Wanderlustress

Quick Update

We are all set to go to Kass tomorrow so we can relax and send other tid-bits...

 

Life in the Nyala office has been very pleasant. There are five foreign staff and over 10 Sudanese staff. Over the past week, we also had a couple of scientists from the Berkeley Lab here conducting tests on fuel efficient stoves with people in the camps. Firewood availability is a big problem so they hope that organizations like OURS will agree to distribute their stoves to people here. Overall, the group is lively and interesting to talk to – especially the scientist who calls rectangles quadrilaterals when the sides are not exactly the same length, know the total number of species of hibiscus plants, and facts about the size of stars galaxies away.

 

Sudan is predominantly Muslim and the country is governed by Shar’ia law so is extremely conservative. All women cover their heads, and there are lots of mosques with loud-speaker calls-to-prayer. Our office/guesthouse compound is right next to a mosque, but for some reason when they blast the call-to-prayer at 5:00 in the morning over our rooms, I do not hear them. Unfortunately, G is not so immune. And there is absolutely no alcohol here whatsoever, none for sale anywhere. You can be arrested if they find it in your luggage in customs – not really worth the risk. The only people who have access to alcohol are the large aid organizations who fly it in on their own cargo planes with the relief food and materials. Apparently, they throw good parties. So we have not had a lick of booze since our last beer on the plane to Khartoum. For a special treat, we go to the Indian restaurant to drink a nice frothy lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, that is for now the closest thing to ice cream), or we go to an Italian restaurant and get a “cocktail” (a delicious mix of fruit juices including guava, yum). We tried going to the movies in an outdoor stadium, but all that was playing were very violent Indian films. So we went for a “cocktail” instead. That is all the excitement around here.

 

They call foreigners “hawajas” here and I have taken to calling G that, too. The locals think its very funny and so do I, but sometimes G is not so amused. Actually, as the Field Coordinator, he has the distinction of being the “boss” of the Kass office so the staff refers to him as the “modir” of Kass. He is tall enough for the distinction…speaking of tall…even though this is near the land of the Dinka, the standard bed-length and doorway heights remain the same.

 

We are slowly learning Arabic, and lucky for me, many words are the same as in Uzbek (???), maybe because of the Muslim culture. And some are the same as Turkish from what little Turkish we learned earlier this year. G’s Russian doesn’t go very far except for us to speak in code so no one else can understand.

 

G is a master at driving the 4x4 pick-ups, able to dodge donkey carts, took-tooks, pedestrians, and other white agency vehicles all at the same time. We have been going around town on our own rather than depend on the OUR drivers. Hopefully, there will be fewer donkeys around in Kass when I will start to drive, too, although we will have two drivers for our work.

Ok.  I'll leave it here until after we get to Kass.

First 10 Days

Khartoum

The past 10 days in Sudan have been a period of intense orientation and preparation for our work. We spent 3 days in Khartoum meeting staff, receiving equipment, obtaining travel permits, and sitting through briefings about the situation in Darfur and security issues. What little we managed to see of the city aside from the hotel and office included a Turkish restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a mall with a huge supermarket, and a drive along the Nile River. The city proper is vast with three distinct sections joined at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, but we experienced only a subset of one district. Rumor has it that there are some interesting sites north of the city, including pyramids, and we hope to explore some of them on our R&R.

 

Nyala

After Khartoum we flew west to the capital of South Darfur called Nyala – a small city that is the hub for all humanitarian operations in South Darfur (and maybe for West Darfur as well). Apparently, there are over 2,000 foreign aid workers here although we keep seeing the same handful of faces over and over again at the inter-agency meetings we’ve attended. With such a large foreign population and the extent of their operations here, there is an economy to support and take advantage of it all. The only thing we have been wanting that we cannot find here is ice cream.

 

Kalma Camp

We visited our programs  in Kalma Camp which at one time had the reputation of being the largest IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in the world. It now has about 87,000 IDPs. Driving through the camp, we were surprised how ‘organized’ it seemed, but then again, we’ve never been to an IDP or refugee camp before. When we talk to someone who has been to one of the oldest camp - Zam Zam camp in North Darfur– they tell us that Kalma is very disorganized. The biggest surprise to us was the market along the main road through the camp. There were stalls of IDP merchants selling vegetables, household goods, beds, stools, radios, etc. This made us realize that the IDP population is not just the beggar-bowl culture that we only see on the news.

