Crossing the Border- Leaving Sudan is just the Beginning

After getting back from Jordan I jumped right in on the action again and then it is back to a bus to a bus to a bus to a bus for a few hours of shooting here and there. I have spent the better part of my time this past week taking photos in two different refugee camps. One in the South in Arad and one in the North in Caramel aka Haifa. There is just so much going on in this country. Although both of these camps have the same idea, they are very different.

So let me back up. As you all know, because it is a very prominent news topic, the Sudanese in Darfur have been and are currently facing a hellish time with the current war. People who can are fleeing the country anyway that they can. In Arad there are over 800 refugees living in in these temporary homes that the government set up. The government doesn't really know what to do with them...why...well because they are not Jewish so this is a difficult problem. They have to continually renew paper work to exist here and they are only allowed to work for 2 months at a time in specific hotels in the Dead Sea. What a contrast you just escaped war and now you are serving cocktails to stuffy Americans what a life. These people in the South are luckier because it is families living together meaning they all made it out together, however life here is only a little better. They are not allowed to work so they are starving. When I went with COHI to do pre and post natal exams I was horrified to find out that these people are not eating. One of the woman was complaining that her baby was small and when one of the midwives I was with, Hillary, asked what she was eating the woman had to think for a while....really nothing... they can't afford food let alone medication and they are living here in Israel.

Hiliary follwing up with a baby she helped birth last month

In the North the situation is very different and even more difficult to handle. The shelter in Haifa is a battered woman's shelter and started out as a clinic for local woman seeking refuge. Then one day in 2006 a border police contacted the shelter and were like... look we have this Sudanese woman and her daughter and if you don't take them we are sending them to prison. This was the first of the flood of immigrants that pour across the border into 2007.

Ok back up...Then you ask wait how did all of these people get to Israel. That's right they WALKED! Maybe one of the most difficult journeys you could ever imagine. After everything they experienced in the genocide of Sudan they cross the border into Egypt where.....they are shot at, imprisoned, beaten, abused, further raped and it is another run for their lives. So where do they run if they are lucky they run to the Israeli border. This border crossing is even more difficult. Let me quote this feature article from a Israeli paper called Haaretz "Last weekend Egyptian soldiers fatally shot a 7 year old girl and a man in his thirties, both of who were trying to cross into Israel. Since the start of the year 16 African refugees were killed trying to cross the border" (to read the rest of this article click here- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/997693.html). It is horrific.

Of the 15 women who currently live at the shelter, many of the woman are pregnant or have children (mostly the results of being raped). All of whom their husbands are either dead, missing, or in prison in Egypt. COHI was there to help provide health services for them- post natal and breastfeeding classes. Medicines are expensive and while it was really difficult to see these women suffer (most of whom wouldn't talk about their experience or were brought to tears recalling some of the events), I was happy to see that these woman had a place where they were finally treated as people and provided food and refuge while they waited to hear from their husbands. The clinic gets absolutely no funding from the government and is entirely run on donations. While this was a very intense and difficult experience it was heartening to see that someone is taking the steps to directly help these people. My only worry is that the shelter could handle 15 women what happens when it is 100? or 500? These people need help.