Frustration Frustration Frustration!

We visited the camp in Doro today – the first one I’ve ever been to. An old waystation marks the entrance to the camp, where UNHCR, when they eventually turn up again, will resume registering new arrivals. The MSF clinic is also near the entrance. In the meantime, hundreds of people have amassed outside, hoping that someone will come and take them in. Jerry cans stretch for almost one hundred metres from the two nearby boreholes and women report waiting for up to six hours just to get water. It does look however like WFP will soon start distributing food, as there were workers unloading sacks of sorghum from UN trucks into their warehouses at the old waystation, and the Oxfam drilling team was on the ground and preparing to sink the first borehole.

The camp is a hot, dry, dusty place with a lot of people wandering around with nothing to do. I should point out that it’s the men and children that seem to be wandering around; the women are working hard, all day, as usual, mostly on their way to collect water. People have really set up makeshift homes with whatever they were able to carry or find locally. Interestingly, the main tribe of people there had thrown together ramshackle homes that really did look temporary, but the small group of resettled Maban people were more organised, having built proper homes with wood and grass, and even constructed bathing shelters for themselves.

We had gone to meet with the community about future hygiene promotion sessions and to establish who the community volunteers were, but our plans were spoiled by immunisations of refugees by the medical personnel. The first disappointment soon grew into frustration as more and more plans were sidetracked for various reasons over the next few days. We spent a lot of time moving up and down between Jamam and Doro, meeting with authorities, missing chances to meet with other organisations and finding out very little information. When you’ve seen people suffering in a place like Doro, and hardly anything is happening on the ground, it’s difficult to deal with.

So I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with the whole thing, mainly because we are in such an information limbo and cannot seem to make any concrete decisions about a way forward. 

What I’m also finding difficult, and confusing, is that I’m here to assist with our longer-term Public Health activities. We are still doing them, but our attention has been diverted due to this emergency. We have an Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R) team that is mobilised for these kinds of situations, so they are co-ordinating everything; but they are also borrowing our PH staff to assist. I’d not been involved in the discussions on the response prior to arriving, so my knowledge is pretty basic – but I’m here, and I want to help, even though it’s not really my role – and there is already a PHP leader within the EP&R team. 

But I would really like to get involved in this; because I find it interesting, because I want to learn and most importantly I’d like to be part of the response. I may just have to find a way to get involved during my short week here and skive off from my long-term program responsibilities for a couple of days... just for a few days before I leave for Malakal again. It’s too much of a good opportunity to give up.