Houses shaped like Voltz wagon bugs littered the golden glitter of the Darfur desert.

"We’re going into a war zone. Please make sure you prepare yourself for anything to happen." a man warned at the security briefing a few hours before.

Jitterbugs did their jitter dance throughout my intestines...

We’re going into a war zone! We’re going into a war zone!

Our convoy of UN vehicles made its way slowly, slowly through the glitter...creeping, crawling, cruising...AMIS peacekeepers in dirty green trucks at the front, the back.

"Their not allowed to carry guns." Ruth from UNIFEM informed.

"But aren’t they here to protect us? " A journalist from Lebanon asked and then was greeted with an uneasy silence.

Out the window, camels a pretty brown made moving hills on the insanely flat landscape, making me dizzy. I thought they looked like dinosaurs and wondered if there was a T-Rex close by and if he was hungry.

"They beat us when we go to collect firewood." the little girls I had met at a school in Nyala had told me earlier. "We go a route that takes 3 hours longer, but it is the only safe route. " These girls were so small, in the third grade.

"There! There!" someone shouted bringing me back to the camels, the jitter bugs.

Our convoy stopped to let out the hoard of international and national journalists that it was carrying.

Digital...check.

Video...check.

Battery...um...where is my battery?

By the time I made my way to where the crowd had gathered microphones were out, interviews had already started. I turned my camera on and focused it on the old woman with leathery skin and face full of scars. A collection of branches were at her feet, a slab of rocks on a string around her neck. She was sitting beneath a tree that offered no shade from that great fireball in the sky.

"Did you ask her about the gender based violence?" I asked from behind my camera, repositioning myself to get a better view.

"Shannon...a few more steps and you’ll be in our way." a man with UN TV warned from behind his own. I backed up and searched for a new angle.

"Can’t you read her face? She doesn’t want to talk about this. Look at her body language. She’s completely frozen up." Ruth was saying. From the lens of my camera, I could see that the woman was close to crying.

"We should go."

"Someone should give her an apron." a UNFPA staff suggested, running to the car and bringing back a white apron that read: UNFPA in bright orange print. Then we got in our cars and drove off.

Next to the window once again, I sat feeling disturbed.

What had just happened?

"We shouldn’t have done that. We had no right." the girl sitting next to me was saying and again our car was filled with uneasy silence.

"Did you ask her about the gender based violence?" my own voice echoed in my mind.

I thought back to yesterday...when journalists had snuck into camps of the displaced people and shoved microphones in the faces of the children—"I got the story! I got the story!"they’d come back, their eyes twinkling.

"Don’t use names. Don’t use individual photos. If the government finds these people have given us any information, horrible things will happen to them." The UN had warned.

Although I had no intentions of using her name or face for a story, I felt awful. I had violated this woman... I had betrayed her.

"The janjaweed. They beat us, they molest us when we go out." the women and children of Darfur complained about the men dressed in turbans that rode on camel back with guns in their hands. But despite the eight hour trek and dangerous terrain, firewood was essential for the cooking of food. Firewood was life.

And here we were....shoving microphones in their faces and dressing them in aprons.

[Ends]

  

 

 

 When word got out that Sudan’s newly elected First Vice President, Dr. John Garang, was killed in a plane accident Sunday morning, the emails started flying. The announcement of Garang’s death was the first shocking news, Noel’s the second:

Our neighborhood is under seize. Guns, bombs. Barricaded self into building with old man. Not allowed to move. Got sound footage of explosions.

Currently chomping on a hazelnut croissant in Greece, I was a little skeptical:

Are you sure man? Noooo! No! And I’m stuck here in this crap hole! Are you in serious danger or are you okay? Come on now, be serious!

Too impatient to wait for a reply I logged into the Sudan news feed and found a spine chilling warning from the US Embassy in Khartoum:

The US Embassy in Sudan reminds American citizens of the Department of State’s Travel Warning for Sudan. American citizens are urged to avoid all non-essential travel to Sudan at this time and those within Sudan are advised to stay indoors in a safe area due to disturbances in Khartoum and the Suburbs.

Hmmmm...sounds pretty serious...time to email Mom:

Ma! Garang is dead! My boss just sent me an email...’URGENT! WHEN CAN WE EXPECT THE GARANG STORY?’, Noel says the neighborhood is under seize and I’m stuck in Greece! I’ve got to get back there! It’s time to fly!

You have NO IDEA how freakin’ annoyed I was at not being able to provide a hands on news story for IRIN and not being able to be apart of the excitement of a rare experience like this. Anxious, I turned a razor sharp focus on preparing to fly into Sudan the following day. I contacted the embassy to see if a car could pick me up at the airport, then Barry, my boss at Unity, for help arranging access to my flat and then I let Erich with IRIN know that I would attempt to cover the story from my perch at Mocafe’s internet shop in Athens.

The story started something like this:

Bombings and shootouts have broken out amongst the streets of Khartoum due to the death of First Vice President and leader of the SPLM/A, John Garang...

But then an email came from Noel providing more disturbing news:

Shopkeepers sweeping up glass, smoke and light flashes from presidential palace, armed solders and police stopping cars, pedestrians. I saw a man in the street being beaten and there were bombs just up the street, gunshots all over.

Choaking on the hard to swallow update, I continued with my story:

Noel, an American teaching for a local school in Khartoum, told IRIN today, "I saw a man being beaten and there were bombs just up the street, gunshots all over."

Noel and other foreigners are currently being held in the Merridien hotel by UN authorities and local police officers in order to protect them from the violence in the streets.

Then Mom decided to join the email game:

Shannon, please tell me this is not really happening?!?!?! What are you going to do now?

Well mom, what I really wanted to do was mutate into Caption Spok of the Next Generation so that I could teleport myself from Athens to Khartoum without the headache of an airplane. But after receiving Barry’s email, it looked like I would have the option of the headache but not the airplane:

I shall be coming to pick you up at the airport. No problem.

And then not even two minutes later:

Ignore my last email! The airport is closed and the advice from everyone is do not get on a flight to Khartoum–they probably won’t fly anyway!

Stubborn as all get out, I wrote Noel, Mom, Barry and Erich something similar to this:

I’m getting on that plane and I’m going to Khartoum.

Mom sent a , ‘Please be careful’, Barry wrote, ‘good luck, Erich was off getting an interview and Noel cautioned:

‘Get ready for a storm.’