Starting All Over Again

By Malene Haakansson, ACT/Caritas information officer

Labado, South Darfur, February 8, 2005 - The fighting in the Ta'asha area has calmed down a little, and the people who fled the fighting are slowly returning to their villages. But everything is destroyed, including the work of the ACT/Caritas emergency-response program in the area.

The villages along the dusty dirt road are empty. Plastic sheeting blows in the wind, and heaps of groundnuts are left in the field. The picture changes as the ACT/Caritas team approaches the town  of Labado, 74 km southeast of Nyala in South Darfur. Walls of buildings and jars blackened by fire in village after village are all that is left of the active lives that were lived here.

This is only the second time the ACT/Caritas team has returned to the area after it was forced to pull out because of heavy fighting in mid-December 2004. Program managers are back to look at the situation and see what has happened to the clinics, nutrition centers and water bladders they had established for the internally displaced people in the area.

The first stop is Um Seifa village. Because the village was burned to the ground, the team is having a hard time finding the water bladder, health clinic and the guesthouse they left behind. After a while, the team finds the framework of the guesthouse and a dark spot where the clinic used to be. A medicine box blackened with soot indicates that this is the right place. Nearby, a staff member picks up a blue pipe that is the sad remains of the water bladder. He shakes his head.

News has reached Nyala that people have started to return to Labado, a town close to Um Seifa. The African Union has set up a camp and is now patrolling the area. The sight of the town is shocking - 63,000 people used to live there, and now there is nothing left.

People have gathered under the trees with a few of their belongings. This is where they sleep and eat if they can get hold of some food. There is no shelter to be seen.

The sheiks from Labado have registered around 750 families - a total of about 4,500 people. Every day people return to the town, and people from villages that have been attacked in the area come here for protection.

A 50-year-old woman says that several villages in the area have been attacked recently. A few weeks ago, she fled with her two daughters and grandchildren when their village was attacked in broad daylight. Twelve men were shot randomly.

"We only managed to bring some clothes and a cooking set," the young woman says, pointing at the sacks around her.

The family made its living as farmers, like most of the 40 families in their village. The family had crops, a big herd of cattle and donkeys. "But it was all taken by the attackers," says the 20-year-old woman, who openly speaks out about her situation.

Farther away, an old woman and her 17-year-old granddaughter are camped under a tree, sitting on a white plastic sheet with a few bags of clothes and blankets. They have been on the run for two weeks and did not manage to bring any food or water when their village was attacked.

"Other families have shared their food and water with us," says the girl, taking a gulp of water from a plastic bottle.

The family wants to continue to Kalma Camp, just outside Nyala, where they have heard that a daughter of a family member has been found. They do not know what happened to the rest of their family.

Though there is nothing left of Labado, families are slowly returning to the town, and other displaced families seek shelter there, hoping that non-governmental organizations will soon assist them. Two truckloads of blankets, cooking utensils, soap and other non-food items from the ACT/Caritas program have already been distributed to 750 families.

"The situation is bad," says the ACT/Caritas program manager of non-food items. "People have lost everything, and there are still new arrivals of people."

In the coming weeks, there will be more distributions. The ACT/Caritas program managers are carrying out assessments of the needs around Labado, and activities that were based in Um Seifa will most likely be moved to the town in the coming weeks.

"Most of the children are borderline malnourished, and I saw three severe cases," says the manager of the nutrition program.

Until now, people have survived on one meal a day, consisting of porridge and okra. Two boreholes have been repaired, but there is still an urgent need for clean water.

In what was once the town center, a man sits on a bench looking at his burned house and two shops. He is the father of 12 children and was doing well before Labado was attacked. Forty-six people - women and children included - were killed, report the local sheiks. "I have lost millions of dinars. All I have worked for since I was young is gone," says the shopkeeper. His children are playing on a wooden bed that survived the destruction.

"If human rights exist, I would like to ask other countries to help us pay back all the things we have lost," he pleads.

SIDEBAR

Facts

- The ACT/Caritas program has been working in the area southeast of Nyala in South Darfur since August 2004, assisting more than 5,000 households with non-food items and providing health, water and nutrition services. On December 13 the area was attacked, and ACT/Caritas pulled out the same evening. Today everything is destroyed.

- In Um Seifa village, the program had set up a water bladder, a health clinic and a guesthouse for the people working in the field.

- In Ishma, there was also a health clinic, a nutrition center, and hand pumps.

- Bashoum village used to have a health clinic and a nutrition center, but after the village was attacked on October 11, it was made into a mobile clinic.

- The people of Hasaba village managed to bring a water bladder with them to Kalma Camp when they fled. A nutrition center was destroyed.

- Burgi village had a water bladder, a health clinic, and was promoting public hygiene.