Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid

by Jessica Alexander

  THE DAY WAS HALF GONE by the time Sheila and I landed in Nyala, where I was to spend the night before my helicopter ride to Zalingei the next morning. Just outside Nyala, the second largest city in Sudan after Khartoum, is Kalma camp, which at the time housed more than 130,000 IDPs, making it the largest standalone camp in Darfur.

  It was a short drive from the airstrip to the compound, and groups of IDP tents lined the sandy road. Other buildings the color of earth blended into the brown landscape. There was hardly any vegetation whatsoever; I couldn’t imagine anything but a cactus surviving here. Donkeys trudged slowly along the side of the road, carrying bags of food or pulling carts whose riders relentlessly hit them with sticks. They walked on, heads down, faces stoic, resigned to their miserable lives. It was so hot that even the flies buzzed in slow motion, hovering in the air, making it easy to swat them. But as deserted as it may have felt, I knew Nyala was, in fact, a major Darfurian destination, a historical trade hub with routes to Chad, Central African Republic, Khartoum, and South Sudan.

  In Nyala, our offices and residences shared a single compound—a one-story complex made up of five boxy cement buildings, which surrounded an open area where someone had hung a basketball hoop. A lone latrine sat in the middle, encircled by corrugated metal. Next to it was a sink and a small cracked mirror. Whenever I had to go outside, I’d hug the shaded walls, hiding myself from the fierce daylight that reflected off of every surface. This sun is seriously trying to kill me.

  But it wasn’t just the Darfur sun—it was the Darfur dust, which seemed to already have penetrated every orifice. I crunched it in my teeth, tasted it in the back of my throat. After having been there only a few hours the skin on my feet turned a shade darker, and my hairbrush was a dirty brown. In Nyala, the office manager gave me a special handheld dryer for my keyboard that got the dust out of the crevices. As I sat there, blow-drying my computer, I wished that I had a similar device for my skin. I had learned quickly in Darfur that it didn’t really matter how many times I showered, since the water coming out of the taps was often dirtier than I was. Some nights as I pulled the fourth brown Q-tip from my ear I’d suspect the dust was mocking my attempts at staying clean. “Nice try, white girl.”

  The UN was holding a security briefing for all agencies the afternoon Sheila and I arrived. It was nothing more than a small room of twenty or so sweaty and exhausted aid workers sitting around a wobbly plastic table, but this was my first multi-agency meeting, and I was excited. “It’s just a security briefing,” Sheila said. “Don’t get that psyched.”

  A man from one agency stood at the front of the room and read out the latest news from the town and camp. “There was an incident yesterday. A fight between the host community and some camp residents broke out. We’re still getting details, no one was hurt, but some of the IDPs were taken to jail. We’re working on getting them released and will get back to you when we have more information.”

  Tensions between the displaced people living in the camps and residents of the towns (referred to as the host communities) were common. I tried to imagine the reaction in my hometown if more than one hundred thousand people descended upon it. The displaced were a social and financial burden to areas already strapped for resources. Sometimes the presence of so many new residents decreased wages or increased housing costs. Local businesses could suffer from the stuff aid workers handed out for free: urban water sellers, for example, couldn’t compete when people snuck into the camp to get free water and resold it in town, bringing down the price. Or host communities were angered by the free services that IDPs received from aid agencies, the kinds of things they themselves didn’t even have access to: the water, for instance, health care or education. Sometimes townspeople rented out their homes and registered as IDPs, taking up residence in the camps. There they were able to receive free goods and avoid paying taxes. The aid community tried to temper such discrepancies and prevent attempts at fraud by providing services to the host community, too. But the limited nature of supplies inevitably created an undercurrent of tension, a strained mood always exacerbated by the apparent endlessness of war and the attendant uncertainty as to when people might be able to return to their homes.

  In the meeting room, people had other questions: “When will the evacuation plans be finalized?”

  “They’re in Khartoum now awaiting approval,” someone replied. If severe fighting were to break out, we were all hightailing it out of there on UN helicopters. The problem was that there were more aid workers in Nyala than seats on the helicopters. If push came to shove, UN staff got first priority, NGOs were second. No matter what, though, local staff would be left behind, a sad reality I would come to grapple with soon enough.

  “What is the status of the police escorts for women getting firewood?” a blonde woman with a Dutch accent asked. “We’ve had another rape.” I listened intently. I’d heard about rape in Darfur before, but the problem seemed so pervasive and horrendous that from far away it was hard to believe—like reading about American soldiers pissing on dead Iraqi bodies.

  One of the greatest needs of the displaced was firewood used to cook food and boil water. Women, who customarily collected these household goods, endured tremendous risk when venturing beyond camp borders. To avoid having to stray far from the camp, the new population cut down surrounding branches, bushes, and trees, which denuded the landscape, depleted vegetation, and led to rapid deforestation. They even resorted to digging out roots of trees, leaving huge gashes in the land. When nothing was left, women were forced to walk even farther outside the protective confines of the camp to get firewood. These trips could take up to three or four days. Many women were attacked or raped by roaming gangs of soldiers, militia members, or bandits.

  Everyone knew rape was a common weapon of war in Sudan. According to Sharia law, which forbids adultery, it was technically illegal for the women to have intercourse outside of marriage, even if they were raped. I heard from nurses who had to block the entrances to their clinics to keep out police officers trying to take women to jail. No one pursued the rapists. Compounding the problem was “Criminal Form 8,” a boilerplate medical evidence form issued by the Ministry of Justice that victims of violent crimes were required by law to complete. Women who had been assaulted had to obtain Form 8 from the police before seeking medical treatment. Since they feared being arrested by the police, women didn’t get the form, which meant they didn’t get treatment. Eventually, after significant advocacy from human rights groups, Criminal Form 8 was amended. Women no longer had to report to police prior to receiving medical services, and health providers who did not file the form were no longer subject to punishment for treating rape survivors.

  The UN was trying to arrange police or army escorts for women. Their husbands and fathers, their uncles and brothers—they couldn’t escort them or go themselves. When asked why, they answered, “Because we will be killed.”

  As the security briefing wrapped up, a final announcement was made. “Oh, and the party tonight is … Where is it again, Mike?”

  “UNICEF,” Mike shouted from the crowd.

  “Right—UNICEF compound. Bring your own JJ.” JJ, as I would discover later that night, was the locally brewed alcohol, dubbed Janjaweed Juice.

  When we got back to the office, Deddy—a polite young Indonesian logistician with dark hair and a skinny moustache—asked if I wanted to go to the party with him.

  “Sure!” Friday was the only day off in Sudan, so Thursday was the night to party.

  “You know we have to leave at nine forty-five to get back by curfew at ten,” he said, tempering my excitement only the littlest bit.

  After dinner, we drove down dark stretches of dirt roads lined by gated compounds and tukuls—Sudanese huts made of earth and roofed with thatch—in search of the UNICEF compound. “God, it’s hot out here,” I said, trying to make chitchat with Deddy. He was a quiet man and not the type to initiate conversation. “What do you think it is?”

 
“At least 38,” he said.

  I tried doing the math in my head. “What is that in Fahrenheit?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s hot. The only number you need to really know here is 40. If your temperature is 40, that’s 104°F. You probably have malaria, and that’s when you go to the hospital.”

  We continued down the bumpy streets, me gripping the glove compartment to steady myself. “There it is,” he said, looking down a narrow path lined with about a dozen parked white Land Cruisers. He slowed and backed into the spot so the car faced outward. “You should always park this way—in case something happens we can get out of here quickly.” Deddy had just spent three years working in Iraq, where he picked up these sorts of things.

  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.