Speak up, Sisters

We walked out of the movie into the dark Seattle night holding hands and sighing, not knowing what to say. It's hard not to feel completely hopeless, we remarked. The movie was The Devil Came on Horseback, a documentary about a man, Brian Steidle, who witnessed and recorded the atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan with a camera and a notebook and hoped his reports would find their way to someone who could change things. In fact, he trusted, because of his faith that America would do the right thing, that his work was making a difference. But when he got home to the States, the story was his to tell. No one was talking about it; his reports disappeared into the ether. The veracity of his work was questioned by Sudanese living in America, the US government and the media.

The movie, which incorporates hundreds of Brian's photos, is not without its faults. The images, which are gruesome, bloody and hard to forget, are scattered throughout the film with haphazard and seemingly random ferocity. We are not given context for the bloody puddles in the dust, the half-buried, charred bodies, and blackened heads with mouths agape locked in their tortured last moments of screaming. See what I mean? These images will haunt you. And they should.

Another image that haunts me is one of the eyes of a woman in the refugee camp in Chad who, through a translator, states that after “the violence” occurred, her husband left her. Her watery coal-black eyes flit toward the camera for a brief moment and then away. "The violence" is the term they use for when they are raped by the Janjiweed. We learn through the translator that in Sudan, the stigma of being raped is so huge a disgrace that they often just say they were beat up or don't say anything at all.

The camps where the refugees are staying are called Displaced Persons Camps or DPCs. We are shown aerial shots from a helicopter, presumably, of a vast network of tents and corridors which stretch for miles. There are hundreds of thousands of displaced people here. In Chad. In Ethiopia and in Sudan itself. In The name "displaced person" has been used for decades to describe a person who has been removed from their home\land, but the term itself is troubling as it connotes a person who is still not in place. Dis-placed. To not be placed. To be without a place. To be in the wrong place.

Sudanese are living in these camps for years on end. They yearn to return to their villages, but there is nothing there and the danger is greater outside the camps. That said, the conditions in these camps are terrible and they aren't even necessarily safe. Another woman’s image haunts me -- she is tall and striking with long black braids. She speaks in clipped and correct English saying that they have nothing left. Everything is gone. She starts to tell us of who she has lost: her three brothers, her daughter and she begins to shake and cry. “Would you believe I am a teacher?” She asks as the tears take over. “I am a teacher!” I get goosebumps.

Back to the woman in the movie who tells Brian she was raped. She is not alone. She is one of countless women and girls who have been raped or mutilated, and then abandoned by their husbands or fathers. This is where it really hits home for me. I shift in my theater seat, I look away from the screen. I don't want to believe the horrors these women have been through. They are flesh and blood. They are teachers and daughters and mothers.

Brian looks directly at the camera and explains that the Janjiweed are paid in loot. Rape is a currency. In fact, rape has been described by the Janjiweed as an integral tool in their strategy. They get to loot and rape as they destroy each village or market. I remember reading in Dave Eggers' What is the What that when the men have been killed or have fled, the women are trapped and must watch as their babies are hacked apart, tossed down wells, their daughters gang raped in front of them. Think it’s hard to read? Imagine that this is your life.

Now imagine that the struggle doesn't end when you reach a DPC. Imagine that you are at the mercy of aid organizations which are operating on too little money and not enough time. The movie states that the places where the camps are located are often devoid of resources. They have no water, no shade and no trees. No trees means very little fuel for fires. No fires means no food. The Janjiweed patrol around the camps and compete for the same scant resources. If the men leave the camp to get firewood, they are castrated or murdered. If the women go, they are raped. It is the women who are forced to go. They sometimes walk 20 miles to gather a week’s supply of wood. These journeys are fraught with danger and if they are attacked, they dare not tell a soul. Imagine this after your house, your family, your possessions and your dignity are all taken away.

A woman from the Save Darfur Coalition came to speak after the film. One thing she told us about was an idea that addresses this firewood problem. It's called the Solar Cooker Project. There are several groups who are organizing to get solar stoves to the women in the DPCs so they don't have to risk their lives to get wood with which to cook. These solar ovens use the resource which is plentiful there: the sun and cook as well, if not better than, an open fire. They are inexpensive, portable and efficient. Jon and I decide the only thing we will put on our holiday wish list is that our friends and families to buy solar stoves for these women. They cost $30 for two. It is the smallest and simplest thing we can do.

I get home and begin researching the cookers. Much to my horror, there are four years worth of articles that chronicle this problem of being raped when hiking for firewood. I find one from 2004 on washingtonpost.com about how the problem is getting worse and worse. I find another from three days ago on CNN.com. Almost all of them mention these stoves and how it will make a huge difference in the comfort and security of the women in the camps. How can four years have gone by and we haven't organized to get every family in every camp a solar cooker? I am so ashamed. I, like Brian, would have thought that America would be doing something. I would have bet that the UN would hear this horrible story and act in the simplest and most peaceful of ways: by helping women provide for their families after they have all been through so much.

But they haven't acted enough, so now we must. This one small act to connect you to a woman across the world who needs your help. We can start here: The Solar Cooker Project and speak up until our voices of sisterhood and compassion are heard across the globe and into Sudan, into a camp and into the tent and into the heart of a woman who needs our help. How can it be so easy and not be getting done?