Judith in the Jungle

my point of view

2011-06-09T05:22:00.001-04:00

The past month or so has been over the top busy and I've found my time, energy, and momentum for updating this woefully low. That said, life in Sierra Leone has stayed nothing short of complicated and colorful. Have a glimpse from where I'm sitting into all that I've been seeing:

sandy steps racing forward:

varied faces of tempered team work:

daily life on bold display:

hot commodity handling:

human traffic and human security:

shadows and reflections:

kids with grown up responsibilities and grown ups looking to forget theirs:

vistas both jarring and tantalizing:

fine dining and fine details:

natural beauty and man made madness:

until there is time to write more, here's hoping these shots provide a captivating glance into what I'm seeing these days.

xx from SL!

glitchy

2011-05-14T12:38:00.001-04:00

When mom said, “You mean it’s not just a tropical vacation party?” I figured it time to speak of the series of minor to major glitches that accompany all the delights of living and working in Salone. That, and the fact that over the past two weeks these glitches have been arriving one after the next.
What began with a text message from the president announcing that there was not an impending fuel crisis in SL, has seen a fuel crisis overwhelm SL. Mental note: surefire way to ensure a fuel crisis is to announce that there is no forthcoming fuel crisis. Word on the streets - which, in spite of the fuel crisis have been just as crowded as ever - is that the IMF said government spending was too high, and as such, there has been a cancellation of the government’s 20% subsidy on fuel. While the hike in price is one thing, new regulations also demand that fuel be sold in liters, as opposed to gallons, complicating the cost of public transport fares, generating ridiculous, hours-long queues at all petrol stations, and inciting overall fury that trumps any road rage I've seen elsewhere.

Now, speaking of traffic, can I just say that Sierra Leone has the whackest traffic situation, ever? I’ve never been in a place with the roads so narrow, potholed, devoid of order or demarcation, and full of irreverence. Given the frequency of massive traffic jams, and that I generally have a driver hauling me around, I’ve taken to working during my commute to the office, from the office, towards meetings, returning from meetings, etc.

How effective might this be? Well, you’d guess that with a laptop it’d be no big deal. Wrong. This bogus PC I’m working on is rife with unexplainable problems that have disabled any hibernation/sleep ability and thus requires a manual powering down and 10 minute long system reboot. Likewise convenient, the internet scenario here requires a dongle – aka an individual USB-drive SIM-card modem – that in addition to being incredibly slow (think .25 kb/s), is pre-paid and runs out of airtime just when you most desperately need to get online. Or, if you’re lucky like me, it straight up breaks, requiring a 45 minute commute to visit the “modem shop” “in town” during working hours. Thrice. In two weeks.

Now, if these visits were peachy, or in any other way productive or something other than demoralizing, I might not be so annoyed. However my latest adventure with Sierratel was thoroughly gear-grinding.  I was first told that my account balance was too low (only to inform the Director of Accounts that he was using the wrong account), then informed that my laptop had a virus by the Director of IT (an incorrect diagnosis according to my up to date antivirus software), then made aware that it was an operating system dilemma…because I’m running Windows XP. After 2 hours deliberating with 5 different folks working there (three of which asked for my phone number and told me they loved me…), determination still outweighed aggression and depression. I really didn’t want to have to reference my *Stateside husband, the computer engineer* while flirtily offering the Director of IT a soda, in order to be able to speak with the Director of Commercial Business, or to have to inform him of all the Sierratel accounts at the Ministry of Health, only to try and talk myself out of a 300,000 Leone ‘price tag’ (read: bribe) for a new modem. After hour four on a Friday afternoon, the offer of an ‘unofficial receipt’ and a price reduction to 200K, and being yelled at for my disrespectful indignance, I settled for settling and took the new, p.o.s. modem if for no other reason than needing to shake the urge to kill everyone in that office and myself.

Needing solace after such haranguing one might opt for a hot shower, or cool drink, or to relax in front of the tube. No dice this round, buddy. All the holiday festivities found the ‘water guys’ off duty for a week, which translated to us running out of running water. A bright side of this was that the water guys didn’t wake me up with their giant truck during their 3AM water-tank refilling process. No real difference to make lately, however, as the local power source has been defunct and we’ve had no electricity, and therefore no AC or fans, and thus a 90 degree house with 95% humidity. As such, sound sleep has been a luxury that I’m not properly partaking in.

Beyond these recent delights, I managed to break our washing machine by pushing the button you push to run the machine. Yes, you read that right. And so, naturally, on the day that I managed to find an electrician/mechanic to come repair the bunk machine so that I wouldn’t have to hand wash my clothes again (which, btw, with 95% humidity and no spin-cycle never really dry, leaving you with a refreshing scent-ual infusion of mildew), it would wind up that our generator battery bottomed out and we realize that the fuel source on the compound had been mysteriously depreciating.

This is all to say that I am very much aware of the fact that *This Is Africa,* particularly as any complaint or relaying of these realities results in someone informing me of my current location. Knowing that these are very much white woman problems really does nothing to alleviate their associated dilemmas. Nor do warnings that the rainy season is coming soon and that these calamities are likely to exponentially increase. Aside from maintaining a well stocked bar (plus or minus ice), my only solution has been massive vitamin-D intake and sea side playtime. And so, on a bright end note, I’ll bring it back full circle with some of the (well justified?!) tropical vacay party pics from the past few weeks.

Stepping away to the white sands of River #2 (read more about this great chunk of paradise)

Backlog, May 1: SL celebrations and adventures part 2 – parties, parties, parties

2011-05-10T17:51:00.001-04:00

Part of the reason for returning to Freetown after a mere one night away was to join in the raucous celebrations and parties planned for the holiday week. Word of the first, notable affair made it’s way from the capital to me on the beach for good reason: the CEO of Sierra Rutile was hosting his annual Easter Sunday/Independence celebration. At the time I was only informed that there would be dancing, booze, and a pool, but that was enough to sway me back to the city. After linking up with my buddy Valeri - a dear mate from SIPA who has taken a short contract here in Freetown as well - for dinner and hearing that he knew the host, I was convinced the decision was for the better; little did I know the night would be the closest thing to Miami Vice this side of the Atlantic.

Freetown's finest, me and the Georgians, Walid making waves, Katy taking a puff, and dancing Swedes

The copious blue, white, and green painted rocks, flags, posters, and signage dotting the roads around town in honor of independence day, while sprightly and patriotic, paled in comparison to the decorated scene at the home of this local big wig. It wasn’t til after the fact that I learned he is cousin of the president and that before the conflict, rutile exports were the top earner for the government, netting 75 million dollars in revenue in 1990 alone. While there wasn’t much in the way of drug trafficking, prostitution or Cubanos, the vibe of the party had a decidedly new wave 305 thing going on given the lavish celebration in the midst of a place with so little. The lush surroundings, posh women, and handful of bars created an air of elitism that palpably wafted above the lap pool. Regardless, the host couldn’t have been lovelier nor the dancing more ridiculous, and I was left with only the slightest memory of an afternoon spent in a poverty-struck village.Freetown's finest, me and the Georgians, Walid making waves, Katy taking a puff, and dancing Swedes

Jubilation over the 50 year anniversary of Independence from Britain seemed to have overtaken everyone, with nearly every Freetowner donning blue, green, and white clothes and accessories, tons of villagers coming to the capital for the festivities, and all beaches, roads, and restaurants teeming with the hundreds of diaspora that made their way back to party. Mardi-gras style parades and presidential presentations were met by all night sea-side parties, major football games, and beach front revelry. Perhaps the highlight of the 5 days of festivities was a very relaxed party at the home of Alan, the only white Sierra Leonean guy I’ve met thus far, who happens to house the largest private collection of Sierra Leonean art in the world. The spectacular display, coupled with a handful of live musical performances, including a group of traditional Malian musicians (video forthcoming, fingers crossed!), was really something special.

Colin by the sea shore and a lobster lunch

independence day crew: martha, mohamed, valeri, katy, therese

Walid, wailin’

Malian Musicians

There was hardly a blink of professional accomplishment in the few working days of the week before the parties resumed, this time with a Royal Wedding celebration hosted by the British boys of IMATT, the International Military Army Training Team. No one seemed to mind the irony of celebrating the monarchy’s next family during the national festivities in honor of independence from said monarchy, most probably because of the ‘Fancy Dress’ code. Likewise, it was hard to focus on what many view as a dire lack of progress here over the past 50 years, with the bevy of revelers - ranging from miners cloaked in Africana-gear, to soldiers dressed as pirates and aid workers wearing their finest regalia and hats – in such high spirits after a week of such good fun.

Backlog, May 1: SL celebrations and adventures part 1 - Banana Islands, Tombo, and Bureh

2011-05-08T17:56:00.001-04:00

The party that is my life in Sierra Leone just don't quit! It's basically been a week of celebrations (religious, royal, and other) from the moment we left the office last Thursday. “Quiz night” at the local Irish pub, followed by a sojourn into Freetown’s latest (and absurdly posh) night club, O-bar, to a late-nighter dance party at Atlantic bar, started off the extended holiday weekend in proper form. It was at this last bar the week prior that I sighted Katy – a gal that I had been e-introduced to when I was planning for work in Uganda, 6 years ago, by an undergraduate professor; despite a few online exchanges and a handful of mutual friends, we never met outside the context of facebook - who I creepily sauntered up to and inquired if it was in fact she. After both of our brains basically exploded by the serendipitous nature of the encounter at a beach bar in Sierra Leone, we became dear buddies, and over the past week, travel pals. Our adventure over the four day Easter holiday weekend took us to the Banana Islands, a paradisiacal retreat about 2 hours from Freetown, touted as Sierra Leone’s answer to Robinson Crusoe. The three islands, once a bastion for British slave trading, are now home to about a thousand people, with the ‘capital’ island offering a lovely guest house with 3 thatched roof huts, solar power, and beach-front bon fires.

After a quick 30 minute fishing boat trip from mainland, Katy and I stepped ashore to find a handful of familiar Freetown faces who would ultimately serve as excellent jungle-trekking partners and volleyball (err, banana-ball) teammates. We made our way across the island in search of relics and faunal-delights: half-buried canons and gravesites from British Navy men who passed on the island while stationed there after the abolition of slavery; washed up Portugeuse Man-O-War and massively tall termite hills; monkeys and babies; and fisherman and their finds (sea cucumbers!).

[local fisherman dive in the middle of the night to sources these sea cukes, which are then processed by two Chinese men that live on the island for the sole purpose of availing these buggers for consumption by the many Chinese who are working on infrastructure projects in SL]

The overall shortage of fresh water was made up for by the abundant lobster and fresh fruit, the absence of AC and fans by the sound of the sea crashing outside our quarters and a magnificent morning view.

Me and Katy by the sea, post volleyball

breakfast vista

While it wasn’t easy to peel ourselves off of the isles of Bananas, we mobilized and headed to Tombo town, home of the biggest fishing industry in Sierra Leone. Katy’s work is focused on fisheries and environmental protection, and a trip to Tombo meant a chance to speak with the leaders of Sierra Leone’s Artisanal Fisheries Union, SLAFU and a chance to tour the mainly Muslim coastal village.

In addition to telling us about their efforts to crack down on illegal fishing practices, sensitize fisherman to the hazards of overfishing, and a variety of other resource protection and capacity building initiatives, the guys of SLAFU were up for hosting a visit to the elite, and yet to be used, Tombo Fish Landing Facility. This facility, the nicest of any I’ve seen in the country thus far, was financed by foreign donors to alleviate the burden on the current landing zone in Tombo, as well as to enhance opportunities for industrial fishing fleets and export potential. The site hosts a fish bowl (for live catch), a boat repair shop, a huge processing unit (with maybe 50 sinks), a large drying room lined with clay stoves to dry fish, lockers, ice storage, bath houses, fuel stations, and a massive dock so that large boats can land and properly collect/hygienically process fishies for sale elsewhere (as opposed to the illegal offshore trade between artisanal fisherman and boats headed north to the Canary Islands).

Despite these glamorous features, it’s been about 4 years since this facility has been developed and it has yet to be launched for use by the fishing communities. Moreover, the extent of artisanal fishing, shrimping and trawling activities here in Sierra Leone, where 80% of dietary protein comes from the sea, demands such robust landing sites for fish to be cleaned and processed, as well as facilities for boat and net repairs to keep the industry moving; here in Tombo the need is even greater as this coastal area is the most productive in the country. The fishermen of SLAFU gave us a tour of the fringes of the existing (hectic and filthy) landing zone, following the tour of the new facility, which made the need for the pristine and functional facility’s opening seem even more great. I heard a handful of reasons for why the site remains ‘unlaunched,’ ranging from the fact that there were too many rocks in the surrounding waters, to something about not being able to get fuel into the fuel tanks, but nothing that sufficiently justified the scenario.

net making and repair at the ‘old’ fish landing

Tombo’s boats and fisherman

Both excited by the visit and bewildered by the circumstance, we continued onwards up the peninsula for a late lunch and swim on Bureh beach hosted by a lovely gentleman named Prince William. After a few snaps of cute kids and beachfront football we wrapped up the natural-history/regional industry/relaxation tour that was our awesome first-weekend-out-of-Freetown adventure and headed back to the capital for continued celebrations…(to be continued!)

backlog 3: first day to the field and first day at the beach

2011-04-26T10:12:00.000-04:00

Erin took me on a lovely day trip to Lakka beach, about 40 minutes drive from our house, for a lazy day in the sun. We parked at a small seaside hotel and found a proprietor to quickly prepare us a lunch of fresh grilled barracuda, before relaxation commenced.

The place was fairly empty, with only one or two kids peddling small wares like necklaces and local masks. We set up shop, dined deliciously, and then had a major sighting...the glass eater. Now, I know that there is food insecurity within SaLone, but I've a feeling that very few resort to this!He, covered in body paint and sweat, approached us and encouraged us to watch and snap photos before he began to eat handfuls of broken, green glass followed by handfuls of hot, golden sand. We were both rather horrified and asked him to stop before he put the glass shards up towards his eyes, suggesting he would start slicing his eyeballs, Buñuel style. He stopped, rubbed his belly, and then regurgitated shards into a massive bowl, before telling me he's been doing this since the age of 8. I gave him the equivalent of 50 cents and have had nightmares ever since.Images below; proceed with caution!

Within a few days, I took to the field for my first site in order to assess how our tools are being used at Ministry health facilities. As luck would have it, and a bit easier on the eyes and mind than the prior visit, I returned to Lakka to visit the District hospital where I met with the Matron on duty, strapped on my 'Attendance Monitoring' hat, placed my best foot forward, and commenced doing spot checks on various staff supposed to be working the wards of the hospital. Pretty good report, all and all, with a few snaps to boot.

Backlog 2: The end of week one: SaLone sights and Seder.

2011-04-25T18:47:00.000-04:00

boarding ‘the pelican’ boat at midnight

The 7 hour flight to London, 3 hour flight to Malaga, 2 hour refueling break, 4 hour flight to Lungi airport, and (after finding the helicopter unavailable) the 1 hour boat ride across a massive bay to reach Freetown at midnight were sufficient indication that my time here in Sierra Leone, and the realities of life within, would be hectic, constantly moving, and full of surprises.

After a full week in country, my amazement hasn’t ceased and I continually find new things to be excited by. Be it the constant availability of mango or lobster at any meal, the architecture, the azure sea viewed from every balcony and window, or the cacophony of Freetown’s horrendous traffic, my expectations have all been either completely off-base or completely exceeded.

The street scenes get me the most riled up every day. This is most likely because I spend an exorbitant amount of time in the car. There are no traffic signs or lights, but plenty of roundabouts and traffic ‘cops’ or directors, who only serve to make the congestion worse. The roads are bad and ‘induced dancing,’ as my lovely driver in Uganda, Nasuru, used to say when the potholes were so bad that the passengers bounced in unison, is the norm. From the time my driver here, the lovely Kebbeh, arrives to carry me to work at 8 am, to our late evening returns home (punctuated by day time meetings with Government officials across town and site-verification visits to hospitals in neighboring districts), I spend a lot of time ogling the sights of the streets.

Constant sources of hilarity are the messages inscribed across the dashes or rear windows of other cars likewise stuck sitting in traffic. Many vehicles here have prolific messages splayed across their glass – I’ve seen those ranging from the grammatically incoherent to “do you it go,” to the religiously disturbing, like “covered in the blood of Jesus.” It also seems that everyone missed the memo on correct helmet use, as the many, many folks using Okadas (motorcycle taxis) for transport will don a hard plastic head covering yet they neglect to make use of the neck strap, which dangles by their jaw, unclipped, as they whiz through, with upwards of four passengers, the sitting 4-wheel drives (namely, white NGO landcruisers).

Possibly a more striking street scene to behold here is the mix of architectural styles and bizarre integration of socio-economic statuses across neighborhoods. On one block one might pass 2, fairly large, western style houses protected by cement walls and uniformed guards, a 3^rd that was partially completed – maybe 5 years ago – and now sits as a cinder-block-and-mortar -only home of squatter inhabitants, 4 or 5 corrugated tin and plywood shanty-town style shacks, and 1 or 2 mid-sized, wood-slatted, single-shuttered window’d, and zinc-roofed Krio-style houses. While the congregation of all these varied dwellings in one small area is shocking to my eye, it’s these last ones that fascinate me the most. Upon first sighting a Krio home, I blurted out “that looks like it belongs in south Georgia,” only to be quickly informed of the Krio housing tradition and culture brought to Sierra Leone by the thousands of returned slaves that were shipped here after the abolition of slavery (bringing many ‘western’ cultural elements, including building structure and style).

krio houses

Though I’m still parsing the overall culture and lay of the land, after a week I can confidently assert that Sierra Leoneans are proud and kind people. The scars of war haven’t been as visible to the unfamiliar eye as I anticipated; the scores of amputees we’ve heard of aren’t teeming left and right, the stories of forced conscription and sexual assault aren’t spoken of, and the “dirty face” of mineral mining and the extractive industry isn’t described in such dirty language. The number and breadth of NGOs here does, however, far exceed that which I imagined would still remain ten years down the line. Beyond these NGOs, though, the other facets of the economy, extractive industries included, have been far larger than I anticipated: the ‘market dominant ethnic minority’ of Lebanese business holders is striking – nearly every shop, bar, hotel, restaurant, or other company seems to be Lebanese owned. While this translates to excellent hummos and baba ganoush availability (as well as aesthetic services (at home bikini waxing, what?!) and aesthetically pleasing people), it also speaks about the status and function of local people within the SL economy. I haven’t quite put my finger on it yet, but poverty certainly looks different here than that within other African capitals I’ve visited. Once my finger is more articulately positioned on this, I’ll report back. In the mean time, I’ll share some street side snaps.

Before signing off, I’d be remiss to not mention the pleasantly surprising quality of Life opportunities for expatriots residing in Freetown. I’ve been lucky to shack up with my friend, teammate, and supervisor, Erin, and have taken residency (at least temporarily) at her (and Danielle’s!) abode on King St. Danielle’s sweet kitten, affectionately named Kitty, has taken a liking to me, and I to it, in addition to the gorgeous balcony, hot-water showers, large living room, and well appointed kitchen. Given the availability of the latter, and my love for annually hosting jewish-themed dinner parties, I welcomed myself to Sierra Leone /ingratiated myself with new friends by preparing a Passover Seder for 8. Our abbreviated Haggadah (downloaded from the web) helped order the affair, which felt like an extraordinarily special celebration of freedom, given SL’s own afflicted history. Some special shots of us celebrating freedom in Freetown:

Backlog entry 1: Updates, newness, and firsts; week of April 11.

2011-04-25T17:31:00.000-04:00

As it’s been some time since my last entry on this here blog, a summary update feels justified. In the nearly two years that have passed, I’ve pulled off a few stunts, with all the most significant having emerged in response to the visit to Haiti described in my last post. In the course of completing my Master of International Affairs and Master of Public Health degrees, I produced my Thesis to develop a new partnership between Columbia University Medical Center and NGOs working in healthcare in Haiti to enable community based participatory research, community-based learning opportunities for future CUMC students, and to support capacity building of civil society in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake. Beyond the academic blood and sweat devoted to Haiti, it’s worth mentioning (for the sake of digital self-documentation) that I also spent 2010 spearheading a project to get essential medical supplies to the largest private hospital in northern Haiti through the 100 Beds for Haiti campaign. These projects, coupled with new friends and loves, new neighborhoods, and new habits all factored heavily into my life since my last update, and it is the culmination of all of these happenings that has led to my current update. And so, random reader that still has this blog on his or her radar, here I am, reporting back, though this time from Freetown, Sierra Leone.

I’ve taken a consulting contract with the UK-office of an international management consultancy services company that has been sub-contracted to manage a program of technical support for the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) of the Government of Sierra Leone. With funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), the overarching aim of the program is to “improve the financing, management, and delivery of sustainable and replicable pro-poor health services, to ensure the achievement of the [government’s] national Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) Strategic Plan,” for the purposes of reducing the maternal and child mortality rates in this country, which have been cited amongst the worst in the world. Of course creating these changes requires comprehensive and quality health services, beginning with a strengthened health system, and as such, we are here providing technical assistance within the central level of Ministry, in the areas of Human Resources and Finance.

