Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid (14 page)

The party was on the roof. A buffet of neatly prepared dishes graced the tables in the center of the patio. Sitting in a circle in the corner were eight or so expats passing a hookah. I recognized some of them from the meeting earlier that day. One had been on my flight that morning. They were of all ages, from all different parts of the world, but none of them from Sudan.

I made my way over to the table where bottles of liquor had been placed in neat rows. As I was surveying my options, a stocky man in his midfifties approached. “Are you new here?”

“Yeah. I just arrived this morning.”

“Ah, a newbie. I’m Bob,” he said, holding his hand out to greet me. He was clean-shaven, unlike a lot of the other men I had seen at the meeting this afternoon, and his shirt was tucked smartly into his pleated shorts. He looked like he was going to play golf.

“I’m Jess. I’m leaving for Zalingei tomorrow.”

“Oh, Zalingei. You’ll like it out there. It’s nice.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.” People described Zalingei as a small, quaint town on a river. “Have you been out here long?”

“I guess so. What has it been … Oh, I think I’m on eighteen months now.” Bob looked about my dad’s age. I found out later that Bob had a wife and three children back in Canada. He saw them over his breaks and R&Rs—the Rest and Relaxation days built into our contracts. Every six or eight weeks, we were given a ticket to Nairobi where we could eat better food, bathe in hot water, sleep in air-conditioning, and watch TV. Some people used Nairobi as a stopover and went even further—to Europe, to beaches on the coast of Kenya or Tanzania, or, if they racked on a few extra vacation days like Bob did, all the way to Canada. R&R was sometimes referred to as “Rest and Reconsideration,” because some people never returned after a reminder of what they were missing on the outside.

“So, since you’re new to Sudan, you must not have tried Janjaweed Juice yet,” he said, pulling out a bottle. I had expected it to look like a Bloody Mary so I was relieved when it came out looking like vodka.

“What is that stuff, anyway?”

“Let’s just say, it’s what keeps us going out here,” he said, pouring me a cup.

“Thanks.” I took a sip and coughed. “It tastes like paint thinner.” Janjaweed Juice was brewed from fermented sorghum. It may have been urban legend, but I had heard that two men actually went blind from drinking a batch that was prepared incorrectly. I saw some white wine on the table and, trying not to be impolite, switched.

People started dancing to Snoop Dogg. Guys were doing shots. The hookah was relit and passed. I reminded myself that I was in Darfur and not on the roof of the PhiDelt house in college. That a sprawling displaced persons camp was visible from this terrace. That this was no pregame party mixer, but a gathering of aid workers involved in the most massive humanitarian operation in the past decade.

No matter how many of these parties I would attend in my time overseas, there was always something unsettling about our revelry. Years later, one agency responding to the drought in Ethiopia got chided by donors—just ordinary people who had given a hundred bucks to support the response—who saw a photo online of aid workers lounging by a pool. The pool was attached to a guesthouse in nearby Nairobi, where staff went for a short break or stopped off while en route to other assignments. But to anyone looking at the picture, a pool was a pool, and to many people it seemed disgraceful that during a drought, aid workers
could luxuriate in the one thing that so many people were dying without. They didn’t know that almost all houses in Nairobi had pools, that a refreshing swim was probably just the thing any human working in those conditions would need once in a while, especially in order to return to work more rested and effective. No one was an altruistic robot. Relaxing and finding ways to enjoy ourselves was a way to stay sane, a way to make life a bit more recognizable. But here at this roof party, the proximity to so much suffering—the pronounced imbalance of it all—was hard to ignore, despite the flowing JJ. I looked over the balcony to the dark town below, bathed in foggy yellow moonlight.

Deddy approached me. “You OK?”

“Yeah. This is some scene,” I said.

“Welcome to Nyala!” he chuckled. “We’ve got to get going soon. It’s almost nine thirty.”

“Do all of these other people just not obey curfew?” I looked around. The party seemed like it was just starting to kick off.

“A lot of people just sleep over and go home in the morning. Do you want to do that?”

“No, no. Let’s go.”

I said good-bye to Bob, who told me that he was probably heading out to Zalingei in the next few weeks and would see me there. As we hurried down the stairs to the car, I couldn’t help feeling like Cinderella about to lose my flip-flop, racing back to the compound before my Land Cruiser turned into a pumpkin.

The Nyala airport where I was dropped off the next morning was surprisingly calm. It didn’t have any of Khartoum’s chaos—just an open room with plastic chairs and a small café selling sodas, coffee, and some pastries. Even so, and even though I was happy to be rid of Sheila, who would be staying in Nyala, I had been dreading this leg of the trip all week. People joked that the UN helicopters we flew out to remote towns like Zalingei were rickety old Soviet hand-me-downs, sealed shut with a glue gun and tended to by toothless bushmen. I walked outside to see the white helicopter parked on the tarmac; it looked pretty sturdy. But then I recognized the pilot. He had been at the party, doing shots with his friends in the corner.
Please don’t tell me he’s flying this thing
. He was.

A handful of other aid workers and I climbed up the small steps into the helicopter and took our seats. The hungover pilot started the rotor, turned around, and yelled something about seat belts nobody could hear over the roar of the engine. For a moment, we hung in the air, then rapidly ascended into the cloudless sky. I looked through the little window and watched the veins of the riverbed zigzag across the expanse of coffee-colored terrain below. As we got closer to Zalingei, signs of life appeared; from the helicopter, goats grazing below looked like white sprinkles on a scoop of caramel ice cream. Before we landed, the helicopter hovered in the air to let a herd of camels pass below.
Their long, clumsy legs kicked up clouds of blurry sand, making the air thick and puffy.

