Wednesday, November 08, 2006
In a Calm Corner of Darfur, Villagers Rebuild Ties - N.Y. Times
Omar Abdul Aziz Gader cupped his hand over his eyes and scanned a landscape of scorched fields and mud huts reduced to rings of ash.“It’s good to be back,” he said.
As a displaced person from Darfur, Mr. Gader found his options were not great. He could have stayed in the packed, increasingly unruly camp where he had been living for the past two years, or he could have ventured back to Artala, his native village, which was burned to the ground by nomadic raiders.
He decided to go home in September after learning that his corner of southwestern Darfur was actually rather peaceful, a place where nomads and farmers had begun to take halting steps toward reconciliation. ...
Mr. Gader says he is looking ahead, building a new hut and planting onions, though at times the past seizes him. ...
Not so long ago, in the village of Wastani, near Artala, nomadic women and women from farms would meet in the fields halfway between their homes and share little glasses of tea.
The nomads, who herded camels and cows, would bring meat, and the farmers would bring grain, and they would trade with one another in a fragile tapestry of interdependence between two peoples surviving off the same slice of dry, unforgiving land.
...
Suleiman Ibrahim, an elder in Mukjar, a camp near Artala with 10,000 displaced people, ... said “It’s not safe out there,” he said.
But many camps are not so safe either, with unchecked violence and rising tension between supporters of different rebel factions.
Mr. Gader, 32, spoke in hushed tones of camp politics and how some of the displaced people had called him a traitor for even thinking of going home, because they said it bolstered the government’s claim that things were not so bad.
Aid workers and camp dwellers say camp elders have a vested financial interest in keeping as many people as possible in the camp, because the elders can make money by siphoning food aid and selling it in local markets. But the returnees are learning that home is a complicated place, too.
...
Mr. Gader said his new hut would be made from straw, not mud. “You never know when we might be leaving again,” he said. ...
Omar Abdul Aziz Gader cupped his hand over his eyes and scanned a landscape of scorched fields and mud huts reduced to rings of ash.“It’s good to be back,” he said.
As a displaced person from Darfur, Mr. Gader found his options were not great. He could have stayed in the packed, increasingly unruly camp where he had been living for the past two years, or he could have ventured back to Artala, his native village, which was burned to the ground by nomadic raiders.
He decided to go home in September after learning that his corner of southwestern Darfur was actually rather peaceful, a place where nomads and farmers had begun to take halting steps toward reconciliation. ...
Mr. Gader says he is looking ahead, building a new hut and planting onions, though at times the past seizes him. ...
Not so long ago, in the village of Wastani, near Artala, nomadic women and women from farms would meet in the fields halfway between their homes and share little glasses of tea.
The nomads, who herded camels and cows, would bring meat, and the farmers would bring grain, and they would trade with one another in a fragile tapestry of interdependence between two peoples surviving off the same slice of dry, unforgiving land.
...
Suleiman Ibrahim, an elder in Mukjar, a camp near Artala with 10,000 displaced people, ... said “It’s not safe out there,” he said.
But many camps are not so safe either, with unchecked violence and rising tension between supporters of different rebel factions.
Mr. Gader, 32, spoke in hushed tones of camp politics and how some of the displaced people had called him a traitor for even thinking of going home, because they said it bolstered the government’s claim that things were not so bad.
Aid workers and camp dwellers say camp elders have a vested financial interest in keeping as many people as possible in the camp, because the elders can make money by siphoning food aid and selling it in local markets. But the returnees are learning that home is a complicated place, too.
...
Mr. Gader said his new hut would be made from straw, not mud. “You never know when we might be leaving again,” he said. ...
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