With the recent expulsion of aid agencies from Sudan, Catholic Relief Services is working closely with the United Nations, government and local authorities, and donors to help address growing gaps in humanitarian aid.

Over the past three months, we’ve started activities in two new areas for CRS—Habila and Mukjar—south of our main operational hub in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state. Partnering with the World Food Program, we’re delivering emergency rations to displaced people and distributing essential household items such as plastic sheeting and water cans. We are also undertaking sanitation and hygiene initiatives to help prevent disease spread and improve overall community health.
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Neal Deles, CRS Sudan’s northern area coordinator and education program manager in West Darfur, Sudan, sent this report.

Groups of 10 women come together to help shape mud and cow dung into a strong wall that will serve as an industrial-sized stove for cooking school meals. Photo by Habib Abdurahman/CRS

After six months in Darfur, my thoughts are filled with images of the people I have encountered during my visits to our field offices and those I’ve passed by on the road. Among this patchwork of images are ones of women stooping—to sweep the wind-scattered trash and dust that has collected in front of their homes, to light fires to heat water for their daily tea, to till their small plots of land early each morning, and to prepare the heavy loads they hoist on their heads.

Last year while I was working in Baltimore, I was fascinated by a photo essay of fuel-efficient stove trainings in Darfur. The stoves looked easy to make. I also liked that they used less firewood, helping to care for the environment while reducing the need for women living in camps for displaced people to risk venturing out to remote areas to gather firewood.
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CRS is helping to build temporary and permanent classrooms in West Darfur for students displaced by the ongoing violence. Here, first-grade students sit down for their lessons in a semi-permanent classroom CRS built at a school for displaced children. Photo by Neal Deles/CRS

Neal Deles is Catholic Relief Services’ northern area coordinator and education program manager in West Darfur, based out of the El Geneina office.

I’ve been having fun meeting students at schools for children displaced by the ongoing conflict in Darfur. Most are shy, coming near me but keeping a comfortable distance and just smiling when I greet them. The more brazen ones shout out English words they have learned in class: “OK! How are you? What is your name?” I shout back “Neal!” or ask if they are “tamam,” Arabic for “good,” which always elicits big smiles. One time as we were driving away, a student shouted “Sit down!” I laughed because I was already sitting down in the car, but then I realized it was his earnest attempt to communicate with me.
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CRS provides food, health and nutrition among  other basic needs.

With assistance from the U.S. government and concerned parish donors, CRS built a water tank that allows families, who once had to travel more than a mile for water to simply turn on a tap and step back as they watch their water cans fill. Toilets, mud stoves, hand-washing stands, shower stalls and garbage pits have been great comforts for displaced residents.  Photo by Lana Slezic for CRS

Neal Deles is CRS’ new area coordinator and education program manager in West Darfur. Here he shares first thoughts from our field office in El Geneina.

In October 2008, Neal Deles began serving as CRS area coordinator and education program manager in West Darfur, working out of our El Geneina field office. Photo by CRS staff.

Since arriving in early October, there has been so much to learn, understand and reflect on about CRS’ life-giving work in Darfur. One word I have heard a lot (and often say now) is “tamam” or “good.” I think it also sums up my experience here so far.

I had prepared for a challenging life out here, but I can actually say that I am quite comfortable. I like that we live simply and can clearly see the stars when the electricity goes off in the late evening. The food is good too—a lot of okra, tomatoes and beans—and the people are friendly and hospitable. Most of all, I am grateful for the collegiality and commitment of our 114-strong team here in West Darfur who have managed to keep things moving along.
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CRS North Sudan country representative Mark Snyder shows Bishop Ricard temporary shelters built by CRS for families recently displaced by the Darfur conflict. Photo by Bill Schmitt/CRS.

El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan – July 26, 2007

Three years after my first visit, I have returned to Darfur. The conflict is now four years old, and it is far from resolved. But hopefully the tide is turning as a new mood emerges and peace efforts continue.

On my last trip, I traveled with Catholic Relief Services’ president Ken Hackett to the town of Nyala in the state of South Darfur. This time I am in the town of El Geneina in West Darfur, seeing once again the situation on the ground firsthand with staff from CRS.

The emergency response has matured, and it is clear that CRS and other leading agencies are making a difference in people’s lives here. The work is difficult and challenging, especially due to security concerns. Risks are very real, and adjustments have to be made daily, which can be very costly and impact the scale of the response. But the overall situation seems to be stabilizing in terms of reaching people in need.

CRS country representative Mark Snyder shows Bishop Ricard temporary shelters built by CRS for families recently displaced by the Darfur conflict. Photo by Bill Schmitt/CRS.

