I'VE read a hundred reports on the Sudan, and seen endless harrowing television news reports about the scale of the humanitarian crisis, and the individual human suffering. But none of these are any substitute for going, seeing, feeling, as I did earlier this week.

Some of the things which surprised me on my trip were to the good. The refugee camp I went to was far cleaner, far better organised than ever I had expected.

OK, it was amongst the best of the 140 plus camps in western Sudan, but some others are of a similar standard. It was basic, very basic. But for those lucky enough to get to a camp like this, there was adequate water, food. It was sanitary.

And some of the health care of young children which I saw was impressive given the circumstances - so much so that a few of the youngsters being treated in the clinics were not refugees at all, but resident in the local town and brought in by their mums because they thought the care was better.

And overall, the United Nations and other aid agencies do seem now to be getting the co-operation they need from the Government of Sudan.

What you can't do with a television screen is look into people's eyes. It was that which was really the greatest shock. I had to use an interpreter to talk to the refugees, but whilst doing so I tried to look within those I was talking to.

There I saw vacancy, abject despair, a sense of an absence of any power over their lives. And yet, the will to live was somehow still there, along with profound concern by the women for the survival of their children.

In the old days - like when I was at school - and when a quarter of the globe was painted pink for the British Empire, Sudan was in yellow and pink stripes. It was never formally a British colony - just run by us through what was called an "Anglo-Egyptian condominium".

Sudan is huge - the size of Europe. Darfur, just a small part, is the size of France.

Sudan gained its independence in 1956 but has enjoyed even relative internal harmony for only eleven of the forty-eight years since.

A civil war in the south was gradually being resolved when the latest trouble broke out in Darfur in the west. It's a complex story. But there's no excuse for the terrible suffering.

And I am determined that the UK should do everything it can, with is international partners, to help resolve it.

I was two days in the Sudan. After an overnight stop in Nairobi, Kenya, I am now on my way to Cape Town for two days of meetings with the South African Government. South Africa is a shining example of how hope can triumph from the kind of despair I saw in Sudan.

It is celebrating ten years of peaceful transition from the inhuman degradations of apartheid.

This trip is only ten days since I came back from holiday, but it feels about ten weeks.