The Translator

I recently finished reading a book called The Translator by Daoud Hari that was fascinating so I thought that I would share.  It reads like a collection of short stories about Daoud's life growing up in Darfur and his role as a translator once the genocide/war broke out.  Daoud was lucky to gain an education, leaving his small village to go to one of the bigger cities in Western Sudan where he learned both English and Arabic.  Because he was destined to leave his family and not continue raising animals like his brothers, Daoud travelled to Libya and Egypt looking for work.  When the war broke out, Daoud travelled to Chad and worked for press reporters, translating for them at the camps and guiding them into Sudan to get images and testimonies of the atrocities.  I'm not going to give away the entire book, I encourage you to read it yourself!  It will provide you with a sense of how people live in Darfur, what happened, what it felt like and what the people went through, but it won't keep you up at night.  There are stories that are shocking that humans could do this to each other, but again, it's not like watching Black Hawk Down.  Go ahead and give it a read, I'm sure you'll enjoy it and learn something about our world.  I might even let you borrow my copy.