. Their successes in Zamzam have been truly extraordinary.
[Radio Dabanga has published a substantial article on sexual violence in Darfur, and it highlights the work of Team Zamzam.]
While Team members have secured for themselves a large communal dwelling, further preparations are underway, even as the counselors and their families adapt to the very different circumstances of this part of Chad, where they have become not “internally displaced persons,” but refugees under international law. It is unclear how Chadian authorities will exercise control over these and other refugees. But we must hope that international humanitarian organizations quickly ramp up the provision of services and basic supplies. Too many people are still sleeping in the open, often without adequate access to food and water.
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The Atlantic Magazine has very recently offered us a terribly grim picture of life in the Tiné area in an extraordinary series of photographs that capture just how harsh life is here. A preface gives context to what these photographs reveal.
In Tiné, a barren desert town in eastern Chad, the first humanitarian crisis of the post-American world is now unfolding. Thousands of people fleeing the civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region have recently arrived there after enduring long journeys in relentless, 100-degree heat. Many have nothing—they report being beaten, robbed, or raped along the way—and almost nothing awaits them in Tiné. Due in part to the Trump administration’s devastating cuts to foreign aid, only a skeleton staff of international humanitarian workers are on hand to receive them. There are shortages of food, water, medicine, and shelter in Tiné, and few resources to move people anywhere else…
According to aid workers on the ground, more than 30,000 people have arrived there since regional fighting intensified in mid-April, and more than 3,500 are now arriving every day.
(Several more photographs from the article appear below; they were taken by Lynsey Addario, an extraordinary photojournalist and the author of Of Love and War and the New York Times best-selling memoir It’s What I Do.)
Team Zamzam has indeed begun work in Tiné but will need initial funding for a number of tools and resources, as well as supplies to begin effectively. For example, they were all robbed of their mobile telephones phones on leaving Zamzam, and these are critical in communicating with one another, people in the area, and with Gaffar, who continues his extraordinarily diligence in keeping in touch with and conveying information from the counselors (tragically, it now appears that one of the counselors may have been killed in the attack on Zamzam by the Rapid Support Forces…Gaffar cannot contact her or locate her by any means).
Funds will also be needed for a small generator to allow for re-charging of the phones, which of course can serve as flashlights in the dark. And if communal meals—so immensely successful in Zamzam—are again to become part of the humanitarian assistance provided by the counselors, a number of items must be purchased (in addition to the food they’ll need—fortunately, Tiné sees many traders and food prices are a great deal less than in the El Fasher area).
And the rainy season has now begun, and tent shelters are critically important. So, too, are the means necessary for collecting rain as a source of fresh water. The rainy season threatens too many water-borne illnesses, especially in crowded areas without adequate sanitary facilities. The counselors of Team Zamzam are fully aware of the importance of soap (which they may be able to obtain in bulk) and education about sanitary precautions—both of which were central to their activities in Zamzam.
The need for their work could hardly be greater, and I hope many will take this opportunity help fund the challenging work of starting anew.
.o