Shangil Tobay, North Darfur

Thought I would make contact before I head out to the field again. Tomorrow I will fly out once again to Shangil Tobay (ST) and hopefully it will be for good. I had to come back to EF last Thursday since I had some technical problems with my computer (it melted down) and our RBGAN (our satellite comms system). As a result of not being able to actually function or maintain contact I had to come back.

All is fixed now, or so we hope, and so I am once again going to ST. I suppose you can call this growing pains all these fits and starts on our way to constructing the new base. Then there is the security situation. For now things are stable in ST and we have the good grace of the SLA-MM commander. But the truth is that no one can protect against armed bandits who wish to succeed. So we are taking all security precautions and making tentative steps forward. The base I construct, by the way, is actually one way to protect us. It will have substantial walls, barbed wire and bunkers to be sure (these precautions are often considered contradictory for maintaining proximity with our populations as an AID agency; but in this context every one understands) as well the injection of money into the community and the heightening of our visibility are two things working in our favour as protection mechanisms.

We are hearing rumours now that make us slightly concerned. Clearly we are heading into another peak of activity in Darfur … this problem is over 4 years old but still it cannot be considered in a status quo state… and so with all the UN involvement, the external political pressures (including George Cluny!) and the internal negotiations between the various factions Darfur is heading into another interesting epoch. Be that as it may, the rumours that concern us is that the ‘non signatory groups’ being all those groups who did not sign the Darfur Peace Agreement back in May ’06 (that being everyone except the SLA-MM!) are now interested in a hostile takeover of the country by pushing the government supporting SLA-MM back to the government controlled territories. Since ST is controlled by the SLA-MM you can see our trepidation.

Yesterday we heard that Chad is embroiled in a big fight. As you know we are not that far from the border with Chad and so we are at risk of some spill-over of that conflict; particularly as the Chadian government is accusing the Sudan as supporting the attacks there. We have no idea of the truth, and we feel safe at some level that we are far enough –there is enough desert between us - to not be subjected to any running gunfights. Still it is big news and we are following the activities in Chad – UN evacuations etc etc.

The world seems to be getting worse, but maybe it is simply because it is more in front of me. One of my friends is on an emergency deployment to Mozambique, another is evacuated from Kenya, another is killed in Somalia. Phew.

Do not be too concerned for my safety yet. Things here are still considered safe and we still have plans to build our base. If things should go south we will quickly suspend operations and we have evacuation plans in place. I feel good, and I feel comfortable that we still have a job to do and we cannot become ham-strung by fear. Little by little we will progress. Stay healthy.

Love to all