Community

So much of ones sanity is dependent upon those around them. Those individuals that you live with, work with, laugh with…they become a support system, a type of conversational release lever. In Darfur that ability to commiserate with your fellow compatriots becomes a type of life line to the world of normalcy.

We are, in a sense, a family…all be it a highly disorganized, dysfunctional, and rather eclectic family. But in a way we are all in the same boat. Each person here knows the frustrations of working here. Daily we face the same grind of security threats, population displacements, arguments with the government, with HQ, with donors. Each one of us knows how hot it really gets, how hard it can be to drive through a wadi, and how difficult Sudanese Arabic can be to learn. There is a collective knowledge here that we all depend on, because no matter how much those back home love us and willingly listen to our stories, they will never truly know what life is like here.

The intensity of life here seems to speed everything up, especially friendships. It only takes a few short months to develop a network of friends that would be impossible to live without. Due to the sever lack of night life and other recreational activities, friends become your only true break from the world of work and poverty you surround yourself with the rest of the day. Often it is just a break for tea or a small dinner party…but it’s those brief moments that allow you to feel normal, to feel relaxed.

But it is the intensity and reliance on these relationships that also contribute to the down side of relief work. While friendships may form a warp speed, they also seem to disappear even faster. Contracts end, personnel gets shifted, and people simply go home. In the blink of an eye the group you had over for dinner the night before is gone, dispersed to every corner of the world. We all try to fight the fight of keeping in touch, emails and phone calls, the possible meeting during and R&R…sometimes we win, more often we lose. It is like university at light speed…yet when our four years is over there is no Darfur Alumni group or class reunions.

I suppose it’s the yin and the yang of our work and I should be thankful for the time we had together…but as bags are packed and airport runs are made its hard to always look at the positive, saying goodbye just gets old after awhile.