you should know.
the following is an article i wrote for a magazine i'm creating at school. i'm posting it here for 2 reasons:
1) genocide, no matter where it occurs or to whom, is everyone's problem.
2) i'd love to hear some suggestions for improvement. (or, if you love it, why.)
It’s Ash Wednesday, a traditionally solemn day for Catholics and Protestants, a day of fasting and repentance following Fat Tuesday’s indulgences. But today on the University of Central Florida’s Memory Mall, while Ash Wednesday observers walk past wearing soot crosses on their foreheads, a fast of a different nature is taking place.
It’s not exactly a holy fast focused on repentance. It’s about sacrifice and understanding.
Participants of Project Darfur, a week-long awareness campaign sponsored by upward of 40 student organizations as diverse as NORML, Campus Peace Action and Campus Crusade for Christ, are fasting today in honor of and solidarity with the estimated 1.8 million Darfur refugees who barely have enough food to live on.
What is Darfur? Darfur is difficult to explain. To do so without oversimplification is probably impossible. The word itself refers to a location as well as a situation-a human-rights crisis, to be exact. Darfur, the place, is a region about three-quarters the size of Texas on the western edge of Sudan, in Africa. The Darfur conflict, as the situation is often called, has taken approximately 400,000 lives since 2003.
In discussing the facts of Darfur, despite hours of research, one feels inept, as ill-equipped as though trying to fill shoes four sizes too big, not knowing which is the left shoe and which is the right-and having forgotten how to tie a bow. The Darfur conflict is a huge “issue,” unwieldy and difficult to make concrete. It’s an issue of such dire immediacy and importance that it deserves to be written about persuasively and passionately, in a way that stirs hearts and mobilizes legs. I’m not so sure I’m the woman for that job. But here I am, and here it is. Onward, then. We’ll limp together.
Darfur Primer
To avoid a textbook-length treatise, and since the causes of the situation are debatable-some argue it’s racial, others say it’s agricultural or economical-and relatively less urgent than the consequences (hundreds of thousands of lives lost), let’s try a bullet list of important facts about Darfur:
- The conflict, between the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes, and the non-Arab peoples of the region, has been ongoing since February 2003. “The Janjaweed are conducting a systematic campaign of murder, rape, torture, starvation, and displacement against the ethnic peoples of Darfur” (ProjectDarfur.com).
- According to Wikipedia, in October 2004 the World Health Organization gave an estimate of 71,000 deaths by starvation and disease alone between March and October 2004. ProjectDarfur.com states that 10,000 people die each month from famine in refugee camps.
- Though current death-toll estimates vary, the totals are generally agreed to be in the 300,000-400,000 range.
- One million to two million more Darfur civilians have been displaced from their homes, and some 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad.
- Not much is being done, either to end the conflict or to aid the refugees. Although the UN, prior to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, called the Darfur conflict the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, the UN members most equipped to come to Darfur’s rescue are tied up in other situations. With U.S. troops still deployed in Iraq, intervention is difficult, and complicated by America’s involvement in the peace process ending the Second Sudanese Civil War. And, as Wikipedia reports, in the U.S. as well as Britain and France, “a strong lobby exists opposed to intervention in countries whose internal strife is not clearly related to the nation's own interest.”
- Finally, and the most fundamental roadblock to action, American awareness of this crisis is minimal.
Refugee Camp Replica
Despite the sober motivations for today’s fast, the atmosphere on Memory Mall, dotted with 30 to 40 tents of all shapes and sizes, is a contagious but odd mix. The participants are simultaneously upbeat and carefree, yet acutely aware of why they’re there and the urgency of the issue they’re championing. In some ways, it’s just like any other section of any other college campus: a couple of guys fling a Frisbee back and forth; a girl lies on a ratty quilt, doing homework and listening to an iPod in the afternoon sun; people come and go on bicycles; another girl carries her laptop out of a tent and asks a friend’s opinion on a paper she’s writing.
In one corner of the field, Jeremy Characo solicits signatures for petitions demanding that the U.S. government do something about Darfur. He relates some of the horrors of the situation to a student who gasps and puts a hand to her mouth in shock. Warring factions don’t shoot people, he says, because that would be a luxury, an easy way to die. Instead, they use machetes, or even bury their prisoners alive. Even if they make it to the relative safety of the camps, refugees are still in danger of death from starvation and disease, Characo continues.
“They can’t send men [out into the war zone] to get water or food, because they’ll be killed. So they send women. Women will be spared-only to be raped again and again.” (King Solomon knew what he was talking about when he said “Even the kindness of the wicked is cruelty.”)
