Can you remember what you were doing four years ago? Starting secondary school? No exams to worry about? What was going on in the world? It has been four years since the war in Iraq started, four years since SARS broke out - what's happened in your life since then?
In four years little has changed in Darfur where conflict between rebel groups continues. The UN think around 200,000 people have been killed in that time. Hundreds and thousands have had to leave their homes unable to return and just under three million people get help from people like Tearfund for basics like food, water and healthcare. All this in only four years.
‘People on horses came and killed a lot of people in my village,’ says Dalma Wadi, speaking in a refugee camp in Chad in 2004. ‘They shot people to make sure they died. They took all our wealth and burned our homes, so we ran. I do not know when we will return home. It is all too dangerous.’
At Tearfund we know very well how dangerous the situation is. Last July we were shocked and deeply saddened when one of our staff was killed in West Darfur.
Vicious rumours had been spread that organisations like ourselves were poisoning water to kill the children. Five of our Tearfund staff went on a regular visit to a village they worked with only to be faced with angry crowds who had heard the rumours. Our team tried to reason with them, but the villagers were so angry they wouldn’t listen. In the chaos three of our team managed to get away, one was badly beaten and Rashid Mohamed Mohamed Adam was tragically beaten to death.
Some time after the attack our team made contact with the head chief of the village. The chief explained that the village felt ashamed at what had happened so they agreed for the team to come back and meet with the people. At the gathering the people said they didn’t deserve for Tearfund to come back and work with them again & that they were sorry. The villagers had each been blaming each other for the attack, but our team helped bring reconciliation amongst them.
In the midst of Darfur – a place of so much suffering & fear, here, Tearfund was able to show God’s love to this village in an act of incredible mercy and grace.
In 2004 we asked for support to help us work in Darfur. We were amazed at how generous your response was. It enabled us to do so much.
Tearfund are committed to people like Dalma Wadi and supporting them while they still cannot return home. But we are going to need more money to help us do that.