REACT will soon be receiving individual responses and voices from teachers and children in the refugee camps.”I want to be an engineer”, “I want to be a teacher”, “I want to be a camel trader or a driver”, “I want to be a doctor”. These were the responses from Nadjua aged 15, Samia aged 12, Mohammed aged 12, and Jebbar aged 10, in the Am Nabak refugee camp when we asked them what they wanted to be.

Samia and Nadjua, Jebbar, Mohammad (who became deaf after bombings in his village) and Mohammad, girls playing in Am Nabak, April ‘07

Their replies to our questions should be taken seriously - they, like children in the UK and elsewhere, have aspirations, ambitions and dreams. Their home for the last 3 years, a tented and sprawling improvised set of refugee shelters on the war torn border between Chad and Darfur, demands great resilience just for daily survival - let alone hoping to study to become an engineer or a doctor. But they face refugee life with startling determination - many even crossing back into Darfur into government held areas - at enormous risk - in order to try and sit exams or find text books to study.

Mona, aged 8, Girls at school and a head- teacher

On the morning of the 14th february 2004, the village of Girgira, where Nadjua, Samia, Jebbar and Mohammed lived, was attacked by men on horseback and helicopters. Those villagers not immediately murdered fled, scattering across the desert. These 4 children could be considered ‘the lucky ones’. Many children died alone - lost in the desert - but these four somehow made the walk to Chad - losing their parents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters in the process.

Sahara Abdel Rachman

Sahara Abdel Rachman is a teacher from the village of Girgira in North East Darfur. She fled the attacks of February 2004 and made it to Chad, 40 km away. A few days later, she and other two women, Fatima and Fatima, and a younger girl, made the journey back to Girgira risking their life to try and save their possessions and, among those, the school textbooks. Meet Sahara as she entered Girgira days after the attacks.