N Africa Darfur refugees
Review of documentary shown on Australia's SBS Television 24 Jan 07
| 08:30 pm | LIVING WITH REFUGEES - A VIDEO JOURNO'S ACCOUNT |
| This is the latest documentary by
award-winning journalist Sorious Samura who is increasingly developing
a reputation for creating ‘real' reality TV – stories that offer a
unique perspective into the lives of people facing terrible situations.
In this documentary, Sorious sets out to become, for all intents and
purposes, a refugee. He travels to Chad to live with a family in a
refugee camp for one month, living under exactly the same conditions,
eating what they ate and drinking what they drank. Sorious builds close
intimate relationships with the other refugees, sharing their hopes and
fears, so that this documentary provides a unique insight into what
life is really like for them. Sorious meets Adam – a refugee who has 2
wives, 8 children, no money and all of whose friends have been murdered
– at the Chad/Sudan border where he has been living on handouts. But he
has outstayed his welcome. Even though he doesn't know how far it is,
he's heading for a UN refugee camp further to the west in Chad, and
agrees Sorious can follow his family on this journey. (From the UK, in
English and Arabic, English subtitles) |
Real reality TV: Backpack video-journalist does it tough with Darfur trekkers to a refugee camp
How would you like to be a Darfur dad trying to feed eight children, or the mum whose oldest kid got butchered by Arab militiamen right in front of your eyes?
Then endure the hardships of an eight day trek over harsh terrain from Darfur region across the border into Chad, drinking from silty pools scratched from the sand in dried up river beds.
Limping your way to the only help you know of - a make-shift refugee camp - the only place to go since the Arab gunmen came and raped, murdered and pillaged your village, right after your own government's helicopters bombed it!
All possessions gone and with them, the livelihood to be able to start again.
So you go across to Chad hoping fellow Africans will feed you on the way. Precious few do.
When you get to the camp you can't get a tent, food for your kids, or anything at all because your camp registration isn't accepted. It's a bit like boat people coming to Australia. You're disqualified from help because you're seen as a queue jumper. It takes two starving, shelterless weeks with your kids under just a blue tarp until your sheik admits this is the case.
Map: It's a region where religious fanatics have a long history, like the mass-murder when British-held Khartoum fell in 1885.
The doco
I knew none of this yesterday but can report it today thanks to SBS's showing last night (Wed 24 Jan 07) that let Aussies see the refugees' conditions.
Thousands of black African survivors from Darfur's bloody carnage at the hands of Arabs struggle to have their presence acknowledged at the camp, for a share of the rotting food that the authorities portion out, only to people whose names have been accepted onto the refugee list.
This is the kind of backpack journalism we need more of, to see what's really happening in the world. Close-up and personal as only a video-journo toughing it with the refugees can do.
Not like the second and third hand accounts we hear from news correspondents hoteling in the cities, passing on text from Reuters.
Donate
Sponsorship by Oxfam and several other aid and UN organisations helped defray the expenses of the video-journalist - the London-based Sierra Leonean Sorious Samura who is winning awards for "real" reality TV.
Oxfam Australia's Executive Director, Andrew Hewitt, said Oxfam continues to send planeloads of supplies like water and sanitation equipment which is used to provide clean drinking water and build over toilets in the camps.
“With only a handful of toilets people are forced to defecate elsewhere, the result is human waste is spread around the camp," he said. "The regular torrential rain washes the excrement into the camp and leads to dangerously unsanitary conditions. Disease and diarrhoea are serious problems and cholera could break out at any time.”
To donate to Oxfam Community Aid Abroad’s SUDAN CRISIS APPEAL
call 1800 034 or use the website.
Or donate to UN - UNHCR's Chad/Darfur link.