SUDAN: The sky was overcast - an ominous sign the deadly rainy season is creeping into Sudan's Darfur region
A sandstorm blew at the edges of the camp that houses 40,000 people driven from their villages by marauding Arab militia.
But yesterday, the Abu Shouk camp did not reflect the world's worst humanitarian crisis.Instead, the Sudanese government presented what one aid worker called a "show camp" to the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, who attempted to see first hand what he says approaches genocide.
Thousands swarmed round him, cheering and clapping their hands above their heads.
With women wearing bright orange, green or red shawls and headscarves, men in white turbans and tunics, and children in football shirts, crowds raced energetically through the dusty camp following Mr Powell on his 20-minute walkabout.
The raucous crowd rushed through the sprawling camp, past rows of light-green coloured tents with blackened cooking pots outside. It coursed through a market area of the camp, where men sat offering onions and sugary tea under wooden shelters.
None were barefoot or showed obvious signs of malnutrition.
That contrasted with most camps across Darfur, the western region of Africa's largest nation, where US officials fear as many as one million people could die this year because of disease and starvation.
Mr Powell, accompanied by top Sudanese officials, acknowledged the government might have staged yesterday's event, but said the aim of his visit was to demand that Khartoum disarm the militias, rather than to find evidence to confirm the "horrific" crisis.
"Whether all of the folk in the camp live in that camp, or some of them came in for the day, is not really relevant. Camps are not the solution," he told reporters.
"It's a show camp. It's the best I've seen," said one aid worker.
One million Darfuris have fled their homes in the past 18 months because of the conflict in the arid region involving the Janjaweed militias - supported by the government - and two rebel groups, which say they are acting to protect the villagers.
The Janjaweed are Arab militiamen, who have driven black African villagers off the land in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, killings, pillaging and rape, which human rights groups say is verging on genocide.
Relief organisations are racing to bring food and medicine to camps for displaced people, before the imminent rainy season cuts off vast parts of the region.
The Abu Shouk camp presentation fits with the government's strategy of downplaying a crisis, that has prompted Mr Powell and Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek UN Security Council action. Khartoum denies there is famine or epidemic in Darfur.
A 20-year-old woman said she came to the camp after the Janjaweed cut her father's throat.
She ran her hand across her neck and said: "The government said it didn't happen."