Along with the mock refugee camp, every night of Project Darfur week is an event in itself, with speakers like Chuck D and Mia Farrow spreading awareness from an outdoor stage set up on Memory Mall, an evening of documentary films about humanitarian crises, a “Concert for Change,” featuring local bands such as Dodger and Mobella, and, perhaps the most profound event, eyewitnesses sharing firsthand accounts of the daily atrocities in Darfur.
Brian Steidle, former Marine Captain and official observer to the African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur, stopped at Memory Mall during his 21,000-mile “Tour for Darfur: Eyewitness to Genocide.” He shared the stage with Mohammed Yahya, a refugee from Darfur. Project Darfur organizers said most of the audience was in tears while Yahya shared his harrowing story-most of his family has been killed, and he has no idea if his parents are still alive, but he is touring the United States to raise awareness about the situation, grateful for every opportunity to spread the truth.
Knowledge = Power
Kara Fosbenter, a sophomore, says that before getting involved with the event, she had little idea what was going on in Darfur. “I’d heard the name [Darfur] before, but I never knew the extent of what was going on.” Now she’s volunteering, manning Project Darfur’s information tent for an afternoon, and seems ready to burst with indignation and anger over what she’s learned about Darfur-and what isn’t being done. “It’s just awful. It’s disgusting,” she huffs.
Fosbenter believes a college campus is fertile soil for sowing seeds of activism: “It’s something people should know about-especially college students, because we’re, in my opinion, some of the most active members of society. I think that if people know about what’s going on, then they’ll definitely do something about it.”
As David Brown, one of the primary figures behind Project Darfur, says, “What really needs to be done is people need to know that it’s going on. There [are] plenty of different solutions, but not doing anything is probably the worst thing that we can let go on. And the reason we’re not doing anything is because there’s no demand for us to do anything. There is no demand for us to do anything because no one knows what’s going on over there right now.” A catch-22 in which the stakes grow more desperate each day.
Tent Dwellers
Chris Granaghan, a freshman spending the week in one of the Project Darfur tents, agrees: “Even if [people] don’t care, having 30 to 40 tents on campus like this, even if they’re not interested in Darfur, they’ll ask you about it. So there’s an opportunity to educate people.” Not that apathy is a desirable response, he clarifies. “I wish they would care, but even if they don’t, at least they’ve heard of it now.”
With a blue “DeVleiger/Eingold for SGA” bandana covering his shoulder-length dirty blond hair, Granaghan explains how he got into Project Darfur as he tosses a Frisbee across a row of tents.
“I’ve been involved in organizations like this for five years,” he says. Granaghan found out about Project Darfur when he “just walked up and got some info.”
“I was intrigued,” he says, “and glad I could do something to let people know what’s going on outside this box we call the U.S. of A. It’s a box that’s trapping people. [But] the knowledge people gain from [this experience] is priceless.”
Some of that knowledge is more experiential than factual. Stacy Kowalski, a sophomore member of Campus Peace Action and a tent dweller for the week, says it’s been hard, fasting on such a hot day, having to wait for water to be brought to the camp, and freezing when temperatures drop at night-although sharing a tent with five other people helps her stay warm. “I’m really dirty,” she admits, and it’s only day three. “In a way it’s good,” she says of the discomfort; she’s gaining empathy for the actual refugees.
Origin of an Awareness Campaign
While he insists that the idea took shape through a collaborative effort, David Brown did originate the project in its most rudimentary form. He had a rough idea, he says, and got together with a number of campus organizations-including bedfellows as unlikely as the College Democrats and the College Republicans-to see if it was a workable concept.
“When we had our first meeting for this ... the first thing I said was, ‘My idea for this is probably going to change by about 90 percent by the end of this meeting,’ and it did. ... We gathered input from everyone else, and then we came up with this kind of format.”
Nonetheless, he’s been a primary force behind Project Darfur’s conceptualization, fleshing out, and coming to pass, and none would argue that “chief organizer” is a misnomer. Regardless of official title, Brown the ordinary guy-a music composition major-has worked like crazy over the past six months to make the event a reality. Brown and the other students involved raised some $50,000 in funding for the event (most of which went toward transporting and compensating-at reduced fees-the primary speakers).
Quiet Man, Big Mission
You might expect the face behind a humanitarian event like Project Darfur to be a bit on the bohemian side, or at least resemble the stereotypical crazy-unshaven-activist-who-eats-sleeps-and-breathes-green-and-patchouli. You’d expect the leader and organizer of a week-long awareness campaign to be outspoken, full of slogans, with an obnoxiously large personality.
