Starting My Day in Eastern Chad

i-ACT’s Gabriel Stuaring and James Thacher are in eastern Chad documenting the stories of Darfuri refugees. This trip, i-ACT #16, coincides with the 10th anniversary of the start of the genocide in Darfur and the more recent influx of 300,000 new refugees into the region.

I’m not exactly sure when the day begins because the night kind of flows into it. I have a hard time falling asleep, but at some point I crash and sleep for a few hours. I wake up and almost instinctively open the computer, knowing that the other side of the world is awake and moving, and I want to see what my team is doing out there and what my family is saying — I want to feel connected.

The bad thing is that connecting is not good for sleeping. After some time, I figure that it’s too late to go back to sleep and better to just start my day, eat some food, and start getting ready for visiting the refugee camp.