South Sudan Travel Diary - Day 5

Continuation of Marc's email travel diary (10 days in South Sudan in November)

DAY 5

My favourite scene in Sudan (repeated over and over everyday): Sudanese woman walking toward us on the side of the road with two tiny feet sticking out on either side of her waist (from the baby which is tied to her back with a shawl). Very cute/beautiful. The babies are either wide-eyed and curious and straining to see anything (since they are facing their mom's back), or they are passed out/sleeping :)

We're winning on the water taste front. Today's production only had a slight after-taste. So we're pretty pumped. Last batch tested well too (no ecoli or other bacteria).
A long meeting with Zamba Duku today again (the ex-teacher turned soldier turned NGO/entrepreneur turned legislator (and speaker of the house). He wanted to be the first to buy 5 cases of water (to put in the president's guest house when he visits Kajo Keji on Tuesday now). We'll produce those first cases tomorrow. The history lesson continues: Sudan has been in civil war (in the south) since 1955. There was a 10 year break from 1972-1983, and then continued war between the arab north and black south. We saw a bunch of British buildings from 1910s which were bombed out by the north (basically, they flew over in planes and bombed anything with a roof. The population here was helpless). Unfortunately, the north was grudgingly forced to accept the peace process, but they are not being genuine about it (for example, the north runs the oil infrastructure in parts of south Sudan, and is supposed to give 50% of revenue to the south Sudan govt. But these payments have been tapering off (although oil prices have been going up). the international community has kind of stepped back, so the govt here feels a bit abandoned and cannot begin to address the infrastructure needs that they have (electricity/water/hospitals/education and the list goes on).

I did an Internet setup training session for an hour with a half-dozen people. "Steve" and "Grace" (everyone has an english name that they've picked in addition to their Sudanese name) will be the stewards of the internet-related equipment. We talked to a carpenter and the plaster guys about finishing a section of the new building first, so that we do the final installation of the antenna and wiring tomorrow.

We visited a theological school, a primary school (all schools are run by churches since the north never built any, and the south sudan govt has too many demands/priorities currently) and various church compounds. One of the most interesting visits was to Samaritan's Purse compound. There was a mid-20s dude there (Chris) who was in charge of the Kajo Keji base, where SP is running a church reconstruction program. It's not what they usually do, the SP has been given tonnes of funds for rebuilding church buildings, everywhere that they were destroyed. So over the past 1.5 years, Chris has built up 6 construction crews, a small fleet of quads, 4x4s, and 7-ton trucks. They've built 31 churches so far, and they will hit their goal of 52 churches in a couple of months. After that SP will likely shut down the base, and move on to different projects in different counties. Chris is trying to diversify SP's involvement into agriculture, training, water, etc so that they will stay in Kajo Keji even after the CRP program is finished. It's really cool because he seems quite committed to this region (he grew up as an MK in Congo, Tanzania, Uganda so he has no specific reason to be attached here, but he was pretty passionate about it).

It might be the heat talking, but I really love this area and it was quite inspiring today. I kept running through all the different scenarios that could bring me back to South Sudan in the future :) I would love for Karla and Lia and Kaia to experience this place.

Logu visit - we drove 7kms (45 minutes) to see the site where Internation Teams was supposed to build a primary school this week. The school is currently operating outdoors (seriously, they use a giant tree as a blackboard). Supplies are kept in a mud/grass building (pretty poor shape. Not even made of home-made bricks). The "facilities" were basically stone-aged.
They've been told for 4 years now that the government would help. International Teams has promised for some years now that they would build the school. But now, due to lack of interest, IT postponed the school building until March 09 (_if_ they can scrape together a team and funds). They did forward $10k in advance of the March trip to show committment, but everyone wanted to know whether they could start spending the money to build the foundations - but we didn't know the answer to that.
The speeches made it clear that there was disappointment over promises that have yet to unfold. Impatience to see any progress.
It was heart breaking to be the bearer of bad news like that. Logu is definitely a step down from where we are. Tukul huts are all made of mud instead of bricks. There is tonnes of rapid development in South Sudan, but it's concentrated in the cities (like Juba, the capital). The development potential is bypassing the rural parts of Sudan and leaving them further and further behind for critical things like education, water, health stuffs.

Tonight we've got impromptu visitors from Morobu (90 miles away, at the edge of Sudan/Uganda/DRC). The bishop of the charismatic church wants to partner with the Revival movement (Episcopal church).
They heard we were here, so they made the 9 hour trip! (9 of them in a 4x4) to meet with us to join the partnership (this means that they want the join the relationship with the Canadian churches that is currently benefiting the Revival Movement)
Every meeting we have has a bit of a formula (we've had about 6 formal meetings today that all included these elements, not in this order everytime):
-greetings with African handshakes all around
-sit down in seniority order
-speech by "leader" of each party to the discussioon includes introduction of team members, thanks to the host, compliments to the other parties, mention accomplishments, praise God repeatedly, drop some names to establish your position/relationship, list your needs and talk about partnership a lot. Occasional singing/drumming. It feels like we are often witnessing some kind of dance/negotiation that we don't understand completely. There is always an undertone and second message behind what is being said. Very interesting!

The Morubu county bishop's requests were for help with starting a hospital/clinic (nearest one is 30 miles/5 hours away), HIV/AIDS program, water program, schools, income-generation activities. Morubu is even more forgotten/remote than Kajo Keji county.
The bishop said that Americans and Canadians have come and had big evangelistic meetings, with big altar calls, but then they left the people: hungry, uneducated, sick and thirsty. He saw the example of concrete things at the Kajo Keji Revival Centre (water/building/etc) and said that was true evangelism. (He also said Islam is coming and bringing with it food/water/hospital programs). To win Sudan, we need true evangelism.

Overall, a very emotional and conflicted day for me. I bounced around between the enormity of the needs, the excitement of being here and doing "my bit", the smallness of what we're doing, the charm/warmth/hope of the place, the optimism that all the NGOs and UN are doing lots of good, the pessimism that it will all be destroyed in 2 years and we'll disappoint the traumatized Sudanese people again.
I haven't landed completely yet. Will sleep on it.
Good night all,
-Marc

PS. I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but it's NOT quiet here at night at all. There are radios blaring, people talking, goats bleating and lots going on until 11 or 11:30pm or so. Then it all starts again at 6:30am. My ear plugs are like gold (good thing I brought extras for the others). I'm sleeping well though. And I'm quite used to the latrine and how to wash now. Doesn't seem too bad any more, so I may have painted too harsh a picture in previous emails.
PPS. My thumb burn is pretty well healed.