 

Our Programs

Our programs in the camps include community centers where women weave mats, make stoves, and attend literacy classes; children attend a sort of daycare while the women are working; tailors (only men are tailors in Sudanese culture) come to make clothes; and there are proper toilets and UN water bladders for washing (water sanitation and hygiene are huge problems in the camps).

 

In addition to community centers, we also have the only veterinary clinic in the camp providing immunizations and care for sick and injured animals. Animals are very important for the livelihood of the people here that this is a critical service to IDPs who managed to bring their animals with them when they left their villages. This could not have been an easy task given that Janjuweed usually loot all animals.

 

We also have several food security projects: a mills program where mills are set up throughout the camps for IDPs to come and have their grains milled into flour, a livestock distribution program of chickens and goats, and a tools/seeds/nursery program.

 

There is also a shelter program to improve the shelter conditions of the IDPs, and a health/hygiene education, soap distribution, and other non-food items distribution to IDPs.

 

Kass

Kass is 75 km. away from Nyala and G and I will be all of WE – Kass as of Thursday. We are flying there by helicopter and are vehicles will meet us there. We have been loading up the trucks with everything you can guess to start up a rural field office: electric generators, water pump, office furniture/supplies, mosquito nets, jerry cans for extra fuel, and we are contemplating a washer and hot water heater but have decided to put them on hold for now – conflicting with our Peace Corps culture a little too much. This past week we interviewed people for staff positions to run the same programs above but for us in Kass. Already there are guards, drivers, and a housekeeper ready to get us started.

 

Once in Kass, we will assess the IDP situation in the town and camps. Kass is unusual in the sense that some IDPs are living among the villagers and not in a camp, making program implementation more complex. We also have a mandate to extend our programs into rural villages with the hope of mitigating the influx of IDPs into Kass as well as attracting IDPs back into the villages from the camps. Of course, all of this really depends on how secure the IDPs feel about the situation in the villages. So our first tasks are to ‘meet-n-greet’ other organizations and government agencies in Kass, and assess the security and viability of our programs.

 

Us

Generally, we have been exhausted most of the time. I was sick for a day with fever but recovered quickly. We both often have doubts about being here, but we are also fascinated and excited by the challenge. I know more about egg production by a chicken then I have ever dreamed of, and while G attended a goat distribution in a camp yesterday, I visited a village about 25 km away where IDPs have started to return to help a colleague conduct and assessment. I saw men on horseback from the main road and didn’t think anything of it until I saw some camels, too. Even then, I was just excited to see some animals before realizing that I was actually looking at the Janjuweed.

 

Its very hot here even though they say its ‘winter’, but there’s a nice breeze most evenings when we go sit on the roof and enjoy the fresh air and changing light. Mosquitoes and creepy crawlies are not too bad. Sudanese food is actually good – pita-like bread, lots of rice, tomato-cucumber salads, beans, roast chicken, eggplant dishes, yoghurt; and we hear there is lots of dairy and produce around the more fertile Kass region.

 

The next update will be after we get to Kass. We’re looking forward to our first helicopter ride.

Peace.

Orientation

Just returned from DC where we received our orientation for our assignments in Darfur. Undeniably, the part that stood out the most was security. Going over briefings on landmines and hostage precautions were unmatched by any orientation I've ever had before, especially when mirrored against recent news of increasing threats to aid workers in the country.  And while I try to follow the peace talks and gleen some hope, I'm not sure how they will affect renegade rebels, banditry, scarce resources, or tribal feuds.

No doubt there will be continued news reports of a seemingly hopeless situation.  Once on the ground though, I hope to report on some of the positive things that can be done and are being done - even on the smallest level - so that things don't seem so futile to the outside world, so that more positive outcomes can be realized through more action by more people.

I just finished "Acts of Faith" by Philip Caputo, about aid work in Sudan, and find that the following passage from the book anwers and reaffirms by resolve to work in Darfur despite the dangers and despite my fears:

"Relief work...the marshalling of resources to organize compassion into effective action, for without action, compassion degenerates into a useless pity."

Two weeks to Khartoum

G and I have just been offered positions in South Darfur, Sudan, to coordinate community projects for an international organization - and they want us to head to Khartoum in less than two weeks! So the pressure is on to pack up and go. It will be difficult to post often via satellite connections, but I will give it a good try.