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?
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