Home Sweet Home...at Least for Another Seven Weeks

The town of Pagak is literally in the middle of nowhere.  To get here, you either need to hire a private plane, bum a ride on a cargo flight, or drive across Ethiopia to the border and hop on an ATV or a dirt bike for the rest of the way.  If you can manage to get here, Save the Children has a pretty permanent looking compound here right next to the dirt airstrip.

From the airstrip you walk down a dirt "road" that has been gutted with deep channels from our LandCruiser as it tries to avoid getting stuck in the mud.  You walk down said muddy path for about 30 seconds and knock on the corrugated tin sheet metal that forms the compound gate .  Eventually a guard will wander up, unlock the door and let you in.  

Inside, we have about 10 or so little buildings, tents, huts, or other forms of enclosed space to work out of or get away from the rain.  The largest is the Dining Hall (or Dining Hut).  Its a sweet wood and mud room covered with grass and topped off with a giant UNHCR tarp.  About once a month, some of the local staff re-muds the walls to fill in the cracks and crumbled exterior.  Outside are the two satellite dishes that provide communication with the outside world.  Provided there are no clouds or rain, that is.  Inside, we have our meals (Spaghetti, rice, and baked beans--everyday!) as well as a TV and dart board.  I've been hitting the darts pretty hard.  When the generator kicks off at noon, in the evening, and at night, there's not much else to do.  I've unwisely already long burned through my supply of books.  When the office gets too full of people, the overflow head into the dining hall and set up shop.

The office itself is actually pretty small--just a one room tukul.  But inside we have five desks, printers, and most importantly--wireless internet.  Although it becomes impossible to use once more than a few people are using it, its one of those things that you don't fully appreciate until the generator kicks off.  Because of the presence of the mighty internet, we usually are in the office until about 11 at night officially working on projects, or unofficially just messing around.

From the door of the office, you can take the network of rock paths (as the rain turns all of the mud into a deep deep soup) to either the kitchen or one of the several rooms in the compound.

Breakfast is usually pancakes or mandazi (fried bread--like an unsweetened donut) and always some hot tea with powdered milk.  Nyamone cooking up some pancakes:

There are two types of living quarters--brick rooms and tukuls.  I suppose three types--we also have two small two-man dome tents covered with tarps for overflow.  All of the rooms are arranged around the perimeter of the compound, which means that at night you can hear just about everything outside--blasting Teddy Afro music, local police on patrol, and people chatting away in their tukuls.  

The winner of the compound amenities game is the hot water.  That's right, hot water.  A while back, someone had the presence of mind to cut in half one of the many old oil drums that we have and use it to heat water throughout the day.

All you have to do is take your bucket walk over to the oil drum, scoop up some of the water, add some disinfectant to kill of all of the worms, bacteria, and all the other crap living in it and...bam! You've got yourself an instant shower my friend.

With all of the crazy moving around that I've been doing lately and the old luggage crisis at the beginning of my trip, I didn't realize until today that I've been here for over a month now.  I've started to settle in pretty well--hot water, mud, wandering goats and all.  Seven weeks to go!

Gettin' Some Community Action

This morning, Duncan, Judith and I went to the PHCC to meet with some previously trained Village Health guys to talk about forming a community health group to be established and run by local people with our support.  As was the case with the women's group, its incredibly difficult to organize something like that within a community of people who have had public goods provided in an emergency relief situation.  It doesn't help that in a place where we are wondering if it is ready for ox-powered agriculture or not, basic needs are still so pressing that people need food before they are willing to talk about organizing for things such as a community education program.  And many are not getting it.  Likewise, its difficult to organize a of individuals to become  the primary stakeholders in a group and are willing to take ownership and leadership in its management and direction, especially on a volunteer basis.  After decades of direct relief during the war, the transition from relief to development is, at times, unbearably challenging.  But you have to start somewhere, even if its with a defunct community group.  The objective is to organize a group of core individuals who will in turn lead the mobilization of a larger group--family, village etc.--and give them the support necessary such that the program is sustainable without the direct management by an NGO.  It is not to directly provide the services or goods themselves.  That way, when the NGO packs up and leaves, those services or goods can be provided sustainably by the local community.  Or so the theory goes.

