Refugees and Legionnaires
(continued) 
Insh’allah. Insh’allah, we will have water at the house when we get back to Abeche. Electricity tonight. Flyable weather tomorrow. No hijacking attempts. No local soldiers high on homegrown narcotics and making trouble. No rebel attacks.
Why, again, do these pilots put up with all of this?
“I wanted to be a better citizen of the world; get out of the U.S. and see what was happening in these places for myself instead of relying on Wolf Blitzer to tell me,” Lauren says that evening. “And I wanted to give something back.”
As for Myriam—when she was 19, her boyfriend was killed in a plane crash while flying relief supplies in Mauritania. “He always told me to pursue my dreams of being a pilot and flying in these places,” she says. “So when he died, I decided, ‘that’s it. I’m doing it. I’m going to pursue my dream … and continue his.’ ”
“We’re not in it for the money,” another Air Serv pilot named Darryl Wade tells me with a shrug. “We’re committed to the cause.”
And in Chad, the cause is the refugee camps, where over 200,000 people now huddle togetwher in makeshift housing, having fled from levels of violence beyond my imagination’s reach. “If it wasn’t for UNHCR,” Pauline Ballaman says soberly, “the Janjaweed (Arab militias in Sudan) would probably have finished off everyone who’s now in D’Jabal (the UNHCR refugee camp in Goz Beida).”
And here’s the thing. Yes, the flying and living conditions in Chad are tough, and the risk of banditry and violence is real. But I spend a morning at D’Jabal before I leave. And what I find there astounds me. I expect to find hollow shells of human beings, traumatized beyond recognition. But three years after these people fled their villages in terror, life is finding its way back into the stick shelters and fenced-in family enclosures here. New babies are being born. Children are playing and laughing. Men and women smile as I approach. Life in the camps is still extremely hard, and I have no illusions about any of these people being emotionally intact or unmarked. But it’s still stunning, what even a little bit of safety and food can do to restore the human heart and spirit.
And Lauren, Myriam, Darryl and the other pilots flying in eastern Chad are providing a lifeline to help make that food and safety possible.
What will happen to all these refugees in the long run is a big and unanswered question, of course. But for now, they have a window of peace, safety and relative quiet. Which is more than I can say for where I’m headed next. Because just as I get ready to leave Chad, word comes that conflict in the eastern part of the Congo (DRC)—where I’m supposed to do some more Caravan flying with Air Serv—has heated up again. And rebel forces are already moving toward the town where Air Serv has its base.
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