Darfur: the struggle to survive

Jeevan Vasagar reports:

Since April, the family has been living on mati, yellow nuts which are poisonous and have to be soaked in several changes of water before they are edible. They fill the stomach, but have no nutritional content. They are eating grass pollen too; tiny dark brown grains cooked into a porridge.

Mr Ibrahim's son Anwar is six, but a few grey hairs curl from the base of the boy's scalp. His father said the child's hair started to turn white after the attack on their village. Like his brother Abdel Karim, his stomach is bloated and both boys are short for their years.

A comprehensive destruction has been visited on this region. Fire has turned stone huts into shells and grass huts into circles of black ash on the ground. The villagers' stores of dried fruit and grains have been carbonised to hard black lumps. It seems as if no clay storage pot has been left unsmashed.