As the first year of this work, which began in February 2010, involved a massive cleaning of the Ministry’s entire Payroll (of approximately 8500 salaried employees) and the development of an Attendance Monitoring Program (in order to improve and systematize HR functionality), I am primarily here to wear an M&E (monitoring and evaluation) hat and to provide assistance to the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Support Unit which manages the pay and attendance program of the MoHS. While my work with HRH will involve processing monthly data submissions from government health facilities across the country, the bigger objective is training and building the capacity of Ministry staff in the utilization of the varied new processes and tools that have been developed thus far. With an initial contract of four months, I’m really quite excited by this opportunity and optimistic that the end of the current funding cycle in July (hence the four month contract) will be met with an extension or a renewal.

some of the ladies of the office

The program is certainly a departure from my past work, and some moments feel like bureaucracy building, but it’s fascinating to see it unfolding and I’m excited for all the newness: the questions, the sights, the smells, and the incessant heat that’s mitigated by discovery (AC unit tucked in the corner! College friends spied across the bar! Matzoh for sale at the Lebanese grocery! Shandies (a refreshing mix of beer + sprite) on the beach! Visits to ‘Country Lodge’ for open-air patio brunches that overlook the city and the sea!)… and for the many firsts that this project presents: my first time in West Africa, first time working for a company, first go directly with a Government, first time in a post-conflict country ten years after war has ended highlighting the massive needs of development that remain after the relief has ended, as well as my first time leaving the US without certain confidence of a necessary return for more school.

lunchtime balcony vistas

And on that note, it’s back to work, dear readers. I can’t promise the most regular updates here, as there is ton of work to be done and the worst internet connectivity imaginable, but please do drop me notes/comments/questions and know that I’m aiming to keep y’all abreast as the newness continues to unfold.

Backlog: Haiti, the land of the leaning house

2009-07-21T09:13:00.002-04:00

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen as much unsightly grime and trash as I witnessed in Haiti. And for the sheer overwhelmingness of it, the friendliness and socialability of the people there was just as surprising. Most people know that Haiti is the least developed country in the Americas, the most impoverished, neediest, and disheveled with the worst social and economic indicators in the hemisphere. What most people don’t think about, however, is how close Haiti is to our own national borders, the role that the US has had in economically orienting Haiti to its current position, and the fact that so many of Haiti’s cultural misgivings are a direct result of Western influence.

That being said, I too thought nothing of these aspects while hopping the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, on the shared (and relatively small) island of Hispaniola. Market day in the respective border towns of Dajabón and Ouanaminthe, viewed from the elevated safety of a Caribe Tours bus seat, painted the most fascinating juxtaposition of two economic polities. My heart skipped a beat when crossing the infamous bridge …upon seeing the striking differences just over a border demarcation, where blue-helmeted UN peace-keeping troops sat in front of Barbancourt-selling stalls as wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow carted off bags of charcoal from a nation suffering from the highest rates of deforestation in the world…

Market madness on the DR side of the Masacre river vs. the Haitian side:

Attractive transport options abound in Haiti!

I went to Haiti to visit my friend Edna, another student from the School of Public Health. A fellow Floridian by birth, Edna is passing an interesting and challenging summer in the country her parents escaped from some 25 years ago, learning the ins and outs of color lines and ecologically oriented human-rights, as an intern with SOIL. Edna and one of the co-founders of this incredible organization, Sasha, graciously hosted me and Kate, offering opportunities to see a part of the world very few have the opportunity, or interest, in understanding.

We visited Shada, a shanty-town slum on the outskirts of Cap. It’s difficult to express the depth of poverty and disenfranchisement witnessed within; for all the third world travel I’ve done, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like Shada. Some 15,000+ people live in a maze of streets with homes made of block and tin, separated by narrowly curved alley-ways strewn with trash and feces, stagnant sludge and decay, with an ever present and ever disturbing stench that wafts through the air. Sitting on the banks of the river running through Cap, Shada’s shoreline serves as a dumping area in the broadest sense – trash and human waste, and something of a pig-pen, separate homes from the water, at least during the non-storm season. During hurricanes past, rampant floods raise these waters and mud high into the lives and homes of individuals living in Shada.

At the same time, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine that, despite, or in spite of, the every day challenges to survive, the people of Shada were warm and inviting; during our walk we amalgamated a pack of children eager to follow us through the sewage lined streets, holding our hands, requesting pictures, and so on. We had the good fortune to witness a dance and rap performance by an awesome group of girls singing about female empowerment. We were welcomed to people’s homes in a way reminiscent of being a part of something. Visiting was, in no small part, made accessible to us by the incredibly gracious (both with guests in her home and with members of her new community) Sasha Kramer, the co-founder of SOIL who has become a hugely positive force for social change inside Shada.

The principle of “living with dignity” underscores the agenda of most, if not all, humanitarian organizations, and the general human rights ethos, and accordingly, I am hesitant to say that that the people of Shada – people strong, generous, and decidedly resilient – are living a life without dignity. But the reality of the scenario, the reality of the lives and the many atrocious conditions within this community, was beyond me.

It was confusing to be there, within Shada. My emotions vacillated in an irksome manner: I felt angered and on-edge, and then quickly I felt just fine. My friend Jean said something rather compelling about work here in the DR that really struck a chord with me:

“And what about all the shit that grates, boils blood, doesn’t compute? It hasn’t been long enough for me to see or process the half of it, yet I’m already feeling my rigid sense of moral uprightness and strict adherence to legality relax in delightful and horrifying ways.“

Reflecting on this, which has taken me days upon days to write, has been likewise confusing. It’s hard to visit a place like Shada and leave feeling complacent. But at the same time, it’s hard to leave feeling empowered to create change in the face of so many calamities. I do not want to come across as the hopeless development/humanitarian aid worker, as the people of Shada are not hopeless themselves. Having had my eyes widened to the complexities of Caribbean inequalities during this visit – highlighted not just by the differences across the border, but by the other things I had the fortune to do while in Haiti (coming in a subsequent entry) - I feel forever more grateful for the luxury of controlling my own life in a way that people living in Shada are still waiting for.

backlog: Batey hopping.

2009-07-15T23:41:00.004-04:00

My work in the DR is structured in a rather circuitous way – as both a program evaluation and a needs analysis concerning access and utilization of health services – making things kind of hectic, much like many endeavors in my life. It’s been a long running start, building up to a rapid finish.

Following weeks of reviewing literature, struggling through meetings (en español, por su puesto) with stakeholders, and participating observantly, the madness of surveys began. I developed a rather extensive, 100-question, quantitative-data collection instrument and trained two Haitian medical students (able to translate Spanish into Creole when needed) in collection methods. After testing and revising the survey, we collected information from multiple field sites in individual Batey communities.

As a background I ought to explain that the organizations with which I’m working provide healthcare through mobile ambulances to communities without access to any other types of health services. This includes preventative medicine, treatment, prenatal care, health-education, and so on. Accordingly, there are huge varieties of unmet needs. At the same time, these Batey communities live on the fringe of society and suffer in need of many other types of services, like education and sanitation infrastructure.

In the name of ethics I won’t reveal too much about the project here or now, but I will say that it has been challenging to segue between the areas of inquiry and practice – between the acts of research versus organizational assessment. The dependency of patients upon these health services limits the accuracy of the reach of a general evaluation survey – these patients lack the typical “rights” of choice, access, and time that other users are afforded in routinized healthcare services. At the same time, as a development and public health practitioner, it’s hard for me to adapt my motivations to fit solely within the “curiosity” realm of the researcher who seeks definitive “conclusions.” Neither my professors nor supervisors were able to guide my thinking in order to pigeon hole the work in one way or the other and I suppose it isn’t necessary.

For the mean time, I’m considering the most appropriate categorization of this project (which will likely inform the thesis I will begin preparing next month) as a practice of applied research to make things work better and more efficiently while meeting the basic needs of individuals who deserve and need critical health services.

backlog, July 2: arts and exploration

2009-07-15T22:48:00.004-04:00

Mama Rocio, the local director of my exchange between Columbia University and the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, invited the four of us fellows on a day trip to the second largest Dominican city of Santiago. After leaving the capital at the crack of dawn, we arrived in Salcedo, for a tour of el Museo Hermanas Maribel. This museum, which is actually an estate, is something of a national landmark and stands in tribute to three women, regarded as national heroines, for their resistance to and opposition of, and ultimately their assassination by the dictator, Rafael Trujillo.

Daughters of an upper-class family, who felt the sting of Trujillo’s reign, the Mirabel sisters formed a group of opponents to the regime. Aside from being empowered and fierce women, an interesting and home-hitting aspect, for me, about these ladies was that they were known as Las Mariposas (or the butterflies) within their underground movement and were referred to as such within their political dealings…During the visit we had the good fortune to meet and speak with Dedé Mirabal, the one sister of four who was not assassinated in 1960. Her life’s work has been dedicated to preserving the memory and legacy of her sisters Minerva, Patria, and Teresa (for the record, I’m assuming that she was a major contributor to Julia Álvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies). For a woman of more than 80 years, her spirit was so uplifting and her attitude positively pervasive. I only hope to be able to live as strongly as she has… this said - visiting the estate, which is covered with both ornamental and living butterfly tributes - a month after the three-year anniversary of losing Katelyn, was particularly powerful for me. It was gorgeous.

Our day continued with a visit to the art and cultural center in the city of Santiago. I wont lie and tell you that I found the arts more exiting than the action – witnessing the rolling and preparation of fine Dominican cigars was the best.

The day of exploring Dominican arts and culture and history continued with a visit to the Candido Bido Museum in the town of Bonao. Bido is evidently a master artist in the DR and has started a great organization teaching creative arts to youth from all economic walks of life. The collection within the museum was surprisingly impressive and I found myself taken aback by the quality and sophistication of some pieces. In particular, check out the crazy furniture design, Los Angeles, by Julio Valentín.

balancing act

2009-06-30T21:22:00.005-04:00

Subsequent visits to the Bateyes have been less shocking and more as per my expectations. The Mobile Health Clinics enter the community bright and early, encounter a long line of patients waiting to see the doctor, there’s an intake/documentation system, the patient is seen, referrals written, repeat.

It’s not exactly fun to see the pregnant teens who’ve not had any pre-natal care and are in their 6th month. It’s painful to see people’s faces when they realize that the prescription they’ve just been given is in fact not available from the mobile clinic and that procuring such drugs will mean a long, long walk into the capital to spend money on drugs that are unaffordable. It’s terrible when at 3:00, after 8 hours and 40 patients have been served and the one doctor is ready to leave, a family of four show up wanting to been seen, yet are told they’re too late and need to wait until the next visit, two months later.

In comparison, it’s so easy to forget all this misery as soon as one leaves the Bateyes and returns to the Capital. It feels light years away. I’m guilty of forgetting too, given how much more comfortable it is to work here in comparison to other field assignments I’ve had the privilege of working on. Given that I’m enjoying my time spent here in which I’m NOT Working, and how permitted and encouraged this enjoyment is, it’s difficult to stay focused on the numbing inequalities and social injustices, when I’m not standing in the middle of them. What I really mean is that the comforts of the ex-pat lifestyle here - with friends, modern public transportation, lux beaches, and wi-fi – are keeping me significantly distracted from the misery and circumstances then I’ve ever been within a developing country.

And this blog has suffered for it accordingly. Evidently, it’s only when I feel able to compare things here with things somewhere else that I feel able to write something interesting. As I head into the field with surveys to implement and photos to take, I’m promising myself to stay more connected to the realities on the ground. Vamos a ver.

p.s. Is anyone even reading this?

back from the beach

2009-06-30T20:57:00.003-04:00

I ran away again this weekend, this time to the north coast. The waters were crystal clear and more placid than imaginable, the vistas refreshing and the company perfect. Motorcycle rides through national parks, fresh catches for dinner, and new friends are nothing but reinvigorating.

A Night on the Town in the Zona Colonial

2009-06-30T20:20:00.003-04:00

Every Sunday night something rather magical occurs in the middle of Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial, the first settlement made by Columbus in the New World: a wild dance party of hundreds of well-heeled Quisqueyanos take over a plaza in front of ancient ruined Monasteries of former splendor, sipping Presidente Light and snacking on pastelitos. A live band plays Bachata and Salsa and Merengue for hours and hours and old friends reunite with new ones. Balmy summer night delight, indeed.

Me and Jean, a dear friend from ATL days, serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer here.

backlog - June 20 - Gaga in the Bateyes

2009-06-29T10:28:00.003-04:00

It took me all of half a second to understand that “agárrate” meant “hold on” when the random man with a motorcycle took off, heading against traffic, on a 6 lane highway. I guess he decided to help me as I was wearing a black dress and running late to my first meeting with the executive director of MOSCTHA. The wind in my un-helmeted hair was a welcome rush after the cab, which a police officer put me in, dropped me off in the middle of no where, following a 15 minute walk in the wrong direction, after exiting the subway at the incorrect stop. A good start to this first meeting as the ED, el Doctor, kept me waiting for 45 minutes insisting that I, “la jovencita,” drink orange juice.

The work may not be as exhilarating as the moto-ride, but it’s becoming interesting and I’m finally getting my feet wet. Literally. Who knew that a trip to a batey meant traipsing through mud and cow paddies to get to the latrine?

Picture this disparity: a five minute drive off the perfectly paved road, lined with mini-malls and car dealerships, lie crop-fields after field only punctuated by trickling rivers and the shrillness of Dominican kids laughing. Houses with tin roofs, rotting wood walls, and a burnt out edifice or two are all that constitute the neighborhood. Perhaps a brightly painted “Palé” sign indicates that one can buy lottery tickets, and a small “colmado” – the ubiquitous Dominican general corner store-cum-bar - sells warm soda, sugar, eggs and toilet paper in the center of town. Kids run about with muddy toes and snotty faces, some lucky to have shoes, but most not. Old men sit and watch the road as if it were television, and mid-twenty year olds are unanimously missing from the scene. My first visit to Yaco, one of the Batey communities that MOSCTHA works with, felt so similar to an east African village, I almost felt the culture shock that I never seemed to experience there, because there, the reality was merely the manifestation of long-standing expectations of mine. That was Africa; this is 600 miles from home.

I stayed surprised when they kids were first shocked by my whiteness, but then adoringly curious – patting my skin and hair, fascinated by the camera and babies wide-eyed and frightened – and was completely caught off guard upon realizing that the Gaga performance that we went to visit could have been rolled out directly from TASO’s cultural performers.

Little did I know that the Gaga, originating from the Haitian ‘rara’ music and dance street festival stylings, is in fact derived from a celebration of African ancestry of the “Afro-Haïtian masses.” Wikipedia informed me that Vodou is often part of the processesion which serves to unite communities across cultural divides and bring people together (details which were unfortunately lost in translation from Kreyòl, to Spanish to English. Regardless, it was really a fun introduction to a Batey and hopefully you’ll find it interesting and curious as well. Check the video and photos below, more photos here.

June 10 - 15

2009-06-16T14:34:00.002-04:00

We finally went out on our own – no accompaniment from friends of friends, or students of the university tasked with entertaining us – and had a blast. Everyone has talked to me about living it up at the bars of Santo Domingo, and naturally we wound up at the most Miami-esque venue imaginable.

Picture this: three gringas emerge from a taxi during a rain storm and enter an Italian restaurant full of beds. The roof was open, allowing for deafeningly loud house-music (with a bit of trancey dancey pop thrown in for good measure) to escape to the sky. Within thirty minutes we made friends with a slew of artists – photographers, cinematographers, and rock stars (from an, evidently, acclaimed band) – who showed us how to have proper fun, Dominican style (Merengue lessons included).

Little beats a dance party with new friends – except maybe having an unexpected, mid-week feria/holiday day-off from work! Accordingly, Margaret and I spent a relaxed afternoon exploring la Zona Colonial, the area almost “overflowing” with colonial history that borders our neighborhood (Gazcue).

The next day, another unexpected surprise and I was out the door to Cabarete, the Domincan Republic’s Kite-surfing capital. Even though I spent last weekend at the beach, and have a big week ahead of me, who could say no to a free ride? We rented a condo in the middle of gringo-landia – I barely spoke a word of Spanish the entire weekend, oops – and, again, stared out to sea while lazing about. I’m finally realizing why people have Caribbean relaxation dreams! And for someone notoriously bad at relaxing, this is serious progress.

June 9 – Movers and Shakers, the Health System and a visit to San Juan

2009-06-15T10:46:00.005-04:00

I turned on the television for the first time today and was a bit taken aback when shots of the Brooklyn Museum were the first images to pop onto the screen. I shouldn’t have been: it’s not easy to miss the connections between NY and the DR. Though, in a country of approximately 10 million people (a country boasting the biggest economy in the Caribbean and its leading tourist destination), it’s still wild to realize that the diaspora of approximately 1 million Dominicans is mostly concentrated in the City I left.

Nearly everyone here has family there. The people talk in the streets about Washington Heights! I’m clearly learning a lot about things I never anticipated: the DR is the largest exporter of immigrants to the City, with (evidently) 10% of the public school system servicing Dominican-Yorkers who are the second largest Latino population of NY; according to historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (read his very interesting series of Q&A’s on the DR and NY here ) the musical culture of Merengue was “intensely shaped” by NY’s rock and disco eras; and, perhaps more interestingly, the powers of racial politics, in terms of resisting a black and white divide (though not so much in terms of racism and discrimination against Haitians) between the full-color-spectrum population here, has manifested in NY in a similar way, in that the sheer number of Afro-Caribbean populations within the five boroughs enables rather homogeneous enclaves where such distinctions are not necessarily required.

I’ve also been surprised to learn just how historic this place is. The first site of permanent European settlement in the Americas (in part by the French in Haiti, the other half by the Spaniards), the island of Hispaniola is dotted with colonial reminders: handfuls of cobblestone, narrow streets, copious churches and cathedrals, and familiar sounding names like Bolivar and Ramirez. Independence from the Spanish was followed by a Haitian take over, then by a US occupation (between 1916 -24), and subsequently by a military dictatorship, before bringing about the current democracy (If you’re interested in more history or details of this place, wiki can tell you about the pre-Colombian days of the indigenous Taíno peoples).

The Ruins of the San Francisco Monastery - the oldest Monastery in the Americas

This all said, there are big schism-like divides here. This country abuts Haiti – only 560 miles away from my home state of Florida and the poorest country in the hemisphere - in which everything appears to be abysmally worse (details on the Haitian/Dominican relationship when my summer research solidifies further). And while you can travel by Mercedes, use high-speed wireless internet, and drop $600 a night at an all-inclusive resort, this place is still teeming with poverty and underdevelopment.

During this past week, the complexities of this country have become more forthright. As guests of the Ministry of Health, Vivian, Margaret, Kate and I travel to San Juan de la Maguana, the capital of the province of San Juan near the Haitian border, to visit their system of public-health care delivery in rural communities. As for contradictions and calamities – it was good, really good, for me to get out and see some legitimate social and economic need to mentally locate this country as a “developing” one – it was very curious to travel as guests of the state (more or less) and visit the proclaimed best-resourced and best-run public health clinics in the country.

Only two years old, the system is a network (o “red” en español), of small health clinics that serve individual communities and refer patients in need of follow up or laboratory services to the appropriate venues. While this sounds rather basic and logical, the majority of persons with health issues here still go directly to the Emergency Room or Hospital, creating a terribly over-burdened system that doesn’t function properly.

One of the primary health centers, a doctor, and an epidemiological mapping shot:

A visit to the Hospital was rather unnerving at points, as we witnessed bloody footprints on the ground, abandoned corridors, and extremely malnourished children. However, on the whole, the place functions remarkably well and seems to run fine:

Backlog – June 7 – Beach Babes

2009-06-12T08:27:00.002-04:00

Kate told me at 9 am that we had to run away for the weekend. Unable to counter her with a logical reason to stay in the city, I haphazardly packed a bag primarily consisting of beach gear. We didn’t know where we were going, only that we were getting out! Within an hour, our “mama,” Rocio, had us getting in a taxi with sandwiches and mango milkshakes, heading to a bus station. Three hours later we arrived in the “sleepy” fishing village of Bayahibe, a cute waterfront with a strange minority population of Italian shop keepers and laid-back island folk. The neighboring beach hotspot, Playa Dominicus, proved a bit more rowdy and up our alley for a stroll. Get jealous:

It was a glorious escape from the chaos, pollution, and general madness that makes up Santo Domingo. We spent the time staring out to sea, eating incredible Italian gelato, and finally enjoying the island lifestyle.

Making a return by Gua Gua:

Backlog, June 3 - Lost en La Sirena

2009-06-12T08:25:00.000-04:00

Today was the first time the Dominican Republic felt anything like Sudan – encouraging me further to re-enter the blogosphere - I was rather desperately walking in circles looking for vegetables, longing for leaves full of more than beta-carotene (mangos are everywhere here…) and something more nutrient-rich than rice and beans. The main difference between this experience and that which it reminded me of, was that today I was standing in a four-storied, air-conditioned, Walmart-esque super-center called La Sirena in which I could buy just about anything I could conceivably need, except for spinach. In a way, this is somewhat representative of how I’m feeling about, and what living and working as a gringa within, the DR is all about: everything is so close, but just seems to miss the mark.

