Nothing Has Changed

can’t possibly know what we’re going through because if they did, it would stop.” I think that’s the most horrible thing about going back to Darfur. You can’t lie to these people any more. You go back to the same places and you see a lot of the same people, because it’s the same people who have been sitting in these makeshift shelters for three years.
Maybe for them all that’s changed is that their families in the towns where these displaced camps are around – they now no longer have anything. They’ve given everything to the people who have been burned out of their homes – so they’ve joined them.
You go back and there’s a real blankness when people look at you. It’s just “Oh, you’re back.”
What people really don’t get about Darfur is that they see it as a wasteland, a land before time. These people have radios. They get the BBC World Service, and in a lot of the cities where their families have homes, people have satellite dishes, they have Al-Jazeera and they hear great amazing speeches that people are saying on their behalf – but their life hasn’t changed. I think that’s the most horrible thing about Darfur.