From there, I had afternoon English class.  Lot's of "I am Bret" "He is Titus" "He is happy" "She is not sad" and the like.  We also played a few games with flashcards of animals and vegetables.  We had a 10 minute diversion over whether or not there is cabbage in Pagak.  The best part of class was, though that I found a Sudanese guy who is pretty good at English and starting tomorrow will teach the class with me.  I hope that if we can get him in front of the class teaching, he can maybe take over for me when I leave.  It also still leaves me with about six weeks for crash course teacher training and plenty of time to come up with a curriculum for absolute beginners and the necessary materials for such a course.

I rode the good feelings on over to the NCDS compound where Judith was having her youth group meeting for a social marketing piece on the importance of education.  The discussion went fine and I was feeling good until the session started to wind down.  One of the guys about my age had said during the discussion that he was willing to come to these sorts of programs and support them because while he was living in Ethiopia he had to go to school barefoot and without supplies.  Sometimes he just wouldn't go.  Eventually a Catholic organization gave him shoes and school supplies and he seems to have a sincere desire to work with local groups on community improvement.  Pretty groovy.  Until he pulled me aside afterwards and asked me if I could find him some glasses because he really needed them.  How do you respond to that?  There are a lot of great groups that collect used glasses donations and ships them to areas around the world where they are needed.  Unite for Sight provides people in developing areas with free eye exams and corrective surgery.  I had to tell him that I just don't have any glasses but that I would look into some things and get back to him tomorrow.  I thought maybe there is an organization or something that I could contact and while I couldn't get anything to him per se, maybe we could work something out in the future for the rest of the community.  The sad reality is that even if there were a supply of glasses ready to be distributed and sitting in Juba, the only way to get anything into Pagak is via a $3000 charter flight from Juba or via Addis Ababa and a punishing overland trip across Ethiopia.  Sudan's infrastructure is just so poor that even something like eye glasses will remain unavailable in Upper Nile for quite some time.  

In Cambodia, these things really wore me down.  I remember the girl who would learn your name and then find you everyday to ask for just a little bit of money.  Over the years I've become a bit hardened to people asking me for things or perhaps just desensitized.  But still, on days like today, somebody asks me for a pair of glasses and I find myself down, brooding in the dark somewhere and sad for what I will have to tell him tomorrow.  He took a piece of paper at the end of the meeting and mentioned something about writing me a letter.  I hope for my own sake that I misheard him.  But I know that is probably not the case.  

Weekend Art Youth Group

This was my first real Pagak weekend. Other than less frequent generator use (to keep it from breaking down) not much is really different. There isn’t really anything to do in the compound or around town so we end up just continuing with work or at least what would be work on a regular day.

On Saturday and Sunday, Judith and Odongo put together a youth community art group for kids and teens to come together and use drawing to express feelings and ideas about issues important to them. I came along to tape it for the documentary project and record some interviews.

There are about 10 people in the group from about 15 to 18 years old. I’m not really sure where the younger kids are since those are the ones we were hoping to target. Today, the teens talked about education and drew pictures about a memory or a feeling they got from school. Most drew a picture of the school building itself, where they had gone. Most of the schools also had an Ethiopian flag, as many had gone to school in southwestern Ethiopia either as displaced persons or to receive a better education than they would in Southern Sudan.

One of the girls talked about how in Pagak the schools only teach up to Grade 6. For an education above that (middle or high school), they need to travel to Maiwut, which is 22 kilometers away. It’s possible to continue on there, but she said that if you didn’t have relatives there, then you’re be stuck with Grade 6. It’s much harder for girls to move away to another town or a city, even to get an education.

On our way home from the art group, we stopped by the volleyball court outside of the Payam administrator’s building/hut. A policeman, dressed in old blue uniform and dark sunglasses, came up to us with a huge grin. He made the sign of Catholic prayer, gave us a huge two thumbs up, a slap on the shoulder and kept on wandering to wherever he was going. He reeked of booze.

