Saturday
Mar152008
Villagers in Darfur told Ellen Ratner the needs they hoped Americans would give
On location in the South Sudan, in a very isolated place called Majom Kor, Ellen Ratner says she is is a village where people from Darfur and other areas have come back to their villages, courtesy of the United Nations. They were told stories of how the people were able to escape to the north or were taken as slaves, although there has been little international recognition that there was slavery at all. One man told them, she says, that the slaves were kept in a pen for seven days without food and water. At this point after all these years away, she says that man told her, the village needs food, clean water, and a health facility. As they were meeting with the villagers today, Ellen said, an unclothed woman came through. The villagers quickly surrounded her, Ellen said, and told her that the woman had been traumatized by rape and that she had seen so many of her relatives killed, that this was her way of coping. The villagers told her the needs that they hoped Americans would give: they had no school, no clinics, no books, no pencils, no paper, and no clean water. That is the need, Ellen says, that is so strong in Southern Sudan.
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tagged Ellen Ratner, Majom Kor, Sudan, darfur2008, slaves in Audio