I moved around the desert camp self-consciously, a white, well-fed woman trudging through their misery. The people understood that I was an international journalist, but I was still trying to figure out how to take pictures of them without compromising their dignity. As much as it would be natural to compare this misery to that in Iraq, it was impossible. Iraq and Darfur were two different worlds, yet my role was always the same: Tread lightly, be respectful, get into the story as deeply as I could without making the subject feel uncomfortable or objectified. I always approached them gingerly, smiling, using their traditional greeting. The Sudanese spoke Arabic in addition to their local languages, so it was familiar to me. “Salaam aleikum,” I would say, and then, “Kef halic? Ana sahafiya.” (How are you? I am a journalist.) “Sura mashi? Mish mushkila?” (Photo OK? No problem?)
And they would nod, or smile back. They never refused.
The crisis in Darfur was a fast-developing story, and the international community had begun throwing around the word “genocide.” Few photographers had shot the refugees at that point. By then I had seen how our devastating photos from Iraq had forced policy makers and citizens to be cognizant of the failures of the invasion. I hoped that heartrending images from Sudan—especially on the front page of the New York Times—might motivate the United Nations and NGOs to respond more urgently to this crisis. As the Sudanese government continued to deny wrongdoing in Darfur, photojournalists could create a historical document of truth.
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THE SUDANESE GOVERNMENT wasn’t issuing journalist visas for Darfur, so the only way for a journalist to cover the situation at the time was to sneak in illegally from Chad. The SLA had almost no financial support and its logistics were minimal, but journalists sometimes crossed the border with them. The SLA’s leaders were wise enough to understand that media coverage might help their cause, so they used their every last resource to accommodate trips into Darfur.
Like most rebels, the SLA used tattered Kalashnikovs. Often a dozen fighters shared one dilapidated truck. For my visit to Darfur, the SLA grouped four foreign journalists together—me, Somini, freelance photographer Jehad Nga, and Jahi Chikwendiu of the Washington Post—oblivious of the competition between teams of journalists vying for exclusive stories. It was a hodgepodge of a group. Jahi was a charismatic and talented African American photographer who had traveled extensively around Africa and called all the rebels “my brother,” grinning widely. Jehad stood over six feet tall, weighed about as much as me, and rarely uttered a word.
The plan was to drive to the edge of Chad, then walk a couple miles through the no-man’s-land between Chad and Sudan and meet the rebels in Darfur. We knew we would have to carry everything on our backs while in Darfur, so we minimized our kit, leaving behind lenses, batteries, clothes, shoes, and, not so intelligently, several bottles of water. We set forth on our five-day journey across the Sahel, the southern edge of the Sahara.
The heat was brutal. Even the small amount of weight we each carried seemed too much under the desert sun. Soon after setting out, we came across some nomads with a string of camels who kindly offered to strap our water, tents, and anything else we could manage to the humps of their herd to lessen our load. We formed a little convoy of man and animal, trudging through the sand. Not a single nomad drank even a sip of water over the three-hour walk. I plowed through the first of two bottles I carried. We should have carried more water.