For all the hours studying theories of intervention-mapping, or processes for planning service delivery, it’s rather ironic that I’ve been tasked with creating deliverables that move against the spectrum preferred by “the public health agenda” by a program actually run by my school. I tried explaining this in Spanish and it made even less sense. Cual yo quiero decir es [my new favorite expression: “what I mean to say is…”] that I’ve been told to produce things that are unsubstantiated theoretically which basically goes against everything I’ve studied for the past year. More specifically, the organization I’m working for has asked me to design a health brochure without doing any of the background processes or development of logic models I’ve been trained to do. More on that later.

backlog: back on the boat

2009-06-08T11:50:00.002-04:00

My cheeks are a bit pink with sunburn – a visual manifestation of the only real expectation I brought with me this summer here in the Dominican Republic. Six days in and I’m finally feeling more accustomed to the tropical humidity, catcalls, and Dominican Spanish.

To clarify: I’ve come to the glorious island of Hispaniola for a summer internship facilitated through an exchange program between Columbia University and the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD). Dr. Linda Cushman started the exchange 10 years ago, as a program to provide public health students the opportunity to “gain an understanding of the culture, and the social and health factors affecting Latinos on both sides of the ‘Air Bridge’ (NYC and Santo Domingo), through class instruction, observation of public health practice sites, and the practical application of public health methodology in local non-governmental organizations.” The 10 week practicum is designed to meet the needs of health professionals who will be working with Dominican and other Latino youth and families whose experience with the US is characterized by circular migration, and accordingly to improve the capacity of practitioners serving Latinos. At the same time, participating fulfills my academic requirements of a 280-hour practicum and lets me bring my Spanish up to a working/functioning level.

We spent the first week meeting with various important types – someone from the ministry of health, another big up from the university, meeting local university students – and trying to get settled in – trying mofongo and mangú, purchasing cell phones, and signing two month leases on terrazzo floored apartments. Concerning the latter, Margaret and I got lucky with our apartment: a spacious fourth floor 2 bedroom set up, full of rattan wicker furniture and ceiling fans. We even have a respectable maid’s quarter adjacent to the “washing machine” (which is a funny contraption worthy of a separate entry). Kate and Viv were not as lucky, and after finding *their* place too dismal for taking, have started looking elsewhere (something of a nightmare here in STO DMG, evidently) and have spent the week sleeping at our pad. It’s been a full fun house.

As we have yet to begin our actual work we’ve spent our time eating ice-cream, walking along the Malécon, and fantasizing about future weekend trips to the popular tourist destinations with aquamarine waters (evidently the sea and sands closest to Santo Domingo, the capital where I’m living, are heavily polluted and the water is too rough for swimming…). Vamos a ver.

Some images from week one:

At the Ministry of Health:

The four of us (Kate, Margaret, Vivian, y yo):

In the neighborhood:

Out and about -- preparing for a night of Bachata y Merenge:

Locals:

Exhibition Opening!

2009-03-09T03:03:00.003-04:00

Drawing Connections

2008-09-21T13:26:00.006-04:00

Multiple times a day I’ll start this blog entry in my head. It’s startling to think that I’ve been doing so for a month.

In Dubai I wanted to write about my transition from the Judy of the logic-devoid, sensory-assualting jungles of Kenya, Sudan, and Ethiopia to the Judy of sweltering sands and capitalist construction capital of the world. The transition into the uber-developed Emirate was easy; Sudan felt light years away. I wasn't at all astonished by the fluidity with which I transformed from bush-woman to high-heel wearing, 300$-a-night-hotel sleeping tourist. I forgot all of the mosquitoes, mudboots, and yellow-cabbage instantly. Seventy-two hours later, in Manhattan, with 72 hours before my flight home to Florida, I saw friends, took cabs, bought expensive toys. Only four days later, bathing in Siesta Key's sunshine, did I feel a bit stunned and moved by it all.

I suppose it's contrived to acknowledge that. White bloggers always seem to reflect and comment on their departures and the symbolism of picking up and peacing out: always able to do what the people around us can not. I've been processing that, but like most other bad-bloggers, have been of course too busy to make meaningful entries, overwhelmed by this pace and that offer and those assignments, to take time and concentrate on writing out all of these nonsensical blabberings.

But then, small things start happen.

A headline about Castro winning a humanitarian award was one thing. A 'dictator' we chastise consistently, won the Ubuntu award? Ubuntu - an ethos based on our interpersonal relations with other humans, generosity, community, and fairness - in the headlines transported me instantly back into Addis Ababa's Bole Airport, where chance circumstances exposed me to that spirit, the spirit held by "those people," those who can't get up and leave, and who by their categorical circumstance have every reason to want to do such things, but, who, by their inherent senses, take graceful stock of their situation and don't choose to flee the way I have. Without losing you too much, dear reader, I'll divulge this 'Ubuntu in the Airport' experience:

After all the hullabaloo with immigration and the ministry of the interior and the court house and lost paper work and my laptop being held up in immigration, I wasn’t expecting a smooth departure. When I arrived at Bole International Airport, with two hours before my flight to Dubai, and an immigration officer was unwilling to return my computer to me, we called Save to intervene. When Save gave the go-ahead to release to me, the officials couldn’t find the computer. One hour til take off and they found the computer in the dusty storage holding chamber and told me to pay up. I had been told a price, and naturally, it was wrong. And, naturally again, all the airport banks were all closed. There were no ATMs. My flight out was in 45 minutes and I had no way of paying off my fine. I began debating getting on the plane and leaving my laptop in Africa, in order to escape myself. I tried raising my "what am I supposed to do" voice in desperation just as a handful of immigration staff approached me with an offering.

Four Ethiopians came to rescue me - a woman who cleans, a man who runs the x-ray machine, a man who blew smoke at the tourists, and a woman with beautiful curly hair gave me the money I needed to pay off my computer fine. They pooled together and paid off the four dollar equivalent that was going to cost me either a laptop or a flight out of Africa. In the face of this humbling experience, I could only offer thanks and a conscious appreciation for this atypical salvation, as I ran with my reunited machine to the terminal.

This spirit of giving, and unified action, and doing good in the name of positive living and positive change in humanity, has been repeatedly evoked within the concrete jungle of Manhattan over the past few weeks. I've gone with friends to see the incredible off-broadway production Fela, and was moved both by the afrobeat rhythms of my favorite musician and by this showcasing of the power of concerted efforts to create change. If you know me, you know I am a believer and advocate of the arts for education, advocacy, demonstration, and for generally shaking-people-up to make things different and better for humanity. Seeing Fela's messages against corruption, military-might, human-rights abuses, and the collapse of Nigerian traditional norms, performed for hundreds of people in such a captivating format was overwhelmingly awesome. As was the month-long showing of children's art from around the world at the United Nations headquarters, of which my work in Uganda was a part.

Small signs on the internet have been abundant, but reading this beautiful op-ed piece, about a teacher at an international school in metro-Atlanta, Georgia - in the community of resettled refugees, within which I first began my work in the arts for social change and my work with Sudanese, and my work with refugees and community development - brought my experiences over this summer, in a way, full circle. The writer's look at lives transformed resonated with me so strongly; her "testimony of transformation" concerning both her life and that of her Sudanese student, echoed powerfully with my journey, and in calling attention to the undeniable truth that we are all interdependent for these highly sought after transcendent moments, within which we see our own power and that of those around us cultivated most beautifully.

Ultimately, be it through churches in Ethiopia, obnoxiously common capitalistic-cultural phenomenons (shopping in Dubai), to nature at its finest, to well-crafted music and the arts, this shared vein of give-and-take connectedness and utility can be felt. And it is this constant balance, that I hope to shed light upon through this writing, as well as learn to craft with more beauty through my thinking, that will take me both around the island of Manhattan and around the world, back to Africa, yet again.

Feeling spirited and spiritual in Ethiopia:

UAE/Dubai:
Indoor skiing, shopping, sunning, and stirring (at the airport)

At home in Sarasota; simple, sunny.

And back to NYC; exhibitions and exaltations:

Backlog, August 15: The Great Escape

2008-08-17T14:58:00.001-04:00

On my last night in Africa I feel that I should feel differently. More inspired, transcended somehow. Hungrier, more determined, or learned would be appropriate.

I guess I am feeling human, though barely. In the face of all the suffering, poverty, derision, and disease in South Sudan, it's really been these two weeks, stuck in Addis Ababa, that have make me feel a bit bereft of my spirit, my humor, my sense of humanity. Much like visitors to ground zero, I feel like a tourist visiting death. I drink the green-gold crop – bottomless cups of it – while watching CNN coverage of famine across this land, and can't help feeling ridiculous.

Luellen and I spent moments aplenty reflecting on our respective summers; moments that carried a fleeting sense of inspiration, transcendence, hunger, determination or learning.

I've learned about myself, it's true, and I've learned about people, and about seeing through as opposed to around and over. I recognize changes in myself and stronger ideas and convictions. My patience will always be limited, but it's certainly expanded and has grown softer. I'm more conscious of my professional tangent, in that my resolve for avoiding halogen lights, cubicle corners, and anything termed 9 – 5 has never been stronger. I can assert that I don't want my cynicism to prevent me from reaching people, but I also realize that my ability to state the obvious can be an asset in an industry plagued by obfuscation. A dashing Irish-man with a dream job convinced me that not all dreams are enviable.

My instinct to escape is as palpable as ever. While I can taste this unending need-to-flee, what it is that I'm escaping remains as mysterious as ever.

Off to Dubai.

I know why the caged lion sings

2008-08-14T13:57:00.000-04:00

It’s startling to me that it takes a shell-shocking BBC-World News special on China’s “arming of the killers,” for me to see an element of sophistication in the wars of both the South of Sudan and that in the west, given the experienced daily impacts, rooted in fairly rudimentary measures of violence. In both cases, the humanitarian disaster hangs in the air, amidst dead trucks and a bullet riddled ground, with human tragedy looming everywhere. The stories and individuals profiled on this television special, Hilary Andersson’s inquiry into the role of China in Darfur, sound so similar to those I heard and spoke to every day. “I lost my husband and four children when the bombs dropped,” “I was raped with my sister while fetching water,” “Our home was destroyed, along with our neighbor’s homes, during the fighting.” War and Sudan are dizzying.
Then again, so is Ethiopia and forced tourism. While I’m happy to be far away from the bush I am looking forward to getting out of Africa, even if only for a minute, to get my spinning head to stop.

With that said, the spinning stalled on Tuesday, after my ten days in Ethiopian legal limbo; I went to court and immigration, and then court, and then immigration, and then court, and court, and court, and more immigration.

The judge ruled in my favor – according to my ‘representatives’ – sticking me with a one thousand Birr fine for entering the country illegally. I’ve been provided with a temporary business visa which requires me to be out of the country within the week. The plans Luellen and I made for traveling in the north of Ethiopia are being put on hold – indefinitely? – and we’ve been getting to learn Addis Ababa most thoroughly.

It's not the historical route, but the smack you in the head route. My friend Marcin coined it “dirty poverty.” The destituteness that is teeming across Addis Ababa is filthy. Of the 25 + countries I’ve visited, including a handful of African capital cities, I’ve never borne witness to such an upsetting and unending array of troubles; poverty’s grip on A.A. – ranging from the horrendous prevalence of leprosy to school children peddling banana-flavored chewing gum at every intersection - and the daily grey skies are wearing on me a bit. All of the polio, elephantitis, and psychosis is haunting.

This critique is all, of course, a partial justification for our activities, which will henceforth be referred to as the excellent adventures of Ju and Lu. During my half working-days, we luxuriated with posh cocktails at the Sheraton, lazy price-haggling for jewelry and market purchases, and glamour treatments at a range of spas. Lu’s friend, Lee, brought us out of the city for a waterfall-fed beer-factory tour. We were the only people in AA eating Chinese food during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We’ve been learning about Rastafarianism from the source and practicing our shoulder shaking. Marcin arrived from Khartoum, via Kampala, and put us in proper tourist mode. Orthodox churches, museums, more salient observations forthcoming. Photos for now.

Backlog, August 5: Addis dissin’ me

2008-08-06T09:46:00.000-04:00

Addis is cold. Both in temperature and temperament. The immigration authorities took my passport upon arrival. This, following three days stuck in Gambella because a) my passport was stuck in Nairobi, b) my contact person traveling with my tickets missed his flight, c) the plane was full, etc etc etc., was not exactly the warm, post-Sudan reception I had hoped for. After last round battling immigration and being deported back to Sudan, overland, one would ask why I traveled via Gambella, where there is no immigration office, again. I would tell them that there was no other way, that south Sudan has no roads connecting Upper Nile to Juba, that the rains were so heavy I couldn’t leave by air, that the armed banditry on the roads between my town and the neighboring town meant I couldn’t travel inland, that I didn’t want to go to nasty, malaria-riddled Gambella by quadbike, that THEY should have immigration offices at their borders, but they wouldn’t listen. They would, however, berate me, asking if Mexicans attempt to enter the US without visas, and then yell at me some more, in Amharic, when I told them we have a fence. So I’m off to court now. Hopefully I’ll have a passport and visa sometime within the next two weeks so that I can leave this continent. Thanks for beating me up this round, mother Africa.

Backlog: August 6: and the saga continues.

So I went to court, twice and someone suspected that I had been in trouble in Ethiopia before. Evidently it’s not so common to get a white lady causing such trouble. No resolve. Back to court on Friday for my ‘hearing’ or trial if you will… and if you wont then…well, I’m out of answers. Nothing here makes much sense. Except for good food and friends. And
company expense accounts (haha, humanitarianism, psssh, jk).

Hopefully someone is on my team.

Backlog, August 2, Paddling my Own Canoe.

2008-08-06T09:32:00.002-04:00

I really couldn't have picked a more appropriate day to re-read
Slapstick, Vonnegut's wry, satirical auto-biography about the tiresome
boredom of humanity and how often those of little power or fortune are
the bearers of the most resplendent pleasures, than today, my first
day out of South Sudan.

In the crumbles of a future Manhattan – Skyscraper National Park -
plagued by death and stupidity all around him, he talks about how the
time flew and how we're all really fighting against a virulent
lonesomeness, and how family neglect is the bane of civilization. He
jokes of the future deference we will all pay to the miniaturized,
flying Chinese: "I await your instructions. You can be anything you
want to be. I will be anything you want me to be." And all I can think
of is the complexity of relief and development and what we are trying
to prove and who we are trying to serve and why we are doing what we
are doing in this industry.

In my journal I wrote about the idea of not spoiling the
"neanderthaloids," Vonnegut's self-description of futuristic
simpletons, lest we destroy all the simply joys of existing. It feels
particularly salient to me at this hour. Maybe it's because I spent
the whole two hours on the quadbike laughing as mud hit me in the
face, birds flew past me, and kids smiled at seeing a white person
turned brown. The people seemed fine. I felt fine. And I didn't even
care (for about two hours) that I couldn't take the airplane and that
I didn't have a visa to legally enter nor a flight out of Ethiopia,
and that I had no computer. I felt fine living simply (ok, the moment
was barely there, but it counts!), and the people around me were so
much happier than any of you reading this at your air-conditioned desk
with high-speed wireless. Accordingly, and as a result of all these
other experiences this summer, I can't stop nurturing my internal
crisis in accepting the post-conflict reconstruction model. I find
myself deeply quizzical of the ethical trajectory of this engagement.
Are we really helping these people 'improve' their lives somehow? What
does improvement really mean in a society where the people don't
really want to live as the rest of the west or the rest of the world?

More than one person has told me that the Nuer consider their culture
to be 'the best' in the world – something that kind of makes me and my
anthropological background laugh a bit. When a child is orphaned, he
is immediately absorbed by the community. Despite that husbands and
wives don't talk to one another after their wedding night (I'm being
100% literal on that…) family units are cohesive. People know each
other. Even if there were more than one 'bar' in Pagak town, everyone
would feel like a living episode of Cheers or a to the Max or the
Peachpit. As I sit here thinking about how emotional my departure from
Uganda was and how different this has been, I can only wonder how 20+
years of violence halts the desire for forward-thinking change, and
how, just maybe, the people don't see our oil-dependence, and our
gender-equality, and our commercial exploits as something desirable.

I'm certainly not sad to be leaving. I don't see myself paddling my
own canoe here in the bush, nor in Morningside Heights for that
matter, as particularly enviable. If nothing else, Sudan has been a
trip. A brain shaking, heart-pounding nightmarish-at-times hoo-haa
trip. And now I've arrived in Ethiopia. More adventures forthcoming.

Hi ho.

Enjoy my final pictures from Sudan and the journey.

Princess of the Mud, Elated by departure:

The Broken Bridge separating Sudan and Ethiopia –
only kind of unlike the Brooklyn Bridge:

Sudanese Sky:

Stuck: Saving the Children or Saved by the Children:

Covered in Mud in Kuergeun, Ethiopia – border town survivors!

After effects/shock

Hi Ho Happy

backlog, July 27: Art Days Continued

2008-08-05T08:50:00.000-04:00

We hit bumps in the road. Trying to create ownership of a project is a tremendously challenging endeavour, when the ownership is not innate. Working with Dang was difficult too – translator, intermediary, and 6’9” beneficiary at once does not a simple solution make. But in kind and patient form, he was always eager to participate in finding the solutions and helping us move forward with the program.

After negotiating that we would provide new footballs, volleyballs, and netballs, and continuing to stress that this program/project was one for self and community benefit, the kids regrouped. The art projects continued. From our portraits and connect the shapes experiments we moved onto talking about the role of youth/adolescents in community development, how parents can support schools and educational infrastructure, and in which ways the youth participants could best share their findings/images with people in the community.

Introducing new technologies may have sealed the deal as well. While in Uganda someone criticized my work – or rather that of my organization – for focusing on economic development through agrarian policy and practice reform. “How will Africans ever move up the food chain when they’re still ploughing fields instead of entering fields in Excel?” the Manhattan-based photographer-come-philanthropist barked at me via email. He raised a valid and tricky question that still haunts me. It’s obvious that in Sudan there is no way to drop in a computer training facility and see rapid results – most people have never written their name on paper, let alone do they have spreadsheets to tabulate nor emails to send. But I do lean on pro-globalization winds and hope that introducing some bits of the modern world will – if nothing else – inspire these kids to think bigger, brighter thoughts, and aspire to do, see, and live more. Who doesn’t love an ipod or digi-cam? Their pictures were remarkably awesome, for the record.

The kids’ images and messages continued to surprise and impress me. One participant noted the importance of ‘multiculturalism’ that can flourish within schools, depicting me in his image. He told me about the community’s own diversity, between tribes and varied experiences of war.

From my informal research and casual discussions with people here, I’ve uncovered how sensitive the role of returnees in the community is. While refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Uganda, many individuals gained valuable skills and were trained in different areas, such as soap-making, education (as teachers), tailoring, brick-making, etc. Their eyes were opened to new things that the ‘stayees’ have never seen. Tensions exist between those that return to the Sudan that the “stayees, stayed and fought for.” Anyway, an example of this trouble is in the reality that the military mite that stayed and fought the war occupy protective positions (like a guard for a compound) and are unable to offer deference to a person – be it their supervisor or not – who was not in the military, but who may have higher managerial and or technical skills or authority. This of course has come forth through the youth’s art creations and messages, when they tell me that school is for everyone, and that all must be treated equally. We’ve worked together to cultivate and draw forth these messages to generate a final, collective message from the group:

We the adolescents of Pagak Payam would like to share our artwork with
you to spread an important message for our community:

Through education our children and community can see a better future.
Growing peace and the return home of many people provide opportunities for
education and cooperation to create change for all people by working together in
unity.
Education improves our community and living standards. Education is
for all people, young and old, boy and girl. Children should go to school
and parents must support their children's education, even from the earliest
ages. Through community education and working collectively we can overcome
harmful practices and move from old traditions, like keeping the girl-child at
home and boys with the cattle, to let the children of our future become educated
participants in our communities and strong society. It is a shared
responsibility, requiring the participation of the community to build, maintain,
support, and improve schools. It depends on all people working
together.

Support children going to school!
Support school development!
Working together as a community is the best step for
change!

We decided that to drive the good message home we would distribute the works of art and have a public function to discuss the matters of serious importance. The artists selected the 10 best, most representative images from the collection of over 100.

I’m hopeful that this work will continue to move forward after my departure this week and that I can count on my colleagues and partners to carry the vision out: we’ve scanned the pictures, translated the above message, and are creating small flashcard-sized, laminated, color cards to distribute throughout the community.

It’s exciting to see such a project come together. I feel like the social-marketing output from this engagement is far more sincere than those of the art-projects with refugee youth I’ve facilitated in the past. This was certainly the most challenging and thought provoking as well. In really seeking to look at the role of returnees in community development, and acknowledging that by community development, I actually mean regenerating social-capital within a system where the political infrastructure and standard government social services are provided by the international aid community, I’ve come to see a mix of bleak prospects as well as striking possibilities. Of course I believe in the power of youth as the strongest agents of change, but here in South Sudan it feels as though they are the most critical actors to seeing any progressive changes for this place at all. I’m honoured to have had the chance to work on this project and see the capacity and insights that these young people have to offer and I have nothing but hope for the changes they can bring about.

i <3 NY

2008-07-31T10:51:00.001-04:00

i
Originally uploaded by judester1213.

I tried to leave today.
The plane didn't come.
It would seem I love Pagak.

not exactly.

Backlog, 3 pm, today

2008-07-30T15:19:00.002-04:00

A lot of friends have written about their monumentally moving experiences this summer, these Hakuna-Matata, revelatory moments where all the synapses are in sync and the linkages that traverse humanity glow vividly under the sub-Saharan sun. I’ve just been complaining and posting photos, it would seem. Today was somehow the same as any other day here and at the same time a tad bit different.