Today we visited Ardamata camp where thousands of people are living just outside of El Geneina. In the last three weeks, CRS erected 750 new shelters for families recently driven from their homes. Agencies are partnering here to create a planned community that mimics village life. People live in very small structures that are very close to each other, but each families’ area is clearly defined, and schools and water pumps bring the community together.

We also spent time talking with a local wali, some sheiks and an imam, who represent the civic and religious authority in the town. They expressed a great deal of gratitude for CRS’ work and for the engagement of American Catholics and the American people in responding to the crisis. Ongoing needs are still considerable, however, and will require long-term assistance, such as improving access to clean water, building clinics and continuing to expand education services. But I’m seeing a greater level of cooperation and collaboration between the local government and aid agencies, and there is respect here for the work of CRS and that of other agencies. There is also a recognition of their contribution to this difficult situation rather than troubling indifference or animosity.

I’m sensing a different mood in Sudan. I believe that the governors, the Church and the Sudanese people are demonstrating a new sense of confidence in their ability to move toward peace. Sudan is a vast, beautiful country with considerable resources. The Sudanese must resolve the conflict in Darfur in order to move forward in achieving sustainable development.

I hope that American Catholics, who have responded generously to the conflict in Darfur, would continue to provide financial contributions to support ongoing emergency interventions. And I hope that these contributions would be matched by a serious effort on the part of our own State Department and administration in Washington to bring all involved parties together so that these skirmishes and disruption can cease. All Sudanese must be able to live in peace to realize their whole human potential.

Pope Paul VI said in his magnificent encyclical letter Populorum Progressio that development brings about peace, and peace is synonymous with development. It is my hope that this happens across Sudan.

Children welcome a visit from Bishop Ricard, Bishop Cooney and CRS staff at a camp in Darfur. Photo by Bill Schmitt/CRS.

El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan – July 25, 2007

I have come to Africa before, but this trip is decidedly different. I’ve not only been able to see conditions firsthand, but I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Catholic Bishops Conferences in three different countries: Zimbabwe, Burundi and Sudan. In these visits, I’ve witnessed African bishops’ deep commitment to the pursuit of peace and development.

This week I had the incredible experience of meeting with the Sudan Catholic Bishops Conference while participating in an open-air Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Khartoum. This joyous celebration of faith, including dancing from all the tribes of South Sudan, demonstrated the bishops’ and people’s hope for a new future between the north and south with the ending of the war. And now I am in Darfur. The mood here is also hopeful, but peace is a long way away.

Today we visited a camp for people who have been driven out of their homes by the ongoing conflict. The standards of living are very poor, but thanks to Catholic Relief Services and other agencies working together, these people at least have a place to stay and receive food supplies on a regular basis. It’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of situation, and I feel deep sorrow for the people living here. People seem very happy to have received some assistance, but they are all looking for better times. Hopefully they will be able to return to their home villages down the line and return to their normal lives — as this is certainly not normal.

A group of children greet the bishops in Darfur at a school where CRS has built urgently needed classrooms. Photo by Bill Schmitt/CRS.

A lot of excellent agencies are cooperating together for the well-being of the people in Darfur, including CRS. I’m hopeful, because I believe an opportunity exists to achieve peace in Darfur and throughout Sudan. Both sides seem to be in a more positive frame of mind. But people continue to suffer — good, hardworking people who deserve the help of the world.

Talking with individual bishops in Sudan was really uplifting. They have some very practical ideas and a desire to make the Church much more than just an idle player and really help the country as a nation. Jesus continuously preached and showed that his lifestyle was to care for those in need. Perhaps this is our time as Americans, and especially as American Catholics, to reach out with what we have to support and help other people. This help can give Sudanese in need food, medication, a house — or at least something to live in — and education. If the rest of the world could pitch in to help as well, the Sudanese could reap many benefits in the years and decades to come.

Perhaps this is also the time in Sudan’s history when everything can turn to the better. It won’t happen today or tomorrow, but I think it can happen.

Bishop Cooney and Bishop Ricard join CRS country representative Mark Snyder in a discussion with teachers at a Darfur school where CRS built needed classrooms. Photo by Bill Schmitt/CRS.

Bishops Ricard and Cooney meet with CRS country representative Mark Snyder and head of programming Hani El Mahdi. Photo by Bill Schmitt/CRS.

Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida, and Bishop Patrick R. Cooney of Gaylord, Michigan, are currently in Sudan to meet with the Sudan Catholic Bishops Conference as well as Catholic Relief Services staff. Here, Bishop Ricard shares some reflections from his first days in the capital.

