Back ... to a baptism of fire

Yesterday I arrived in Maban county, Upper Nile state, where Oxfam is doing emergency WASH (water, sanitation & hygiene) response for Sudanese refugees. There are over 100,000 refugees here now with no (current) end in sight to the new arrivals.

I haven't been here since March and the transformation is incredible. The first thing that hit me was how green and lush everything is - the grass is long - you can't even see the ground - the trees have leaves(!), there's water lying around everywhere and subsequently the bird life is prolific. Driving to the compound in Jamam late yesterday afternoon, I was dazzled by the gold-capped grasses swaying gently amongst the emerald green backdrop as the sun was setting. The goats, donkeys, sheep and cows are certainly fat and happy, even if the refugees here aren't...

The Oxfam compound in Jamam is now massive, and resembles a small walled city. We have around 100 staff working here. The compound has two massive tukuls (thatched huts) in the centre, one for eating and one for watching telly, and our acccommodation is now small individual tukuls instead of tents. Yeehar! A Rubb Hall has been constructed in one corner of the compound, a proper solid kitchen in another, and the previous living area has been converted into a second office. The only downside is that we still don't have phone coverage. No bother (except when you get stranded at the airport and no-one is picking up the Thuraya sat phone ... ). Oh - and the volleyball court has been replaced by a garage. D'oh!

There are two new camps in Maban: Gendrassa and Yusuf Batil. Yusuf Batil already holds 30,000 people.
UNHCR/IOM is currently moving 12,000 refugees from Jamam 1 camp to Gendrassa because of flooding and the potential sanitation disaster posed by thousands of people in a small area - in the mud. 4,500 refugees from Jamam 1 have already been moved to Gendrassa, with the remaining 7,500 to be moved by the end of August.

The moving process is a tiring one. When the refugees move, first they are placed in a 'transit camp' with pre-constructed tents, while their tents are packed up and moved; then they are put in buses or trucks and sent to Gendrassa. There they pass through a handwashing station set up by Oxfam, they are registered by UNHCR, and then they are checked by IMC for their health status (many are suffering from diahorrea and malnutrition) before being moved into their re-constructed tents. Sigh ...

So, we have moved our emergency Public Health operations to Gendrassa too. We have established compound there which is pretty basic, with UNHCR tents (we are refugees too!) and a generator for the evenings. No internet, but at least there's phone network as we are near to the county capital, Bunj. We had been drilling boreholes, installing hand pumps or submersible pumps + tap stands and emergency latrines in preparation for the arrival of the first refugees; now that some have arrived, we are undertaking hygiene promotion and cholera prevention activities (there was an outbreak scare last week), and continuing digging emergency trench latrines to cater for the new arrivals.

While all these people are being moved, we are continuing to undertake hygiene promotion activities with our existing refugee volunteers in Jamam 2 and the remaining population in Jamam 1.

There is mud everywhere and people are taking water from pools on the ground or haffirs (stock water points) instead of the tap stands we're installing, because it's closer and more convenient. They also don't like the taste of chlorine so they'll walk for hours to get river water. Unfortunately all this surface water is killing people through diahorrea and other fun diseases. We also had a suspected cholera outbreak here recently; thank goodness it wasn't confirmed.

So there are a number of different teams of hygiene promoters working in the camps, and I'm possibly going to be overseeing the team in Gendrassa to begin with - but having input into activities in Jamam 1 and 2, as well as the continuing long-term program, the team which is still on the ground working with the host community. This is particularly important as the host community are suffering just as much as the refugees; with the influx of all these people, there is now a lot of competition for scarce water resources and the community are crying foul - rightly so - that they are not receiving the water, sanitation, food, road infrastructure and medical supplies that keep trundling past their front doors on the way to the refugee camps. We are repairing water points, training water committees to manage them, working in schools to improve water and sanitation, and undertaking hygiene promotion activities with volunteers. More recently we have been doing cholera prevention activities in Jamam town and especially in the market, targeting hand washing there where people congregate to eat.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Rumbek and Juba were a lot more peaceful ...