I’ve been struggling to write a success story – max 600 words – for the past three hours. This is both a result of my incorrigible distractability – ooh new news in the google reader! A bird I don’t yet have a photograph of in the waterhole! FACEBOOK!! – and that it’s really hard to write this narrow focused piece giving a succinct example of our organization's direct impact on one individual. The writing style requested is completely not my own and the content requested isn’t something I’ve thoroughly borne witness to either.

So I moved to my room to try and write from there. All of a sudden a foreign sound filled the air: a tiny charter plane was descending! I looked at the computer calendar to make sure I hadn’t insanely confused the days. Charters come on Thursdays. No movement. Today is Wednesday. I looked up and blinked: it's really a plane and it's landing. I ran to find Joseph who was running toward me, shouting, “Pack your bags! You go! I’ll go tell them you’re coming!”

I darted for my external harddrive and scrambled to back things up from the comp I’ve been using since mine died my first week in Sudan. I started cramming lenses and ipods and prescription drugs into my neatly and anticipatorily-well-folded clothes. I ran and grabbed all my wet clothes off the line and was ready to use the latrine one last time when I heard the propellers. I climbed atop the big mound of dirt adjacent to our toilets and saw Joseph amongst the 75+ onlookers surrounding the plane. A military man yelled at the kids to scram out of the way of the excitingly foreign technological delight while I stood watching from inside the fence that separates our compound from the airstrip.

For about 60 seconds I had one of those feelings of hakuna-matata connectedness.

Though we were physically separated by a dilapidated fence and some muddy puddles, I stood with those kids, gazed silently while berated by the general, and watched the world take off in front of us, with no one to grab and nowhere to go and nothing to say but to utter a slight sigh as it left us longing for something more.

The rain started falling as soon as the plane lifted and the moment in which I felt the weight of the world outside coming and going passed just as quickly as it had come. All the onlookers began running for shelter as their likely only t-shirt became instantly saturated; Nyaraka ran to hand me an umbrella and my gumboots. She took my wet clothes and walked barefoot through the mud.

It’s still raining an hour later. If the other charter lands tomorrow I’ll get on and go, and leave this place and these people like so many before me have done. Maybe in a week’s time, or a month’s or a year’s, I’ll think about Pagak, never really missing the place, but with a slight sigh at the tragedy of waiting for something that never comes. And I’ll feel I accomplished so little for this place, seeing that I can’t even write a one page story on the lives affected, except my own.

lots o pop

2008-07-29T13:54:00.003-04:00

Today was really stressful, but somehow popcorn made it alright. I had been holding the precious kernels since Nairobi and had basically forgotten them in my suitcase. And yes that means I'm packing up in Pagak. I'm writing final reports, burning CDs of photos for nearly everyone that knows me, and enjoying some good pre-departure hijinks. Joseph broke out the Ethiopian wine and East African tunes.

It's time to return to the partying - before we cut power - enjoy the fruits of globalization:

and my absolute favorite:

blabberings in the middle of the mud

2008-07-28T15:48:00.003-04:00

So, I've been watching alot of Ultimate Survival instead of blogging. My life seems pretty pale in the face of Bear's adventures. Things are really just kind of calm and boring here lately, and I guess that is symbolic of the sense of comfort I'm feeling with everything here in Pagak. Of course comfort isn't the right word, and of course I am only feeling this way because I'm leaving here this week. But it's been decent to try and take in Africa and just roll with the punches a bit... I'll update you, dear blog, with details of my hard work soon. But for now, just a bit of my daily appreciations:

The upside of rain:

dinner party - nyama choma! - Jean's going away party, for the plane that didn't land:

The three stooges that make life entertaining:

Fun times in the middle of the night and the crazy things that come out of zero light pollution:

saturation point

2008-07-24T05:40:00.007-04:00

It’s crazy to think I’m supposed to leave Pagak one week from today. I say supposed to as I’m really beginning to doubt this will happen. It’s been raining every day for the past week. Not a little drizzle to be easily dodged with an umbrella, but a mean, drenching, overwhelming downpour. The sky turns black and dumps the weight of a thousand swimming pools all over our mud houses. We sit and wait. The satellite internet doesn’t really work under these clouds. The mud is too deep to use the quadbikes, let alone the hardtop (landcruiser).
Thanks Bret for the shots.

The mud-walk at least has some cardiovascular benefits: schlepping through the shin-high sludge of black-cotton soil is work. And today I’m thankful for even those few minutes of work – experienced only as I stop reading my novel to trek to the bathroom across the compound - as the rain has limited the opportunities I have for engaging in my actual work. The art workshops have been on hold. It’s hard to draw on A4 paper under a monsoon. It’s impossible to ask mamas and babies to sit and talk about the value of school and communities when the earth below is not solid enough to sit on. It’s hard to write reports on an electricity-dependent computer when the generator is breaking down and your fuel supply has been flooded with rain water (for the record, we’ve evidently got less than a week’s worth of fuel supply remaining).

My departure plans are further muddied. Not remembering the size of international visas and the oft recklessness of immigration officers who stamp your passport upon arrival, my passport was nearly filled after arriving in Nairobi. I tried to get extra pages in Addis during the last visit to Ethiopia, but time and political circumstances limited this option. There is neither an American consulate nor embassy in Juba, and I’m not allowed into the north to visit our offices in Khartoum, at which I would be able to have additional pages added to my document. And so, I’ve sent my passport with Gach, our local partner, through Ethiopia to Nairobi where Josephat is purportedly going to the Embassy.

Now this is where it gets complicated. Gach is meant to return to Pagak next Friday (August 1) and I am meant to leave for Juba next Thursday (July 31) if the UNWFP flight is able to land (which is only willing to do without rains like this and hence unlikely). As the flight is domestic I don’t need the passport to travel to Juba, but I will need one to leave, requiring that my passport be sent directly from Nairobi (or Addis, depending upon where Gach is) to Juba.

An alternative: talk of a charter plane from Juba, bringing long-awaited drugs and ECD materials to Pagak has been brimming for months, but has recently (as in within the past two days) been set ablaze following heated threats against our program staff for "neglect to care" for the community. An intern trying to get out of the field is certainly a valid consideration for sending a plane, and a hospital without drugs for eight months is rightfully of concern, but it is evidently the threatening that raises the urgency of getting the charter here. If the supplies can be mobilized, and the charter is physically able to land, then I can hope for this second option of transport to Juba. But the two logisticians in Juba are both conveniently on R&R, and each time I call HQ to discuss this with support staff, the satphone connection snaps.

The other remaining possibility is to get myself back to Ethiopia (at this point - given the condition of the roads - on foot), both without passport and visa, in hopes of meeting Gach (to collect the passport), while he's in transit at the local Gambella airport, flying from Gambella to Addis, and then Addis to Juba to debrief, and then back to Addis, from where I am meant to fly to Dubai – which ultimately will cost the organization an extra $1500 USD.

If this saga has been confusing to you, take comfort knowing that I am still confused as well. This serves both as an update on my status (or lack thereof) and a clue to the tremendous challenges of coordination and the realities of my whereabouts. When I bitch and moan with cynicism about the lack of action and my impotency in creating deliverables, I will re-read this entry. I’m also planning to mentally re-echo what I’ve been repeatedly told: Upper Nile is the most difficult state in which to work or see changes in South Sudan. Regardless of it not being my fault, I’m growing tired of being stuck in the mud.

p.s. And while I’ve written on the afflictions of the community facing the move from recipients of emergency-relief to participants in development, and we feel it internally with the heavier organizational prioritization in logistical coordination than in programmatic application, the coordination is abysmally low. How have we gotten to the point of 8 months without drugs and to one week’s worth of diesel?

backlog: deworm this

2008-07-24T05:24:00.000-04:00

I’ve been reading around 20 news articles a day on the Bashir indictment. And I’ve been following mass emails from my girl Gabi who has recently returned home to Zimbabwe. And I’m talking with colleagues about their crazy days back in ‘Mogs’ (Mogadishu). But there is nothing like a de-worming event with 200 worm-infested kids to make you feel the wrath of mother Africa during July.

What started as a seemingly benign ‘health action event’ (remember the maxipads?), in which mosquito nets and de-worming medications were to be disseminated to children attending the ECD centre, with welcome songs from children being busied and proper use of bed-nets being modeled, eventually became a mad scramble. We started at the centre around ten simply explaining the link between children's health and wellness and their ability to do well in school. I got a few decent portraits in the early moments, when expectations, and accordingly spirits, mine included, were high:

The following four hours were perhaps my most stressful in Africa. Worse than an econ exam: I had translators and mamas and old men and babies crying for drugs left and right. I actually found myself practicing deep breathing exercises and replaying the lyrics to a favourite song in my head in between herding angry people into different groups for registration and distribution. I have no idea what I was expecting, but a semblance of order and organization was somehow part of that vision. Evidently they were part of my camera’s sensor as well, though, I swear these photos don’t do justice to the chaos that was a result of our poor planning.

As per colleagues' suggestions, I'm trying to reassess the successes here. We DID get essential drugs into the gritty hands and mouths of kids needing to be dewormed. About 200 of the 300+ people will now be protected by insecticide treated bednets. While we didn't necessarily accomplish the registration goals I had in my head, and the linkages between the ECD centre and the health centre are still slight, I DID learn a thing or two about planning in advance (and how many people will show up when promised new goodies).

Sigh...

NGO coordination? I think not!

2008-07-20T04:28:00.001-04:00

UNICEF stole our thunder!! Donors are visiting a local/Sudanese Indigenous NGO (SINGO – my new favourite acronym), and said SINGO showed up at the Save-the-Children pre-school facilities about thirty minutes before our planned parent meeting. The teachers and parents were swooped up. We waited and tried to tell the unengaged ‘care-givers’ that hitting children with sticks does not add up to giving care. Our cross-
cultural sign-language wasn’t so effective needless to say. After a series of pictures of portraits of cute lil kids, the donors were ready to go and it would seem our golden moment had arrived. Wrong! It was spontaneously lunch-time (or as the case may realistically be, the one meal these kids eat per day). The WFP distribution is evidently supporting a make-shift school feeding programme (which, in my opinion we should be privy to, given that the entire centre is a save-program, in theory). At least some folk got what they came for. Meeting postponed round 3.

art days

2008-07-18T15:01:00.004-04:00

It’s good to be able to answer the question “What can I do or bring that another person (another intern?) can not?” with an action that you really enjoy. It’s also really great to feel experiences transforming your understandings, in real time, on a day-to-day basis.

I find it rather amazing that my experiences with Sudanese youth are coming full circle through markers and cameras, despite the fact that I’m a terrible artist. In January of 2003 the youth program coordinator of Refugee Family Services told me that once I began working with refugees I wouldn’t ever stop. New to Atlanta, finding that my new University lacked both fine arts and communications departments, I was seeking some way to get my feet on the ground. I never though a monster-track advert for judging a children’s art contest would lead me to where I am, but as per her predictions (and after two years volunteering as an art teacher, then a year of research looking at refugees’ art and photography as a tool for community building, followed by teaching art in refugee and IDP camps in Uganda), here I am in Sudan teaching art to returning refugees.

Over the past week and a half, I’ve been holding daily sessions with anywhere from 10 to 25 adolescents. The objective of the engagement has evolved in parallel to their expressiveness and excitement. What began as an activity to get me out of the compound for a bit in the afternoon has grown into a support structure for our social marketing agenda for the early-childhood education work and community mobilization ideology.

Self-portraits were the first step in getting these ‘kids’ – some former soldiers, some orphaned, some attending school, all survivors of war and returning refugees – to open up and think about how visuals and pictures can help us share ideas and feelings with other people.

Experience has shown me that it’s best to embarrass myself before expecting others to do the same:

I initially found myself feeling intimidated by the age of these participants – in the past I’ve worked almost exclusively with young people between the ages of 8 and 13. Despite being much closer to me in age – ranging between 15 and 28 – the image quality and sophistication was quite similar to that of previous students. My guess is that extremely limited exposure to visual arts as well as limited participatory involvement in the arts are to blame. The biggest difference however was the sense of humour and intellectual engagement with the workshop’s agenda.

Over the next few days our subject matter evolved. The following assignment was a depiction of our respective experiences of education. For many this meant formal school buildings in Ethiopia, for others, images depicted where they found themselves before being in school, and accordingly, what school/formal education had brought to their life. Following this, we focused on how to represent the ideal school, and what educational institutions should look like. Some of these pictures really impressed me – ranging from students aspiring for masters degrees, which represent the epitome of educational attainment (snarky har har from me on this one), to images of diverse student bodies, indicating a sense of cross-cultural acceptance, unity through the equalizing structure of education, and progress over tribal differences that abound here.

If nothing else, the kids like me and it’s good to make some friends here:

Diversity at school:

We next explored how the community can support the educational development of youth – the crux of my research and interests for my summer stint in Sudan. The images and dialogue, masterfully recorded/transcribed by Bret, were nothing short of awesome; the ideas and vision that these ‘youth’ have is incredible. It’s great when you approach something thinking that you have to explain it, slowly, and repeatedly through haphazard translation, but people actually get it. Like, really, truly, get it.

They told me how the parents must come together and meet to plan how to physically support (build) the schools, provide the food at the schools, and make demands of the government for trained teachers. The images showed people coming together through opportunities like sporting events, which could also serve as a forum to resolve conflicts and disputes. I was told that the community must demand the schools be located close to homes/villages so people can attend (there is only a primary school system here; students aspiring to attend school after grade six must either return to Ethiopia – a financial impossibility for most – or attend secondary school in neighbouring Maiwut town (22 km away) - a logistical impossibility for the others). Some pictures showed the lifestyle before school in which children found themselves sitting and eating mangoes all day; with school to attend for the children, parents must take responsibility for some of the work, such as firewood collection, fishing, digging, to maintain the way of life in the community, that the youth otherwise take responsibility for.

I find myself continually humbled by the simple privilege of education.

This of course has not been problem free. The ever present ‘dependency syndrome’ I’ve written on, a somewhat natural by-product of receiving aid (i.e. living in an environment in which basic necessities - that we in the west tend to turn a blind, unappreciative eye toward – like housing, food, water, pens, soap, glasses, vitamins, can not only be obtained, but are provided for free by the humanitarian community), is making its cruel mark on this project. We’ve stalled for the past 48 hours. The participants took issue with the motive of the program; fear that I’m a researcher not offering remuneration for their service and commitment, concern that this training merits financial compensation, and general confusion as to the purpose of the work, have made me look quite critically at a multitude of factors. We met again today and I explained the voluntary nature on both of our parts, apologetically accepting the poor job of explanation I may have done, trying to justify my position by telling them of the fluid and organic development of the activity. We’re on track for a few more workshops with a big finale in the works.

Stay tuned!

another day in the life

2008-07-18T14:44:00.002-04:00

Bret’s recent blog entry gives a lovely visual look at our life here in this compound-o-fun.

Here are a few new snaps from within and around the compound as accouterments:

Below are some neighbours and their homes; I love the decorative effect, seen clearly on the pre-roof-addition new construction, and the innovative (read: oil-can-come-bong) water pipe that Madame was so eager to have photographed:

.

Minarets beautifully adorn these tukuls. I don’t know where they come from.

And finally – how I’m really spending my internship:

backlog: feely losery

2008-07-18T14:21:00.002-04:00

In the hazy, crazy frenetic moments of life in the west I rarely have time to process these feelings of solitude and an incessant internal boredom. He said I was one of his most social friends; people here say I have a lot of energy. Is it that I know not how to be slow and patient and relaxed and therefore know not how to function here? When the generator is cut, and the droning chorus of frogs – sometimes pierced with the sound of rats and bats rummaging through the ceiling and with the shrill crack of canings from the neighbouring army barracks – subsides, and I’ve finished wasting time on the internet without accomplishing much of anything, and my book is boring, and it’s two AM but I can’t sleep, I feel broken down.

Today I cried for the first time since arriving in Africa. Sharing with Titus the doubts of my efficacy and seeming inability to aid in the creation of change, my frustrations began to well up. There are far too many moments of self-doubt and wonder as to what I’m doing here, and when I start analyzing my usefulness I feel it all spiral.

It’s hard to believe that I’m returning to NY a month from today. I get to fill my brain with the pleasantly distracting desires for a new apartment, maybe a visit to Florida, a hopeful concert or two before the sun leaves Manhattan for the winter. But these are all merely cursory wants – which in the face of my surroundings are outrageous. Panic about bio-statistics and econometrics coursework then floats in. Panic. I am here for scholastic purposes of course, but the idea of such scholarly pursuits finds me feeling paralyzed.

What’s worse is that I don’t have a vision of what I do want as the alternative. If I were to quit this community development and public health route, what would I possibly find for myself? A move backwards to photojournalism? This despondency would follow me there, for sure. It would be better if I was craving a particular something, someone, some place. Instead, I just feel tired and irritable.

Inner-personal stimulation is the pits. I have too much time to sit and think, but I don’t have anywhere productive to pit those thoughts and then I come full circle into frustration. Unlike other friends interning in the 4th-world, who claim to enjoy the downtime, thinking about the meaning of the world and getting to know themselves more, I hate this slowness. And then I realize the implications of such. And then I feel ridiculous.

come come community

2008-07-15T12:52:00.001-04:00

Despite the tremendous downpour, our Friday Community Group Meeting occurred. The 40 some-odd parents waited patiently under the tin-roof awning for the thunderous beat to subside, as David, Titus, and I spoke at high volumes to try and get our message across. Erstwhile Bret, my fellow intern, has begun capturing footage for a promotional documentary piece about the work we (Save) are doing here in Pagak Payem as well as bits of the engagement in other areas across Maiwut county.
I’ve been wondering what he’s capturing, including whether my growing fatigue and cynicism are vividly obvious on film, and if he can somehow put a positive spin on our methodology which involves developing a “community action cycle” – a process of how to implement a program – then surreptitiously force feeding/selling it to the community in an utter Pavlovian fashion, in the name of empowerment and ownership.
Surely my skepticism, echoing that of other development critics, is a result of the long windedness of such meetings, and like all my emotions here, waxes and wanes with the heat of the Sudanese sun. I look at the alternative and know that of course the community has to grasp whatever structural implements are meant to create long-term changes. But it somehow feels silly to approach people – who I fully recognize as having knowledge to share and voices to be heard, and with an understanding of their own needs far greater than we could ever know or appreciate from behind our labcoats, protective goggles, and clipboards – that want you to sell them something directly, and pretend that you’re not there with such a purpose.
All this being said, our model is to develop a school-monitoring committee (SMC) that is comprised of parents, our technical-officer and program-officer, the head-teacher/principal (equivalent) of each respective school, and a subsidiary parent-discussion group. My function is really to see the process role forward, from the hiring of the technical officer and 17 teachers, to the facilitative development of a parent groups that meet monthly to discuss issues related to parenting youths aged 0-3, share knowledge, and eventually lobby the government for their appropriate causes. This meeting on Friday was meant to be something of a sensitization engagement, through which we sell this whole strategy to the community itself.
Elections of officers and delegates is meant to happen later this week. For now, a few snaps from the ECD centre and from our meeting…
KK and the welcome gang:

Me and baby:

Cross generational participation:

Titus and some motivational clapping:

Me and Gloria at mtg:

it takes a village

2008-07-13T13:46:00.002-04:00

Nyamone had me over for a visit to her home and a traipse through Pagak Payem proper. Too tired for real words, plus you know I'm better with pictures anyway.

Rebeckah (Nyamone) and her cute kids, inside their tukul. Furnishings and inputs are from nearby Gambella, Ethiopia:

I'm totally living in Africa:

These twins are four months old. Malnutrition is rampant in these parts.

just another day in Pagak

2008-07-13T04:46:00.001-04:00

Judasss and technical farts

2008-07-12T09:17:00.000-04:00

Just a few hours after that last post my spirits returned to an acceptable level.

Maybe it was meeting with Deng, and hearing his humbling story of fleeing war in Sudan. He was only able to detail moving to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, being driven from Ethiopia to two different IDP camps back in Sudan, chased to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, and then upon attempted recruitment by the then ‘rebel’ movement of the SPLM, moved to a more secure Dadaab refugee camp, before the sun started to set and I needed to be walked home. When I go back to the National Community Development Services compound, of which he is executive director, tomorrow to lead an art workshop with adolescent returnees (refugees that return home), I expect to hear the rest of this all too common experience.

Or maybe it was the long-awaited invitation to visit Nyamone’s home tonight, to meet the husband and two children of my age-sake, which helped put things in perspective. I think of her as head chef at our compound, though I’m told there is no such position. That she is purportedly the worst of the three cooks we have is contributing to my GI calamities, but I’ll not let this deter me from the opportunity to finally visit someone in their home.

It was most likely, though, my talk with Gach, the boss-man of our implementing partners, and his ironic demands for funding for a year of work that never happened that forced me to laugh at all of this. His intransigence was punctuated by the hilarity that is the Nuer pronunciation of the English alphabet, in which the letters F and P are swapped and the ‘th’ sound non-existent, giving simple expressions like “technical parts” and “peer educators” new and more comedic meaning, and readjusting my name, Judith, to end with a sly hiss. Judassss.