Khartoum, Sudan — July 24, 2007

For the first time in almost 20 years, Sudan’s bishops are reunited in Khartoum, having come together to participate in the Sudan Catholic Bishops Conference plenary. This joyous occasion marks a new unity, with the separate north and south conferences merged once again into one.

This Sunday on the grounds of St. Matthew’s Cathedral a sense of jubilance and relief prevailed at the open-air Mass and subsequent celebration of music and dance. Around 5,000 people gathered outside the church, expressing an incredible outpouring of affection for the bishops by shaking and kissing their hands. Young dancers and drummers from every major tribe in South Sudan entertained the crowd with music, song, dancing and prayer. The festive mood moved audience members — including nuns, priests and a bishop — to join the dances of their related tribes. This celebration felt like a real turning point, as if people were removing the last restraints of war and feeling free to finally express their faith and joy.

When we met with the bishops the following day, it became clear that the reality in Sudan has changed. Peace has created a whole new set of issues for the conference to address. People returning to the South have rising expectations and are looking to the Church and parishes for schools, medical care and more. Anxiety over delivering all that is needed tempers newfound optimism as people realize that rebuilding won’t happen overnight — even if people are ready to return home now.

Khartoum has also changed. The quiet sleepy town I visited with Ken Hackett in 2004 is now a burgeoning capital with plenty of traffic and construction cranes. There is also a greatly increased presence of southerners, especially young southerners taking advantage of Khartoum’s growing employment opportunities.

Today we will move on to Darfur to visit with some officials and tour CRS projects. Our briefings to date have noted a relative decrease in terms of violence and insecurity and an improvement in the ability to reach more people than before; nonetheless, most access is by helicopter because roads remain dangerous. We should bear in mind that this conflict is far from solved, and 2 million people are still not able to return safely to their homes.

The Sudanese bishops are deeply concerned for their country, both in regard to Darfur and the challenges of facilitating return to the South. They are working closely together to address common problems and are speaking with a unified voice. This represents a new day and is clearly the result of the long-term commitment of CRS and other NGOs who stuck by the Sudanese people, walking with them and accompanying them in their struggle.

Peace and hope for the future now exists between the north and south. May it soon reach Darfur.

A glistening steel water tank sits atop its metal throne. The structure is an arresting sight — a tall anomaly in a town of grass huts, mud-brick homes and one-story cement buildings. Thick pipes run down the length of the tower until they disappear into the dusty ground. I feel a strong temptation to salute the tank in admiration.

After the Indian Ocean tsunami, I worked in Sri Lanka helping to coordinate relief activities in the southern district of Galle. Getting enough water to temporary camps there was a never-ending headache, and here above me — in Darfur of all places — stands a tank filled with what I consider to be liquid gold.

CRS in partnership with UNICEF and the government’s water and sanitation department have set up this impressive temporary water system in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state. A generator, pump and considerable amount of fuel drive fresh water from an area borehole up into the CRS storage tank, which was funded by the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). At designated hours each day, the tank releases chlorinated water, which flows out to multiple taps in two camps for displaced Darfuris and in a small village nearby. Families who have had to flee their homes to escape violence now have the small luxury of turning on a tap and stepping back as they watch their water cans fill.

I enter the closest camp of Medina Hujaj with three of CRS’ West Darfur staff members: Derek Kyambadde, water-sanitation and education program manager; Rashida Ahmed, education team leader; and Ibrahim Azrag, water-sanitation officer. We stop in front of a set of six taps and wait for the area sheikh to arrive. He walks up with an outstretched hand, and everyone launches into the traditional string of Sudanese welcomes — “Peace be with you. Blessings be with you. How are you doing? We are OK. How are you? Good. Good. Thank God for that. All is good.” I join in with the few Arabic phrases I’m still mastering, hoping no one notices the creative liberty I take in the hum of hellos.

The sheikh kindly grants us permission to tour the camp and speak with its residents. We approach a group of women gathered near the water lines, and I ask one who is filling her plastic can if she’d be willing to share a bit of her story with me.

“When we came here, there was no water in the camp. We had to go to a small river bed more than two kilometers away,” says Zahara Adam, a 25-year-old mother who arrived three years ago. “Now it’s good to have the tap here. It saves time for making food.” She adds that the water lets her wash her family’s clothes more easily and helps keep her baby clean.

Camp resident Zahara Adam appreciates how much easier life is after CRS installed water taps in the Darfur camp she has called home for the past three years. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS.

Right next to the taps are another group of women sitting around the drying foundations of round mud stoves. As if on cue (and totally unplanned), another CRS vehicle pulls up with two health and nutrition staff members. A second hum of greetings ensues, and we learn that they started teaching these women yesterday how to construct the mud stoves, with plans to finish this morning.

