Our trip was through International Teams (http://www.iteams.ca). More info about the water project here: http://www.enviro-stewards.com/sudan/
DAY 1 - Kampala, Uganda
Day 0 was my trip from Germany I guess.
We (Bruce, Lloyd and myself) are crashing at this school in a tiny bedroom with 3 beds and a bare light-bulb (the ILTS school earns money by hosting people as they pass through for $20/night incl bfast and supper). The main lady (Anne Mwangi) at the school is teaching, and raising some orphans and helping other random people who get dropped off here. For the school part, class size varies from 9 to 25 students, and classes last 10 weeks, followed by 12 weeks in refugee camps and a debrief at the end (2 full sessions per year - guest teachers wanted :)
Early early this m
orning, after a late late bedtime (11:30pm or so, due to a long line at the airport, and a very caref/well slow anyway, immigration officer), a rooster jumped up on my pillow and crowed extremely loudly in my ear. Turns out the chicken coop is just outside our window (the rooster wasn't really in the room, but almost :) I put in earplugs and went back to sleep. we were "had" by the same early-morning-rooster-trick in Namibia. Stupid roosters. Who do they think they are? And don't they know it's still dark out? 
After an early start, we drove around Kampala all day, breathing in dust, diesel and various other odors and particulates (my throat/nose/eyes are reacting to the assault on my senses), and collected visas, cash, SIM cards, food, tickets and other necessary vitals.Lunch was a $3 buffet of Ugandan food (maize porridge, plantains, potatoes, beef, chicken, rice and ground nut saucy stuff. Delicious).
Kampala alternates from developed and kind of cool, to chaotic and slummy. We shopped for bananas, pineapple, and melons in a super-local market. Felt very safe there, and most people speak enough english to figure stuff out, so it's easy to function there. I kept seeing everything during the day through Karla's eyes (or what I imagine Karla would notice, based on our trip to Namibia): the nice big fun Shoprite, the multitude of craft markets selling every kind of beautiful craft you can imagine (which I can't buy until the end of the trip because it would put me over our weight limit for tomorrow's Cessna flight with MAF), the music everywhere (kind of cool), everyone in suits and nice clothes, driving around on "bota bota" motorcycle taxis, looking proper, despite the dust/diesel exhaust swirling everywhere. I saw lots of good looking streetfood, but never had a chance to eat some.The Southern Sudan embassy finally gave us visas, after hours of waiting (they told us to come back tomorrow, because their printer was broken, but our flight is at 7am :(, so we stayed and eventually they got it together. Anyway, tomorrow we're flying in an MAF cessna (or something similar) to a dirt strip, and I'm pretty excited about it.
DAY 2 - Kajo Keji, South Sudan ("You are Welcome")
My day started out with me losing a cage match with 2 mosquitoes who somehow got under my treated mosquito net. Well, I didn't totally lose. They both ended up dead, but from the size of the mess, it seems that they got what they came for :(
MAF flies from the Kajjansi airstrip in Kampala (as opposed to Entebbe international airport south of town). To get to the airfield involved an very bouncy dirt road (in town). It didn't look official at all - more like we were driving to a dangerous drug deal in a slum/jungle (things are very lush right now, the rainy season ended last week. Malaria, here we come!)
There were 6 people (3 of us on this Sudan project, two others, plus the pilot). Thanks to a mistake on the weight and balance sheet (it was for the wrong aircraft type), the pilot said he needed me to sit up front with him!! After he figured out the sheet mix-up (we were in a Cessna C208), he didn't really need me there, but let me stay. So, I got a headset (to hear the pilot, and also all the air traffic stuff) and a tutorial on flying in Africa from this guy.
Best flight ever! Plus you can use your BlackBerry and carry knives onboard :)
We flew 1.5 hours to Arua, Uganda (dirt strip) to re-fuel, cross exit customs and then hop across the border to Kajo Keji airstrip in Sudan (30min flight). It wasn't too bumpy, but we all took gravol in advance, after hearing Bruce's stories of all his previous flights. In Kajo Keji, the Anglican Archbishop of Sudan was leaving on the MAF plane that we arrived on, so we got to meet him briefly.
On Thursday, to celebrate the fact that road to Juba (capital of southern Sudan, 100kms away) is re-opening, after years of de-mining, the president of southern Sudan is driving down to Kajo Keji. Apparently, we will get to meet him and promote our water project (the Anglican Revival Movement here seems well connected, or maybe just well-noticed by the government). 
Once we arrived at the revival movement compound, we had a small welcome meeting with 20 people or so. A couple of speeches by them (introductions, thankyous, you're welcomes, etc) and a couple by us. The cool part was that everything that got said kept being interrupted by joyful clapping (if people were happy to hear something), or if they were _really_ excited, someone would break into song, and everyone would join in(complete with 5 different percussionists, and lots of melody/harmony stuff). Very cool culturally. Same thing happened later in the day - when we gave away Revival Water t-shirts to the local team (for example). Very exciting atmosphere and it feel very heart-felt. Our rooms at the "Solomon guest house") in Kajo Keji have the feel of a prison cell (concrete room, with a steel bed, a chair, and barred metal door with a padlock). The toilet is a hole in the ground (with a flush though), and the "shower" isn't working. So I had a bird-bath in a half-tiled stall, trying to balance in the muddy water, while avoiding the ants and the strange splats/stains on the wall. Felt great! I washed off at least 2 out of the last 3 days worth of grime :)
During the afternoon and evening, we unpacked and assembled everything we needed to bottle water. (Ozone generator, tanks, piping, bottle cleaners, capping machine, etc). There were some glitches (the ozone meter isn't giving us a reading to prove the ozone diffusion into the water is working), and a critical valve is only letting drips through, instead of opening properly, but we should get that fixed tomorrow. We bottled 3 cases of water today, and we're incubating some samples overnight to see if the sterilization worked.
For me personally, the big triumph today was hooking up a BlackBerry to a laptop, adding an external antenna, configuring a Zain mobile phone account and presto: internet connectivity on the revival movement's laptop (proof of concept anyway). Next step is to find a high place to install the antenna (to get a better signal and faster speeds) and then roll it out internet-cafe-style so others can use the connection (for a fee). It felt great to have this succeed, as I was quite worried about the Zain SIM card configuration... Somewhere in the middle of the day, I scalded by whole thumb with boiling water (by accident). I've now got a nicely-boiled-lobster look (although it's hard to see under the polysporin and gauze :) One last comment before I go: I don't know why I thought that Sudanese and Ugandan cultures would be very similar (and in some ways they are..), but the "feel" of the culture/people is quite different here compared to Uganda. I'm thoroughly enjoying this so far (the food is great too, although I know they don't eat like this normally)
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