Never far from the nurse’s mind, the many dangers that plagued the camp accounted for her sense of profound sorrow as she quietly made her way down the narrow aisle separating the hospital’s forty beds. She always felt this way when she stopped to consider the magnitude of what the African people had suffered. Of what they still suffered on an hourly and daily basis. Lily Durant had been in West Darfur for just six months, but during that time she had come to see the true depth of hardship that her patients endured. Not to understand it, but to see it in front of her, around her, everywhere.

For Lily, that was an important distinction. She wanted to help these people, but she didn’t claim to identify with them. Nor did she pretend to understand what they were going through. Her refusal to do so wasn’t a matter of Western arrogance-in fact, it was the complete opposite. In Lily’s eyes, the situation was simple. She was there to help. Not to judge, not to empathize, not to intellectualize. But to help. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reaching the end of the aisle now, she heard a small noise to her right. As she turned toward the sound to check it out, she moved quickly to the side of the bed and knelt by the hard mattress. Her calves and thighs immediately screamed out in protest, as if to remind her that she’d been on her feet for the past twenty hours. But Lily ignored the pain and focused on the patient lying before her.

She leaned forward, her fingers brushing against the mosquito net that covered the squirming figure.

“Hello, Limya. Badai lo cadai? ” she whispered, asking the sick girl if she needed anything in the Zaghawa tribal dialect. It was one of many local phrases Lily had made it a personal imperative to master. While it was nearly impossible to absorb all the languages of the camp, she had found that even a few key phrases could help bridge the cultural and linguistic divide.