Editor’s Note: This blog was originally posted on iactivism.org by Gabriel Stauring.
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Moving again. We’ve spent five days here at Kou Kou. We visited the Little Ripples school, and I was blown away by the work the teachers were doing with their students. Pure joy is what I felt when I saw them singing and laughing together, doing breathing and movement exercises, and learning numbers and letters—all while having fun.

Sadly, I was also blown away by the hardship the refugees are going through. Their rations have been cut drastically, and they are having a difficult time adjusting. How do you adjust to not having food? There is some real suffering involved. It was impossible for my mind to process the joy and the sadness all coming at once. We are doing good work in camp Goz Amer, but it is not nearly enough. Now we move.

We have to be up at 5am to then start our drive from Kou Kou to Goz Beida at 6. There’s some stress waiting for us at the other end of the road. We have to tell some wonderful guys that their dreams of being a part of the Darfur United squad that will travel to Sweden have come to an end. Six players will hear the bad news. Fifteen will be hit by joy, and their dreams will begin to feel very, very real.

There’s more stress when we move from Goz Beida to the capital. We are working on passports for our all-refugee team, something that is far from easy. Of course, there are also funding challenges that are making me so much older than I already am.

But, we will continue moving. Little Ripples and Darfur United and the rest of the work that we do with our friends here is about positive movement towards the future. Thanks for being a part of pushing us forward.
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