This is all to say I’m feeling a bit less corn-fused today and that my directionlessness has been squelched for yet another few hours. It also goes to show my need to connect with people and how disparaging it can be to lost in your own mind in the bush. Having tangible activities helps. Today’s thwarted election process was still productive; we are making progress at facilitating the community to take ownership in the entire development process – something I’ve echoed as a mantra for many years in my community building work, but always doubted my ability to aid in. The idea of sustainability is key here, as is promoting independence, in light of the tremendous challenges facing the population returning to a country that parallels America in the early 1700s. It’s hard to imagine working with teachers who themselves never went to school, or promoting basic hand and face washing, when people only have the rain water collected in muddy puddles in front of their homes, or girls being married off at age 14 and my being single and childless at 25 nearly despicable, right? It’s not just the lack of electricity, the disease, or the constant insecurity that plagues South Sudan – it’s now an ingrained, culturally imbued, dependency in the face of years of humanitarian aid. It’s the interns that come for two months during the summer, and don’t get to meet any Sudanese people until they force their way through the bureaucratic loop holes. And the organizations that take months, if not years, giving, giving, giving, to the point where the people constantly demand for things like notebooks, malaria-nets, food, etc.

Oh the moral hazard of aid! I’m chalking this up and trying to delight in the small things that can keep me somehow centered and grateful. And on that note, we have pet ducklings.

I’ll never know which way to flow.

2008-07-10T08:31:00.004-04:00

One month in and as soon as I feel a modicum of directed sensibility, I lose it instantly.

This entry began a few days ago, with a paragraph berating everything about this place, but within two hours time I was smiling, feeling great about the work I’m attempting.

Entry control-a’d and deleted.

I started working outside of the office, to escape both the literal and proverbial heat of exchanges within our mud hut, and things were looking even brighter. I spent time making myself feel better: more exercising, more chatting with the important people in my life and my internets, more reading, more photo-editing. I went drinking with colleagues and was bequeathed with incense and lively banter.

But then my irritability and snarkiness returned, much like the ever-present spider near my headboard, forever lurking and only seemingly lost.

If I can’t count on my western friends and our American post system to make something as simple as mailing a rent check happen, I wonder how stupid I must be to think things could ever be straightforward here. With other colleagues and our local partners I've been working to organize a community-stakeholder group and an election process to determine internal leadership. Of course after three weeks in agreement, everything unraveled today. At the same time, the terrible distance between our project aims and humanitarian vision, and the borderline contemptuous resistance felt from the “beneficiaries” is brain bending. I have to question just what the hell I’m even doing here when I get put under house/compound arrest and told that I’m not allowed to leave without accompaniment. Likewise, I’ve recently been informed that now not only is my photography generally not permissible, but that all the visual documentation work that I’m here to partake in requires notifying the mayor (equivalent) who will decide on the acceptability of said request and if authorized, send me to work with a member of the administration as a supervisor. Oh, and I’ve got to submit a written report following any photography or video as well. Let it be noted that for the most part, the administration can't speak English, let alone read it.

I have to wonder if I’m just a miserable complainer that will find something to be dissatisfied with no matter the predicament or if this emotive entry is reasonable. I tend to think myself rather level-headed generally, and in this case justifiably cantankerous. I know, and have people regularly tell me, that I am impatient. And I know that I’m demanding - of others and of myself. I would say though that I can be tolerant of difficulties and I’ve exhibited this – with grace, if I must add – at many points in my 25 years. But today I feel like my brain is spiraling, shaking, and shouting a deserved What The Fuck at everyone and everything, including the face in the mirror.

back to the bush

2008-07-08T08:18:00.003-04:00

After a mere 24 hours back in Sudan, Ethiopia already feels light years away. For about an hour I was excited to be back here, happily waving to funny, excitable kids and ladies and goats as we made our parade back into town after a week away. Said excitement faded quite quickly with the news of my grandfather, the (initially) broken generator, today’s rain, irritating co-workers, spotty internet, failed project implementation in our absence, etc etc etc.

The Ethiopian respite ended in a funny fashion as well. Given our arrival mode and timing of travel – overland from Sudan with a local/domestic flight from the town of Gambella into Addis last Sunday evening (when immigration was essentially shut down) – I had some trouble securing a visa. After four days in country an Ethiopian colleague finally agreed it was important for me to get some legal documentation of my presence and took me to the immigration office in downtown Addis. We entered separately; he referred to this as Ethiopian gender sensitivity, haha! We waited in one long line and spoke to one irritated woman. We waited in a second long line, yielding the same results: scribbled Amharic across the back of my visa application, jammed into my full passport (note, must add pages, ASAP). We were shuffled off to the head of immigration, who shouted that he couldn’t believe our story and how could he know that we had in fact asked immigration for visas upon our arrival to Bole International Airport, but had been shooed away. Then he declared our options were detention or deportation (all of this was in Amharic, for the record). We scuffled quickly to the Africa Area office of Save the Children and were told that given Ethiopian sensitivity to these matters the best thing would be to send me (and one other – out of 25 of us - in a similar situation) back to Sudan overland – a three day trip - ASAP, in an SC vehicle.

While a little disturbing, this prickly situation proved to be a relatively great chance to see the resplendently beautiful countryside of Ethiopia. Our driver Salomon turned out to be a former tourist guide and avid bird-watcher – who was accordingly stoked to learn and supportive of my secret bird-nerd/ornithologist streak – and thus gave us key insights into the different towns and areas we passed through on our 800 km journey westward.

I really, really liked Ethiopia. Nearly everyone in the country is gorgeous. As a visitor it’s incredibly cheap - definitely the least expensive country I've ever been to. The roads are beautifully paved. Eating with your hands, and accordingly playing with your food, is obligatory. Addis is cool and breezy and the rains aren't accompanied by a trace of humidity.

It was hard to feel the destituteness and despair within this country, the only African nation boasting a colonialism-free history, but more renowned for starving, fly-swarmed children. Maybe the month in Sudan has hardened me; coming back here makes me wonder if there is anywhere in this world backwards and stuck as South Sudan. For the mean time, I hope you enjoy these pictures of my trip.

RIP Papa Bud

2008-07-07T08:38:00.003-04:00

Ethiopian men hold their babies. They walk down the highway with their kids in their arms. It’s not exactly Park Slope, popped collar, and a stroller, but these men demonstrate an admiration and celebration for their children in a way that is gravely missing in Sudan (and amongst many African fathers that I’ve met, for that matter). I am feeling particularly sensitive to this observation and thinking a lot about my relationship with my own father, and the relationship between my father and his father, and the trickle down effect of fatherly attention and what that ultimately means for child development.

Without digressing too far, I must assert that knowing how proud of and happy for me and the work that I’m doing in Sudan doesn’t make my grandfather’s passing any easier. I can’t say that I was shocked by my father’s email, opened after three days without internet yesterday morning in a dusty, roadside, dialup internet shop in Gambella Ethiopia, but I definitely didn’t expect that we would lose my Papa just like that. I am frustrated by it – and afraid as well; will I never travel to Africa without losing a grandparent in the process? Even if I were to try and travel home to be with family, it would at this point take me eight days, assuming no rains come before the Thursday flight to Rumbek, Friday’s to Juba (and then a flight to Nairobi, onwards via London, Dubai, or Amsterdam) to reach home.

Tonight I feel both terribly saddened by this loss and gratuitously fortunate to have been the granddaughter of such a warm, funny, smart, compassionate, spirited individual. My grandfather was aptly nicknamed Bud, given his proclivity for making friends and buddies effortlessly. I loved his jovial nature that defined him so well, and I feel that I take after him and my grandmother in such innate and undeniable ways. No doubt inherited from my father, I have been graced with my grandfather’s photographic eye and visual habit, and now share his travel addiction and passion for seeing the world that is so much bigger than me. I’ve developed the same compelling agenda to work to make others well as he did for so many years as a physician. From his fishing days, to his more recent wooden duck carving pursuits, the memory of his whistling, humming, and singing makes me smile; the way he continued to flirt with my Nana, even at age 85, over a sugar-free chocolate bar, his unbelievably well-organized and expansive photographic slide collection from travels spanning six continents and the maturations of 4 kids and 11 grandkids, and how he insisted to keep his drivers licence and retook a driving test to prove his ability despite his octogenarian status and his ever worsening deafness, are all testament to his vivacity and great sense of humour. He was beyond dynamic as an individual and as a grandfather. I’m so thankful that we were all together in December to celebrate with you, and as I’m missing you, Papa Bud, I’m feeling incredibly blessed by the family you’ve fathered.

Addis Adventures

2008-07-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

Tuesday

The reasons SC-US South Sudan has retreated to Addis for the week are still not too clear – at first I thought we were attending a conference or something – but it seems to be more of a morale-boosting exercise and an opportunity to explore some Logistics and HR-specific challenges as a group. Plus, it is evidently cheaper to fly everyone to Ethiopia and put us up at this institute, than to bring everyone from the field into Juba. All I can say after day one is that it's rather hilarious to play team building exercises, like "lost at sea," (in which you're stranded on a sinking yacht and have to prioritize which 15 items you save) with people who have lived their lives in land locked countries and have never been on/in the water. Shark repellent and mosquito netting were among the top choices of my teammates.

More interesting for me was the examination of Save the Children's global movement toward "Unified Presence." Currently, the organization operates under an international alliance structure, with a London-based secretariat, but great autonomy amongst the 29 member countries that operate in over a 100 countries world wide. In an effort to streamline their engagement, the organization is seeking to unify the presence of the different members operating in the same countries; 2008 will see the unification in South Sudan between Save-US, Save-Sweden, and Save-UK. This paradigmatic shift is meant to not only limit redundancies and aid in transparency, but, following global unification in the next few years will make Save the Children the fourth largest International NGO (following the Red Cross, Unicef, and World Vision).

Hip hip hooray for big biz-nas.

---------------------

Thursday

I've learned about the grant cycle, and procurement requests, and which program managers are better at getting things to happen. The majority of this retreat has not been applicable to me in a direct way, but it's really interesting to see what value chain of command issues plague all types of operations. It's unbelieveable how many steps and actions have to be taken to get drugs to this program, learning materials to that site, fuel for generators, R&R requests processed, etc.

It's been fun to run around Addis with Kate and the others from the Juba crew. Some shopping, a mani/pedi, traditional dancing, and a few altitude-impacted-hijinks here and there have been worth the trip out of Sudan alone.

The pool table and cold brews are calling.

backlog: national museum

2008-07-03T11:33:00.001-04:00

Before the rest of the office arrived to Addis, Bret and I found ourselves with some free time to dally around town. The hotel called a cute taxi for us – they look almost identical to my mom’s first car, a BMW 2002 – and we adventured in and were convinced to visit the museum, something neither of us were particularly excited to do. I’m really pleased that our driver Abie encouraged this as I found so much of the collection really incredible. On the first level were royal relics – robes and dresses of former Emperors – as well as ancient finds – pendants, seals, carvings – ranging from BC through the 11th century.

I didn’t realize that Ethiopia is home to so many pieces of history, nor as rich in artistic tradition. Not much time to espouse on my enjoyment of these treasures, but I was sincerely impressed.

Enjoy the snaps.

backlog, tuesday: your robot is defective

2008-07-03T11:26:00.001-04:00

I much preferred last night's showings of The Life Aquatic and Pride and Prejudice than tonight's Zathura. Whatever the case is, I'm totally rejoicing in having a room with electricity, a balcony, and bathtub. It's raining in Addis and after a long day workshopping with 20 others from the Save-US South Sudan office, I'm almost delighted to watch this terrible Jumanji 2 American flick.

We left Pagak on Saturday, ferrying two quadbikes (all terrain vehicles/ATVs) from our compound, across the Ethiopian border and 25 kilometers through sparsely populated forest and bushland to reach Kuergeng. In this small border town – a place that seemed bustling compared to Pagak – the four of us mused how "everything is better than Pagak!" while taking a liquid lunch and waiting for the others to reach us and our hardtop vehicle that is kept by the local authorities for our exclusive purposes of driving in the far western areas of Ethiopia. So, yes, now I can say my first stop in Ethiopia was to a mud jail – where I watched all the police officers bucket bathe in the scorching sun, haha!

We stayed overnight in Gambella, all of us taking great enjoyment of simply being out of Sudan, all of us acknowledging that Pagak is Hell (attn mom – it's not just me complaining!), before traveling on Ethiopian airlines on Sunday into Addis Ababa. Shared concern about our accommodation at the "International Livestock Research Institute" left Bret and me cracking jokes about sleeping with goats and chickens, but we were so far off. It is beautiful here – and in Addis, generally – with resplendent gardens, English speaking support staff, good restaurant, tennis courts, and interesting expatriates lingering at the Zebu Lounge nightly. Over a few Vodka/tonics, I chatted with a Norwegian-raised-in-Kenya fellow, the regional coordinator of a large water research group, whose work has stationed him all over the globe. Aside from his good looks and daily presence at the bar, what really stuck with me was his comment concerning life in the stable west versus working in these challenging places we find ourselves in: "There is too much of the world to see, what reason do we have to live somewhere boring?"

Ticket to Ride

2008-06-27T14:30:00.004-04:00

Gach told me to be there at one. I thought the executive director of our implementing partner was finally giving me some time to talk with him about my community mobilization ideas and the work I’ve been doing this week. This, of course, did not pan out. Following our 2:30 arrival and a couple of revolting photos of our impending lunch, the reason for the visit arrived around 3:30; Commander, “the big man” as they called him, of all the military of Upper Nile state (one of the ten states of South Sudan) came. It was unclear to me, as we used our fingers to slop goat, ugali, and breadsticks for lunch, the real reason for our inclusion at the function.

We doted around. I listened to stories of ostrich slaughtering. For the majority of the time, I was one of two women present in the crowd of 20 or 30 guys, half with guns. After having two stucks that morning – we attempted to use the hardtop (landcruiser) despite last night’s rain, and lo and behold, we made it about 50 yards outside the front gates of the compound before getting stuck in the mud, and then had ‘the tow’ stuck subsequently – and a few lengthy planning discussions with both my newly returned education-program officer and new arrival intern Bret, I was getting itchy to leave. I nudged and hinted. Imagine a case of Judy restaurant anxiety to the max extreme. Gach disappeared and returned to make our introductions to the Commander (though we’d been sitting adjacent to each other for what felt like hours at this point). I was presented as an American intern who would be traveling to Ethiopia tomorrow and returning the following week. Jimmy was presented as another great intern who would be traveling to Ethiopia, but onwards and home to Kenya. The commander smiled and wished us well, jesting over the two others sharing names beginning over the letter J. I gave my ubiquitous (at this point) smile and nod. Jimmy beamed. Jimmy’s ‘case’ was finally closed simply with the big man’s word, after being kept in Sudanese-legal-limbo for the past month, being prohibited from leaving and consistently harassed. His crime? Catching an unmarked vehicle – happening to be a military truck of ammunitions – in the background of a photo. Following his subsequent arrest, computer and camera confiscation, and the accusations of espionage, I can see why he’s ready to end this internship and get back to Nairobi. Please note my deserved timidity of street photography these days. Singing Jimmy Mack probably won’t be bringing my buddy back any time soon. Here’s to praying for no rain tonight so that Jimmy can drive me on a quad bike one last time (and so that we don’t travel the 25 kilometer distance to Kuergeng by foot).

Backlog, June 26: How do you keep people from selling maxi pads?

2008-06-27T14:08:00.001-04:00

When I showed these photos to a friend online he inquired what Sudanese women do when they menstruate otherwise. Learning that many girls and women are monthly relegated to staying at home and waiting to return to the field, work, school, or town because they have no sanitary way of publicly having their period, Scott was a bit shocked. From my education-policy research in Uganda I was aware that many girls wind up dropping out of school when they reach puberty, with lack of hygienic facilities and materials bringing shame that keeps them away from books, and so this was not such a shock for me...

Some donor (collapsed institutional memory means that no one here knows who exactly…) gave SC-US about a million maxi-pads. Being the first female on site in months, I was tasked with disseminating these “comfort towels,” as they are termed by my Kenyan colleagues, to about a 150 women. After multiple quad-bike trips schlepping heaping towers of pads to the Primary Health Care Centre and mobilizing community informants to tell people to come to said PHCC to collect the goods, the good times rolled.

I’m thankful for bringing modest undergarments with me to Sudan. Rounds of demonstrating how to apply winged maxi-pads to panties, how to remove said protective barrier, and how to either drop in a latrine, burn, or bury your used product, were translated into Nuer by my faithful friend Gloria.

The distribution process was equally laughable as we tried to pack 12 packages into the skinny arms of these ladies before they signed off a photo-release and receipt of goods document.

I would just like to note that, as a friend pointed out, I never would have imagined doing this. Nor would I have ever thought myself privileged for a) having a signature (90% of these women used a small dot next to their recorded name and have never in their life signed their own name), b) having access to tampons, nor c) finding myself in a position requiring the immediate sale of these humanitarian-aid-given products because the financial value of such would be able to feed me for yet another day. Driving back home after this long morning at the piss-scented PHCC it was heartbreaking to see girls hawking their maxipads at the market. I heard some even made their way to Ethiopia already.

Cheers for non-sustainable development.

Backlog June 25: Power Trippin

2008-06-27T12:58:00.005-04:00

This woman's simply written piece about living a rugged life in the jungle, with a tribe untouched by modernity, got to me.

Getting back to the very basics in life does give you a different perspective on things.
It's all about needs not wants.
It shows you that people are more important than things.

In a way I would like to mirror that author's sentiments, by commenting on the joys of the simple life, but the mirror is fogged a bit in this (swamp/) jungle. Superficially, there are great similarities in our experiences - we're both caught dodging away from civilization into a place where cell phones are futile, porcelain toilets are unheard of, and where the slow pace of life forces you to reconcile an internal hurry - but there is no excessive vetting needed to recognize that here, nothing is so simple, nor do the needs of people become more important to the power-holders than the need for things. I’m sure that it was for the sake of BBC’s Magazine readership that she spared comment on anything political, but I’ve got to wonder where this idyllic jungle tribe survives in a state of simplistic people-centered needs that are unfettered by violence and calamity. I sit wondering if any communities within this dark and green continent continue to exist in apolitical isolation, living untouched by the crises of the world, most specifically those of Africa, surrounding them.

Mugabe's tyrannical grip on Zimbabwe and the staggering political/election violence was the talk of our office all morning. When I inquired what he felt the bottom line of the violence, obfuscations, and unending power grasp was, a Kenyan colleague didactically asserted that the despot's rule, which brought independence to Zim, is a case of the African dictator “gone bad.” Acknowledging that power corrupts, and that the octogenarian Mugabe will keep “winning” his power until he dies or until someone kills him, my colleague told me of the theories of why he holds on so tightly and engages in such atrocities, the most amusing being that Mugabe’s current (and second) wife has become used to the lifestyle of first lady and he therefore can’t retire, before positioning that “there are so many ways to kill a rat - you can trap it, skin it, or bury it alive; do you think Garang was just an accident?”

Eventually this devolved into an hour long debate on the role (and, in turn, value) of democracy in Africa. One colleague argued, rather obstinately, that democracy was not made for this continent and that the greatest violence and human suffering came as a result of post-colonial installations of democratic systems. I asserted that this western paradigm of democracy is meant to be an equalizing force, to bring higher social, economic, and political opportunity to more and more people, ahe told me that the highest indicators of human welfare occurred under African dictators. The lightbulbs of Libya’s Qadaffi, Uganda’s Musevni, Sudan’s Bashir, and countless others went flashing in my mind at the lunacy of this comment, and I couldn’t help but inquire why this coworker was engaged in this line of work if he believes such.

What to do about Zimbabwe came back to me just as fast however. UN or an AU deposition? In the face of Iraq’s terrible failure? Colleague X argued for a return to pre-colonial borders and traditional governance structures. Not going to happen. Another suggested highly coordinated sanctions – and given the recent moves on Pyongyang, I could maybe take this as an option. Maybe it’s the voice of activists and critics that will create change (ahem, Mandela). Or maybe hitting them where it hurts is the option - nice work on that cricket ban, guys. Or maybe SADC should step it up - Gaaaaahh!

(thanks Pernille)

Whatever the answer to getting Mugs out and something sane in, I find the complexity of Mugabe’s flinchless grasp and reign of terror– in my opinion due to power hunger (and a wee bit of madness, and not just being evil, able to derive joy from hurting others, nor due simply to poverty or gullibility, as another blogger suggested) in which any means become justifiable – to exemplify why we need political structures designed to limit individually held power. Given that systems where legitimacy is derived from shared investment and participation, through which culpability is more deeply embedded, I still feel lost on my colleague's advocating for dictatorships. In a continent – and world, for that matter -plagued by densely concentrated power holders, how can progress be felt in any other way but democracy?

Garrison Keillor put it far more eloquently than I am able:

"The fear of catastrophe could chill the soul but the social compact assures you that if the wasps come after you, if gruesome disease strikes down your child, if you find yourself hopelessly lost, incapable, drowning in despair, running through the rye toward the cliff, then the rest of us will catch you and tend to you and not only your friends but We the People in the form of public servants. This is a basic necessity in a developed society. If you are saddled with trouble too great for a person to bear, you will not be left to perish by the roadside in darkness. Without that assurance, we may as well go live in the woods and take our chances. This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying."

And while I agree with Friedman’s op-ed this morning, and believe that “people have to fight and win their own freedom, and that’s what gives their institutions legitimacy,” I think people – and sovereignty arguments - reach a breaking point. Give us all a break Mugabe.

Anyway, here is an interesting online community of Zimbabwean activists: http://kubatanablogs.net/kubatana/

Kombo and Jeff, I’m thinking of you and yours and hope for positive changes for your homeland.

