- A plastic sheet for shelter along with daily allotments of two or three gallons of water and about 2,000 calories of the simplest of foods - grain, oil, a few beans - is enough to keep a person alive.
But imagine being limited to those emergency rations day after day for three long years, as have countless displaced people in Sudan's remote Darfur region, and you'll quickly understand the engine that drives the private enterprise sprouting in the camps they now call home.
Lamia Mohamed Issa offers an array of small goods for sale on a blue tarp stretched across the hot sand at Abu Shouk camp: white soaps, pink soaps, dates, powdered milk, biscuits, nuts, sunflower seeds and bubble gum. Lamia has been in business since last year, after earning the money to stock her "store" by working as a day labourer.
She sells her wares for pennies - about 20 cents for a bar of soap, two cents for a piece of candy. But at every turn on the parched passageways of Abu Shouk, other women are doing the same, and competition is stiff.
Halima Abdel Rasoul opened her shop under a straw shelter on an elevated patch of ground in late spring. Detergent, small stacks of peanuts in their shells, onions and pencils are some of her offerings. But in the past five days sitting out in the hot sun, she has earned barely 1,000 dinars - less than $5.
With nine children to care for, Halima needs the money from her small enterprise to buy precious firewood for cooking the family's meals. The proceeds from her recent sales will buy enough wood to last four or five days.
Without the money to buy wood, many women are forced to leave the relative security of the camp and search for trees, often having to walk up to nine miles away. The risk of attack by armed men is high.
Attacks on women are one of the most frightening realities of the conflict that has now consumed Darfur for more than three long years, forcing more than 2 million people from their homes.
Though an African Union peacekeeping force is now patrolling the region, it numbers only about 7,000 members and is far too small and ill equipped to carry out its mission effectively across Darfur - an area about the size of Texas.
The AU force says that in places such as Abu Shouk it does not have the troops or the resources to accompany the women as they scour the land for wood.
"If you have money, you can buy it (wood)," says Karima Elduma Mohamed, a member of a community health committee Oxfam helped to organize. "If you don't, you have to go and face problems."
Kalma's MarketAs the conflict continues to flare, Kalma camp in South Darfur now teems with more than 90,000 displaced people. Together, they have created a spontaneous, sprawling city of tangled paths, raggedy shelters, and a local market that stretches as far as the eye can see.
"Everything is available in this camp," says Lawrence Teh, a public health promoter for Oxfam, which is providing water, sanitation, and public health outreach to about 45,000 people at Kalma.
Stalls loaded with bolts of fabric, soccer balls, kettles, dried fish, limes, cosmetics and used washcloths - among the countless goods - crowd both sides of the market drag. There are also shops for making phone calls, for repairing bicycles, and for building furniture. There is even a restaurant, The Son of the Hill, equipped with six small tables and a collection of rickety chairs.
Not all of Kalma's enterprise is concentrated in the market. Scattered throughout the camp, people make livings as best they can. One man hacks apart meat in a straw hut, laying chunks of it on a mat in the midday heat. A sewing machine whirs in a straw lean-to. Boys dig dirt to make mud bricks. Little cakes sizzle to a golden crisp in oil over fires tended by women.
Charcoal-makersWho are the customers in all this activity?
Some of them may well be the charcoal-makers labouring on the outskirts of Kalma in yet another example of how displaced people are piecing together livelihoods despite the tumult around them - and at the expense of the environment. Once dotted with trees, the land around Kalma is now largely bare, the old growth chopped down to feed the fires of the tens of thousands of people who have flocked to the camp.
Broad patches of blackened earth mark the approach to Kalma. These are the charcoal sites, where massive tree trunks get stacked, covered with earth, and ignited for a slow, eight-day burn that turns the wood to charcoal.
At one site, 12 men have teamed up to share the work, trekking more than six miles to find the trees to supply their business. Using only simple axes, it can take the men up to four hours to hack through the trunks of the broadest ones. Turning their hands face up, they show palms as calloused and tough as tanned leather.
If things are going well - and it's safe enough to venture far in search of trees - the men can make five sacks of charcoal per person each week. They can sell each sack for about 1,400 dinars, or nearly $7. They use the money to buy food and clothing to supplement the basic goods aid groups regularly distribute.
Entrepreneurs at Kalma are making a living, of sorts. But the work that fills their days is hardly a replacement for all they left behind when they fled their homes. And that's where they really want to be, the men say - home again.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters.Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
