Does anyone care?

Provincial elections are set to begin in Sudan next week.  Elections that have been in the works since at least 2005.  An election would be a breakthrough for this devastated country.  But now it's falling apart and it will probably only get worse.  The government thrives on intimidation and threats, making empty promises to people desperate for relief.  Civil war will likely resume and many more will be killed.  Evidently more than 2 million dead isn't enough.  Women and young girls raped, children mutilated, little boys taken into slavery, families burned alive in their huts.  No war is okay, acceptable or justified.  But war in Sudan is brutal, unfathomable, possibly the closest thing to hell on earth.
I have seen the faces of those who survived war.  I have walked through a village that was bombed, raided and burned to the ground.  I have seen people drinking contaminated and disease laden river water because dead bodies were placed in their clean water wells.  I have seen young children with stick figure bodies and protruding bellies due to severe malnutrition and protein deficiency.  I've held babies too dehydrated to muster a cry.  I've seen a grandmother attempt to produce milk from her own breast for her orphaned grandson.  I've met men, with tribal symbols etched into their foreheads, who tell stories of men on horseback who rode through the marketplace and killed everyone in sight.  I have cared for a mother and her newborn, all the while wondering how this mother can love her fifth baby when the previous four have died due to entirely preventable and treatable reasons.  I learned that a mother is a mother anywhere in the world.  A mother who has experienced such grief and loss is still capable of loving again.  Even more surprising to me, she loves without condition and without limit.  She loves her baby everyday of its life, not knowing if tomorrow will be the last.  Loving and nurturing her little one, her touch is gentle and her heart is full.
I hope someone cares.