Waste

In the morning we wake up to hear the children crying. In the makeshift hospital here, set up by foreign aid workers, it is so crowded with the sick that some are sleeping on the floors.

Among the stench and flies, the children lie wasted, staring into space. Tiny human beings, who were born into the madness of man's inhumanity to man, into the madness of a spate of killing that has left many of their fathers, brothers, grandparents and uncles dead.

And now, they face starvation which is cruel and slow. Most of the children are too far gone to eat. Some have the peeling skin and lesions that come with advanced starvation - their skin is wrinkled, loose around their bones. The mothers sit by powerless.

We spent two weeks in Darfur, driving through eerie, burnt-out villages, empty of people.

We travelled to Mornay camp, where we were a month ago. On arriving back, we went to the medical tent. It was strangely quiet inside.

Four people were sitting in a circle. A mother was looking down and sobbing silently, rubbing her hands on her face. I realised I knew her. Then it slowly came to me what was going on. Her daughter Nadia, whom we had spent two days with in this tent a month ago, was dying.

The mother, Juma, was saying an awful goodbye.

We moved away in their private moment. Ten minutes later Nadia was dead.