That is exactly what David Brown is not.
He looks like an ordinary guy, someone you probably wouldn’t even take note of unless you knew him. He’s unobtrusive; he’s not a walking signboard for a style or a cause. Medium height, medium build, brown hair cut simply, wire-frame glasses. He’s wearing a navy blue suit and a tasteful tie when I meet him (because he’s been in meetings-the cost of heading an event like this-all day), and he speaks with pauses between thoughts, letting his words take shape in his head before they come out, and in a quieter voice than I expected. (To be fair, it’s midweek, when he’s understandably exhausted from running around nearly 24 hours a day making sure events go smoothly-so perhaps he’s more subdued than usual.) This gives his words more weight-his thoughts on Darfur come across as sincere, deeply rooted views rather than rapid-fire regurgitations of catchphrases and stock explanations.
No Thanks, I’m Wearing Heels
Case in point: While we’re talking, sitting on a mesh steel bench parallel to Memory Mall, where Invisible Children (a documentary film made by college students about a situation in Uganda comparable to Darfur) is being projected on the side of a white tent, a young woman stops near us and asks what’s going on. Brown could have said, “I’m doing an interview,” or he could have pawned off the task of explaining to a nearby Project member. Instead, he says, “This is Project Darfur, have you heard of it?” She hasn’t. Brown gives a succinct explanation-less than 100 words-ending with “This is just an awareness project.”
“Wow,” is the gist of her response. Though she seems enthusiastic about the events (especially Chuck D, who spoke two nights before), she declines to join the documentary viewers because her high heels will get stuck in the grassy field, she says.
But that’s more or less typical of conversations with people walking by the tent city, Brown says. Though he laughs as he remembers, “The first day, when we were setting up, someone asked if we were selling tents.”
He feels their presence on the lawn all week has been effective. “For the most part, people that come out here know what’s going on. Even if they don’t come out to the events, even if they’re just walking by, they at least, now, know what [Darfur] is.” It’s a prime location: hundreds of UCF students journey between the Classroom One and Health and Public Affairs buildings on a daily basis, and thousands walk past the 5-foot-high signboard plastered with Project Darfur posters outside the Student Union. Word has gotten around-whether through active promotion, articles in the Central Florida Future, the Orlando Sentinel and the Orlando Weekly, or casual conversation. And that’s the point, Brown says.
A Campus of Activists
Brown has nothing but praise not only for the student volunteers who helped pull off such a complex event, but for student-body support in general. “I had a lot of students come up to me crying and just give me money [after an SGA meeting where funding was discussed]. One student gave us $1,000, another student gave us $2,000. Lots of other students have just been giving whatever they can give. Right after the [SGA] meeting I found an envelope in my mailbox that said ‘Darfur’ in red ink, and it had sixty bucks in it.”
During planning stages, he says, “It got to a point where, every time someone heard about it, they would say, ‘Add my group to the list.’ We stopped keeping track after a while. But everybody kept helping.” Whether they got recognition or not, individuals and groups have rallied behind the cause with dedication and enthusiasm. Brown relates how a sorority came out to help for the day: “They had their entire sorority come out for three hours, 40 people, helping us promote tomorrow’s concert, which was really cool.”
In general, he says, “The students have been really involved. In fact, the students that have been working on this have been the most amazing group of students I’ve ever worked with-and I’ve done a lot of projects.”
Stacy Kowalski says one of the most impressive aspects of Project Darfur to her is the diverse mix of groups and individuals involved. “There are Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, and Christians. That’s been really nice, [getting to] talk to people that you would never [encounter].” Perhaps a tragic enough situation can actually unify special-interest groups.
Fast, Then Feast
As the sun sets on Ash Wednesday, volunteers set up folding tables and pile them with donated food-bagels, breadsticks, black beans and rice, hummus-as the fast-ers gather for the “feast.” Pots of white flowers someone has placed on each table seem incongruous with the concept of a “mock refugee camp,” but then again, so are the tables full of food (and the benevolent hands that donated it).
With the loss of the sunlight, the day’s heat dissipates with a speed that’s out of character for Florida, even in March, but mimics the way an African desert cools as night sets in. One wonders if the refugees in Darfur have sweatshirts to don like these college students do. Doubtful.
But perhaps, because these students are out here, living in tents instead of dorms, even if just for a week, and even if their “refugee” experience is relatively luxurious-perhaps the feast to end the real refugees’ fast is that much closer.
