Even in Darfur, laughter equals life

The little girl, maybe 6 years old, was shoeless in the scorching sand. I looked closely at her feet, struck by how old they appeared, wrinkled and calloused gray, and it occurred to me, she's probably never worn a pair of shoes.

I saw her near Nyala, in Sudan's Darfur region, in a camp for displaced people called al-Salam, Arabic for peace, it is a place surrounded by war

NBC NEWS VIDEO: Desperation in Darfur

Now, 700 camps like this one dot Darfur, and the majority of the people in them are children. Glimpsing a brand new baby in one camp, when the wind caught the fabric of her mother's headdress, I wondered how one keeps a child alive in this hell.

Click here to read the rest of Ann Curry's blog in The Daily Nightly about the children of Darfur.