Angelina Jolie’s recent trip to a camp housing Darfur refugees in chad

The first time I saw that in the camp it was obviously really shocking. They are people who are traumatized by the bombing [by Sudanese government forces attacking villages in Darfur and by war. The old woman may have had some dementia before. The reality is there are one or two aid workers for every 2,000 refugees. The same with the doctors, the therapists. The basic need there is to just try to keep these people safe. To keep the tents up in all the sand storms, try to get the food distributed and basic health-care needs. The chained woman started to beat her daughter with anything she could find. She kept hearing voices of the people yelling at her. So she feels constantly under attack. I'm no therapist, so I don't understand all the details. But when I did try to talk to her, she seemed pretty rational. But then she started aggressively telling me that I had to stop them from putting snakes on her. And for the people to stop yelling at her and for the bombs to stop dropping.

The little boy was a normal 3-year-old [now 7] who disappeared for 48 hours after [his village was bombed]. I can only imagine what he saw. Sure he saw death. And when found, he was found in a state… As a first reaction you want to remove the rope. But the mother, she has four other kids, she's by herself. Therapists visit him, but if he's left alone he will disappear or bang himself. I talked to him for like half an hour and just kind of looked at him for a long time before he touched me and there was a little boy in there who was open to a kind sound.… There's a normal little kid right there, but he's got a look of fear. He's nervous to touch. And you can feel that need for safety. The mother unfortunately can't not go work for the other children and can't sit with him all day long and hold him, which is probably what would do some good. But what he needs is probably some serious therapy. There arelots of children like him there. Lots of victims of war. It's a whole other thing that you usually don't get to address because they have to be so focused on the basic needs of survival. These are the many other casualties of the kind of war that is happening in Darfur.