When she first arrived in Chad, some local women came and donated what they could: ground nuts, some tea, some sugar. But after a few weeks, they said they were running out and had no more to offer. Tinjany gathered a few teachers and offered their skills to the village. But the Chadians couldn't even afford the salaries of the teachers at the one school in Tine.
"Chad is a very little and underprivileged country and we have no more to offer," said Tom Dillo, the governor of Tine. He held a satellite phone and papers tallying the refugee flow. "There is a saying in our community that you can't close a big hole with a little hand. We will have nothing left to offer except the soil to bury us all in."
The well in Bamena, Chad, is crowded with people in search of water for cooking, bathing and livestock. The village, located across the Sudanese border, has 7,700 people and just three wells.
(Emily Wax -- The Washington Post)
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A Friendship Cools
Back near the Bamena well, Ibrahim and other Chadian women formed a committee to gather blankets, food, shoes -- anything extra that they owned -- for the refugees.
"The only thing separating us is our huts," said Ibrahim, whose home is made of mud, but keeps the sand away. One night she awoke to the sounds of a woman crying in the desert who had lost her family. Another night, she found three orphans.
There was another reason she and the other women donated. Most of the refugees were women and children. The men were gone, some dead and others fighting. Since many men had two or three wives, they left behind large families and dozens of mouths to feed.
"The women here have a close relationship," Ibrahim explained. "We know they are hurting."
The village women donated 17 sheep, 50 sacks of sorghum, seven bags of sugar and three bags of tea.
The refugees rejoiced. It was enough to help them survive another week. Ibrahim gave one of her best dresses to Yousife, an orange one with flowers and a sweeping head scarf. For a few days, everything seemed better.
But the only thing the villagers couldn't offer enough of was water. The village of 7,700 people and 5,000 head of livestock has just three wells. There has never been so much demand for water, never so many people going to the same sources.
So the friendship of Ibrahim and Yousife cooled off where it began: at the watering hole.
Ibrahim, who has four children and is herself one of three wives, watched in shock as five of her cattle, 29 of her camels and three of her horses died because of the water shortage.
The refugees' livestock also ate her grass. She wondered if sharing was endangering them all. Her husband was upset. His other wives were blaming her. Her children were hungry.
"I wish I had anything left to give," she said on a recent morning, as a group of Chadian women gathered by the well. "I feel so angry now. We have so many problems. Now, I am thinking we are going to have a lot more."
Her friend Yousife and some other Sudanese refugee women came over.
"We are angry, too," Yousife said. "We don't even have a space to live. We are suffering so much."
There was silence.
