My enjoyment is coming from being able to stay in the one place - I'm not moving up and down so much between Upper Nile and Lakes, and am enjoying being able to spend my weekends with the crew here. have been getting into playing basketball in Freedom Square. We've been playing a bit of badminton and watching the French Open and UEFA Cup football on the 'big screen' in the Safari Style hotel compound - a carefully erected bedsheet.
I've also really been enjoying basketball practice. A couple of mornings a week, I go out to the court in Freedom Square with my friend Dak, or if he's a no-show, whoever turns up - be it the street kids, an Ethiopian soccer player or two skiving off from training, or kids on their way to school. On Saturday mornings I go out for a run with some of the local guys. They're all way taller than me, and driving on them is a bit like hitting your head against a brick wall. Pointless and painful. So I've had to improve my outside shooting...
I'd been practicing for a week or two; then one Sunday evening I went out to play my first game. Five minutes into the game, I managed to break my nose due to an errant (and sharp!) elbow from an opposition player retrieving a rebound. I'd forgotten how red my blood was. I was lucky that one of my colleagues happened to be passing the court on foot and was able to call the car; I had no phone. I didn't head to the hospital - they wouldn't have been of any help - but went straight to the fridge in Safari Style for some ice! I now have a nice little lump on the bridge of my nose. Nice. I got a couple of nice little black eyes, and wearing sunnies was painful for about a week. I was actually annoyed that I didn't get better bruising on my face. I want the pain to be worth it. Give me BLACK EYES!
On the social front, everyone seems to be leaving over the next few weeks - including my good mate Rach, who has been working for Oxfam for the past six or seven months. She's leaving on Wed, which I'm really sad about. She's been such a good friend to have adventures, be silly and watch movies with, give & receive hugs, and most importantly, vent to - because we both understand each others' frustrations! I may go partly mad without her here! We are throwing her a big farewell bash on Tuesday night and have invited all the staff to come, as well as the khawaja crew. It should be really fun - there will be nyama choma and dancing, of course!
The three musketeers will soon become two ...
A couple of others are leaving by July, so our contingent is shrinking by the day. Even Ollie, the social glue of Rumbek, is fed up with the difficulties of managing a hotel here and is considering going to work in Mozambique. So I'll just have to wait and see how many friends I'll have left. It's the usual cycle of humanitarian workers. New ones will come... Insha'allah...
Rach and I were on dog patrol last weekend. We were taking care of a friend's puppy while she is on leave. On Thursday the puppy started getting really sick; by the weekend she wasn't eating or drinking anything and had bloody diahorrea.... so we took her to the vet at Veterinarians Sans Frontiers, who diagnosed her with parvo virus, something that commonly affects puppies. We've had to keep her hydrated by syringing water into her mouth - which she promptly throws up. She's now at the compound on a drip and it's not looking good; the vet says she may only live a few more days. We're absolutely mortified. Yesterday she disappeared in the compound and we were petrified she'd gone off to die somewhere. We were so relieved when we found her.
Work-wise, Oxfam is moving into a new county for 2012-13: Rumbek North. This county is quite remote and not served by many NGOs. It's insecure due to cattle raiding and inter-tribal fighting, and the one road leading there is already getting muddy with the impending rainy season, and soon will be impassable in sections, not to mention the villages we plan to work in, most of which are deep inside the bush. There are loads of trucks carrying marram northwards for road construction ... as well as loads of trucks carrying soldiers up to the border areas to fight the North. There are some training camps on the road for the new recruits to learn how to fight; on the other side of the road are the ramshackle villages which house the wives and children of the soldiers.
We spent last week doing a Needs Assessment
there (checking the status of boreholes, visiting communities without
boreholes - often over an hour's walk on foot because the landcruisers
can't reach there (mud!) - and meeting with authorities) and this week
we'll be doing baseline surveys with households in these same villages.Most of the villages we've visited have no hand pump, or their existing
hand pumps are either broken or need some sort of rehabilitation, and
no-one has a latrine in their home. People drink water from the river an hour's walk away, where they also take their cows to drink; during the rainy season they take water from pools on the ground. The schools are mostly simple benches under trees with a single bamboo shack that doubles as a church. It's very much a subsistence agricultural community. So it will be an interesting - and challenging - place to work in terms of implementing infrastructure and changing behaviour.
Rumbek North is isolated, but it's also really beautiful. The countryside is so green due to the initial rains; there are loads of birds everywhere - I've seen egrets, crowned cranes, ducks, ibis and other water fowl; and bucket loads of cows! We pass cattle camps - or remains of them - regularly, and a lot of small boys herding their cattle to the next site of green pasture. The cattle camps look like amazing places, even though I've never been into one. They are temporary settlements out in the open, with no houses, just temporary shelters to protect the mostly men and boys from the rain. They stay there with their cows - often in the hundreds; there are stakes in the ground to tie up the cows at night, and sometimes they put branches around the outside to mark the boundary and provide a temporary 'fence'. They keep dogs with them to help protect the herds from hyenas and burn cow dung to keep away the flies and mosquitoes. The people live - almost exclusively - off the cows' milk, use the urine to bleach their hair, and cover their faces in ash.
The community is currently in their fields cultivating the land with their huge white cows with the even huger horns, which pull simple ox ploughs behind them, and are planting peanuts, sorghum, sesame, maize - all by hand. Unfortunately the moving herds of cattle don't mix well with the villagers' crops, and cause all sorts of problems when they eat their way through.
And soon enough, we won't be able to get to any of these places, so we'll spend a few months in hibernation - planning our activities and hopefully improving our approach from last year. My gumboots are definitely going to get a work-out.
Thank you so much for this. I can't tell you how much guilt it alleviates.
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