Darfur Diaries: A Message From Home

Darfur Diaries: Message from home is a documentary put together by three students and human rights activists Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, and Adam Shapiro. These three activists decided that some action needed to take place that allowed the international community to see what tragic events were taking place in Darfur. In the book Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival Jen Marlowe talks about her first introduction to the crisis and how there was little information about the event being circulated in the media. Refugees from Darfur had been pouring into camps in the neighboring country Chad for a year and still no coverage. She called many newspapers, stations, magazines, etc. and told them about the atrocities she had discovered and was told again and again that if it was newsworthy people would already know about it and that their were more pressing matters in the news at the time (Afghanistan, Iraq, the impending election in the U.S.) In collaboration with Adam and Aisha they begin to plan a trip to Darfur to film a documentary.

They were led to cross over forbidden borders by Sudanese rebels who made up the SLA Sudanese Liberation Army,(those who oppose the governments' oppressive regime and fight for freedom). They traveled to different Zaghawa villages were the villagers were now dislocated along the fringes of the villages due to the total destruction of their homes. They also went to the primarily Zaghawa refugee camps in Chad. The places they visited include but are not limited to the Zaghawa villages of Furuwiya, Amarai, Shegegkaro, and Anka villages. Here they spoke to the internally displaced Darfurians. They also spoke with refugees at the Mozbut and Iridimi camps in Chad.

They spoke with many Darfurians who expressed their own opinions of what was happening in their country. The makers of the film took care to not allow any ethnocentric or outsider perspective to have any influence on the messages of the film and what the Darfurians had to say about their reality. No interviews with United Nations or NGO spokespersons were allowed or included, and the creators were not seen or heard throughout the film. No voice overs were included and all outside information about the crisis was included by way of text across the screen. They felt that the people's own stories and faces should constitute the entire content of the film so that people could see their own pain, anger, and call to action. An important aspect of the film was the Zaghawans' sense of agency and plans to better their own situations.

In the camp at Iridimi although the teachers were without any textbooks, curriculums, pens, paper, or any other resource for that matter, they still set up a school because of their own beliefs that education is the essence of life and of dire importance for their own children and also the future of Sudan. So the children and mothers gathered together and with mud and water created walls to block the harsh desert winds and create a gathering place for learning. They created a blackboard with a piece of tarp and set off to educate their children. In this camp the women were training to be teachers for the children. One woman spoke of how they did this all day without breakfast or lunch or breaks but they did it understanding the importance of education to their children's futures. The rebels that fought in the SLA also spoke of their own experiences. They were previously called the Darfur Liberation Army but decided that to express their beliefs in equality and justice for all they would need to be inclusive of all the marginalized oppressed by the government and the few military elites in control in Sudan. They did not want to appear biased but wanted to be welcoming.

Another group of Zaghawas that previously made up the village of Shegegkaro were no longer teaching their children in fear of further attacks from the government and military-proxy group the Janjaweed. With the help of the documentary directors and a fundraiser hosted back in the states the school reopened in September 2007. Tragically in May 2007 the village was aerial bombed by government military where a few students were killed and a portion of their market was destroyed as was two out of the three water pumps. This is a telling example of how the killing and ravaging of homes continues today despite the efforts at peace.

This documentary takes the viewer to the heart of Darfur and shows footage of displaced people and what has happened to their lands. I thought that their attempt to show traditional culture that was demolished by the attacks was appropriate and would have been a great source of knowledge to add to the crises, but unfortunately fell a little short of really accomplishing this. For example, a man mentioned how women would travel miles to get water or food but there was no mention of why the women were the ones who did this and what potential dangers these trips hold.There was a few women who were interviewed, and they spoke of the rape that so many women experienced, but there was very little mention of women's sufferings due to their gender. I had to wonder if this was due to the fact that rape is considered such an obscene violation of a woman's purity in this culture and often positions them in a place of disproval and unacceptability from men. Zaghawa women who are no longer pure are no longer accepted as potential mates. Even though they have no control over these circumstances they are still treated as if they had done something wrong. Avoiding discussion of the topic altogether was easier for the women. Some women probably hid the acts of violence altogether in order to protect themselves and secure their futures. These issues might have been explored, but in the director's defense they kept their own insights and observations to themselves to maintain the documentary as a pure source of information straight from the mouths of the displaced.