George Clooney Still Doing His Best to Save World

Actor, accompanied by team including NBC News' Ann Curry, touches down in "most desperate place on Earth" ahead of presumed civil war

By Gina Serpe Oct 06, 2010 4:34 PMTags
George Clooney, PingPing.fm

George Clooney is continuing to use his power for good (while inadvertently making the rest of us look kinda bad…when was the last time you risked your life for a cause, again?).

The movie star and perpetual do-gooder touched down in Southern Sudan this week ahead of a vote for the nation's independence and, thus, a possible civil war.

"If you knew a tsunami, or Katrina or a Haiti earthquake was coming, what would you do to save people?" Clooney asked.

The question was reiterated in a blog entry posted by Ann Curry, who is traveling with Clooney through Sudan and who has been chronicling the journey.

"Landing now in south Sudan with George Clooney, who fears a war is coming here," she tweeted last week.

The area in which they are traveling, west of Darfur, is rarely entered by foreigners, but a rash of high-profile visits—none more so than Clooney & Co.—has occurred in recent weeks thanks to the region's forthcoming January vote.

"In 100 days, people here will vote on whether to secede from the rest of Sudan, and war, even genocide is predicted," Curry wrote, adding that the land is of particular interest for the International Criminal Court-facing president of the country, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, since 75 percent of the country's oil is located in the region.

Calling it "one of the most desperate places on Earth," Curry has posted a series of photos of Clooney and the rest of their party, who are traveling in order to bring a voice and awareness to the plight.

Clooney has so far visited a mass grave from 2008, slept in a hut with "frogs in the toilet...bugs the size of small countries on the beds" and traveled through the unstable border of North and South Sudan.

The actor himself has not commented on his visit, and—no doubt for security reasons—it's unclear how long the trip will last.