Amira's Journey to Um Dukhun

Amira will receive grass to cover the wooden frame of her camp dwelling, which will house her and her three sons. Photo: Kristin Griffith/Mercy Corps

The arrival of rainy season usually marks the highly anticipated start of planting season in western Sudan. For Amira, this year's rains means only that she and her family will remain wet.

Amira is one of thousands of new arrivals to camps in Um Dukhun, a Sudanese border town in the center of an increasingly unstable region. They're coming not only from elsewhere in Darfur, but from neighboring Chad as well as nearby Central African Republic (CAR).

We need your help to continue meeting the basic needs of families who arrive in these camps with next to nothing.

A week ago, Amira and her husband gathered up their three young sons, stuffed whatever belongings they could fit into a bag, and fled their village in South Darfur. Tensions in the village had been ratcheting up for two months as inter-tribal conflicts escalated. Amira's neighbors suffered as their livestock and household belongings were slowly looted. Finally, when a neighbor was shot while thieves attempted to steal a goat, Amira and her family decided their lives would be at risk if they stayed any longer.

The family set out on foot, walking for two days before reaching Um Dafok, a town on Sudan's border with CAR. There, they found a truck heading to the larger town of Um Dukhun, well-known as a hub for aid agencies offering relief to Darfur's displaced. Standing alongside the truck, a tearful separation ensued: Amira and her sons were allowed to buy passage and climb in, but her husband was not.

A day later, the truck arrived in Um Dukhun's Jeddida camp, one of ten camps inside Um Dukhun where Mercy Corps is providing shelter, latrines, water and other basic necessities to families. Amira and her fellow passengers are among 300 families who have arrived in the past four days.

Mercy Corps opened its Um Dukhun office last October in response to an increasing number of displaced people there. Agency aid teams continue to help build latrines, provide drinking water, teach livelihood skills, and promote good-hygiene practices among roughly 14,000 people.

Toward the end of May, simultaneous fighting in eastern Chad as well as in Um Dafok resulted in hundreds of new families arriving in Um Dukhun. Mercy Corps teams worked with other agencies and the local government authorities to rapidly erect a camp for an anticipated 650 families. By July 3, more than 1,300 families had arrived. Still more come each day.

In recent days, Mercy Corps has shipped truckloads of materials to Jeddida camp to build shelters and latrines to meet the needs of the surging population.

One of these trucks ferried grass mats and bamboo; they'll be distributed tomorrow to Amira and other families. For now, Amira says that she is simply "waiting": for the supplies and for her husband, who she hopes will come and join her. Most of all, she is waiting for the day her family will be able to return home, and join Sudanese families heralding the start of rainy season in their fields.

Your donation to our Emergency Response Fund can help us deliver aid quickly to families like Amira's.