1) genocide, no matter where it occurs or to whom, is everyone's problem.
2) i'd love to hear some suggestions for improvement. (or, if you love it, why.)
It’s Ash Wednesday, a traditionally solemn day for Catholics and Protestants, a day of fasting and repentance following Fat Tuesday’s indulgences. But today on the University of Central Florida’s Memory Mall, while Ash Wednesday observers walk past wearing soot crosses on their foreheads, a fast of a different nature is taking place.
It’s not exactly a holy fast focused on repentance. It’s about sacrifice and understanding.
Participants of Project Darfur, a week-long awareness campaign sponsored by upward of 40 student organizations as diverse as NORML, Campus Peace Action and Campus Crusade for Christ, are fasting today in honor of and solidarity with the estimated 1.8 million Darfur refugees who barely have enough food to live on.
What is Darfur? Darfur is difficult to explain. To do so without oversimplification is probably impossible. The word itself refers to a location as well as a situation-a human-rights crisis, to be exact. Darfur, the place, is a region about three-quarters the size of Texas on the western edge of Sudan, in Africa. The Darfur conflict, as the situation is often called, has taken approximately 400,000 lives since 2003.
In discussing the facts of Darfur, despite hours of research, one feels inept, as ill-equipped as though trying to fill shoes four sizes too big, not knowing which is the left shoe and which is the right-and having forgotten how to tie a bow. The Darfur conflict is a huge “issue,” unwieldy and difficult to make concrete. It’s an issue of such dire immediacy and importance that it deserves to be written about persuasively and passionately, in a way that stirs hearts and mobilizes legs. I’m not so sure I’m the woman for that job. But here I am, and here it is. Onward, then. We’ll limp together.
Darfur Primer
To avoid a textbook-length treatise, and since the causes of the situation are debatable-some argue it’s racial, others say it’s agricultural or economical-and relatively less urgent than the consequences (hundreds of thousands of lives lost), let’s try a bullet list of important facts about Darfur:
- The conflict, between the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes, and the non-Arab peoples of the region, has been ongoing since February 2003. “The Janjaweed are conducting a systematic campaign of murder, rape, torture, starvation, and displacement against the ethnic peoples of Darfur” (ProjectDarfur.com).
- According to Wikipedia, in October 2004 the World Health Organization gave an estimate of 71,000 deaths by starvation and disease alone between March and October 2004. ProjectDarfur.com states that 10,000 people die each month from famine in refugee camps.
- Though current death-toll estimates vary, the totals are generally agreed to be in the 300,000-400,000 range.
- One million to two million more Darfur civilians have been displaced from their homes, and some 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad.
- Not much is being done, either to end the conflict or to aid the refugees. Although the UN, prior to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, called the Darfur conflict the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, the UN members most equipped to come to Darfur’s rescue are tied up in other situations. With U.S. troops still deployed in Iraq, intervention is difficult, and complicated by America’s involvement in the peace process ending the Second Sudanese Civil War. And, as Wikipedia reports, in the U.S. as well as Britain and France, “a strong lobby exists opposed to intervention in countries whose internal strife is not clearly related to the nation's own interest.”
- Finally, and the most fundamental roadblock to action, American awareness of this crisis is minimal.
Refugee Camp Replica
Despite the sober motivations for today’s fast, the atmosphere on Memory Mall, dotted with 30 to 40 tents of all shapes and sizes, is a contagious but odd mix. The participants are simultaneously upbeat and carefree, yet acutely aware of why they’re there and the urgency of the issue they’re championing. In some ways, it’s just like any other section of any other college campus: a couple of guys fling a Frisbee back and forth; a girl lies on a ratty quilt, doing homework and listening to an iPod in the afternoon sun; people come and go on bicycles; another girl carries her laptop out of a tent and asks a friend’s opinion on a paper she’s writing.
In one corner of the field, Jeremy Characo solicits signatures for petitions demanding that the U.S. government do something about Darfur. He relates some of the horrors of the situation to a student who gasps and puts a hand to her mouth in shock. Warring factions don’t shoot people, he says, because that would be a luxury, an easy way to die. Instead, they use machetes, or even bury their prisoners alive. Even if they make it to the relative safety of the camps, refugees are still in danger of death from starvation and disease, Characo continues.
“They can’t send men [out into the war zone] to get water or food, because they’ll be killed. So they send women. Women will be spared-only to be raped again and again.” (King Solomon knew what he was talking about when he said “Even the kindness of the wicked is cruelty.”)
