Mahamat Haroun Dahab, farmer, Chad: "What we really need here is schools, a flour mill and water"

 

By IRIN

The southeastern Chad border district of Tissi has seen an influx of people fleeing violence in neighbouring western Sudan, among them Chadian nationals who had either migrated there for work or fled earlier violence, and new refugees from Sudan’s Darfur area.

 

Mahamat Haroun Dahab’s family (his wife and four children) are among those from eastern Chad who left the country seven years ago during the conflict there, for Darfur. They recently returned to their Tissi village of Tadjou, after fleeing inter-communal violence. Dahab and his wife told IRIN their story.

 

Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN

Mahamat Haroun Dahab and his wife in the southern Chad village of Tadjou, in Tissi

 

[Dahab:] “I have been here for three months. I arrived in May when the Misseriya and Salamat [ethnic groups; the latter lives on both sides of the border] started fighting in Um Dhukun [Darfur]. I am not sure what they were fighting over. Around us there were people who were killed and injured.

 

“The journey from Sudan to the Chad border was by donkey. Then, once we were on the Chadian side, IOM [the International Organization for Migration] brought us here [to Tadjou village].

 

“We just packed what we had and sought safety; we did not have time to prepare ourselves.

 

“Here we are doing some farming, mainly of sorghum. Back in Um Dhukun I used to slaughter some sheep. I worked as a butcher. But I have always been a farmer.

 

“The land I had here before I fled is where I am planting my crops now; during the fighting this area was deserted and my land and house remained intact.

 

“None of my children have been to school. They are young and I don’t have enough money to register them.

 

“But I have no intention of going back to Darfur. Here, I can practice farming; there [in Um Dhukun] we had to buy things from the market.

 

“What we really need here is schools, a flour mill and water.

 

[Dahab’s wife - she did not give her name:] “We decided to leave [Um Dhukun] when our belongings, such as our [mobile] phones and livestock, started being taken by force by the Arabs.

“We are OK living here [in Tadjou] as we just go to the farm and come back.

 

“But the children really need schooling and some clothes. What we really want is schools.

 

“Myself, I have never been to school. I learned to speak Arabic because people around me speak it; but I can’t write anything or read. A person who doesn’t go to school can’t read Arabic.”

 

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Chad averts locust threat

By IRIN



Pest control and dryer weather have curbed locust invasion
Credit: Col Frankland/Flickr

Chad has eliminated the threat of a full-scale locust invasion in its northern region, a pastoralist zone dotted with oases that provide water for small-scale farming, says the National Locust Control Agency (ANLA).

"If we hadn’t prevented the locust infestation, pasture and farms would have been devastated and there would have been famine," said ANLA’s Rassei Neldjibaye.

Control operations and dryer weather in recent months have reduced locust numbers across the Sahel. Only scattered and lone adult hoppers were observed in a few areas in northern Chad, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said in a recent update.

Neldjibaye said plans were in place for future pest control operations targeting either 50,000 or 100,000 hectares "in case of an invasion".

SAHEL: Malnourished to remain above one million in 2013

 By IRIN, Dakar (Senegal)

 

Children in the Banemate village in Oullam district in Niger's Tillaberi region have been living on wild fruits since last year
© Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Despite good rains across much of the Sahel this year, 1.4 million children are expected to be malnourished - up from one million in 2012, according to the 2013 Sahel regional strategy.

The strategy, which calls on donors to provide US$1.6 billion of aid for 2013, says fewer people are expected to go hungry in 2013 - 10.3 million instead of 18.7 million in 2012.

Harvests across much of the Sahel were fairly good this year following more steady rains, but vulnerability remain as the 2012 crisis, on the back of crises in 2005 and 2010, left many families heavily indebted, with severely depleted assets, and with no seeds to plant.