Reporter's Notebook: Inside Sudan

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

(CBS) 
The general, who hailed from Nigeria and has surrounded himself with a support staff made-up entirely of his fellow Nigerians from what we could see, declared my interview "most entertaining" as he threw us out of his office after strictly adhering to the 15 minutes we had been granted. I stole some extra time by drawing into chatter about his pen collection and digging in my bag for the only CBS pen I knew I had with me. But the truth was the general was ruthlessly succinct and actually answered my questions without rambling — a rare find in the television interview world. I'd grown far too accustomed to doing endless interviews in Arabic after many months reporting in Iraq and was reminded of how much more satisfying the whole process can be when you are able to do it in a language you understand.

Armed with what I had learnt from the general, which basically confirmed what I already knew — that the African Union troops were dramatically undermanned and badly outgunned — we set off for the offices of an international aid agency, the International Rescue Committee, which has been working tirelessly to help the people of Darfur since the crisis began in 2004.

They took us to one of the camps where they work that is now home to some 40,000 people, many of them women and children. I use the term "home" very loosely — it is hard to imagine a collection of sticks wrapped around some torn cardboard boxes as home, but that is what awaited us.

There in the red desert, with little or no protection from the sand blowing around us in a violent storm, were thousands of people the IRC referred to as "new arrivals" — only that doesn’t really mean what you think it does. "New" arrivals, as I discovered when I talked to some of them, can mean you've been living here for as long as nine months, waiting for help that might never come if new funds are not found.

So these people who have fled their homes, running in terror as their villages were burned to the ground and their loved ones murdered, these people who come here with nothing but the clothes on their back, still have nothing.

One woman, Fatima Hamid, impressed me with the gentle way she handled her children, holding her young baby's hand up to her mouth and pressing it gently to her lips as she listened to my questions. She told me she was nine months pregnant when she fled her village in terror with her five young children. They walked for 10 days to reach this camp and she gave birth almost immediately, but was so ill from the journey that she needed blood transfusions to save her life.

Sitting with Fatima in front of the pathetic, tattered shelter where she sleeps with her six children, I asked her how could they get money or food in this place? The only way is to send your children to town to beg, she told me, but all they can get is enough for one small meal. I knew that could not be an easy decision for a mother who so clearly adored her children. "They eat that meal and go out again to beg the next day," she said. I wanted to give them everything I had.

Instead, I left the camp and moved on to another aspect of the story. Such is the way things are in this business. You intrude on people's lives and live their pain for a moment — but it is just a moment.

The only comfort you have is hoping your stories live on, in someone’s memory or someone’s heart. And you make sure that you, at least, never forget.