mattsiller.com Blog

So I’ve taken another writing hiatus.  Hard to attempt insightful writing when your mind is elsewhere.  On my break I’m headed to DC, NYC for a long weekend, Miami for a little fishing, then Texas.  Hopefully I’ll get to catch up with many of you.  See you soon.

Apologies (if necessary) about the touchy, possible inappropriateness of my presumptuousness to assume I am qualified to write in the first person on such a difficult subject in the last post. I just thought it would be interesting to write from that perspective. In a sick sort of way, I enjoyed writing it. I think it was more enjoyment just writing in 1st person and using my imagination more than the actual subject though.

Like a good overseas contract employee I am counting the days as my leave approaches – 11 left. See calendar on right. I just finished a complete overhaul of the reporting system here for the mission, my big task filling the first 4 months. It was satisfying to roll out. Now we should be much more capable to manage the statistics of our operation. (Saving Africa..err..indirectly..)

When I come back off leave, my second four months will be dedicated to streamlining our internal processes between departments. Like I mentioned before, 1st world corporate buzzwords in 3rd world countries don’t always mix, so I should have my work cut out.

I’m also a happy camper b/c I dominated another round of Thursday all-night poker (using my Clay poker chips – one of those must-include items on your list of “What to bring if you’re going to a remote place for a long time”), had a rough Friday recuperating, but I was all smiles because I walked everywhere leaning a little left with the wallet weighing an additional $420! Thank you Mom for giving me the Tao of Poker, a book I’ll sacrilegiously call my bible down here, providing lessons which have contributed to a much heavier winnings kitty at these weekly games.

I also went into town today with some of our local staff to have lunch. They told me I must try this meat, very ‘to-mam’. We drove to a hole in the wall market in the middle of a shanty town.  In this outdoor market, we first bought half of a skinned sheep, young male with the tail still on (also skinned). Locals like to eat the fatty and cartiladged tail. I have a feeling I did today. (Don’t ask just eat.) We bought this freshly slaughtered half animal, saved his carcass from the flies, and took it to another stand to cook. The meat was served chopped up, bones included, with a peanut hot sauce, cut vegetables, and flat bread on a big tray in the middle of the table – eat with your hands.

During moments like this, you can’t help but be constantly reminded that you’re in the middle of BFE. Sitting in plastic chairs in the sand around a little table under the stick supported shade cloths in the middle of market, little kids come up to roughly polish your shoes, people are buying tea in small half filled glasses sold by women, Africans in long white robes are moving everywhere, a water-pumping generator is buzzing over the constant jabber of local languages, and I’m sipping on luke warm bottled pepsi written in Arabic. I’m sure my ‘waldo’-ness stuck out like a sore thumb in this scene.

It was a memorable meal although sheep and goat will probably be on my list of meats to avoid eating once I’m Darfur free.

For you, a short story by me about the plight of a local IDP man and his family:

Life has always been hard, but it was once much easier. I used to own property, a small section of land where I had a prosperous crop of tobacco plants that afforded my family a brick stucco house with a fenced barrier and entrance gate for privacy. The crop provided enough money to send my children to grade school, raise our animals, and travel into Khartoum to shop. My wife sold various types of tea in the shade to the brick makers during the day and gathered the necessities to cook and live in the evenings. I tended the crop during the day and at night would gather with other farmers, playing cards and listening to the radio. My three children took the goats out on a daily basis after school to graze and played soccer in the pastures in the evening with their friends. My children had a quick wit and energy for learning and I was saving money to send them to University in Khartoum, God willing. We had a donkey to help carry water and chickens to produce eggs. We always managed to effectively battle the droughts, money shortages, government bureaucracy, diseases, and famine like most working families here. We not only survived, but we were surviving with progression.

I knew for some time that our lives would change, but I did not realize to what drastic extent. The UN has provided food to our people for years. Its path from plane to home often crossed multiple hands and markets. I didn’t think much of it until arms started arriving in Darfur and managing this supply chain. I’ve seen my neighbors take up arms, helping to manage the shipments arriving over the last ten years from Libya, Chad, and our own Sudan, among others. These weapons, accumulated with intentions to defend and prosper, over time, have been the very means of our own downfall. They have united and divided our people. They’ve caused resistance, striking interest in the most unmerciful outside parties.

My neighboring brothers have joined a movement, a movement intended to enrich our resources and improve our prosperity. It recently backfired and took its toll in a most unholy wrath.

One night we heard gunfire in the distance from our home. As it approached, I decided it was best for our family to take shelter in a more inhabited and neutral area, our children’s school neighborhood.

The battle continued through the night, apparently between our village’s brothers and a northern Arab tribe. The next day I returned to find my home and crops burnt in entirety. As I struggled to make my way through the rubble, I saw fellow farmers shot dead, lying lifeless in their own fields, resembling my own perished crops after a drought. What a disaster? Together the destruction of my home and friends left both a weighted emptiness and ominous foreboding in my heart. Notice was placed by the victors that if I did not leave my family and I would be killed.

