christmas in darfur

from my office window, the lush fertile feminine green below slowly dries up into crunchy dusty jaundiced beige. we are in southern sudan's airspace in clear skies. finally leaving uganda on an 8-hour flight to my new base in abéché, chad. i steer her northwest; deeper into the desert. the hot true smooth clean rock of heart-piercing wastelands.

the heat waves shimmer in silence. a buzzing fever in your eardrums.

living the daze of our lives.

there are only two seasons here on the edge of darfur: rainy season and rebel season.


abéché, arabic for "gateway to the desert," is protected by a french army base that forms part of the airport. when the rebels attack, all of us ngo workers seek refuge inside the french base.

in the next week, i fly to the area's strips on flights with my new base manager, lauren. she is a wicked cool, laid-back lady with a great sense of humor. she's already been flying here for two years. and it was alaska before that. a rare woman.




air serv's mission in chad is to provide air support to aid workers operating in bandit-controlled areas. we also fly darfur refugees to abéché or n'djamena, where they can receive urgent medical care. little kids who have lost limbs by accidentally picking up unexploded mines can be fitted with prostheses.


there is something romantic and isolating about flying over the remote desert. an elemental substance that makes you feel more alive and alone. just another small speck, like the dust and the flies and the harsh jagged peaks rising above sweltering ouadis.

i check in on the HF radio: "alpha x-ray base, u.n. charlie one, position gondo, flight level zero eight five."


descending above featureless terrain, it's hard to pick out a runway in these spaces. a low pass clears off the camels and i touch down on a strip with another load of aid workers. i feel, for one of those rare moments, truly in the middle of nowhere.



december brings with it a certain holiday. it's that special time of year when jesus returns to earth to give shoppers a pep talk. the reason for the season: get stoked and pumped to stampede mall warts.

are you ready to rrrrrrumble?

barcode scanners beeping in sweeping time with christmas carols. global, mega-homogenized corporations from cleveland to houston to las vegas to baltimore hawking the same crap to wrap and put under our chinese plastic christmas trees. a weird social guilt spurring you to buy things for people you don't even talk to the rest of the year. something about our culture leaves you feeling empty and derailed.

the season has sold it's soul. (25% off!!) can it be saved? (the more you spend, the more you save!!!)

i am happy to get back to the source: desert and camels and starry nights and poverty.



******



i ride with our cook into town for some orientation and to help pick out tonight's dinner. in the market, the sari-wrapped women yell back and forth in arabic and french from behind their displays, competing for my business. packs of homeless boys surround me asking for a gift. "cadeau! cadeau!"

a woman is swimming her hand over the blood-red tomatoes, rolling back a black wave of flies. they are everywhere, mostly buzzing between rotting reject vegetables and onto children's indifferent faces: crawling up their noses, into the corners of mouths, ears and eyes.

driving home down the razorwire-lined alleys: walled compounds keeping undesirables out. the silica streets are washed out and full of holes. debris fields of rotting plastic sacks and banana peels and dead cats and empty water bottles settle into the lowest fissures. they silt up the sandy cavities of ouadis and anonymous washboard passageways.

driving through the backroads of our lives.

here are the unwanted, throwaway souls of humanity; here are the forgotten corners of a planet. the sand soaks up everything; every sweet precious drop of water, camel piss, or people's hopes and dreams. it drinks them all down without discrimination.

i sit on my front porch and think about these things. it's my great cop-out: pretending that all my mental processing will ever deflect the enormous inertia of injustice.


will santa make it to the children of darfur this year? how will he know where they are living, with all these houses abandoned?

the sunset through the insect screen is incredible. it seems extraneous, all these colors and swirls and shadows. somehow, someone seems to still be in control of all this. is god too busy painting to do anything else?


kicking back on a chair, bare feet up on the table where they belong. oooohhhh. what's this?

i crack open my little christmas miracle: a double bag ipa. how did santa know? (actually it's a present from my buddy who came to visit 4 months ago.)

the smooth icy bittersweet nectar flows down my gullet, warming my heart. this favorite familiar liver marinade always makes me more philisophical.

you don't teach people it's wrong to kill by killing them. as human beings, maybe someday we will figure this much out.

all these different religions telling us to live in peace and care for our neighbors. yet all we do is slaughter each other. why won't we recognize our shared humanity? it is really so hard?

troubling thoughts. 8,000 feet reveals the fractures of society. men focus on divisions and territorial pissing instead of building a bridge. we choose this drought.


a parched riverbed of theology splinters the barren and desolate souls of wide open wastelands.



******



at night, she is calling to me through the window. a soft saccharine whisper in your ear. the tinkling of sand grains pluming off the crest of a dune. the golden grist of a distant truth.

overhead, through the drooping wires of our HF antenna, an inky night sky is speckled with stars; distant cold blue and pink pinpricks of ice. sending their radio signals through outer space, patiently waiting a million light years to be heard:

"i'm here, over."

inside your heart, the loneliest of feelings:

it's just you, standing there in your shoes.