Working for UNICEF, Catherine Wiesner spent six months assessing the situation of child soldiers throughout Sudan, while also assisting with the emergency response in Darfur. Below is an excerpt of an email she sent to friends and family shortly before returning to the U.S. about the situation in the war-torn country.
Dear family and friends,
As most of you know, I have had the opportunity in the last several months to travel to Darfur to support emergency response for what is being called "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today." It is also being called genocide.
Since arriving in Sudan in January I have sent several emails and articles about what is happening in Darfur. Many of you have responded with shock, sadness and encouragement. I can't tell you how much I have appreciated your words of support and solidarity. A number of you also wrote asking what you can do to help--hence this email. I guess my answers are fairly predictable: speak up, give money, send prayers, and forward this email and other information.
Being in Darfur has been an experience that I find difficult to describe. Utterly tragic and compelling are the words I have used most often. It is such a cliché to say that seeing the immense suffering up close has made a deep impression on me, or that I will not easily forget the children of Darfur. But it is true. I continue to be inspired every day by the bravery and commitment of Sudanese colleagues. I have sat and tried to comprehend the despair of lives so brutally destroyed, yet I have been totally humbled by the incredible resilience of the human spirit.
My mood was somber the day I flew out of Darfur for the last time. I was trying to come to terms with all I had seen and heard, and with leaving so soon. Two things I was certain of: that it had really been my privilege to be there and try to offer some small amount of help, and that I had to find ways to spread the word and do more. So this is a first step.
Some of you may notice that I am sending this letter out on my 30th birthday. Indeed, it is one of the most significant ways I could think of to mark the occasion. It is with great gratitude for the many blessings in my own life that I am reaching out and asking you to help in raising awareness, funds and doing whatever you can for a place and people who are in such great need of hope.
Thoughts on the Children of Darfur
…Visiting the Morny refugee camp, I also went and visited the brand new temporary classrooms that had recently been constructed. It absolutely made my day to see hundreds of children proudly carrying their new exercise books in little homemade book bags made from scraps of cloth and to see the brand new volleyball net strung up. About 4,000 primary school children had been admitted to classes in Morny when the new schools opened the week before. More than 8,000 had registered and couldn't be accommodated. There is still much work to do.
The other image I had in my mind as we drove back from Morny that afternoon was a photo I had seen the day before of a beautiful 9-year-old girl crouching against a tree with a very far away look in her eyes. The person who showed me the picture said that she had been gang raped by a group of men the day before and pointed out to me the dried blood stains on her skirt. Wondering about that girl and the help that she might or might not receive, and about the impact of this experience on her future, I was also thinking about how child protection work is about so much more than delivering food and plastic sheeting (yet also desperately needed).
My area of work—looking out for children who have been separated from their parents, restarting education as a way of restoring some sense of normalcy to severely disrupted lives, creating opportunities for recreation and play that help children to express themselves and start to heal from the terrible experiences they have had—is not always considered lifesaving. But I will continue to fight for it every time as a core emergency intervention.
Yours,
Catherine