“mystery brews interest”

2008-06-24T15:04:00.002-04:00

In so many ways Sudan is a mysterious beast of a place. The brewing interests, stewing curiosities, and evolving complexities are forcing me to reevaluate and conceptualize things in new ways. The construction outside of my bedroom that begins at sunrise is ok, serving as an alarm clock, but an alarm clock I don’t really need, as for the first time ever, my body wants to sleep at midnight and wants to wake with the sun. Emerging at meetings caked in mud and grass isn’t a bother, as the bumpy quad-bike ride to reach said destination means a smile-and-wave, street-parade-esque, celebratory procession through town and my ego inflates beyond bother of mud. On the same note, my hair, breasts, and wardrobe have become obsolete markers of my identity, and – given that there are no mirrors here – I am ascribing very little of myself to much more than my ideas, understandings, and ability to transcend (even if only temporarily, thanks) these demarcations. I’m seeing the frog that lives in my bathing quarters as a symphonic accoutrement to the crickets, and the fireflies occasionally trapped in my mosquito net as a bit magical. Shy adolescents are opportunities to create changes – and my colleagues’ incessant, and sometimes annoying, discourse on American politics and the current campaigns as indicators of globalizing progress.

Things are still all types of screwed up, all around me, and I’ve not gone blind. But I’m easing into things, thankfully. Yesterday I visited one of the early-childhood-development centres that SC-USA has “constructed.” I use quotes as the center is little more than the fruits of an individual’s inspiration and Save has merely smacked their proverbial label on the outside. I haven’t seen much other work that can be attributed to the org on this project, aside from the construction of a latrine that I saw children urinating IN FRONT of. Accordingly, in reassessing, it would seem that I have come here in order to get the ball rolling. In a long-winded blog post I wrote in MS Word, and lost before posting when my laptop died, I examined the essential role of education in redeveloping the socio-economic fabric of communities. I don’t have time for that now, but will say that in this country, with some of the lowest social and economic indicators in the world – where a woman is more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than complete primary school (1:9 vs 1:100) and where there is less than a half kilometer of paved road in the entire country – and where tensions between those returning from exile and those who stayed and fought the war are rife, there is a lot to do be ‘done’ in the realm of community building and implementation of an education system.

That said, I’m working to create and empower or mobilize a group of community stakeholders (parents, teachers, religious leaders, members of the government, etc) to collectively determine the education needs and opportunities for the youngest members of society. Monday I visited the ECD centre that is currently serving hundreds of kids, without trained teachers, proper facilities, materials, or curriculum. Part of my vision for the core community group is developing the capacity of individuals to construct these elements, as well as develop their sense of ownership and responsibility concerning the education of the next generation. At the centre I was able to discuss this with the current administration and a group of parents present as volunteer child-care providers. The photos below are more telling than my words at this hour. For the record, and for those who haven’t yet realized, clicking on any of the photos will take you to my photo website where I have uploaded additional images that I’m not posting here.

I was graciously welcomed to the group with some great singing and clapping. Jimmy snapped this one:

In the center is KK, the jump-starter of the entire initiative as the ECD program founder. Following the return of so many refugees from Ethiopia, with children of all ages who had been deprived the opportunity to learn, he first began gathering children informally to sing, play, and engage with each other. Now, in partnership with a local NGO (our implementing partner, Nile Inter-Development Programme - NIP) and with SAVE, we're working to build the facility and local community at the same time. He’s a polio survivor and a dynamic guy, to say the least…

The lack of material goods is a serious barrier - one small blackboard for a group of twenty children is far from efficient. I'm working on securing educational toys, games, books, and implements in the near future…learning under a tree is fine on dry days only. Part of the goal of the parent discussion group will be to cultivate traditional toys and educational approaches and incorporate these methods into more modern practices. Likewise, I'm looking to link the education program and the local health care facilities with an efficient referral and documentation system.

A snap from the first meeting with parents, teachers, and school administration to discuss program goals... the guy in the tracksuit is the assistant headmaster. Not pictured, but essential was my translator Simon. I have no idea if he's actually translating, ftw.

Here are a few additional shots from today's visit to an adult education program – English lessons – led voluntarily by a Kenyan man working for NIP. I'm hoping to involve these parents in the community discussion group mentioned above.

Finally, in case you haven't believed me about the mud, here are some shots from first thing this morning!

So here's to this mysterious girl from NY brewing interest in Pagak. Cheers from the bush, y'all.

2008-06-24T13:23:00.002-04:00

One of the best, and only, outings to be had in Pagak is a trip for Ethiopian coffee. Thus far I've visited two different homesteads for this thick, caffeinated delight, but this visit was more delightful given the company and entertainment.

goodnight moon

2008-06-22T15:25:00.003-04:00

My mom told me to buck up - for public image - so I'm going to try and stop bitching as much about this crazy semi-autonomous polity.

The first weekend here was relaxing and full of frenzied football watching. The generator stays on late, and the TV serves as the biggest community builder I can think of. Maybe that's what all of SS needs. Lots of boob tubes!

When the generator is off I spend my time distracting myself from myself. During the electricity (and internet) free periods of time this weekend I was to be found doing one of the following: napping (something I am enjoying for the first time since highschool), exercising (ok, dancing like a fool to whatever electro-mashup I can pull from this external harddrive or yoga-ing on the dirty floor), bathing (bucket style, sometimes with hot water from the boiler) reading (in the middle of Dark Star Safari and The Emperor's Children), or complaining to Laura (what will I do when you leave next week!?) who thankfully commissioned someone to prepare doro wat for dinner and subsequently approved Wat as an accepted scrabble entry. Friday afternoon I did take a stroll through 'town' - which is a collection of empty mud/wooden stalls, drunk men, and kids smiling at me - and enjoyed a nice hot Bedele.

I'm excited for tomorrow, when I will be distributing about a million maxi-pads. Evidently SAVE has had them, ready for dissemination, for a few months but there hasn't been a gender-appropriate person to do the work, heh. I wonder what exactly this work entails. I brought some markers and colored pencils - maybe posters?

In other good news, I'm looking forward to August travels in Ethiopia with my good friend, Luellen, who is working there this summer on an education project. In researching our potential itinerary I stumbled upon wiki-travel. Any tourists looking for insights concerning Sudan shouldn't hesitate to tour this entry! Love the warning at the top and found the link to the Juba travel guide worth a read as well.

Electricity is waning and a muddy trek back to my casa is in store. Adios internets.

Fallacious Logic

2008-06-21T15:18:00.001-04:00

Capacity building isn’t pointless, and it never will be, but it sure seems like a NGO paradigm that is yet to be applicable to parts of South Sudan. It’s much more depressing here than I was anticipating. Or at least I’m feeling more depressed than I anticipated. My hopes for an uplifting experience, which would let me feel connected to the work that I am pursuing through graduate studies, are being muddied. The idea of doing this type of work for the next 20 to 30 years is disturbing. I don’t want to sound as cynical as a I do, and nothing particularly bad has happened to me that is making me say this, I’m just realizing that to rebuild society in a post conflict situation like this one is unbelievably difficult.

Facebook updates from friends touting their fantastic summer internship experiences – through which they are seeing the fruits of their labors and efforts – from Nigeria to Cambodia to Brazil have left me as smug as I felt during my first encounters with the Economic and Political Development program at SIPA during orientation, when all others were beamy and delighted. Perhaps I’m not cut from the same block of marble as these sustainable development folk, nor the same block of steel as the rugged humanitarian aid people. I wish that I had left NY in better spirits so that I was more eager to return there in the fall, and felt more inspired by my career choice. I’m too young to feel this depressive about my future, right? So where does this leave me? I can’t articulate a ‘skill set’ pertinent to the for-profit sector, working for the government (should my countrymen fail me in November) is something I don’t see myself interested in, and the prospect of a desk job at a foundation is panic inducing. Maybe I’ll be able to perpetuate this protection-arts-refugees-community building thing for a bit longer, but it’s all a bit unclear and confounding in the face of such distress.

I’ve begun denouncing logic. Boss-man told me from day one that it’s not exactly applicable nor employed by the community here. David Byrne is echoing through my mind.

Whatever the case, my oft astounding naivety is humbling and there have been some fortuitously uplifting encounters. One of our partners called my idea to lead discussion groups with both adolescent and adult women concerning what is important to them, using a female translator, brilliant. I’ve received good feedback for my plans to develop a visual arts project as part of the shared education and health program social marketing campaign. Last week’s meetings with UNHCR’s education department, UNICEF, and the Ministry of Education were close to encouraging. And some of the Nyas agreed that I should have my hair braided in the local fashion; what do you think?

World Refugee Day

2008-06-20T06:09:00.002-04:00

If you spend one day per year thinking about the nearly 40 million people that have been displaced from their homes and livelihoods by war, conflict, disaster, and persecution, make it today.

The high commissioner of the United Nations agency for refugees - UNHCR - visited the world's largest refugee camp, calling for attention to the plight of those so often left voiceless.
.

Angelina upped the ante with her video:

Even Facebook is letting you give a hand!

life in Pagak

2008-06-20T03:47:00.002-04:00

I can’t stop thinking about my six summers in Minnesota. Pagak is like sleep-away camp in that I’m spending plenty of time in the sun, walking around in tevas or riding a quad bike, discovering new breeds of spiders, and there are plenty of little fires around me. The smell of Ethiopian food, distinct lack of sailboats and Jewish girls, and my visit to a PHCC/VCT (Primary Health Care Centre/Voluntary Counseling and Testing) clinic today should be enough to remind me that I’m no where near Cass Lake. But it’s still a bit fun in a cheeky kind of way. I’m sure it will hit me by tomorrow – after a subsequent day of goat and using a wooden-box-sitting latrine – that this is no paradise (haha) but until then, I’ll keep this plastered smile.

It seems like my little house is one of maybe 15 permanent structures in the entire ‘town,’ with the others belonging to other iNGO compounds or facilities they’ve developed within the community itself. Even the local government is housed in a traditional structure. My space is great though - it’s bigger than my apartment in NY, far more light and airy, and I’ve got room for sleepovers if any of y’all want to visit. I can’t stress enough how delighted I am with my battery powered i-pod speaker, nor how I consistently surprise myself with the fluctuations in my cleanliness standards (note, Emily, there are no Clorox wipes here). It looks like there is a blood stain on my curtain.

The compound has about five of these small houses, four other tukuls, a few unnamed structures, including a chicken shack, and then a central area with the office, kitchen, ‘store,’ and canteen or dining hall. It seems that all Nuer women’s names begin with Nya, making it a challenge to remember names and properly communicate with our support staff of cleaning and cooking ladies - Nyanaka, Nyamwuon, Nyapuka, Nyarwach, Nyalwal, Nyamwach, and Nyaduoth – oh and that only one speaks English compounds that difficulty. No worries. A big smile and guffaw gets me far. The dining hall was under renovation today; I should have inquired how frequently the place gets remudded. Again, huge language barrier. Zoom into grandma-in-red’s outfit; talk about easy access!

Some shots around the compound:

Jimmy, another intern, brought me to the health center that ‘we’ have put in place, though Save isn’t operating it directly, and it is under the control of the local health ministry, if you will. I say this, because it functions at a depressingly low capacity. The nine to five, five days a week signage, made me ask him, “What happens if someone is really sick?” he straight-forwardly replied, “they die.”

On that note, Kate wrote a really beautiful and striking piece about health and the massive implications on human, social, and economic development:

Think about the last time you were sick...
I mean really sick, with something infectious. None of that stuffy nose and cough type thing. What was it? The flu? Strep throat? What if it was tuberculosis? Or malaria? Or leprosy? Or river blindness? In the short time I've been here I have seen more people with diseases that have been entirely or mostly eradicated from the North (or the West, however you like to phrase it) than I can count. After seeing a blind man making his way along the main road by himself with nothing but a stick, it was explained to me that river blindness has left 1/4 of the people in villages nearby blind. One in four people. Take a minute to think about that. If 1/4 people in the US were blind how would it impact our capacity to run our government, let alone our economy. …. So if 25% of the population has river blindness, and the leprosy rate is somewhere between 10 and 30%, and 70% of the world's remaining burden of Guinea Worm is in South Sudan, not to mention the worms crawling around in the bellies of most kids (ring worm (okay it's a fungus, still pertinent) is particularly obvious as you see kids with black hair with white polka dots), the micronutrient and calorie deficiencies of kids and whole families. The list goes on. Where does that leave the people living here? There is development under way and with immunizations slowly becoming commonplace there are less disease outbreaks, and the menningitis and measles outbreak that occurred last year was contained relatively quickly with the efforts of NGOs, the government and the community. But even so, the impact that ill health can have on development has never been more apparent. Consider that many micronutrient deficiencies can lead to slowed mental development and mental retardation if not corrected within the first years of life, or that anemia makes children and adults alike tired, think more slowly and have less energy for daily activities. You have a huge proportion of the population that is entirely absent from productive activities because of their health. So, as many workshops as you do and as much capacity as you build in the community, the physical capability of the population is severely limited by its ill health. …. But then there's nodding disease. Ever heard of it? That's because it only exists in South Sudan and no one knows what causes it. It mostly affects young children, causes seizures that make the children look like they're nodding, and leads to mental retardation, and then as it progresses is almost 100% fatal. A few people are studying it, google it for some more in depth info. But I've visited schools and looked at the rosters and you see so many kids listed as "nodding" or having "fits". So if you've got all the issues listed above, plus anywhere from 5-25% of your children will have retarded mental development or will most likely die, it's just one more giant pothole in the pathway to development. So, for anyone who wonders what on earth I'm doing in South Sudan, it's doing the first survey in memory of the health status of Southern Sudanese children in this county. And hopefully, as with all data, it will be put to good use, will move and inspire donors and other organizations, and all the other big things I imagine happening. But at the very least, the kids here won't be invisible anymore, because someone will have documented what it's like to live here.

home in Pagak

2008-06-19T06:06:00.000-04:00

Midnight - June 18:

They just cut the generator and I can only hear crickets, bats, and the occasional mosquito. It’s great. Pagak is even breezy. The soil is black and the kids have bugs in their eyes, but for the most part I feel substantially calmer here than in Juba. At 7:30 this morning I heard our support staff loading the landcruiser and knew the time had come – by 9 we were in the air after a short and breezy security check at Juba International Airport in which I had to show no ID. The views from the air were verdant and sprawling – we flew low given the size of the Cessna Caravan plane – and again I felt a bit of serenity in this crazy country that I’ve done so much griping about.

The views of the
Sobat river, which flows into the Nile, were breathtaking, as I sat listening to my ipod reading Dark Star Safari.

A quick dive to see the muddiness factor, and a loop over Ethiopia, brought us home to Pagak! It was awesome seeing peoples’ faces from the windows of the plane as we landed, and a bit of a warmer welcome than I am accustomed to. A two-minute walk from the airstrip and I was already within the office compound. Pagak is tiny.

Pagak is complex. The boss-man here explained to me that nearly 50% of the population is part of the military and that the bulk of the people don’t feel that the war is actually over. Security seems relatively fine, though there are, as he put it, plenty of “funny militias” just over the border in Ethiopia, where the people are ethnically the same as those of this part of Sudan. Secessionist tensions – against the Ethiopian government – are aplenty. I’ll have to post more on this later – internet is about to peace out!

trapped in Juba

2008-06-16T01:19:00.001-04:00

Juba jail:

I was supposed to be writing this from Pagak, and for that matter I was supposed to be writing this from my laptop. But, as I’m realizing, little in this country comes to fruition as planned (abyei CPA failure?). My excuse for the delay in updating this blog and responding to respective emails: my laptop bit the dust. Week one in Sudan, woohoo!! Thanks Noah for encouraging me to be demanding; I’m now writing from a work computer (windows – yuck!) and my lovely MAC is en route to Nairobi, though something tells me it wont be functioning til the end of August upon my return to NY. To continue the cynicism/irritation: heavy rains and bad logistics have resulted in three flight cancellations and so, I’m still in Juba, unsure of when the next charter flight (a Buffalo cargo plane) will take off. I’m totally ready to get out of this crazy shit hole. Summering in Sudan is a lil like summering in NY, in that I went dancing in a tanktop and open toed shoes, spent time on the water, and bar-b-qued with friends, but honestly, I really just can’t wait to get to Pagak (my field site in Upper Nile) so that I can start working. Despite having a good number of new comrades, and a handful of old, I’ve been more or less consistently on edge since arriving. The cadre of 15 y/o boys with AK47s, the impossibly slow internet, movement restrictions, and lack of work for me to engage in, is taking its toll.

Laptop gaffe aside, I’ve been spending too much time on the computer. This is partly due to the fact that it takes roughly a minute to get any website to load but also because I feel like I don’t have anything else to do, which if you know me at all, you know that my impatience grows exponentially with downtime and that I do not handle boredom well. Shit, I certainly didn’t come to Sudan because I have a penchant for inactivity. I’m growing frustrated that my work for the past two weeks has involved reviewing project documents that amass to little more than rhetoric. I have a hard time imagining that the data and information I am looking for – who are our partners? What are our defined expectations of said partners? Who is and how many are being served? What has actually happened over this grant period? How many trainings have occurred? What documents were involved in those trainings? What are the national policy frameworks in place supporting this engagement? What did that consultant do? – is simply non-existent. How could this organization not have reporting frameworks for such a big project?

I’m desperate to get to the field, meet the education manager, talk with people on the ground, and figure out what is actually going on. I suppose these calamities are endemic to this part of the world, at least at this point in time. NGO politics and government politics (which in this case are more or less enmeshed in NGO politics, as so many of the government’s ministries are propped by NGOs on the ground) aside – Sudan is a straight up incredibly difficult place to be. I never knew how severe seasons could be and no-one has hesitated to tell me how impenetrable the rainy season in Pagak will be. The rains begin in June and every day until September, the skies drop more and more. I’m told that I wont be able to leave the compound for days and weeks on end and that the likelihood of me being able to leave (given the mud that prevents both cars from driving and planes from landing) the village drops exponentially as the summer moves towards fall. I am beginning to ask why exactly, knowing that essential to community development work is access to the community, the country director accepted an intern to this location during this season. The how of departure (medical emergency departures, that is) was already answered; UNMIS will rescue me and their helicopters don’t have to actually land…

Mike reminded me that my life here is as worthless as anyone else’s (thanks, bud…) and today, on the two year anniversary of my step-sister’s tragic death, I am thankful for the opportunities and protection that I’ve been afforded. Knowing full well that I am not here to fix or save Sudan, I will try and take this for what it is and shut my face up long enough to appreciate the undeniable opportunity for learning that I have. It’s times like now where believing in God would make things make more sense in a way. My newest friend, Sammy, has a profound belief in God, and for one of the first times, I don’t find it unsettling. Sam’s story and life is nothing short of incredible. He fled his home in Bor, in Jonglei state, where John Garang (former leader of the SPLA/leader of the secessionist movement of south Sudan) was from, with his younger brother, barefoot with other children in 1987. It was the last time he saw his father alive and the last time seeing his mother or home for nearly 20 years. After 8 days and nights of walking/running through the jungle – no roads then either - to the sounds of gun shots, bombings and air raids, he reached a refugee settlement established for youth in Ethiopia. When war broke in Ethiopia he moved, again by foot, with others to Kakuma camp in Kenya. Thus far his story is not unique – there were over 350,000 stories like this from southern Sudan alone, not including the millions who were internally displaced – but it was hearing this story from a man my age, who is now my colleague, who’s brother was resettled in the US, but who himself was unable to be resettled because of a database spelling error in his name/ID cards, who put himself through school and university in exile and alone without family, who has now returned to his own country as a logistics manager for a huge international NGO with aims to go to law school and become a politician in the near future, and who has the most positive outlook and earnest, soulful expression of anyone I’ve ever met, that really effected me. I’ve heard the first part of Sam’s story multiple times and read it even more often. I’ve worked with resettled refugees and in refugee camps. But it was this time that I felt his story and felt the conviction of southern Sudanese. I suppose that it’s this sentiment that leaves me with an iota of hope for this place – and a taste of the sweet irony of the arrogance of ‘empowerment’ and ‘capacity building’ programs that cant even put a basic assessment together.

Here are some photos from screwy Juba – that I had to take from the window of a moving vehicle lest my camera be confiscated... Send me good thoughts.

Street scenes:
There aren’t too many streets lined with shops in the part of town where I am living, but if you drive through rocking “downtown Juba” you’re sure to find many storefronts to this effect:

You’ll undoubtedly encounter plenty of mud and reckless trash/pollution - this is a beyond mild example:

Not entirely sure what these rocks are used for, or if they are sold by weight within the emptied jerry can, but thought the scene photo-worthy:

Street scene, a shot of what I am told is the old Juba movie theatre:

typical local homes - tukuls made of mud, grass and generally whatever plastic sheeting is available:

fueling the fire

2008-06-11T11:42:00.004-04:00

Don't worry, I didn't fly into Sudan from Jordan, nor am I in, or planning to visit, Khartoum. Frankly, I'm not even allowed into the capital of Sudan proper, given the Israeli stamp in my visa. That said - I'm fine, though the footage from the terrible plane crash is beyond upsetting.

