When
refugees from neighbouring Sudan started to pour into the east
of the country late last year, the Chad Red Cross sent its top
emergency coordinator to the region on a two-week evaluation
mission.
Eight months later, Abdoulaye Saleh is still there. During this
period, he has spent just three days home in N’Djamena,
when his wife, also a Red Cross volunteer, gave birth to his
youngest daughter. He named her Naima, “Gift of God”.
As head of Chad Red Cross volunteers, Abdoulaye leads from the
front. Early last year, he took the first team to the south
when 40,000 people fleeing political disturbances in Central
African Republic sought safety in Chad.
Just a few months later, his experience and commitment are once
again instrumental in driving a relief operation, this time
to assist refugees displaced by the conflict in Darfur.
Staying behind after completing the evaluation, he set up basic
assistance to refugees arriving in Tine, with just six volunteers
in very precarious conditions. The town was regularly hit by
bombs and armed horsemen from the other side of the border.
Despite the difficulties, the initial team provided welcome
services, distributed food supplies from the World Food Programme
(WFP) and carried out awareness training.
“The early days were very hard,” Abdoulaye recalls
with a smile. “We kept our morale up in the evening by
singing songs about the Red Cross, and dancing.”
When he joined the Chad Red Cross youth branch back in 1981,
it was the singing and dancing that attracted him. As a Muslim,
he thought he did not have a place in the Red Cross, until a
friend convinced him to come to a meeting.
He has never left the movement since, giving up his job as a
teacher to become a full-time volunteer in 1993.
Just weeks after the beginning of the emergency, an assessment
team from the International Federation came to determine the
most pressing needs.
Abdoulaye asked for trucks to move the refugees from exposed
border sites, and resettle them safely in the camps being built
by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
“I will never forget the day 20 all-terrain trucks arrived
from the Norwegian Red Cross,” he says. “I was so
proud to see the Movement I have given my life to come together
to assist the refugees.”
After five months of shuttling backwards and forwards under
scorching sun, blinding rain, and blistering sand, the Red Cross
fleet in eastern Chad has transferred over 25,000 people.
Today, the refugee encampments in Tine are empty, thanks to
the efforts of Abdoulaye’s team of volunteers.
His work there is done, but he has no intention of slacking.
Abdoulaye has already set off on yet another difficult mission:
to prepare the ground for a new camp to be managed by the Red
Cross in Tréguine.
“Within a few weeks, 20,000 people will be living here,”
he says as he surveys the vast expanse of empty land. “We
cannot disappoint them.”
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Abdoulaye
Saleh has brought his experience of the refugee operation
in the south to the emerging crisis in the east (p11860)
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Chad
Red Cross volunteers have been distributing aid to refugees
and transfering them to camps. Shortly they will be involved
in the running of a new camp (p11864)
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The
humanitarian actors assisting the Darfur refugees face
a number of challenges, such as access to clean water
and health services. Eighty-eight-year-old Adam Ghazi,for
example, is suffering from a fever (p11861)
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