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.

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.

South Sudan Travel Diary - Day 1 & 2

I (Marc) recently travelled to South Sudan on a 10-day trip with some Canadian engineers on the second phase of a water filtration project. Our main tasks was to setup a water bottling line as an income-generating project for the Revival Movement of South Sudan (local NGO). My side project was to setup an internet connection using a mobile phone and an external antenna (pointed at neighbouring Uganda). I wrote a kind of travel diary during my time in Uganda and South Sudan - and I'm posting it now in pieces, with some photos. The trip was Nov 16-25, so this is a tiny bit out of date, but not too much - I have still have a tan!

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 morning, 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)

Ruined for Toyota

So, an unexpected perk of our little situation here in Deutschland is that we are now an unofficial automobile test-driver. So far we've had a VW van, a BMW wagon and our current vehicle is a Mercedes wagon. Have to say that the VW was a tank - did NOT enjoy it. The BMW felt very powerful and comfortable - just what you want in a vehicle.
You know, I never really understood the big deal about fancy cars (and I realize that a wagon isn't that fancy, but still, it's a beamer), but now I think I'm catching on. Nice things are nicer.
It was a little tricky to get used to how to work the windshield wipers and the heating, but once I realized that it was more intuitive than I expected, and they kind of did anticipate my every need - there really was a button for that - then we got on much better. One of my favourite buttons is the seat warmer. 3 levels of intensity for your every heating need. Level one for when you run out to the Apotheke to fill a prescription, Level 2 for when you've just walked your child to the kindergarten and are on your way to the gym, and Level 3 after a few hours of wandering around the Weihnachtsmarkt. Gluhwein is all well and good, but it doesn't reach everywhere.
So good news, the Mercedes has all the critical features I enjoyed in the BMW (wonderful GPS lady, large trunk space and of course, the seat warmer). Can I also note that this Mercedes is an automatic which would have been pretty useful back in the beginning when everything was new and tricky. Would have taken some of the pressure off.
Just like now I finally have a debit card which really makes purchases much smoother - also would have been much nicer back in the beginning...but I digress.

A disadvantage of these powerful cars is the ease at which we break speed limits. They purr like kittens at rather high speeds (except for the VW which sounded more like a rhino). The tires on our Mercedes are only rated for 210km/h, which is good. Wouldn't want to go too much over that anyhow. :) Actually the real problem is in town.
We've received our first ticket (I say received because we've seen the flash of the camera several times now, but we've only gotten one ticket in the mail - 20 euros plus a 9 euro processing fee from the rental car company.)
Luckily, Marc got the first ticket. It's better that way, trust me! :) The notice includes a grainy black and white snapshot of the driver, just to remove all doubt and put the blame squarely on the right shoulders. We have a lovely portrait of Marc smiling away enroute to Hattingen.

Advent, aka "Pass the fire extinguisher, please!"

I am loving the festive spirit in the air. It's not even December yet, but the Christmas markets have been up for a week already. I've had my Gluhwein, roasted almonds and chestnuts, and crepes (both sweet and savory), but I fought off the impulse to buy a chocolate covered apple today. I think it may win next time. We'll see.

Today I went to a craft (basteln)-making session with our neighbour - very fun! I made an advent wreath and a decoration for our door, using stars, pine cones, cinnamon, star anise, birch bark, etc. We also enjoyed yummy snacks, including my first taste of Baumkuchen - a German classic.




































However, the event that I'm really burning to write about is the Adventsgärtlein at the Kindergarten. They had sent a big letter home about it, which didn't do us much good, although I did understand enough to get a babysitter for Kaia, since there was something about absolute Stille. Seems like one-year-olds would not have that.
Lia's teacher had told us to be sure to be on time, and we were!! We gathered in the main room where we were admonished again to be very quiet. We proceeded slowly into the gym where there was a large spiral made of pine boughs and a large candle in the middle. We sat around the perimeter of the room, and one of the teachers told a story in German about Mary making a dress for Jesus out of the moon, sun and stars...uh, it loses something in the translation, I guess.
Slowly and ceremoniously another teacher took an apple with a candle in it, and, holding it in two hands, walked carefully around the spiral until she reached the large candle in the centre, and she lit her candle. She reached down and picked up a golden foil star lying on a bough and replaced the star with her apple candle, being very careful to position the round apple so it would not tip and allow the flame to come in contact with the flammable tree branches. She walked back along the spiral path until the end, where there were more apples. She picked up another, and handed it to one of the children from Lia's class.
So there were 20-some 3-5 year-olds all to perform this task (with increasing fire hazard levels as more and more candles were burning at knee level along the path) with absolute Stille. And some of them did - especially near the beginning. But there was one kid who had been getting restless, and had seen enough to know exactly what to do, and he didn't feel like he needed to walk slowly. So he kind of ran, and tripped on a bough, and skidded a bit, and knocked over some candles. Marc and some other parents hopped up quickly, and righted the apples before anything caught fire. Everyone else seemed quite composed, but I think I may have gasped a little loudly. There were no actual injuries, I guess, but there could have been - don't you think? Would something like this EVER happen in Canada? Even the foil stars - they were sharp!
So everyone recovered nicely, and the next kids were very careful. Lia was the very last child - except for the boy that didn't get an apple (not sure what happened there - poor kleine Mark) - and I think her courage faded a bit the longer she had to wait. So she wanted Daddy to go with her, which left me with a great view of her glowing face as she completed her task carefully and solemnly. And then, with the smell of singed hair lingering in the room, we made our way out into the night, unsure of what an Adventsgärtlein was really about...