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Melissa Fitzgerald recently volunteered for IMC at a refugee camp in northern Uganda. Her experiences there were deeply moving, which comes through in the fictional letter she entered into a contest held by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Fitzgerald’s piece stood out from the rest and was highly praised by Kristof as having “captured the mood of a refugee camp and was also painfully evocative.”
Her winning entry:
Dear Katy,
There is not much time now. I see you and the other relief workers packing and getting ready to evacuate, so I know the Janjaweed must be on their way. There is nowhere else for us to go. No place for us to hide. We can only wait.
I know that we have never spoken. I have not been able to speak since the day my village was attacked, but I wanted to say Thank You. Thank you for feeding our children, removing the bullets from our bodies, and for caring for us with love and kindness. This has been more meaningful than you will ever know. I ask you to please do one more thing for us, for me. Please tell the world what is happening to us. I know that I will be killed tonight, which is why I need to tell you my story. So someone knows.
I know your name is Katy because you introduced yourself to me with your big open and warm smile. I was unable to respond, so I will now introduce myself. My name is Fatima. I was living in a village with my parents, my dear husband, Abdul and my two beautiful children, Osman and Gida. Osman, my son, was 3 years old. So smart and full of life and energy. He loved to sing and dance and he had the most beautiful infectious laugh you’ve ever heard. My baby, Gida, was only 4 months old and she was a very happy and smiley baby. She loved to watch her big brother and she loved to be held and sung to sleep.
The day the Janjaweed attacked our village, began like any other day. I woke, prayed, and prepared a fire to begin the morning meal. My husband and children were still asleep. All of a sudden, hundreds of men, the Janjaweed, rode into our village on horses and camels and behind them, government soldiers rode in on trucks. The Janjaweed shouted, We will not allow blacks here! This land is only for Arabs! My husband and I grabbed our children and started to run. As we were running we heard my parents crying and screaming. The Janjaweed had set fire to their hut, burning them alive. They shot my husband and stabbed his body with their bayonets. They made us watch as they stuffed his body in the well. They kept shouting, You blacks are not human! We can do anything we want to you! Six of them grabbed my children from me and raped me. They whipped me. They laughed at me. My son was watching. I willed myself not to cry. One of the Janjaweed said, You belong to me, you are a slave to the Arabs and this is a sign of a slave. He slashed my leg with his sword. They allowed me to crawl over to my children. I held them as the men laughed. They grabbed Osman from me and one of them said, You have a choice, your son can either be burned alive or shot to death. Osman ran towards me, his arms reaching for me and they shot him. His little body fell to the ground.
Gida and I somehow survived that day and we eventually made our way to the Chad/Sudan border to this camp. I don’t really know how I was alive but I had to keep walking to get to this camp for my baby. We had no food, so my milk dried up. The night we arrived at this camp, Gida died in my arms.
I know that you are a brave and good person, Katy, and there must be more people like you where you come from, please tell them about us. It is too late for my parents, my husband and my children. In a few hours it will be too late for me. But there are more of us and it is not yet, too late for them.
Much love and courage for your journey.
Always,
Fatima
