Writing another book on refugees was not among my original intentions when I left for Eastern Chad. Originally, the material from the refugee camps meant to be a series of exhibits and installations which would keep the refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan in the public eye. After a series of exhibits of photographs and stories of the refugee families, it was proposed that I compile the material into a book. I started half-heartedly working on it in 2006, right after my first book, Illegal was published. Half-heartedly, because eventhough I believed that it was important these stories reached as many readers as they possibly could, I didn’t think such a short snapshot in time could be worthy of a book, especially when so many books on Darfur were coming out almost on a weekly basis.
Besides, life in the desert was fluid, and political alliances, the situation on the ground, almost everything related to Darfur changed fast. Chad was soon swept into civil war. The angle of news had shifted, and that is when I realized this book had to come out. Yes, everything changed except one. As talks were underway, as people discussed Darfur, the refugees seemed to be forgotten. Yet with the personnel on base in the east partially removed, talk of camps being relocated ongoing, life as a refugee was getting harder than ever. With hardly any hope of safe repatriation, local attacks on refugees was rampant. Traffic in between camps had peaked, not to mention across the border. The families were stuck in cross fire. Normalization was still not exactly underway in Darfur, and Eastern Chad was now ablaze....
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