One of the stove makers is Aziza Juma. She tells me that she is 23 years old and is the mother of three children. She quietly adds that only one is still living. I reach for her hand in a totally inadequate gesture of condolence and ask no further questions. After a silent pause, we continue talking.

She explains that she is building an improved mud stove with CRS because it’s dangerous to use an open cooking fire inside her shelter. The new stove will also use less firewood. This is good, because she doesn’t feel safe going out to collect wood, and buying it is expensive.

As we leave to see CRS’ other water-sanitation improvements in the camp — including blocks of toilets, hand-washing stands, shower stalls and garbage pits — we thank the women in another singsong of goodbyes and well wishes. “Ma’salama, ma’salama.” We leave you with peace.

Debbie DeVoe, CRS’ Regional Information Officer for East Africa, is currently visiting projects in Sudan to share stories about the people CRS is assisting. This dispatch was written on June 18.

A camp resident, Aziza Juma, is happy to be building a more energy-efficient mud stove with CRS’ help. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS.

Zeinab interviews a mother about her family’s eating habits to analyze health and nutrition issues in northern Darfur communities. Photo by Hikma Alnour/CRS

It’s a little unsettling to fly west across Sudan’s deserts to Darfur. The four-year-old conflict — which according to UN estimates has killed about 200,000 people and displaced 2 million from their homes — continues to rage. But in a number of places, an uneasy security holds, enabling aid agencies like Catholic Relief Services to provide emergency assistance.

The local Sudanese staff hired to deliver the aid on the ground are vital to these relief efforts. CRS currently has about 120 staff members in our West Darfur field office in El Geneina. When security allows, another dozen work out of three sub-offices in the 85-mile Northern Corridor stretch running up along the Chadian border. These dedicated professionals provide a wide range of relief services, including monthly food distributions to 150,000 people affected by the conflict, temporary shelter construction, health and nutrition training, education programs, agricultural recovery, and water and sanitation projects.

When I arrive at CRS’ modest sub-office and living compound in Kulbus, I’m surprised to meet two female staff members who are providing health and nutrition services. Male staff sure, but what are young Muslim women doing working in Darfur hot spots far away from their families?

“It’s better for women to do health and nutrition work because women are the ones who cook and provide primary care for their children,” explains 29-year-old Zeinab Mohamed, CRS’ West Darfur nutrition team leader who previously worked for six years with Sudan’s Ministry of Health.

Hikma shows Haraza villagers how to make mud stoves that cook food twice as fast using half the firewood as open-air fires. Photo by Zeinab Mohamed/CRS

Zeinab works alongside 24-year-old Hikma Alnour, a CRS nutrition assistant. Teaming with two other female staff members in El Geneina, they coordinate health and nutrition activities in six El Geneina camps for displaced families and in the towns and villages surrounding CRS’ northern sub-offices. When they head north by helicopter, they travel in pairs and typically visit one or two sub-offices over a two-week period, providing as many services in as many villages as time and security allow.

“I want to support communities affected by the conflict and educate them on how to make their lives easier,” Zeinab adds. She also appreciates the money she can earn to educate her own children. With her seven-year-old son in primary school and five-year-old son in kindergarten, Zeinab needs to pay their teachers and for transportation each month.

Running through the list of CRS health and nutrition activities takes some time. These four women weigh children under five in the communities served, provide two weeks of daily follow-up to mothers of underweight children, hold nutrition education workshops, offer demonstrations of how to prepare more nutritional local dishes, teach women how to build simple energy-efficient mud stoves and train traditional birth attendants in prenatal and pediatric nutrition, immunization guidelines, breastfeeding best practices and more.

Today we take a four-wheel-drive truck across sandy tracks just outside of Kulbus to visit the village of Haraza, where CRS has worked for the past three years. A new mother joins us as we’re chatting with her relatives, and Hikma’s eyes light up as she reaches out for the baby. The one-month-old girl is doing well even though the family has its challenges. Villagers must collect all needed water by crossing the mile and a half of sand to Kulbus — a distance considered quite short in this region, especially when covered by donkey. Some women must also travel considerable distances to reach their farming plots of arable land.

I ask Hikma if she ever gets discouraged in her work.

“I support people from Kulbus and Sirba, so it’s good,” she says, shaking her head no. “Mothers don’t know the benefits of early initiation and exclusivity of breastfeeding. I teach them, and children benefit.”

I benefit too by having these women replace my preconceived notions with a new understanding of courageous, committed health workers who are more than capable of taking on the challenges of helping people in Darfur.

Debbie DeVoe, CRS’ Regional Information Officer for East Africa, is currently visiting projects in Sudan to share stories about the people CRS is assisting. This dispatch was written on June 16.