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.
4 comments:
I was kidding with my facebook comment.. this is very cool.
I guess it is always the little things we take for granted.
Hi Jude-
Amazing we don't know each other since I think we know about five hundred people in common, and most of them have at some point in their lives dealt with huge quantities of maxi pads.
Anyway, I've enjoyed reading your blog of late (basically, since you commented on Kelly's Livejournal and I followed the link). I like that you have so many photos of yourself! I feel like there are like three photos in existence of me during the past year and a half or so since I'm always busy taking other people's pictures. And since my camera weighs more than most small African children, I'm often reluctant to have someone else take a photo of me. How do you manage it? Also, how do you manage to have so much internet access in Sudan?? Do you move around with your very own Bgan? Or does SC just have that many resources?
Sometimes it feels like a blur, prison today, slum tomorrow, AIDS clinic the next day... I'm sure it's easier to get tired of things in the bush (actually, I know that from my stints in the bush, all much briefer than yours) but the city can be exhausting too. Inhale pollution, exhale cynicism.
The pentecostal church next door keeps you awake until 5 am with its stamina? Google David Matsanga! And leave long comments on the blogs of others!
Anyway, just wanted to say hi... an extended hi... motivated by pentecostal praying and mutual exhaustion.
-Scarlett Lion
(Glenna)
Glenna,
Apologies for delayed reply on this but thanks for the fanship! I've heard your name thrown around a bit over the past two years - Ugandan blogosphere/Columbia make for a small world - and it is quite funny that we've never actually met.
I've added your blog to my feedreader and love the assistance in remembering Ugandanism through your writing and images.
To answer your question on getting myself into my pictures, I would say that I've learned that teaching your "beneficiaries" how to handle your camera is a worthwhile process - perhaps this is because I first started working with refugees as a photography teacher! - and I try to pass my Nikon around whenever appropriate. Regarding internet access, I would never have thought it possible to be in a place with no mobile phone network nor radio waves, but with (relatively) abundant wi-fi (naturally, of course, powered by our satellite and generator, on a tightly controlled schedule). The intertubes are everywhere!
P.S. Pentecostal wakeup beats SPLA drill marching and borehole construction anyday :)
very nice pictures. what kind of gas did you buy for your riding lawn moyer? Do the giant large wild animals bother you there? I would be terrified of them!
i am afraid of snakes and spiders though. My cousin Donny got bitted by a spider and his hand fell off.
http://fox-news-magazine.blogspot.com/
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