Hope in Adversity

Prospective Parliamentary candidate Chris White has just returned from a fact finding visit to CORD’s programme in Chad where our team is working alongside 85,000 Sudanese refugees who fled from Darfur. Here he gives his impressions.

"Even with months of preparation and several unpleasant injections, my visit to Chad was an experience I could never have anticipated or will forget – the people, the heat, the poverty, the challenges and I believe, the hope.

We flew from N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, across hundreds of miles of desert to Abeche, CORD’s local HQ, residence of the Programme Director and support team. We drove on through very dry and dramatic country to Amleyouna, about half an hour by road from our final destination.

The following morning we arrived at Gaga and started to make our way round the schools. The children started at half past seven – they had very little – a school. Most classes were in basic buildings, with corrugated iron roofs, with heavy boulders on top to prevent the wind blowing them apart. Some classes were held under trees, some in mud huts. Classes were often large, perhaps sixty, seventy or eighty, until the children were a little older, perhaps aged eleven, when they stopped going to school – so they could look after their families or go to work.

The children knew we were coming and in every class we were greeted warmly with very loud singing and lots of giggles – a very happy and very extraordinary atmosphere! Bright and determined faces. But no desks, nor chairs, nor textbooks.

We visited ‘child friendly spaces’ where they played musical chairs with rocks (each time the singing stopped a rock was taken away), made clay models and drew with crayons and remembered how to be children. We learned too how vulnerable children were loved and cared for.

I had a remarkable time and met remarkable people – such as Louise and Hassan Baba and Johanna. Their commitment was, is extraordinary, inspiring and humbling. Darfur is an international tragedy. Gaga refugee camp, for children at least, is a place of hope. And we should be immensely proud of what CORD does. Please support their work."