A Phila.-based group is sending relief supplies to Sudanese living in refugee camps in Chad

By Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writer

Nearly one ton of food, clothing and medical supplies&mdashmuch of it collected locally, and destined for Darfurian Sudanese living hand-to-mouth as war refugees in Chad—will wing its way to Africa this weekend thanks to the Philadelphia-based Darfur Human Rights Organization of the United States and its supporters.


The shipment, valued at about $50,000, according to the group's president, Abdelgabr Adam, includes more than 2,500 pairs of shoes and flip-flops, 400 one-piece outfits for infants, sun hats, soccer balls, and pediatric vitamin supplements to be distributed at the Iridimi refugee camp, home to 40,000 of the estimated 2.5 million Africans displaced by government-affiliated Arab militias.


Critics of Sudan's government say the violence by Janjaweed militias is part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in which a quarter of a million people have been killed.


Major local contributors to the relief effort, which began collecting items last spring, include the 350-member Key Club of Abington High School and students at Warren County Community College in New Jersey.


Key Club faculty adviser Debra Laub Jack, Abington's reading specialist, said the crisis in Darfur has gripped students for the last three years, since Adam, 53, came to the school to speak about it.


About $4,500 in proceeds from two midnight bowl-athons at Thunderbird Lanes in Willow Grove were donated to purchase pediatric vitamins and other supplies. Because of the need for desert-friendly footwear among refugees, the students this year decided to undertake a lip-flop drive.


Stuffing suitcases with hundreds of pairs of the rubbery shoes in the yard outside his Northeast Philadelphia home, where the shipment was being assembled yesterday, Garelnabi Abusikin, 22, a Darfurian who was granted asylum in the United States, said his mother, Mariam, and sister Munira are living in the Iridimi Camp. When the Janjaweed attacked his village in 2003, about 60 people, including his father, uncle, brother, youngest sister and grandmother, were killed, he said.


Abusikin will accompany the shipment via Ethiopian Air out of Washington tomorrow, then for five days travel by truck over dirt-track roads from Chad's capital, N'Djamena, through Abeche to the remote camp.


"I want to thank all the Americans who contributed to this trip," he said, speaking through an interpreter. "We will never forget."