Darfur is not a clothing company....part I

So that is what I discovered June of this year, 2006, to my utter dismay. Being one of the typical numbed-by-too-much-information people, I had been getting sporadically and minimally educated on general refugee situations since 2004 when my friend Hilary asked me to donate a gift certificate from my shop for an auction she was having. I had no problem donating some time for it and missed going to her event called "Rock For Refuge", and didn't think to investigate further. 2005 She invited me to go to my 1st World Refugee Day opening ceremonies in DC, I was late and missed the press conference but met alot of interesting people and stayed for a viewing of Hotel Rwanda, which was followed by speaker Paul Rusesabagina who the film portrayed. I was deeply touched and vowed to get more informed. It was during 2004/2005 I remembered seeing a few celebrities here and there displayig tshirts that simply said "darfur" on them, which I thought odd but signed it off as yet another logo for another clothing company hollywood was embracing. Fast forward to May,2006. I was fervently researching refugee situations as I wanted to be prepared for this year's World Refugee Day preparations. I read Ms. Jolie's book on her refugee camp travels, started looking into the various websites from www.unhcr.org to www.theirc.org to amnesty's site and beyond. For some reason I did not focus on Darfur though until the main speaker at this year's opening ceremonies gently spoke of the problems still happening there, and that is when I realized my folly...Darfur is a place? I had been so swept up in getting to the ceremony and was thrilled that Hilary had invited me again even though it was "invite only" this year, and had completely swept by Darfur again. When I got home from the event, I went online and started to read.....