BY CRAIG GILBERT
For Gary Gray, heading into a war zone, even one in the midst of mass genocide, will be old hat.
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After all, it?s been 20 years since the now-retired CEO of the Sudbury YMCA first visited famine-ravaged and war-torn Sudan.
Thursday?s claims by American president George W. Bush that genocide has taken place in the troubled Sudanese western state, Darfur, have nothing
to do with Gray?s visit.
Gray?s going to help the people of Sudan and ensure programs started by the YMCA two decades ago are running smoothly.
The remarks by the American president marked the first time the U.S. government has labeled as genocide the killing, rapes and destruction that have claimed 50,000 lives in Darfur and forced 11.2 million people from across the African nation from their homes.
?This time will be interesting because we?re not sure how Khartoum is affected by the Darfur situation,? said Gray. ?Our understanding is people from Darfur are not moving into Khartoum, but there?s so much activity, it?s hard to know what will happen.?
Gray and past-chair of the Sudbury YMCA, Robin Thomson, will be spending between one and two weeks in the Sudanese capital, located in the northeast of Africa?s largest country, to review the local YMCA?s programming.
The visits must take place every three years to evaluate and refocus the support Sudbury and three other Canadian YMCAs have been contributing.
The mission is the same he had in 1984, when he was head of the YMCA in Cambridge, Ontario, says Gray.
Picture hundreds of thousands of war-ravaged and starved Ethiopians streaming westward over the Sudanese border.
Civil war ravaging the countryside pulled the plowshares from the hands of young farmers and saw them replaced with weapons, said Gray.
With armies conscripting left and right, there just weren?t enough people farming, so the people had to flee in search of food.
?Sudan took a huge number of refugees,? he said. ?One camp, near the Sudan-Ethiopia border at Wad Kawli, grew from zero to about 125,000 refugees in four months.?
During the crisis, the first Sudanese YMCA was born at Khartoum.
It was Gray?s job to document what the Cambridge YMCA was doing to help. He had to find out whether the aid was getting there, how it was being used and whether it should continue.
?Of course, the answers were yes, it?s getting there, yes, it?s being used effectively and yes, it?s a desperate situation, so send more.?
Gray had special training to deal with the horrors he was destined to see, but a photographer from National Geographic he worked with had not.
?It was one of the most depressing and eye-opening things I had ever experienced,? he recalled. ?Everyday, 80 people died from dehydration. It?s very difficult to take a picture of someone dying ... it affected the photographer a lot.
?You realize in our situation here (in Canada) we have a responsibility to help our fellow human beings in the world.?
By the time the next review came up, the Cambridge YMCA had projects on the go in Peru and Gray had moved to Sudbury to head up the YMCA here.
Since Gray was the contact with Khartoum, the connection followed him to Lloyd Street and the former Sudbury YMCA.
Gray will also be participating in the Khartoum YMCA?s 25th anniversary celebrations.
?They timed it so we could be there.?
First contact between the YMCA and a region in need usually occurs during a disaster and, therefore, involves emergency relief. The next stage is development, and that?s where the YMCA gets involved in public education and economic development efforts.
The Sudbury YMCA would be considered in third stage, providing run of the mill fitness and social programming.
In the mid-1990s, the Khartoum YMCA shifted its focus to education, in other words, phase two.
Canadian YMCAs providing support helped start up a secretarial and trades school to provide some useful job skills, which are in short supply in
the primarily agricultural country.
The Sudbury YMCA and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which matches YMCA dollars about three-to-one, are the single largest contributors to the Khartoum facility.
?We provide (mainly financial) support, the Sudanese make the important decisions, because they?re the ones that know what they need,? he said.
But knowing they are not alone is more important to the Africans than greenbacks.
?Financial support is not the major kind of support we give,? he explained. ?Just knowing there are other people in the world that care about the people in Sudan is enough to keep them going.?
The visits, then, are intended to provide leadership expertise training, moral support and to maintain the long-established relationship.
?I need to be able to pick up the phone and ask the YMCA president in Khartoum how things are going,? he said.
Many people here in Canada are surprised to learn there are YMCAs in eight cities in Sudan, according to Gray.
The country is tangibly divided between the Muslim north and the African south, he said.
According to a 1993 fact file, subsistence farming and nomadic cattle, goat and sheep herding are the country?s main activity, despite rich oil deposits in the south.
The Sahara desert occupies the northwestern quadrant of the mainly arid, infertile land of Sudan. Khartoum is situated near both the White and Blue Nile Rivers, which run from Egypt roughly along the eastern border to Zaire and the Central African Republic in the south.
Sudan shares borders with those countries, Ethiopia as mentioned above, Kenya, Chad and Libya, and has coastline on the Red Sea.
The military regime gained independence from Egypt and the United Kingdom in 1956. In 1993, its GNP was $540 (American) per person.
Gray is often asked how a Christian-based organization is allowed to operate in a Muslim region.
?The YMCA does not get involved in religion or politics,? he responds. ?I?ve met with several ministers in the Sudanese government, and they appreciate the help. Our main concern is the individuals.
?They?re a very good, truthful and up-front people to work with. They work relentlessly to help the disadvantaged in their own country. They?re
very proud of their heritage.?