Adam, a driver from my NGO, was waiting with a few other drivers outside the small fence surrounding the airfield. Although we plastered agency stickers onto any moving vehicle in Khartoum, in Darfur discretion was encouraged for security reasons. Here, all the agencies used unmarked Land Cruisers, a policy that made it blatantly obvious who was part of the aid community but at least served to conceal particular agency affiliations.

Adam grabbed my bags and flung them into the back of the pickup. Driving through the small town, we passed men walking slowly alongside the road, their long white
djellabas
and matching turbans glowing against the dry, muted landscape. Some pulled donkey carts or rode on donkeys; others paced the dusty roads with friends, their arms intertwined. Although men and women never showed each other affection in public, it was not uncommon to see men walking through town hand in hand, or with their arms on each other’s waists. There weren’t many women on the streets, but those who were all wore multicolored
tobes
draped around their bodies. A group of them strolled in sync along the dull horizon, dressed brightly in magentas, limes, golds, aquas. They looked like walking flowers.

The town was centered around a colorful market where vendors came to sell vegetables, meats, grains, and rice. Women sat on the ground or on short stools, adjusting their head scarves, their crops lined up on
blankets and in baskets in front of them. Fruit was arranged in miniature pyramids, tomatoes grouped in piles of six, strips of okra stacked delicately. Small shops opened up onto the square, some with freezers containing soda, juice, and water, others with shelves lined with canned goods, biscuits, and cereals. There were designated areas where men parked their donkeys and camels while shopping. Many of the camels were tied with their two front legs folded back at the knee so they couldn’t walk anywhere. They seemed confused and helpless, hopping uncomfortably as they tried to stand up.

We drove through the main square slowly. There wasn’t a road, just a large open space where cars could pass. In a place like this, where the majority of vehicles were those of aid agencies, roads didn’t really exist. Someone told me that you could tell how long a place had had vehicles—and therefore how long aid workers had been around—by looking at the behavior of the animals. If they were oblivious to the sound of a honking horn, you knew cars were new to the scene. In Zalingei, animals strode in and out of traffic, unaware of the potential dangers of high-speed vehicles. Some lounged casually in the middle of the road until drivers got out and physically pushed them aside.

WE PULLED UP TO THE
NGO compound and Adam cut the engine. A guard opened the heavy, squeaky gate and we proceeded down a stone path leading to a
flowering tree. The complex looked like a low-budget retreat center. To my left was a row of bedrooms and ahead was an open kitchen and dining area, big enough to hold a Ping-Pong table and some sagging hammocks. The workday was over and my new colleagues were already back from the office and sitting around the kitchen table, casually eating and chatting, some with laptops open.

A warm Bangladeshi woman in her early thirties with a round face, deep dimples, and curly hair heard the gate open and skipped over to me as I lugged my suitcase along the pebbly path. She immediately put out a hand to help. “You’re Jessica! I’ve been waiting for you! I’m Amina.” After my time with Sheila, I was relieved to be welcomed by such a friendly woman, especially since I knew she would be my direct supervisor. We had exchanged a few e-mails before I arrived but I hadn’t guessed she’d be this nice.

Amina introduced me to my new colleagues. Laura, the gender-based violence officer, had already been working in the camps for five months. She was in her early thirties, a hardened rape counselor from Queens who loved the Beastie Boys. She had a thick tattoo around her arm, and spoke with an unsentimental New York accent. Matthew, a shy, sweet Swiss water engineer, oversaw the water and sanitation program, which included everything from basic camp hygiene, to digging wells and designing and constructing latrines. Although he spent his days figuring out how to keep people clean and safe from their own shit, he blushed
whenever the word was spoken. “I prefer to call it excrement,” he said.

Christine was an adorable blonde Canadian in her early twenties who always seemed to be bouncing. She had been here for more than seven months working as the finance administrator. Like me, this was her first real job in the field. Then there was Jumma, an older Pakistani man in charge of logistics. Jumma was routinely asked to do the impossible, procuring everything from Nescafé to printing paper, from the foam mattresses we slept on to the daily donkey delivery of two barrels of water that we used to shower. He had a head of thick gray hair, stocky legs, and pants with ten pockets. You wanted him on your side because he’d be the one to find a working fan or extra lamp for your bedroom when everyone else said it was out of the question.

Dmitri was the head of the Zalingei office: everyone’s boss. A tall, balding, handsome ex-military man from Russia, he was kind and approachable despite his intimidating résumé. He wore a T-shirt which displayed a picture of his wife and son and drank his coffee from a mug with the same photo on it. Dmitri welcomed me warmly and showed me to my room. It was small but had everything I needed: a bed and mosquito net, a lightbulb, a screened window, a fan, and a small dresser. After so much anticipation, I was finally here, and the place didn’t seem nearly as rough as I had expected. I unpacked slowly and heard a knock on my door.

Amina popped her head in. “You OK?”

“Yes, yes!” I said. “Here, come in.” I didn’t have a chair in my room so she sat on the bed.

“It’s really great to have you here. I think your study will really help us plan our programs. I have some ideas now and am applying for more funding, but we need to know more about the children and their needs before we can make further plans.”

People like Amina ran programs that worked to restore normalcy for children. Experts in child psychology had long understood that children needed structured and stimulating places to go and outlets for play, especially after times of trauma. Usually children were the most resilient people in a population and could rebound easily if given the chance just to be kids. My role was to investigate how the children in the camps were coping with the changes in their lives—to question boys and girls about their feelings of safety, their daily routines, their fears, who they went to for help and support. There were many questions Amina wanted answered. Did girls go to school—or were they too busy with household chores or taking care of their younger siblings? Did boys go to school—or did they try to earn money by making bricks? What did the children here like to do for fun? Had their behavior changed since coming to the camp? Did any show signs of antisocial behavior? What did antisocial behavior even look like in place like Darfur?