As quick as that, my life as I knew it had changed. I returned to my family and said we must leave. My children didn’t completely understand and teared up at the thought of lost friends and change, but I insisted and we left quickly with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We followed other families west where we were told temporary shelters could be found until the fighting subdued. In one night, everything that I had worked for and owned was left charred, broken, and abandoned.

We traveled in mass beyond the adjacent village, which had also been abandoned after being recently attacked. How far would these attacks reach? I was speechless as I witnessed the same destruction seen in my own village. My children walked quietly behind and my wife questioned me in concern about our home in comparison to this village. None of it sat well. Were we walking into or away from these mortal disasters?

We set up camp three days later outside a town in hopes of attaining temporary shelter, food, and work. None of these came easy.

I spent my days gathering random materials from town, finding sheets and an old bed frame, along with local sticks and brush from a nearby field. Together our family built one of the few tiny, private shelters for our temporary housing.

Several weeks into our new and temporary life, my wife left the camp early one evening to gather firewood she sold for food. She did not return until morning, nearly naked and ravaged. A friend and I had been looking for her at the time of her return. My son ran and found me, saying “mom had come back and was hurt.” I rushed back to our shelter, my heart nervously pounding as I contemplated the disastrous range of possibilities. As I approached I saw my wife lying limp on the bed frame. Her lip quivered and upon recognition, she looked the other way, unable to look me in the eye. Her swollen face was bruised blue and almost unrecognizable. I knelt down in bewilderment, leaning toward her and offering a kiss of comfort on her forehead, trying to mask the building rage. What evil, inhumane being had done this? “What had happened?”, I managed to mumble.

On her trip that evening to gather firewood (a common livelihood partaken by innocent woman) she had been kidnapped, raped and beaten by a warring tribe. They were a group of beasts, whose only intention was to devastate lives and spread Arab blood by impregnating the black African woman from other tribes.

I was frenzied and outraged. I ran outside of my tent with tears pouring down my face and yelled to the Gods, “Why?” My initial instinct begged for revenge. Nothing short would set me at ease. I paced outside our shelter most of the day, trying to determine how and in what form I would seek justice against these animals. In calming breaths of reassurance, I nursed my wife back to a reasonable state of awareness over the next two days, all the while plotting my next move.

Upon her becoming, I went in haste to see the local militia commander. I rambled off her story and leaned in to ask what could be done? His eyed seemed glazed. He glanced towards the ground, shook his head, and said “My friend, I am truly sorry, but your wife’s attack is not an isolated case.” In a convoluted state of affairs, he said, “This is what we are fighting for, and against.” He then walked over to a wooden crate in the corner of his office, opened the lid and took out an automatic rifle, looked me in the eye and said, “Join us and together we will avenge.”

In a short two weeks, like the graceful rains that become a torrential thunderstorm, I had transformed from a farmer into a warrior. My eldest soon joined me in plight. Over the next six months, we traveled in packs of 50 to 100 in the back of pick up and cargo trucks from village to village, defending our personal right to life and avenging justice against the Government and Arab militias. We patrolled villages and took orders from the commanders to unmercifully attack nearby enemies. We were under manned and often under armed, but we found motivation in returning the damage they had done to our families and homes and fighting for our right to return to a normal livelihood. Leaders would claim we were fighting for equal opportunity in a government that neglected our region, but it was more personal to me. For awhile we fought well. We shot down government helicopters (which provided support fire in attacks against us), captured soldiers and executed for justice. Looking back, I now realize I was becoming the beast I was fighting against.

Eventually the rebel leadership shifted and our militia became divided. Attacks were less organized and often we did not know who we were fighting. Men were scared and loosing motivation. In every battle, we would begin by riding in the back of a truck, moving into position. I would sit with a determined look on my face, trying to fight the adrenaline and build focus for the upcoming mission. While in route, my mind would occasionally wander. Thoughts like “What was my wife doing now?” and “How was she holding up?” would fill my head. I began to question everything. Was I now fighting for her or some leaders cause? Would I ever be able to provide closure by avenging her attack? The clear and chilly night that passed over my face would send chills to the bone.

My son would see me in this state of mind and try to mimic my determined look but all I could see in his eyes was fear. This look he couldn’t blanket scared me to death and has haunted me to this day.

One night in a skirmish my son was killed by gun fire. It took the wind from my sails. Seeing his body, once so intent to please, the proud man he was becoming, now lying lifeless and lost brought a hopeless feeling of failure to me as a father. I took his body in the most solemn moment of my life and gave him a proper burial, praying he found the peace that we were so lost in re-attaining. At this point I realized that justice would not be attained for me in battle. The matters of whom and why we were fighting were too convoluted.

I gave up my arms shortly after and returned to my wife after being away far too long. She had moved camps again and it took another 2 months to find their location. Returning home was not an option and conditions at the current dwelling were desolate and badly needing improvement. Food had become scarce and life had become much more difficult, if not desperate, bordering helpless.

