I've been in El Fasher, in northern Darfur, for a week now and I'm finally leaving tomorrow. It's very strange to say this, but I might actually miss this place. I've been spending days traveling around by road and air with the African Union and returning every evening to a UNICEF guesthouse that feels sort of like a low-rent, third-world Real World without the white people - or the sex.

 

The first two days I was here with a VIP delegation - two major U.S. donors to UNICEF and the Sudan country director - and the treatment was commensurate. There was lots of food, fresh fruit (Darfur has great mangoes. Don't ask), an illicit bottle of Citron (Absolut, not Goose, but it might as well have been) and interesting conversations about Darfur, Africa and philanthropy. Then the delegation left, and I stayed back to work on my own for a few days. The big spreads of food disappeared, and for the last FIVE nights I've eaten the same meal: rice with vegetable stew, and a warm orange for dessert.

 

If I spoke Arabic, or had the strength, I might have ventured into town more often. The closest I came was two nights ago. I went with Hanan, a nice young lawyer from Jordan who is new to UNICEF, to the bakery around the corner from the guesthouse. She'd had the idea of making some Jordanian flatbread, so she'd mixed a bowl of sesame seed paste and a bowl of egg-and-pepper paste and we walked over with the intention of having the baker bake it for us.

 

It's a wonder the Darfur peace agreement didn't collapse then and there. To start off, the neighborhood could barely handle the sight of two white people (mind you, Hanan is Jordanian and speaks Arab as a first language and I am, well, you know, but to the people of El Fasher we might as well have been Vikings) going into the baker's kitchen. Then I, to no one's surprise, made a huge mess as I tried to help Hanan spread the toppings on a few pieces of dough. In no time the baker's worktable was coated with a volleyball-sized patch of sesame goo. The baker's assistant looked at me like I was a moron. Hanan tried to busy me with less technical tasks, like holding her walkie-talkie and standing still.

 

Hanan and I get along well - although I think she thinks I'm a little off. To start, I have been spending an inordinate time in outside in the tiny courtyard, in the dark, using my satellite phone or the satellite modem to get online. Now it so happens that the place on the guesthouse property that the modem works best is next to the women's bathroom and under the laundry line. The first time Hanan saw me, she was going to take a shower and I was typing on a computer while sitting directly under what appeared to be a pair of, let's say, conservative women's undergarments hanging out to dry.

 

"Why are you sitting under my clothe-is?" she asked. "For shade?"

 

The women who work in the guesthouse don't understand me either. How can I not have breakfast or lunch? they ask. Well, breakfast is easy - instant coffee with powdered milk, even in Darfur, isn't appetizing, nor is the bread and warm cheese (especially after seeing the condition of that baker's kitchen). But they are very sweet. The first day, after I left early in the morning and didn't return until it was almost the 9 pm curfew (almost feels like a boarding school), Hanan had to talk Joyce, the lead housekeeper, out of reporting me missing.

 

"Even if he was abducted," Hanan said, her opinion of me perhaps tinged by the laundry episode, "we should wait at least two days to see if he comes back."

 

The other people in the house are minor characters - there's a Spanish guy who claims to be obsessed with the World Cup but never seems to know who is playing or when the matches are on, and a Gambian woman who is very nice and whose job involves confronting Darfur rebels about human rights violations but who has a mortal fear of small bugs. We don't spend that much time together - when I'm in the house (and not hanging out near the underpants) I tend to gravitate toward my room, which is air-conditioned