South Sudan Travel Diary - Day 3 & 4

Continuation of my travel diary from the trip to Sudan in November...

DAY 3

Today, we solved problems and streamlined/reconfigured processes: Several ozonation and water bottling issues were resolved with panty-hose, zip ties, and a toilet tank float/valve. We spent lots of time training and talking about how to sell water (and get the bottles back through deposits, etc). Quality assurance was a big topic too. Our main issue: even though the water is quite clean, it tastes bad. So today, we took the ozone scrubber and re-purposed it for filtering (activated charcoal). (We have another part which will be fine for ozone scrubbing). Results for test batch #3 are tomorrow. The taste of batch #2 is much improved compared to day 1. Next experiment is to ozonate well-water directly as opposed to biofiltering it first to see how that tastes.

For my part, I spent a lot of time wandering around with a 2.5m wood pole with an antenna on top, reading my BlackBerry and surveying the site for the best location/orientation for the antenna. Did more internet trials today and basically, it seems that we will be limited to 57.6kbps modem speeds (which was killer back in 1993). Problem is that most webpages are designed for broadband (even gmail and yahoomail are terribly large webpages), so it's a slow experience. Less risk that we'll go over the 600Mb cap though, at these rates :) The issue is with the Zain Uganda back-end, not the mobile phone throughput. Anyway, everyone seemed grateful to be able to check their emails - until now the leadership here only communicates with Canada every couple of months when they travel to Uganda, and this causes many problems when they are trying to coordinate large transfers of money and building-projects. It didn't seem like too big a deal before to me, but everyone here is making a big deal.

We also surveyed the site with Philip's 100' tape measure, so that future buildings/fish-ponds/etc can be visualized/designed from Canada. Maybe tomorrow we'll check out some land where the fish-farming project might be built. David Knight (Lincoln Road Chapel pastor) arrives tomorrow to join our team. The 4 of us then have a number of appointments being set up to promote the water project to the local govt/military officials.

The food has been fantastic: beef and chicken with great sauces, fresh bread (cooked on a fire like everything else), deep fried roots of stuff, deep-fried bread chunks, peanut sauces, bananas, oranges (that are actually green on the outside), various greens that taste amazing. Overall I'm eating well. It seems that Bruce and Gord (who have been here many times previously) built it up to be much harder than it actually is.

Showering still isn't any fun though. Neither is going to the bathroom. And tonight the generator ran out of gas at the guest house.
Also, the nearest cellphone tower is down, so it's extra quiet for me :)

There are a lot more stars in Sudan than in Germany. Good night all! (Although I expect this email won't actually transmit until tomorrow morning, when the cellphone tower will be back up presumably)

DAY 4
"Prostitutes/immorality is not entertained in this guest house apart from your own wife" (Rule #1 of the guesthouse where we are staying).

This morning started with a couple hours of bottling/training. David Knight arrived at 10am on MAF, and after he arrived, we all got in a 4x4 and travelled to see the security office, the commissioner and the office that oversees all the NGOs operating in Kajo Keji county. We also visited the local Anglican diocese office (and later had a meeting about a solar mango dryer project for the widows association). Both the security office and the commisioner were a bit of a bust: the men in charge were off somewhere making preparations for the president's visit (which is apparently on Monday now). We'll be going back tomorrow to see them for real. We met with their replacements though and had a very warm reception. They were especially excited about having internet access that could benefit the general population (right now, only a couple of NGOs in the area have internet and it's not available to everyone). So that's cool. The people we met seem very in tune with what's required to develop this part of Sudan as the UNHCR continues to repatriate tens of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people (it's the quite the exercise, since IDP are sometimes living on someone else's land for 20 years. Now they have to leave so that the descendants of the original pre-war land-owner can move back. Complicated. Some parts of southern Sudan have a lot of unrest and lawlessness. But Kajo Keji is now quite stable - all the local officials were rightfully proud of this. They were saying that anyone who gets visitors must be living in a desirable/agreeable place to visit :)

The dirt tracks to get to each of these offices were unbelievably bad. You definitely need a 4x4 and lots of gravol (or muscle-relaxants?). But it's better than it used to be: the bota-bota fares have dropped on by 30% on a number of routes recently due to the "improvements" (ie. It costs less fuel/time to travel)

After lunch, we ran another bottling trial, and then had a big meeting about the aforementioned mango dryer project (we brought money to get it built. The diocese will manage the project). I got a chance to phone Karla too ($0.50/minute from a Ugandan cellphone, which isn't too bad). Lloyd and I went for a walk (ok, an hour expedition in the hottest part of the day that left me completely worn out) around the village of wudu (also called Kajo Keji, even though Kajo Keji is the country name). We were unsuccessful in locating any souvenirs. But we'll try again.

Compared to what Bruce described from last year, it was unbelievably developed (in a "#-of-brick-buildings" kind of way. There's still no water or electricity. They sell Coke everywhere, but at these temperatures, it's hardly worth it :) (By the way, the bricks are all made locally from the clay soil - only cement and corrugated tin is imported. Most huts are made of bricks, mud and thatch (nothing imported). After over-doing it in the sun, I had to take a break and eat/drink/laydown to recover from the headache.

Last-minute addition before I send this email: we just met with the speaker of the house for the govt of South Sudan, as well as the commissioner (they came and found us. Bruce was in pyjamas for the meeting:). They were very excited about the internet access. They were wondering about whether it could be done in a few other places :) He told us all about the political/military situation here (he's an ex-SPLA soldier who found God after realizing that all his friends were dead from the war).
The peace process here is a bit broken due to lack of support from the international community after the peace process was grudgingly signed by the north (forced by the international community in the first place). They think one of the things that the church can do is to tell people to work hard (if you don't work, you don't get to eat). 20 years of war has made people get used to hand-outs, and destroyed their energy for work (since everything was continually getting destroyed during the war).
Another interesting area was the repatriation of exiled Sudanese - the movement of people only happen during the few short months during the year when crops are not yet started, and thatch is plentiful (so that they can build a new hut when they return to Sudan). The govt here goes down to Uganda on recruitment drives to try to convince their former population to return and re-settle and help build Southern Sudan.

Very interesting conversation overall. I'm still processing. Best history less you'll ever get, given that he's a participant in this history making.