Mattafix journey to Africa

by Marlon Roudette 03.AUG.07

The 20th century will forever be scared by conflict on a massive scale and the turn of the millennium has done little to indicate that the near future will differ in any way.

Our brothers and sisters in Darfur and Eastern Chad are part of the largest concentration of human suffering in the world today.{{more}} Out of a population of 6 million in Darfur, around 2.4 million have been forced to flee their homes and take up shelter in refugee camps. A total of 4 million people are dependant on foreign aid.

Violence broke out in Darfur in 2003, as Government backed militias used brutal violence in an attempt to control the predominantly nomadic tribes of Western Sudan. As a result millions have fled their homes in one the worst humanitarian disasters of our time. Recently the attempts by Humanitarian groups to assist those in need have been greatly disrupted by further violence. Many aid workers in the region operate in a climate of fear and danger.

A few months ago my band, Mattafix, were approached by a group of Human Rights lawyers determined to help bring about an end to the armed conflict in Darfur. We were asked to provide the music for a visual campaign aimed at raising awareness and putting pressure on governments around the world to help stop the violence. Of course we accepted this offer and have since been working with humanitarian groups such as Oxfam and Crisis Action in an attempt to create effective and thought provoking material. We as a band have always felt that music is and has always been inextricably linked to the human struggle for freedom.

On the 15th of July 2007, I set off from London with a team of 8 other committed individuals, bound for Eastern Chad, close to the Darfur border. With me were a film crew, two journalists from the news network Al Jazeera, and an Oxfam campaigner. The trip was aimed at filming a video for a song I had written and recorded in Johannesburg a few months earlier. From London we flew to Paris and then on to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. Air France charged us a fortune for excess baggage despite my attempts to reprimand them for their uncharitable behaviour! From there we chartered a single engine aircraft inland and set up camp at an Oxfam base surrounded by refugee camps and camps for Internally Displaced People (IDPs are those who have been forced to leave their homes within Chad as violence spread across from Darfur).

On our first day we drove into one of the largest refugee camps in Eastern Chad. Just under 20,000 people living in clusters of huts in grid formation. As we arrived hundreds of curious children surrounded us fascinated by our cameras and equipment. I was struck by their positive energy despite their deplorable living conditions and past experiences. Many of them were orphans and many of the women we saw had been raped by militias before they fled their villages. Several times a day we were passed by pick up trucks strapped with sub-machine guns and carrying plain clothed soldiers. It was impossible to tell which side of the conflict they belonged to. As I began performing for the cameras amid the crowds of people who converged around the video shoot, I could not help feeling a little awkward and incongruous. After all, the music business seemed a far cry from the stark cold realities of a refugee camp. However, I kept reminding myself of the reasons for my being there. A global audio-visual campaign can go a long way in influencing the outcome and conclusion of atrocities such as Darfur.

During my stay I also began to appreciate our own role as a mouthpiece for the movement. The Oxfam campaigners were keen to educate me in the complexities of the situation both politically and logistically. NGOs in the region are forced to walk the tightrope of diplomacy as they constantly try to cope with the bureaucracy of helping millions of people often against the wishes of their government. On the plane journey back to London I began thinking how far we still have to go to secure the basic human rights for the people of Darfur and Eastern Chad. In a year that was supposed to mark the bicentennial of the abolition of slavery we must face the reality; millions of our people are still not free.

“See the nation through the people’s eyes,
See tears that flow like rivers from the skies.
Where it seems there are only borderlines,
Where others turn and sigh,
You shall rise.”

Marlon Roudette will be sharing more about his journey with young artists in the interactive discussion program ‘The Art Room’, Total FM 100.5 this Sat 2.15- 3.15pm.