Tuesday 16 th November

It was the first Monday after Kath and Kim 3 had gone to air. My first Monday off for months and months. I was holed up in bed with a throat infection and feeling like death. That morning, my friend Naomi Steer (head of Australia for UNHCR) called. “Jane, would you like to go to Chad next week to visit the refugee camps on the border of Sudan . It will take about three days to get there and you will need to get about eight injections tomorrow.” Since she put it like that how could I refuse?

So two weeks later we touch down into the searing heat of N'Djamena, the capital of Chad and a fascinating, eye-opening heart wrenching experience begins.

After a days rest, Naomi, Tony Wilson (cameraman) and I fly from N'Djamena to Abeche aboard a UNHCR light plane. Abeche is near the eastern border with Sudan and it looks like life hasn't changed much here in the last thousand or so years.

UNHCR Sub Office-Abéché

We are met by Eduardo, the UNHCR PI officer (Public Information) in Abéché and our driver Mustapha. We travel in a four wheel drive vehicle along unpaved dusty streets lined with small, whitewashed, mud brick buildings, open market- squares and minarets. Everywhere people move from here to there on bikes, mopeds, open trucks. We see women carrying water from the well in plastic jerry cans on their heads. There are white-garbed cattle herders and children tending their goats, gentle donkeys with bales of sticks tethered to their sides.

We are soon in the open country. We have two hours of driving to reach the first camp. The roads are merely bumpy dirt tracks snaking their way through the semi desert of the sub- Sahara . The roads are not just bumpy, they are bouncy. Naomi and I make a lot of noise like we are on a ride at the show, as we are thrown about car. We laugh at ourselves. Luckily the suspension is good.

The landscape is beautiful and the desert air is hot and fragrant. Despite looking almost prehistoric, with extinct volcanos and mountains of boulders, there are signs of life around every turn. Little villages of maybe ten thatched huts appear along the roadside. People, camels, cows and goats are everywhere…. We cross many wadis, the dry shallow riverbeds that fill up just once a year during the rains. This year the rains came for just three days … for Chadians and refugee's alike water is the big issue here.

Farchana Refugee Camp

At about midday we arrive to visit Farchana the first refugee camp. The sun is overhead and beating down. There is no shade at all here, no trees, just a bit of scrub and thousands and thousands of dust covered UNHCR tents.

Eduardo takes us on a walk around the camp. Tony is filming and to start with I feel very shy and awkward, feeling very much likes a nosey intruder.

Beautiful little children surround me and break the ice with shy laughter at my attempts to communicate. These Sudanese speak Arabic, not French like the Chadians and regard me with wonder as I keep insisting on” Bonjour! Bonjour!”

We find some shelter at the registration tent. At least a hundred new refugees are lining up to register. Once they are registered as refugees they receive a basic emergency kit, containing a plastic sheet, plastic water gerry cans and cooking utensils. They also get food vouchers.

The first thing that strikes me here in Farchana is that most of the children look unwell. All seem to have colds and chest infections, many seem malnourished with bloated stomachs and some are coughing with the characteristic ‘whoop whoop' of whooping cough.

The Sudanese refugees have been arriving in the camps in a bad state (up to 40% of the children suffering from malnutrition). UNHCR has implemented a supplementary feeding program…of enriched milk powders, vitamin and other supplements that is given to children under five, breastfeeding mothers and pregnant women.

We next go to look at the medical clinic staffed by UNHCR partner MSF Holland where they are vaccinating against TB and other infectious diseases. Epidemics of Hepatitis E, TB, malaria and cholera are common in the camps.

Ironically during our visit to the l clinic at Farchana I begin to feel ill. The intense heat and my empty stomach (seems pathetic to say I hadn't eaten for what? three hours) is taking its toll and I have to take five in the car and the aircon.

All the staff I meet at the camp, the doctors, nurses, protection officers, hydrologists -all have an amazing gentleness about them even with me as I ask obvious questions and make ignorant suggestions they are kind good humoured and above all totally and utterly dedicated to helping the refugees.

We leave Farchana and I guiltily feel absolutely starving. Lunch turns out to be a dusty can of Pepsi (cold!) purchased in a tiny village. Funnily enough it filled me up and I feel lucky to have it.

Bredjing Refugee Camp

The next camp we visit is another two-hour drive away. This camp, Bredjing, - one of the first to be built here in Chad -is about 18 months old and huge. It was designed for about eighteen thousand refugees but at one stage was home to forty thousand people. It is clear at Bredjing that the land here is not designed to support this sort of concentration of numbers. There are even fewer trees here and the lack of firewood (used for cooking) has become a major problem for the refugee camps. Not only does it present a problem for the health of the people it creates other problems.

Eduardo tells us of an incident in this camp that happened a few weeks back.

Some young girls and women had gone out to find firewood and had to travel some miles away from the camp. Far away from the safety of the camp they became prey to bandits and were attacked, beaten and raped. UNHCR is now organising local gendarmerie to be stationed at each camp to help with these and other security issues.

There was a desperate feeling about Bredjing. One little boy eagerly grabbed a water bottle I offered him and was immediately set upon by other boys. Even an empty water bottle is a prized commodity when you have nothing.

We were advised to get back on the road as quickly as possibility. Despite the heat this is winter and the light fades early. UNHCR advises their workers to be off the roads before dark. It is not safe.

UNHCR Field Office- Adré

That night we are put up at a UNHCR field office in the tiny town of Adré . Ana, Haime and Sebastian, UNHCR protection workers are our hosts. They are so friendly and share their meagre dinner with us. After a cold shower (there is no hot water) we sleep under mosquito nets.

TUESDAY 17 th NOVEMBER

The next day we set out for the border to look across the wide sandy wadi to Sudan to see where the refugees have trekked from. We visit a village and meet with refugees who are still staying there with Chadian kinsmen who have taken them in.

Many refugees were initially taken in and looked after by the Chadians until their numbers grew to over two hundred thousand and UNHCR set up camps stretching thousands of miles along the border.

In the village I talk via two interpreters-we have to translate from Arabic to French to English- to two women, a shy, young mother and old women who talks animatedly about her experience They have fled their bombed villages in Sudan leaving husbands, brothers and sons behind. Many have been killed (an estimated 200,000 people so far) by the militias, a few are staying behind to try to salvage their few animals… and maintain some livelihood.

These women tell us they are staying to help the villagers with the peanut harvest and then want to go to the camps. Food and fuel is getting scarcer and they are concerned about their security. They don't think they will be able to return to Sudan for some time. 1.7 million of their fellow Sudanese are displaced, still living in Sudan , living with the constant threat of violence against them.