Along with the mock refugee camp, every night of Project Darfur week is an event in itself, with speakers like Chuck D and Mia Farrow spreading awareness from an outdoor stage set up on Memory Mall, an evening of documentary films about humanitarian crises, a “Concert for Change,” featuring local bands such as Dodger and Mobella, and, perhaps the most profound event, eyewitnesses sharing firsthand accounts of the daily atrocities in Darfur.
Brian Steidle, former Marine Captain and official observer to the African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur, stopped at Memory Mall during his 21,000-mile “Tour for Darfur: Eyewitness to Genocide.” He shared the stage with Mohammed Yahya, a refugee from Darfur. Project Darfur organizers said most of the audience was in tears while Yahya shared his harrowing story-most of his family has been killed, and he has no idea if his parents are still alive, but he is touring the United States to raise awareness about the situation, grateful for every opportunity to spread the truth.
Knowledge = Power
Kara Fosbenter, a sophomore, says that before getting involved with the event, she had little idea what was going on in Darfur. “I’d heard the name [Darfur] before, but I never knew the extent of what was going on.” Now she’s volunteering, manning Project Darfur’s information tent for an afternoon, and seems ready to burst with indignation and anger over what she’s learned about Darfur-and what isn’t being done. “It’s just awful. It’s disgusting,” she huffs.
Fosbenter believes a college campus is fertile soil for sowing seeds of activism: “It’s something people should know about-especially college students, because we’re, in my opinion, some of the most active members of society. I think that if people know about what’s going on, then they’ll definitely do something about it.”
As David Brown, one of the primary figures behind Project Darfur, says, “What really needs to be done is people need to know that it’s going on. There [are] plenty of different solutions, but not doing anything is probably the worst thing that we can let go on. And the reason we’re not doing anything is because there’s no demand for us to do anything. There is no demand for us to do anything because no one knows what’s going on over there right now.” A catch-22 in which the stakes grow more desperate each day.
Tent Dwellers
Chris Granaghan, a freshman spending the week in one of the Project Darfur tents, agrees: “Even if [people] don’t care, having 30 to 40 tents on campus like this, even if they’re not interested in Darfur, they’ll ask you about it. So there’s an opportunity to educate people.” Not that apathy is a desirable response, he clarifies. “I wish they would care, but even if they don’t, at least they’ve heard of it now.”
With a blue “DeVleiger/Eingold for SGA” bandana covering his shoulder-length dirty blond hair, Granaghan explains how he got into Project Darfur as he tosses a Frisbee across a row of tents.
“I’ve been involved in organizations like this for five years,” he says. Granaghan found out about Project Darfur when he “just walked up and got some info.”
“I was intrigued,” he says, “and glad I could do something to let people know what’s going on outside this box we call the U.S. of A. It’s a box that’s trapping people. [But] the knowledge people gain from [this experience] is priceless.”
Some of that knowledge is more experiential than factual. Stacy Kowalski, a sophomore member of Campus Peace Action and a tent dweller for the week, says it’s been hard, fasting on such a hot day, having to wait for water to be brought to the camp, and freezing when temperatures drop at night-although sharing a tent with five other people helps her stay warm. “I’m really dirty,” she admits, and it’s only day three. “In a way it’s good,” she says of the discomfort; she’s gaining empathy for the actual refugees.
Origin of an Awareness Campaign
While he insists that the idea took shape through a collaborative effort, David Brown did originate the project in its most rudimentary form. He had a rough idea, he says, and got together with a number of campus organizations-including bedfellows as unlikely as the College Democrats and the College Republicans-to see if it was a workable concept.
“When we had our first meeting for this ... the first thing I said was, ‘My idea for this is probably going to change by about 90 percent by the end of this meeting,’ and it did. ... We gathered input from everyone else, and then we came up with this kind of format.”
Nonetheless, he’s been a primary force behind Project Darfur’s conceptualization, fleshing out, and coming to pass, and none would argue that “chief organizer” is a misnomer. Regardless of official title, Brown the ordinary guy-a music composition major-has worked like crazy over the past six months to make the event a reality. Brown and the other students involved raised some $50,000 in funding for the event (most of which went toward transporting and compensating-at reduced fees-the primary speakers).
Quiet Man, Big Mission
You might expect the face behind a humanitarian event like Project Darfur to be a bit on the bohemian side, or at least resemble the stereotypical crazy-unshaven-activist-who-eats-sleeps-and-breathes-green-and-patchouli. You’d expect the leader and organizer of a week-long awareness campaign to be outspoken, full of slogans, with an obnoxiously large personality.
