Thinking of Mia and all Darfuri Mothers
Mia is starting her second week on hunger strike. More than 75 people are fasting with her today. Millions more are going hungry around the world. In Darfur, millions are going hungry because their own government has decided it.
I’ve been watching Mia’s video-journals. She is so focused and strong. You can hear children in the background, and one of her grandchildren makes an appearance in one video. Mia’s children have been worried about their mother’s health. All of us that
know her are worried also, and so are so many around the world.
I think of Mia, and I see her sitting in the middle of a sea of color in a refugee camp right on the Chad border with Darfur. She sits with her notebook and listens to a mother that now has no children. Mia is sitting on the floor with this Darfuri mother and is looking straight in to her eyes, sharing an experience as if it was one-on-one, not in the middle of hundreds of women with their children waiting for food distribution.
The janjaweed rode in to this Darfuri mother’s village. They killed all men. Mia asks her about her children. The Darfuri mother says, “They were all boys–men, so they are dead.”
