Remembering Sudan, Envisioning Peace, and Promoting Church-Based Advocacy

Angelique Walker-Smith Saturday, 1 March 2008

In 1983, I lived for two months in Darfur's capital city, El Fasher. I recall traveling across the vast Sahara desert, hearing the call to prayer five times a day, sleeping and eating in village homes, and mixing mortar and laying brick at our worksite in Darfur. I was participating with other volunteers from the U.S. and Sudan in an Operation Crossroads Africa project, focused on the construction of a local youth center. Even in 1983, we were witnessing the southward expansion of the desert that would eventually contribute to competition among ethnic groups for scarce, livable land, on which there were also rival historical claims held by various peoples. This has become a key ingredient in the genocide of over 250,000 Darfurians. Nevertheless, it was the broader, decades-old conflict between northern and southern Sudanese that most captured our attention and gnawed at our consciences.

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