That is exactly what David Brown is not.
He looks like an ordinary guy, someone you probably wouldn’t even take note of unless you knew him. He’s unobtrusive; he’s not a walking signboard for a style or a cause. Medium height, medium build, brown hair cut simply, wire-frame glasses. He’s wearing a navy blue suit and a tasteful tie when I meet him (because he’s been in meetings-the cost of heading an event like this-all day), and he speaks with pauses between thoughts, letting his words take shape in his head before they come out, and in a quieter voice than I expected. (To be fair, it’s midweek, when he’s understandably exhausted from running around nearly 24 hours a day making sure events go smoothly-so perhaps he’s more subdued than usual.) This gives his words more weight-his thoughts on Darfur come across as sincere, deeply rooted views rather than rapid-fire regurgitations of catchphrases and stock explanations.
No Thanks, I’m Wearing Heels
Case in point: While we’re talking, sitting on a mesh steel bench parallel to Memory Mall, where Invisible Children (a documentary film made by college students about a situation in Uganda comparable to Darfur) is being projected on the side of a white tent, a young woman stops near us and asks what’s going on. Brown could have said, “I’m doing an interview,” or he could have pawned off the task of explaining to a nearby Project member. Instead, he says, “This is Project Darfur, have you heard of it?” She hasn’t. Brown gives a succinct explanation-less than 100 words-ending with “This is just an awareness project.”
“Wow,” is the gist of her response. Though she seems enthusiastic about the events (especially Chuck D, who spoke two nights before), she declines to join the documentary viewers because her high heels will get stuck in the grassy field, she says.
But that’s more or less typical of conversations with people walking by the tent city, Brown says. Though he laughs as he remembers, “The first day, when we were setting up, someone asked if we were selling tents.”
He feels their presence on the lawn all week has been effective. “For the most part, people that come out here know what’s going on. Even if they don’t come out to the events, even if they’re just walking by, they at least, now, know what [Darfur] is.” It’s a prime location: hundreds of UCF students journey between the Classroom One and Health and Public Affairs buildings on a daily basis, and thousands walk past the 5-foot-high signboard plastered with Project Darfur posters outside the Student Union. Word has gotten around-whether through active promotion, articles in the Central Florida Future, the Orlando Sentinel and the Orlando Weekly, or casual conversation. And that’s the point, Brown says.
A Campus of Activists
Brown has nothing but praise not only for the student volunteers who helped pull off such a complex event, but for student-body support in general. “I had a lot of students come up to me crying and just give me money [after an SGA meeting where funding was discussed]. One student gave us $1,000, another student gave us $2,000. Lots of other students have just been giving whatever they can give. Right after the [SGA] meeting I found an envelope in my mailbox that said ‘Darfur’ in red ink, and it had sixty bucks in it.”
During planning stages, he says, “It got to a point where, every time someone heard about it, they would say, ‘Add my group to the list.’ We stopped keeping track after a while. But everybody kept helping.” Whether they got recognition or not, individuals and groups have rallied behind the cause with dedication and enthusiasm. Brown relates how a sorority came out to help for the day: “They had their entire sorority come out for three hours, 40 people, helping us promote tomorrow’s concert, which was really cool.”
In general, he says, “The students have been really involved. In fact, the students that have been working on this have been the most amazing group of students I’ve ever worked with-and I’ve done a lot of projects.”
Stacy Kowalski says one of the most impressive aspects of Project Darfur to her is the diverse mix of groups and individuals involved. “There are Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, and Christians. That’s been really nice, [getting to] talk to people that you would never [encounter].” Perhaps a tragic enough situation can actually unify special-interest groups.
Fast, Then Feast
As the sun sets on Ash Wednesday, volunteers set up folding tables and pile them with donated food-bagels, breadsticks, black beans and rice, hummus-as the fast-ers gather for the “feast.” Pots of white flowers someone has placed on each table seem incongruous with the concept of a “mock refugee camp,” but then again, so are the tables full of food (and the benevolent hands that donated it).
With the loss of the sunlight, the day’s heat dissipates with a speed that’s out of character for Florida, even in March, but mimics the way an African desert cools as night sets in. One wonders if the refugees in Darfur have sweatshirts to don like these college students do. Doubtful.
But perhaps, because these students are out here, living in tents instead of dorms, even if just for a week, and even if their “refugee” experience is relatively luxurious-perhaps the feast to end the real refugees’ fast is that much closer.