During lunch, over the cries of tonight's dinner (ubiquitous goat, yech) coming from the back yard, an interesting newscast raised the question of sanctions and the costs on human security. What is the impact of cheaply manufactured, counterfeit, and recycled replacement aviation parts - perhaps utilized in response to international sanctions prohibiting the export of advanced technology to countries like Sudan, Myanmar, and Iran? Clinton banned exports of technology to Sudan in '97 and the July 2003 crash of a Sudan Airways flight that killed 115 people, left the Government of Sudan (GoS-Khartoum) quick to blame sanctions for restricting vital, sophisticated aviation tools for the crash. And this round?

I'm certainly not arguing against the U.N. Security Council's embargo on providing arms and military training to armed groups in Darfur, nor that the travel ban and and freezing of assets of certain key figures isn't essential. Where else can the "international community" leverage it's weight against perpetrators of heinous crimes? Madeleine Albright's op-ed in the Times couldn't have come out at a better time:

At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?

In reviewing project documents all morning, reflecting on work in Uganda, and recognizing the inherent issues in trying to implement an early childhood education program using teachers that have no education themselves, I've grown a bit weary. If nothing else I can lend a big thanks to SIPA for strengthening my critical eye of the humanitarian field.

On that note, I plan to stop complaining about the heat when I start complaining about the rain. Check out this map of my upcoming destination. After downloading the file, zoom into towards the bottom right corner, look for the green airplane, and find Pagak, right on the border.

p.s. For the record, Deet does not deter black flies and I've become really good at throwing shoes.

Juba adventures and insites

2008-06-10T02:04:00.002-04:00

It’s funny to watch Animal Planet’s “wild in Africa” from the middle of it all. The television hasn’t been turned off since I arrived at this house. It can be a bit much, honestly. Working hours are 8 am to 7 pm, 6 days a week. We all live and work and eat and play at the same place, day in, day out. This seems standard for international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and those who work for them in Juba. It’s prohibitively expensive to run an office and staff otherwise– a tented camp costs upwards of $200 USD nightly – and both transportation and communication are difficult to come by. There is no legal driving edge (evidently) and 12 to 14 year old drivers accordingly make my favorite mode of travel, by boda-boda, riskier. To call a private-hire, the equivalent of a NY livery-car-service in the bush, is an outrageously over-priced option: a 10 minute drive to a party at the UNMIS compound this weekend would have cost me $20 US each way. There are multiple phone-carriers, yet no two can contact each other. I'm using Jem-Tel for the week (before hitting the field where I'll be relegated to the realm of sat-phone only) - everyone whom I've told has inquired how exactly I was able to even get a sim-card; apparently sim cards come in waves and arrived when the tides were right.

My buddy Alex was here last week before moving to his field site for the summer and I’ve found his commentary quite poignant on the dynamics of this strange, strange place.

Leaving the compound is a bit like being punched in the face. The poverty is hard to take in and the contrasts of the city are chaotic. As the city is quickly being developed, there are a few very nice new buildings. One intends to be a business park, another is a bank. Yet most buildings seems to barely stand, or no longer are. People throw tents on cement foundations of buildings with no other remnants. Between the buildings there are small neighborhoods of huts that seem strangely out of place. They seem to belong in a rural areas with beautiful wild animals and not this sprawling confusion. The urbanization seems to surround the rural living styles and the cattle, rather than push it out. The nicest buildings seem to be those of the aid and development workers, or the businesses that cater to them. Hence, the insane prices on imported goodies and comfortable places to sleep.

Check out his blog when you have a chance.

Parsing the plethora of PDFs on this harddrive I found some relevant guidelines for managing stress and maintaining wellness as a humanitarian worker – thanks Dirk! It’s undeniable how important taking good care of one’s self is with this inherently stressful work, but it’s really challenging to prioritize self-preservation in the face of such emotionally intensive and distressing engagements. Kate and I have been doing daily aerobics and yoga sessions (much to the delight of the compound guards, I’m sure) and Sunday the boys included me in their approach for dealing – D’nile!

I went with a couple of the guys from the alliance to a cool place on the banks of the Nile river, where we drank some cold ones and enjoyed the awesomeness that is my new battery-powered ipod-speaker. It seems like we weren’t the first to discover this locale – a less fortunate visitor before left a more impressive mark with this sunken ship, whereas some locale people make good use of the river resource for bathing and a car-wash (please pardon the voyeurism here).

sunken ship and a fisherman under the mango tree:

bathing cars and bodies:

Finally, in keeping with the self-preservation M.O., a sunning lizard:

Back to work.

Juba Dooba

2008-06-09T11:00:00.002-04:00

Smooth landing (thanks African Express) next to a handful of UN helicopters and I was in! The first few minutes were kind of surreal… I guess my conception of Sudan is a bit loaded. I dodged past customs after securing my immigration stamps and met Martin, an awesome StC driver.

About 500 greetings-from-new-colleagues later I finally got the scary security briefing from Maryanna, an American staff of Save-UK (who share a compound with us, Save-US, and Save-Sweden, who all collectively are representing the Save-Alliance here in South Sudan): Mid-May, Juba experienced a good bit of armed-banditry, specifically targeting NGO residential compounds. A 10:30 ‘city-wide’ curfew was imposed, security beefed up, and new protocols mandated, inclusive of daily AM security/movement briefings. Things have cooled down now evidently, though the wire today reported that the LRA has just attacked and killed approx. 14 SPLA officers further south of here – this following last week’s collapse of the peace talks and other murderous rampages. More on that here and here.

Juba is muddy and full of bugs. And full of arms and full of aid workers. It’s bloody hot here. About 35 degrees Celsius on days without rain.

That said, Juba doesn’t seem to be all-bad. I have far more friends here than I realized – Kate, a fellow Emory undergrad, Ken Cole Fellow, Carter Center intern, Columbia grad-student is also interning for Save-US on a School Health and Nutrition project in Mvolo (I swear, one day we will open our own NGO together...). Adding to the delight: I am supposed to link up with Teohna, a fellow SIPA student working at UNDP this summer, later tonight; old pal from Sarasota (who was working in UG last year as well) Noah, as well as my former boss at RFS, Anne, by the end of the week! Small world, really….

Proof - Kate and Maryanna:

People here, though a little more shy at first than my Lugbara countrymen in Uganda, are friendly once approached. I guess 21 years of gunpowder does that to a place. I witnessed some gruff attitude during a walk through town yesterday – two Kawaja girls with cameras are maybe not the most well received, especially by SPLA soldiers. I’ve been warned that my gear will be confiscated should I accidentally shoot any officials. I’ll stick to the cute relm for now:

Backlog: June 7

2008-06-09T10:54:00.003-04:00

There were five flights leaving Nairobi for Juba within one hour of each other. Business, both of the humanitarian breed and of the opportunistic lucrative type, is booming in Juba, evidently. Pre-boarding took all of five minutes and the two hour wait before that in the international terminal was made tolerable by new friendships with a Lebanese water/sanitation engineer working for ACF and a S. Korean wat/san engineer headed to Rumbek with the Malaria consortium.

My empty, 2-hour flight with a significantly lower than anticipated maximum cruising altitude, let my anxieties fester as I realized that I have no pages left in my passport and still have three countries (Sudan, Ethiopia, UAE) that I am meant to enter this summer.

Once moving out of the great Kenyan rift valley and over the rolling greenlands of southern Sudan my elation soared, however, as it was just so beautiful to see this huge country, seemingly placid, yet so complex and multifaceted, only a mile below me.

Over African skies:

a village from the Air:

go go go

2008-06-06T08:17:00.004-04:00

The disco lobby of the Jacaranda Hotel is rocking – Michael Jackson and some Mortal Combat theme-song remix have me – and no-one else - bobbing my head over the somewhat tacky leopard print/bamboo carpet. I’m killing time before heading into the office to use a decent wireless connection one last time before leaving for Juba tomorrow morning. The Save the Children-USA (henceforth StC) – South Sudan country office (SSCO), based in Nairobi, is about to officially close and relocate their CO headquarters to Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Years of war and insecurity meant a base here in Nairobi for all of the US office's operations in South Sudan, though things are changing. Accordingly, the only people here now are finance officers – some lovely and kind folk, but folk that know relatively little about my upcoming work and locality. I did have the chance to meet with the StC-US regional education advisor who was able to tell me that I’ll be the only female at the Pagak office and likely the only Kawaja (white person in the Nuer language) in the region, before dumping about 30 project documents on my flash drive. Once I know what it is that I’ll be doing, I’ll be sure to get back to you, dear internet fan club.

Yesterday I received my hard-to come-by travel pass/visa to enter Sudan. This afternoon I’ll make a last minute stop to Uchumi to grab ‘snacks,’ a watergun, and some gum-boots for Teohna, before getting dinner with my former-CARE-UG intern/fellow NY grad-student/current-summer-intern-in-Kenya friend, Jocelyn, and before flying on a local flight to Sudan TOMORROW. Holy moly. Peace-out running water, tarmac, regular electricity, and modern medicine!

backlog: June 5 - Arrivals

2008-06-06T07:31:00.004-04:00

I forgot how splendid passion juice is. As the name should explain, passion fruit can incite unrestrained splendor for the mouth. My breakfast at the Jacaranda hotel was likewise lovely, though this entry would be incomplete without warning: avoid pili-pili omelets, if your henceforth-hot tongue isn’t ready for passion!

The first night in Nairobi was awash with exhaustion. I awoke for a few hours between my 3 pm arrival to Jomo Kenyatta and work commitments the next day (today) to the long lost buzz of ‘squitos in a netless room for an awkward, overly revealing instant-message or two. Apologies to those who deserve them!

Josephat picked me at 9 am sharp from the hotel today, something I found rather amusing given my ‘Africa-time’ frame of reference. Something must be wrong with me in that I feel so instantly comfortable here. The old-man-Africa smell, once so pungently revolting, is now an almost friendly reminder that I have arrived on the greenest continent. Yesterday’s (and, in general, New York’s) despondency and irritation are almost nominal. Is this progress? My fears were so different with this journey than with the last – before arriving in Uganda I was afraid of such little things and took inordinate precautions – I remember the details of my driver and first SIM card purchase; the potholes on the road from Entebbe and my first spotting of the gnarly maribou stork. Today my fears seem practical. What type of antiseptic must I add to the bathing water? Will my field work entail travel over murram roads that are land-mine ridden? Does the lack of remaining pages in my passport mean trouble from Ethiopian authorities considering the market is on ‘their side’? More on these concerns after leaving luxuriant Nairobi.

My forgetfulness did not end there. How could I have forgotten the differences between being white in Kenya and being white in Uganda? Knowing that Uhuru and the path to independence between the two neighboring former British colonies were radically different, the differences in the air are still striking. The sense of independence as well as collective positioning in terms of national capacity to resist and/or create change – most recently showcased in the post-election crisis here – should have reminded me, but it was really the combined effect of my visit to an expatriate’s posh house in a mixed neighborhood of black and white Kenyans, with the lack of instant racialized attention that being white here generates (compared to being white in Uganda) that smacked me.

The applicable standard of East African hospitality remains ubiquitous – no where have I felt more catered for than in this part of the world (maybe in ATL, once or twice =D ) – but it’s strikingly interesting to be present in the face of the (at least topically) integrated lives that blacks and whites have here.

Likewise fascinating were today’s headlines: Kenyans are crazy for Obama. While I am beyond elated to read of his securing of the democratic nomination, my new colleagues are even more incredibly excited by the news of a Kenyan reaching the White House. Without sounding too snarky or arrogant, it’s almost amusing to witness the sense of connection to Barrack Obama that people feel here – in comparison to the American public’s demonstrated conception of Obama’s ‘Africaness.’ That said, hip hip hooray! November is getting brighter everyday and should Barrack win the election I expect to see not just great things emerge domestically (in the US) – the abridged version of his nomination speech brought tears to my eyes (is this hope?!?) – but also imagine a wave of empowerment washing across all of Africa.

backlog: June 3 - Jetsetter

2008-06-06T06:45:00.001-04:00

Dubai International airport is far from the embodiment of Emiraties than I had pictured: never have I seen greater diversity, strange tolerance under the auspices of conservatism, nor such an obnoxiously long terminal. That said, I am already very much looking forward to my return stop-over here in August.

Speaking of conservatism, it was awesome seeing sexy Persian ladies wearing mini-skirts and heels slip into full hijab upon the pre-landing announcement in the air. Less amusing was my co-passenger on this flight, a nothing-but-nice, American navy-reserves member returning to Djibouti for an eight month assignment that finds the Navy engaged in the building of a maritime academy off the coast from Mombasa. He is stationed in Djibouti contributing to the US development of schools, hospitals, and general development infrastructure in the strange, francophone, African country – a project that he couldn’t thoroughly explain to me beyond something to the effect of “we’ve seen that making enemies doesn’t work, so we’re approaching this trying to make friends.” When this work fell under the jurisdiction of the US Military as opposed to USAID I have no idea. Maybe it’s the year at SIPA, but I was shocked to hear that there is no integration of civil society, international NGOs, or other development practitioners into this work. Must learn more about this strange booty-engagement.

More fascinating was my three-hour conversation with a Turkish co-passenger. Six years of teaching Turkish language at a private academy in Kenya and big eyes gave this guy a great sense of the world – we spoke primarily about US foreign policy and the failures of global governance, and who really runs Washington. I am returning to the land of the religious. How could I forget so quickly what a minority I am? In my rejection of organized religion, and in professing my belief in the possible existence of a personal God but denial of knowing such a God myself, I did not offend my Muslim neighbor, but I know that few East Africans, nor a good percentage of the Wazungu in the field, will be so quick to let me escape without trying to help me accept revelation…

My arguments for science, human rights, and the testimony of reason will never trump the believers, at least not this summer in South Sudan. Fine; I’ll seek not to end global addiction to faith and shuffle it under the table with their arguments that Jews secretly run the world. Fine. I’ll bite my tongue as I did so often in Uganda when asked if I was born again. I don’t have the passion to argue it today. On that note, I just learned my boss at the field-site on the Ethiopian border is a Reverend, with dreadlocks – Jah heard?

backlog: June 3 - goodbyes

2008-06-06T05:55:00.002-04:00

JFK airport is a perfect mirror of the city: chaotically busy with the righteous indignation of people from well over 190 countries tearing through turnstyles, with security officers paying too little attention when a real threat surfaces, all while awfully isolating in its bleakness. This is not to say that this morning has been all bad. Final goodbyes and sayonara text messages, last minute packing, the end of wireless, and cookies for breakfast (why doesn’t the international terminal have at least a bagel?!) have made my last few hours in NY reasonably un-noteworthy.

I feel more drained by the pre-departure departures. I could have used more support. I am nervous and scared. Sudan feels like an impenetrable, unstoppable clusterfuck of bad news and it’s hard to believe that I’m actually en route.

Two sappy romantic comedies about foolish early twenty somethings in NYC have left me feeling a little bit empty on this flight. I’m surrounded by many other world-wanderers, including one that even goes to school with me and will be in Sudan later this summer, but I can’t shake my feelings of isolation.

I know that once I make it to Sudan that the decision will feel right and I will feel ok about what it is that I am embarking upon. At present, I just feel blank. Thanks xanax.

pulled from my final group assignment for Aldo Civico's Conflict Resolution course, fall 2007

2008-06-01T00:30:00.000-04:00

Situating Conflict

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is divided between a Muslim-Arab northern population and a Christian and Anamist/Sub-Saharan African southern population. Conflict in southern Sudan began with the First Sudanese Civil War in 1955, one year before Sudan gained independence from Britain, with conflict between the north and the south lasting for 17 years. The war was brought to a close by the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement of 1972, which provided regional autonomy for Southern Sudan and an eleven year cease fire. This agreement was punctuated with violence, providing only a temporary peace in a battle over resources, power, ethnic diversity, the role of religion in the state, and self-determination [1]. A growing number of weapons entered Sudan at this time, which paralleled the development of the national Sudanese armed forces and an increasing Islamicization within the Khartoum Government. Violence resurfaced in 1983, marking the collapse of the Addis Ababa Agreement and the start of the Second Sudanese Civil War, a continuation of the protracted conflict concerning the equitable access to natural resources (oil in particular), the right to self-determination, and religious choice. This war's human suffering, in the form of starvation, deprivation of education and healthcare, and the inaccessibility of humanitarian aid, lasted for 21 years, resulting in over two million deaths, four million persons displaced, and over 600,000 refugees pushed across international borders. This space will explore the failed attempts at bringing a lasting peace to south Sudan, the confluence of events leading to the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005, and the impact of this conflict in context of Sudan today.

Primary Actors: Then and Now

Many actors influenced the conflict and resolution of conflict within Southern Sudan. This conflict has been characterized by an asymmetry of power between the Government of Sudan, based in Khartoum, (GoS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) within the South.

The governing political party of Sudan is the National Congress Party (NCP, المؤتمر الوطني), which has its roots in the National Islamic Front [2] and is headed by President Omar al Bashir, a military leader and dictator who assumed office in June 1989. The NCP is now one of the main partners in the power-sharing agreement between the north and south.

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the SPLM is the political wing created by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Known collectively as Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), the rebel group was led by Dr. John Garang, and fought in opposition to the military rule and Islamic dominance of the country, until 1989 when the movement joined the primary opposition group within Sudan, the National Democratic Alliance. The SPLM was characterized by a strong conviction for a democratic, secular Sudan.

Reconciliation of the conflict in south Sudan was directly linked to the actions of key international, regional, and institutional stakeholders pressuring for sustainable peace [3] The most significant roles were played by:

Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD): Established as a regional/intergovernmental vehicle for regional security and political dialogue, through which leaders of Eastern African countries were able to tackle other political and socioeconomic issues in a regional context
The United States and the US Special Envoy to Sudan headed by former Sen. John Danforth
UK, Norway, Italy: the parties involved by IGAD
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda: IGAD envoys and country ambassadors who formed alliance/team
Mediator General Lazaro Sumbeiywo: served as Kenya’s Special Envoy to the IGAD-led Sudanese peace process (1997-98) and then as mediator (2001-05)
The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS): Established under UN Security Council Resolution 1590 of March 24, 2005, was established to support the implementation of the CPA and perform humanitarian assistance functions.

The newly establish Government of South Sudan is a semi-autonomous polity governing the ten states of south Sudan during the six year interim from the signing of the CPA until 2011. First established by Dr. Garang via agreement under the CPA, the leadership is now under President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar . The GoSS joined the Government of National Unity (GONU), as part of the CPA power-sharing agreement, which is composed of the NCP, SPLM, and other parties under the national presidency of Omar al-Bashir, with representation of both the southern and northern political factions in the form of dual vice-presidencies (First Vice President: Salva Kiir, Second Vice President: Ali Osman Taha).

Making Moves: Cycles of Violence and Agreements

Intractability
The conflict between the north and south of Sudan demonstrates characteristics of intractability, as explored by mediation experts by Jacob Bercovitch and Peter Coleman [4], [5]

Sudan has been divided by asymmetries of power which has created a long standing sense of historical grievance held by southern Sudanese. The SPLM/A identified these core grievances as political marginalization; a centralized, minority-dominated and non-democratic government; the nationalization of customary land and its leasing to a few, mostly external investors; discrimination and racism; a lack of religious and cultural freedom; an agenda of Islamization and Arabization including the imposition of shari'a law and an education system designed to promote this agenda; and underdevelopment and inequality. Whereas the powerholding GoS/NCP identified the lack of development and greed of the SPLM as the causes of war. [6]
These grievances exacerbated the length of the conflict, while raising the commitment among insurgents, perpetuating Africa's longest running conflict. The duration and pervasiveness of conflict has fostered greater division between warring parties.
Said divisions, and the associated intractability of this conflict, are at the same time the result of intangible issues such as id entity, sovereignty, and values and beliefs, which differ greatly between the Muslim/Arab government of Khartoum, and the Christian and Animist sub-Saharan Africans of the south
These value differences naturally inform the relationships between all parties of conflict. Both the interactions between the north and the south, as well as the internal interactions within south Sudan are marked by hostility. Factionalism, marked by polarized relationships between the Dinka majority and different parties within the rebel movement, exacerbated conflict: internal divisions intensified fighting in the south, hampering potential peace [7]
The conflict has been plagued with resistance to third party interventions, despite repeated and concerted attempts, which has continued marking the conflict as intractable for 20+ years. The use of traditional resolution processes and management efforts (diplomacy, negotiation, mediation, use of threats/force on either side) repeatedly failed to bring a lasting solution to the conflict, further demonstrating intractability. Some of these failures are looked at below.

