Reporter's Notebook: Inside Sudan

Lara Logan Travels To Sudan For A Rare Look Inside The Camps of Darfur

(CBS) 
For now, as we inched over the barren, red desert below, I marveled at how hot it was inside the plane where I sat cramped up against the small window, stewing in my own body fluids. It was desert all the way to El Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, and I did not think that was an encouraging sign.

It wasn't. Our arrival in Darfur was met by a blast of hot air that enveloped us from the moment we set foot on the runway and would stay with us until we left the country nearly two weeks later.

But the African Union machine was roaring along in fine form, and the loudly-efficient Major Bongani Majola from South Africa was on hand to order us into a waiting vehicle and take us to the information office at their base — where we were presented with yet another paperwork and permit dilemma that our best efforts and months of work had failed to protect us from.

After great patience, hours of waiting and much cajoling of Majola, we were relieved when he triumphantly declared the war over and our work ready to begin. The truth was, without Major Majola and the minor miracles he worked on our behalf, we would never have been able to do what we came to Darfur to do, and it struck me that he was a perfect candidate for the U.S. Marine Corps. This African soldier easily matched the most motivated Marine I'd ever encountered, and anyone who knows the marines will understand how much commitment that takes!

There’s a point when you are working in places like Darfur and you know you have to surrender. Nothing will work the way it should, nothing will be easy and if you lower your expectations to non-existent, you may survive with your sanity. But to make television, you have to do all of that while still fighting tirelessly for everything you need — demanding the world and settling for nothing less. Once you learn to do all of those things at the same time, you're in with a chance of actually doing your job.

So it was with relief that we were ordered across the blistering, sandy parking lot to the office where we would interview the African Union Force Commander with an unpronounceable-name, General Ihakiyre. "God help you if you get it wrong." Majola told us, after teaching us to pronounce it exactly the opposite way to how the General himself made me repeat it to him later after our interview. "He doesn’t like that."