Some three years ago I was working in a place called Kalma IDP camp in Darfur, home to more than 90.000 internally displaced people (IDP). Very often they were on international headlines, due to their claims on abuse and violence, and sometimes due to violence inside the camp as well. Many reports and events have occurred since I was working there, and the situation for many of these families has not changed much, although it seems like the general violence has diminished, due to the presence of African UN forces on the ground.
Last month I was made aware of this footage and note aired by CNN, and the curious thing is that I did not know about this note. I remember the interview, but in the limelight of so many complicated events during those difficult months, I never saw it on TV. (For the record: my family name is misspelled at the beginning of the interview).
I realize that there so much information that is stored in places where we will never find them, and reality is still there, sometimes in our face, but we simply ignore it, due to so many reasons. Some of these reasons is the perception of an overload of information; sometimes it is because of political convenience, and sometimes, it is just because we think we don´t need to know everything around us. When finding this note last month, I thought I did not want to forget these people, as they do not forget us. So here they are, as I remember them from three years back.
The CNN note was published on January 26, 2007 — As seen on Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria. The Pulitzer Center Director Jon Sawyer traveled in early 2006 to Sudan, where he spent a week with African Union peace monitors in Darfur.