Rippening Stalemate - Failed Negotiations on the Way to Peace

Koka Dam talks/declaration (Ethiopia, 1986) - Peace negotiations between the Government and the SPLA which agreed to abolish Islamic Law, however, refusal of key major parties to participate undermined the achievements of Koka Dam [8]
Sudan Peace Initiative (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1988) - The Democratic Unionist Party drafted a cease-fire agreement with the SPLM, however it was not implemented due to opposition from the National Islamic Front
Addis Ababa talks (Ethiopia and Kenya, 1989) - Talks between the SPLM and the Khartoum Government, joined by former US President Jimmy Carter, achieved nothing. Subsequently, the National Salvation Government, under al-Bashir, sought to establish peace, agreed that Shari'a law would not apply to non-Muslims, however, issue of self-determination was not addressed and saw factionalism within the south undermining this effort [9]
Abuja talks (Nigeria, 1992-93): Peace talks in the Nigerian capital were weakened by factionalisms, and the GoS vied for majority rule and imposition of Shari’ah law. Southerners rejected this, pressing for a secular democratic system and the right of the south to a referendum on self-determination. Khartoum rejected secularism and the proposed referendum, accordingly the talks rapidly collapsed.
Peace talks on the Sudan conflict (IGAD 1993-95) As Sudan's violence increased and relationships with neighboring states deteriorated, the Heads of State of the (then) Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD) convened as the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and undertook consultations with regional governments stakeholders to support a new peace process; Khartoum proposed that IGAD take up the peace process and IGAD established the Standing Committee on Peace in Sudan. Peace negotiations in Nairobi were launched and IGAD presented the Declaration of Principles, with a number of provisions relating to human rights, unity of Sudan, a secular/democratic system, and equitable resource sharing, before the talks collapsed [10]. In 1995 the GoS focused on reaching an internal peace agreement with the factions of the southern rebellion (South Sudan Independence Movement of Riek Machar) while aiming to defeat the SPLM/A militarily. At the same time the SPLM/A built relations with the NDA, to further pressure the government and gain acceptance from other parties. Erstwhile, IGAD focused on gaining western material and political support, ultimately creating the IGAD Partners’ Forum (IPF); IGAD sought to present this peace process as the sole option for the international community and supported the military assistance of the SPLA by member states (Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda).
Khartoum Peace Agreement (April 1997) Following increasing internal violence, piecemeal peace-brokering with certain southern parties, the military engagement of regional powers, and a growing regional isolation, that GoS returned to negotiations with rebels. Yet regional pressures decreased and the IGAD peace initiative failed to produce serious changes. Hostilities remained and little progress was seen.
External Initiatives (1999 - 2001) Multiple other peace efforts came forth continuing the path toward ripeness with the demonstration of concerned interest and recognition of potential opportunities"

June 2001 - Nairobi Peace Talks, attended by President al-Bashir and rebel leader John Garang, failed.
July 2001 - Libyan/Egyptian Initiative included a national reconciliation conference and reforms
September 2001 - Following September 11th, the US took more serious interest and engagement in Sudan. President Bush appointed Special Peace Envoy (Senator John Danforth), who invigorated processes with Kenya and IGAD to leverage action and dialogue. IGAD gained further support from UK, Norway, and Italy at this time, and the US extended unilateral sanctions against Sudan for another year

Rippening Stalemate - SPLA Soldiers

Ripeness: Parties, Mediation, Protocols
Zartman explores how conflicts reach a point of ripeness, which is "why, and therefore when, parties to a conflict are susceptible to their own or others' efforts to turn the conflict toward resolution through negotiation [11]. The theory asserts that circumstances like Sudan's, where the asymmetry of power between the north and south eliminates the possibility of attaining a equitable stalemate, repeated failures to attain peace positioned Sudan on a conflict plateau: “a flat and unending terrain without relief.” The surfacing and presence of international pressures for peace, made significant by threats of military interventions and sanctions, represented “the precipice,” that Zartman situates as the perceptual event and momentum for reaching a peaceful negotiation [12]. When both parties are able to perceive the deadlock and the impossibility of a military resolve to the conflict, a ripe moment for resolution emerged. [13]

This moment of ripeness was felt in 2002, when factionalism within the south significantly decreased through the colluding of the SPLM/A, the Sudan People’s Defence Force, and the forces of Sudan National Alliance [SNA] to campaign collectively against the northern government. The greater capacity of the southern rebel movement forced the north to recognize their inability to find a military solution to this conflict and set the stage for the July 2002 signing of the Machokos Protocol. The presence of strong mediation and pressures by IGAD led to the broad framework of principles of governance and procedures for a transitional process, calling for (1) the rewriting of Sudan’s constitution so that Shari’a law would not apply to non-Muslims, and (2) a referendum to be held in six years' time providing for the independence and right to self-determination of South Sudan. At this time the Government and the SPLA also agreed to adopt a temporary ceasefire for duration of negotiations.

While peace seemed promising in the south, violence soared in the western part of the country within the state of Darfur, as rebels in the region claimed neglect by Khartoum for the area. The transitional military and security agreements signed by the GoS and the SPLM/A, during Sepember 2003 in Naivasha, provided a status and arrangement for the integration of the two forces, which led to the signing of a bi-lateral Power Sharing agreement in 2004 and the creation of a new Government of National Unity and a separate Government of Southern Sudan.

Land contest and disputes remained over the three resource-rich areas of Abyei, the Nuba Mountains and the South Blue Nile, but were countered by the 2004 signing of the accord on the sharing of wealth, specifically the division of oil and non-oil resource wealth. Likewise, the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict and The Resolution of Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States were both signed by the Gos and the SPLM in order to guarantee specialized representation and administrative status of these disputed territories. By the end of 2004, the GoS and SPLA pledged before the United Nations Security Council to end the war by December 31 at which point the final two chapters of a peace accord were signed. With the support of international donors and witnesses, south Sudan set on a path to rebuild itself physically and politically, welcoming the reconciliation deal with the National Democratic Alliance that established a power-sharing administration, followed by the establishment of the autonomous government in the south. [14]

Possibilities for Comprehensive Peace
The landmark signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement occurred on January 9th, 2005, marking the end of the Second Sudanese Civil war between a the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. The cornerstones of this agreement, sometimes known as the Naivasha Accords, focused on building democratic governance through political autonomy for southern Sudan during the six year transitional period before a referendum on independence to be held in 2011, and the equal sharing of oil revenues between the north and the south.

A Review of the Protocols: agreements culminating in January 20005

The Protocol of Machakos: Signed in Machakos, Kenya, on 20 July 2002. Agreement on broad principles of government and governance– peace process extends over six years, will end with referendum to allow S Sudanese to choose between independence or remaining in Sudan; until referendum, the south is autonomous region within Sudan, six month pre-interim phase
The Protocol on security arrangements during the interim period: Signed in Naivasha, Kenya, on 25 September 2003
The Protocol on wealth-sharing: Signed in Naivasha, Kenya, on 7 January 2004 – state resources generated in the South (taxes, oil revenues) will be divided equally between two parties
The Protocol on Power-sharing: Signed in Naivasha, Kenya, on 26 May 2004
The Protocol on the resolution of conflict in southern Kordofan/Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile States: Signed in Naivasha, Kenya, on 26 May 2004
The Protocol on the resolution of conflict in Abyei: Signed in Naivasha, Kenya, on 26 May 2004
Permanent Ceasefire and Security Arrangements Implementation Modalities During the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods: Signed in Naivasha on 31 December 2004

A significant outcome of the signing of the CPA was the establishment of the new Government of National Unity, which united Sudan through a legal and administrative power-sharing structure, giving representation of the south within the NCP and representation of the north within the new Government of Southern Sudan.

Conditions for Successful Signing of the Accords
As previously examined, this conflict reached a point of ripeness before the possibility of resolution surfaced. In particular, the role of third parties to achieving the signing of the CPA is undeniable; the international community’s pressure on Khartoum facilitated the sense that the NCP had no alternative options and forced recognition of the impossibility of a military defeat of the southern rebels. At the same time, the details of this third party’s intervention are significant: IGAD had established both regional and international legitimacy, the focus of their declared principals was specific to the demands of the SPLM (self-determination and secularism) , and they held a long term perspective on the conflict with realistic plans for enacting peace [15]. Finally, the personalities involved and relationships that developed between the stakeholders must be considered significant, as General Lazaro Sumbeiywo’s conviction to finding a peaceful resolution helped build the political will of stakeholders [16]

A Conflicted Greater Sudan
Problems with Peace and Challenges for the Future
While the CPA was achieved at a moment of ripeness and optimism, the Accords have faced serious challenges of implementation, and peace, as outlined by the CPA, has not fully materialized for greater Sudan. The primary challenges are the:

Bi-lateral nature of the agreement: the structure of the peace accords looks strictly at the conflicts of Sudan through a north-south lens, which serves to marginalize other political, military, and civil society actors within the country. [17]
Failed Implementation: the NCP has faltered with implementing the accords agreed to with the signing of the CPA. The untimely death of SPLM president Garang was met with regressive behaviors and action by the NCP who have continuously failed to honor the agreement. This is demonstrated through delayed elections, violations of the ceasefire agreement, delayed border demarcations, refusal to implement the protocol on Abyei, and the refusal to withdraw military forces from the oilfields. [18]
Disintegration and temporary peace: The SPLM and Government of South Sudan withdrew from the Government of National Unity in early October 2007, claiming that the NCP has undermined the implementation of the CPA and that the international community’s focus on the conflict in Darfur has limited the required attention to the implementation of the CPA [19] [20]

It is becoming clear that the CPA is in crisis and without renewed international engagement the agreement could collapse resulting in return to war!

Conflict Across the Country
Ultimately, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is not yet stable, and the continued unrest in the south has been met with a continuation of the crisis in Darfur [21]. The hope for successful implementation of the CPA has not materialized, but is deeply connected to the current circumstances within greater Sudan, which remains plagued with violence, division, and continued insecurity.

Violence Inspired [22] The SPLA's successes in articulating their demands through violence influenced the mobilization of other actors across Sudan; violence soared in Darfur as the Peace Talks in Naivasha gained stamina. At the same time, the NCP continues to manipulate the international community by focusing attentions on one conflict to diminish external pressures on the other.
Divided Sudan: North, South, East, West: It is significant to note how deeply connected the conflicts in the south and the west are with each other: years of marginalization by the central government have resulted in similar experiences of massive violence, yet a unified mobilization has not developed as the NCP in Khartoum has consistently pitted the two parts of the country against each other [23]. This is significant when looking at the many advocates of the CPA as a model for peace-building in the western part of the country. Prior to the most recent collapse, the CPA was heralded as a framework for resolution of conflict in Darfur, because the CPA was established a power-sharing model for the entire country, yet the CPA has not succeeded in unifying the parties sharing grievances against the central government. [24] As explored above, the CPA has perpetuated political and economic marginalization of minority groups, thus furthering the divide within the country at large.
Continued Insecurity: Insecurity for South Sudan means insecurity for all of Sudan: the conflicts affecting Sudan are all interconnected and the peace agreements should not be viewed in isolation [25]. Violence, mistrust, and factionalism in the south only exacerbates tensions within the west, and violence in the west severely limits the feasibility of a United Sudan, upon the referendum scheduled for 2011.

If you're interested in the rest of the presentation/document let me know and I'll email you access.

Sources:
[1] SPLMtoday.com: The Official Website for the Sudan People Liberation Movement, "Civil War: Historical Background", [page 1 of 4], (2007), http://splmtoday.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=30 (accessed November 15).
[2] "Military: Sudan Political Groups", (27-04-2005), http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/sudan-political-groups.htm (accessed November 15).
[3] Conciliation Resources, "The mediator’s perspective: an interview with General Lazaro Sumbeiywo", (2006), http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/sudan/mediators-perspective.php (accessed December 4).
[4] Jacob Bercovitch, "Characteristics Of Intractable Conflicts," Beyond Intractability, Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, (Boulder: Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, 2003), http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/Characteristics_IC/ (accessed December 4).
[5] Peter Coleman, "Intractable Conflict," in Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman, The Handbook of Conflict (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2000), 429-431.
[6] Jason Matus, Conciliation Resources,“The three areas: a template for regional agreements,” 2006, http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/sudan/three-areas.php (accessed November 15).
[7] SPLMtoday.com: The Official Website for the Sudan People Liberation Movement, "Civil War: Historical Background", [page 3 of 4], (2007) http://splmtoday.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=30&limit=1&limitstart=2 (accessed November 15).
[8] GlobalSecrity.org, “Military: Sudan Second Civil War,” April 27, 2005, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/sudan-civil-war2.htm (accessed November 15)
[9] Mohamed el-Mukhtar Hussein, Conciliation Resources, “Negotiating peace: the road to Naivasha,” 2006, http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/sudan/negotiating-naivasha.php (accessed November 15).
[10] Ibid. [The Machokos Breakthrough]
[11] William Zartman, “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond”, in Paul C. Stern and Daniel Druckman, Eds, International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War, (Committee on International Conflict Resolution, National Research Council, 2000), 228.
[12] Ibid., 228, 229.
[13] William Zartman, “Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiations in Internal Conflicts”, in Zartman, William (ed), Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars, (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1995), 18.
[14] Conciliation Resources, “A summary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/sudan/cpa-summary.php (accessed November 15).
[15] Conciliation Resources, “Reflecting on the IGAD peace process: An interview with Nicholas (Fink) Haysom," 2006, http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/sudan/igad-process.php (accessed November 15).
[16] - Conciliation Resources – Mediators Perspective
[17] CrisisGroup.org, "Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement: The Long Road Ahead," Africa Report N°106, March 31, 2006 http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4055 (accessed November 15).
[18] CrisisGroup.org, “The Khartoum-SPLM Agreement: Sudan's Uncertain Peace - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS,” Africa Report N°96, July 25, 2005, http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3582 (accessed November 15).
[19] “Sudan rivals agree to heal rift,” BBC News Africa, December 5, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7129001.stm (accessed December 6).
[20] Isaac Vuni, “South Sudan parliament backs SPLM withdrawal from central government,” Sudan Tribune, October 25, 2007,
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article24413 (accessed November 10).
[21] Roger Winter and John Prendergast, “An All-Sudan Solution: Linking Darfur and the South,” ENOUGH Strategy Paper #9, November 2007: 3-6.
[22] “Q&A: Peace in Sudan,” BBC News Africa, July 8, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3211002.stm (accessed November 15).
[23] Mark Doyle, “Sudan’s interlocking wars,” BBC News Africa, May 10, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4759325.stm (accessed November 15).
[24] Stephanie Hanson, Council on Foreign Relations, “Darfur’s Peace Process,” June 18, 2007, http://www.cfr.org/publication/13611/#6 (accessed November 15).
[25] International Rescue Committee, “Aid Agencies Warn Sudan Peace Process May Stall without Greater International Attention,” January 8, 2007, http://www.theirc.org/news/aid-agencies-warn-sudan-peace.html (accessed November 15).

back to the bush

2008-05-30T01:56:00.000-04:00

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mass update

2007-07-07T06:15:00.001-04:00

well, I've been pretty bad about posting this past month, but i figure it is better to spend time enjoying my life then spending time writing about it, right? that said, my last two weeks in Arua were great -- i loved working with NRC despite the really intense areas of work and desperation I've been looking at. had the chance to make some new good friends at the last minute, and build stronger relationships with those who, by the end of my five months there, i could call old friends. in so much that i had not one, but three official going away events. a friday night at oasis, with all the proper NGOs in town being represented, a dinner party at Per-Olaf and Jelena's, and a proper farewell at 'The Indian'. It was great that Phil was present to meet all these folk and have a slight glimpse at where I've been living working this year...the next point to mention is that PHIL IS IN UGANDA! yay! it was a bittersweet departure from arua, but his presence and our travel plans certainly made it more palatable.

More details/photos/memories/feelings will have to come when i'm not at an internet cafe in mbarara.

***************************************************************

Again, at an internet cafe in Mbarara, after darting to reach a Western Union by 12:30 on a Saturday, I can write with a bit of ease. Bank calamity has been partially absolved. Not worth posting details - hakuna matata, right? I'm sure Phil is sick of me telling him things along this vain, but hey, "This is Africa" (please pardon my use of the worst quote ever). But hey! This IS Africa!! Tuesday we reached Murchison Falls, where we stayed at a lovely hotel (with bad bad bad operating procedures and horribly annoying missionaries that were singing far too frequently...) on the south bank of the Nile River. A few game drives yielded spottings of buffalo, uganda kob, birds a plenty, antelop, bush buck, etc. The highlight of the visit was the River Boat launch, where crocodiles smiled widely, and lounging Hippos burped frequently as we cruised up towards the base of the tremendous falls. Actually, that wasn't the highlight -- the visit to the top of the falls was! absolutely incredible. photos will have to explain further.

From Murchison we headed southwest, via Hoima, to Queen Elizabeth National Park - the park harbouring the greatest diversity in the country. We stayed at Jacana Lodge - a gorgeous gem with a fullboard price that nearly rivaled my salary for the past five months. Yesterday we started with a game drive at 6:30 AM - spotting multiple prides of lions, elephants, kob, etc - before chimp trekking at the Kyambura gorge, and then heading with a packed lunch to the Kazinga Channel for a river cruise and ending the day with a drive through the crater lake salt mining fields. All fantastic, with little much I can say -- you know how I do. Photos are a must. Until greater bandwidth exists, i'll keep you waiting!

Proceeding to Lake Bunyonyi now, Rwanda (GORILLAS!!!) on Monday, down to Kigali, and back to Kampala by Friday. A quick tour for Phil through K'la's hotspots before he leaves for Dubai on Sunday, and I head to Nairobi...

hope your trails are as fruitfull as mine! XOXO.

World Refugee Day, June 20 backlog

2007-07-02T04:39:00.000-04:00

World Refugee Day was a hoot. I'm delighted to say that I'm finally being paid, AS A CONSULTANT(!), to make art with refugee kids, and it came completely by surprise! When work with CARE collapsed I found my networking skills to be in top form as I was quickly offered a short contract with Norwegian Refugee Council to help look at their current legal cases and see what issues were regularly emerging, in order to stream line their engagement.

As it would turn out a severe budget cut for this operating year meant looking at the caseload and trying to find ways of attracting more donor funding, i.e. figuring out what can really pull at the heartstrings of government wallets, i.e. child protection. Given my background, the upcoming World Refugee Day (really a day that is meant to bring to the attention of the west/global north the plight of the displaced, and NOT a celebration of refugees themselves...), and the appeal that child-focused projects have to donors, I was asked to coordinate NRC's activities for the seventh annual World Refugee Day. This involved my participation as the NRC representative to the UNHCR committee organizing the various aspects of the WRD events as well as the orchestration of the specific work of NRC for the big day.

This year UNHCR had no official theme for the day, nor did the country of Uganda, yet somehow both had unofficial themes, the former being 'Repatriation' (as refugees at individual settlements across West Nile are all in the process of voluntary repatriation to south Sudan), and the latter - which was later determined to be completly NOT even an unofficial theme, but an art exhibit in Kampala at the time - 'The World Through the Eyes of the Refugee Child'. These two themes - to me - shouted 'Let the kids talk about their feelings through pictures!' and not 'Lets have another long, dry speech that fulfills classic Ugandan protocol of special events.' Thankful NRC heard the same thing!

After mobilizing appropriate resources (tempera paints, white kitenge, bananas, school teachers, etc) an action plan was in place - one primary school class and one secondary school class would participate in a collaborative project that helped them look at their own feelings about returning to Sudan and also thinking about how to share this information (as individuals and as part of a group) with other people.

Serge, Tove, Jonas and I created a masterpiece of a banner the night before I headed to Imvepi settlement with a Landcruiser full of NRC legal and information officers, bottled water, art supplies, and recording equiptment. About three hours behind schedule we began the art classes - as a facilitator I guided the NRC counselors/officers as art teachers for the day to help the students ease into the idea of being communicative artists. We started with self portraits, looking at what you can tell someone else about yourself by putting your emotions onto paper, before dividing into groups, one covering the topic of home and the other, the topic of repatriation.

Hard at Work:

Day of drawing:

Some of the results were expected; women with Jerrycans, mango trees, flags, school houses. Others were startling: landminds detonating, UNHCR convoys catching on fire, people murdering with pangas, empty fields that used to have villages and have been left in ruins. The students began so quitely but poured so much extreme emotion into their creations --

We wrapped up the session by working together to finish the banner/mural that was started the day before, to represent the students' ability to work together to create something of shared value, that demonstrates a collective voice of refugee children. At the same time some students gave short monologues about their feelings on returning home to Sudan, a place where some of the students had never actually been.

Group painting:

New friends:

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A few more photos ...

Old Sudanese Scarification:

New Sudan license plate:

Parking Lot:

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Wednesdays actitivities were enjoyable but never ending. With a total of about 15 speeches, I have to say the NRC presentation took the cake (maybe after the Ding Ding dancers from Madi-Okolo...).

The day started with a football match, first between refugee youth teams, and then between refugee adults and a team composed of different UNHCR implementing partners (including NRC, DED, RTP). The partners lost (someone argued for political reasons, but i must comment that DAMN those Sudanese are serious about football).

Implementing partners football team:

Football:

Watching the Match:

Some prayers, welcome songs, and introductions later the first dramatic presentation was great, despite that I couldn't really follow what the Congolese drama group was really talking about....

Congolese Drama:

Audience:

Around three o'clock the youth from the NRC project began their presenation -- six individuals described their picture, what they felt about the theme, and what the image meant to them. The other students from the group carried the poster of images and showcased the work to the broad audience, before parading the group banner.

Images on Display

Students presenting on WRD:

Drawing of repatriation //Kennedy smiling brothers greeting each other

Full banner with kids:

Overall I think the activity was really rewarding, both helping the students' think more thoroughly about what they can do to tell the world how they feel, and in terms of helping them accept that it is ok to have a wide range of feelings and responses to the different experiences they must face. Plus, it was fun.

As I said, the only perfermance that may have outshown us were these cultural dances from visitors from Madi-Okolo. Check it out for yourself:

Ding ding dancers

Acholi dancers from Madi Okolo:

I've been so fortunate to have had the opportunities with NRC; it was a real surpise blessing/life making lemondade/silver lining of the CARE work falling through. Reading through case files, helping look for child-protection issues, field work, etc, has offered a (albeit slight) solid look at refugee work in the field...quite interesting to say the least!