I dreaded returning home without our son but braved the encounter and did my best to provide understanding to my wife. Together we mourned. How could we escape from this disaster that had become our lives?

While sleeping at night, I tossed and turned, mixing dreams about my former life and those of the battle scars I had recently endured. For a short time, I awoke graced with hope for improvement. But the intangibility of hope eventually eroded my reassurance.

Early one morning several months later our former militia came into the camp. They were looking for supplies. They began to round up approximately 200 people from the camp to lead them away. We did not know the reason for this mass movement and I was again disturbed. I recognized one of the militia men and approached him. Upon recognition, he welcomed me and said they needed people to help gather supplies for their mission. He said, “Come” and handed me a metal pipe with a chain and weighted end, a numb chuck looking weapon. “Take this” he said, “You will need to defend yourself”. I responded saying I would not go but his mood changed and demanded me to follow, now at gun point. I looked at the crowd, then back at the man, once a brother in battle, now an insistent stranger. I handed the weapon to another man and reluctantly joined. The militia rounded us together like sheep and pushed us forward toward the international soldier’s camp.

Were we going to force our way into the camp of the soldiers who were here to protect us? Were innocent people supposed to lead the way, in a sort of sick human shield, directed by the cowardly militia from behind? Were these men really that desperate for supplies? I didn’t answer myself because I didn’t want to face the realization any further. I trudged forward and in the ensuing chaotic state of madness between the International force, innocents, and militia, made a stealthy get-away back to my family as quick and safe as I could.

It’s been three years in my temporary new life and my family and I still reside in a displaced persons camp, acting as low profile as possible. We do our best to survive. The fighting parties haven’t found any resolution and the International presence hasn’t solved the problem of providing enough protection for us to return to a normal life. I try to remind my children of past happiness, teaching them the occasional life skill that may apply one day for their future. But future is an uncertain word. The recent-past, current, and future has become a melancholy song whose tune I try not to be reminded.

Earlier this week I made my way off the sand and back into Khartoum (the capital of Sudan) for a few days. Politics is playing a nice little role with the mess in Darfur and Sudan’s government has made it quite clear up to now that they are not interested in foreign intervention by the UN. The people are riding off this momentum and the news has been fiery. Two journalists were just arrested for printing public notices in the Khartoum newspaper, offering $100,000 to anyone for the assassination of the top U.N representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the same for a US Embassy leader who made a comment at a party, saying “go tell that to your prophet” to a local leader that was leaked to the press.

My company has been the target of some interesting press. Front page headlines are being made in several of the Khartoum newspapers. Local Journalists are feeding anti western intervention and essentially trying to get us booted from the country. Libel at its best, they’ve written that we’re the Tip of the Arrow for American Imperialism, representing the frontline of the CIA and belonging to the Pentagon. They claim our managers have coerced a planned Western takeover of Sudan with Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush. Propaganda is splattered all over the articles, saying things like ‘Colonization in the past was led by bishops and the cross but the new colonization is led by intelligence companies, spying organizations and NGOs’.

I was in Khartoum on lock down Wednesday during demonstrations in front of the UN headquarters. Bus loads of people were trucked into the city. In a true state of lawlessness, civilians toted their AK-47’s through the streets, the third world version of a peaceful protest.

Diplomacy is a great thing though. The African Union was supposed to decide on making the official request to the UN for the take-over a week ago. They delayed (at Sudan’s request) this decision for a week while Sudan garnered support in keeping international troops away, an ominous sign. Fortunately, all have come to a middle ground and today, Sudan agreed to allow the UN into Darfur with the condition they do not come until a peace agreement has been signed. These peace talks (taking place in Nigeria) have not been successful in the past (see Rebel post) and look to be yet another stall tactic, but all outsiders are committed to getting one signed and we will see how the players unite to get this achieved. At least Sudan has said the UN can come, which will mean the Government will be hypocritical if they continue to ignite the local media and public in additional campaigns against western intervention. The irony of this whole campaign is that the UN has been here for some time, carrying 10,000 strong in Southern Sudan. I suppose it’s yet another sign of the Arab/African regional split and favoratism/interest shown by the Arab Government for their own people.

The good news is that I stayed spoiled in our Khartoum Villa/Mansion, relaxing, watching TV and movies and eating well. The taste buds were itching for calories and I jammed down pastries, steak and seafood, Baskin Robbins ice cream, and cold beer! The bad news is that it ended too quickly. I arrived back in Darfur to a nice welcome party of dust. The Haboob (Sand Storm) season has begun, and for the next two months, the wind should offer us some real beauties. This storm graces its victims in an intimidating Tsunami style wall. Dust and sand is blown everywhere. Your eyes itch and your mouth gets gritty and your sheets get grindy. No house, tent, or tukle is safe. You can see the approach and visibility pictures below. Pleasant experience!

I’m at T-minus 19 days before I hop a plane back to the mainland for some additional R&R. Looking forward.

Interesting smack down given by Arab American psychologist Wafa Sultan to a bearded cleric on Al Jazeera television.   Her last line speaks volumes.

Click here for the link.