Bridget Steffen, 24, from Stroud has recently returned from Eastern Chad, where she was working as a volunteer with a medical organisation in the refugee camps that have sprung up as a result of the conflict in Darfur. She leaves the Five Valleys again for Rwanda at the end of January to interview survivors of rape from the time of the genocide and to write and translate articles about human rights issues. Here she touches on her experiences so far and shares her long term hope to make a career in humanitarian aid work

YOU might think that refugee-covered desert plains in Eastern Chad, women's stories from the deep green hills of Rwanda and the Cotswold Cakes factory in Stonehouse have precious little in common.

In fact, they are all part of my journey to begin a career in humanitarian aid work.

I have just returned to my home in Stroud after spending several months working with International Medical Corps, a relief organisation that provides healthcare to tens of thousands of refugees who have fled across the border from their destroyed lives in Darfur, Sudan.

I had no idea what to expect and the reality was quite unlike the lectures of my politics and international development degree in Liverpool.

The desert plains were frequently pelted with torrential rains that washed our ambulance away down a swollen river. The camps were enormous and the majority of its population were children - it was a miracle that the surrounding Chadian population survived at all since they had as little as the refugees.

While I was working there with IMC, I shared my mud-brick room with a doctor 10 years my elder and before long we had become firm friends and colleagues - me translating for her and she allowing me - as a trained first aider - to assist with basic patient care.

I would go into the camps with her during the day to see to refugees who were unable to reach the health centre.

I assisted her in carrying out patient examinations and care and in dressing wounds in the dirt beside the tents, while goats milled around us adventurously sniffing at the antiseptic solutions, and curious children in the most brilliant, brightly-coloured clothes peered at us, giggling in the sunlight.

Working at Cotswold Cakes at the moment is certainly quite a culture shock from life in the desert but it has a warm, friendly atmosphere and we get to wear frilly bonnets.

My wages are also the key to being able to support myself financially to take up a voluntary post I have been offered working with a small human rights organisation - African Rights - in Rwanda.

By collecting personal testimonies from survivors of the genocide of 1994, I will be documenting the plight of genocide rape survivors and working with an HIV/AIDS program to support survivors that have become HIV-positive.

While African Rights has asked me to start immediately, I am not yet in a position to fund myself, having left university with large debts.

Alongside my job with Cotswold Cakes, I am seeking sponsorship from local businesses or kind individuals to support my first few steps in the world of humanitarian work in Rwanda, however small the donation.

In the meantime, between cake-packing and learning teach-yourself Arabic, I am translating testimonies sent to me by African Rights from the UK until I am able to make the journey there in person.

* To discover more about my time in Chad or to follow my forthcoming experiences in Rwanda, visit my web-log: www.colours-in-the-desert.blogspot.com, or to contact me personally, email: bridget_steffen@yahoo.co.uk or phone: 07906 626 555.