Getting Down to Work

I officially started my documentation project yesterday. Earlier, I had pitched an idea to shoot a promotional documentary that the country director could use to keep a record of field projects and hopefully to help push the donors our way when it comes time to renew several of the grants that the Sudan office relies upon for its operations. As I had been struggling before to define for myself my job for the next two months, I latched onto the project as a way to focus my energy while I sort of tread water in the short term.

Early yesterday morning, I met Jeffa, the Pagak area community health organizer, at the compound. Duncan and he had arranged for me to meet and interview a mother, whose young son had about a month long stay at the Public Health Community Center with burns on 40% of his small body. I walked with Jeffa the few minutes it takes to get from the compound to the PCHH. The PHCC was pretty empty as is often the case. The PCHH only receives a case or two per day—usually Malaria. A few SPLA soldiers were hanging out, lying on the benches outside one of the buildings and chatting with one another. I met the mother who was sitting in front of the hospital wing—there are two rooms with about five beds each, one for the men and one for the women. We greeted, shook hands, and I explained what the project was for and expressed my appreciation for her willingness to talk with me.

I was a bit nervous—this was my first case for the documentary. The mother’s smile and the happy boy, who was maybe only about a year or two old and being bounced around on his mother’s lap. I started to get all my equipment together and was utterly unprepared as the mother started to take of the child’s clothes, revealing a near continuous scar that ran from his side and back all the way down his leg. An overwhelming sense of what the boy must have felt at the time washed over me and yet I was entirely unable to empathize with such a feeling of pain.

I clumsily set everything up and did a very short interview. Nothing too much, just tried my best to get the child’s story and be respectful of him and his mother. Even with Jeffa there to translate, the details were hard to follow. I was still distracted. The child had been burned with either hot water, hot oil, or hot something that the child had knocked over onto his body. His mother took him to the PHCC afterwards. Luckily an American couple had visited the PHCC a few months back and left some medical supplies—specifically anti-bacterial gel and disinfectant. During his month stay at the clinic, those supplies saved his life.

I later interviewed Jeffa about the child’s case as well as the services the PHCC provides the community. The PHCC was only finished this year. “Before then, the child would have died,” he told me. Such a thing had just happened a few months ago and too many times in the past years.

I thanked everybody there, especially the mother, who was very grateful even though I had no role in her son’s treatment or recovery. I will hopefully be working out of the clinic more in the future as I start to figure out with Duncan our plan for community health mobilization.

Next stop was over at the Nile Interdevelopment Program (NIP) compound, where Judith, Odongo, and Titus were supposed to hold an election for the women’s group. Unfortunately, right at about the time the meeting was to start, the rain clouds opened up a torrential downpour. The LandCruiser had that day old throw up smell. When we got to the NIP compound, about 40 women crowded under the small roof of the office. Some messages were mixed and about 10 men were also there for the women’s meeting.

The group wasn’t quite ready for an election. Instead, it was a two-hour group session to get everyone on the same page on working together as a community to address and solve educational issues and the Early Child Development Program. It’s a tough challenge to try to get a group of individuals to take charge of a program to help themselves move forward. It’s even tougher in a place like Southern Sudan, where many people feel helpless and need direct aid—food and supplies. The trick of it is to avoid the aid dependence that occurs from simply freely handing out goods. The women are motivated though. They desperately want to learn. They want their children to go to school. They want to improve their economic lot. They want someone to teach them how to make soap. As refugees in Ethiopia, they had free schools and other services provided to them in Ethiopia. In Southern Sudan, they need to take the reigns and get involved in the school, get the training and skills to run the schools and programs after the NGO’s are gone.

There was no election. But the women’s group is moving forward. Next Friday, there will be another community meeting to keep the momentum going and hopefully after that we can have the election and get the program structures in place. It’s slow, but at least its moving.

I took about three hours of film today. I’m having some trouble getting the audio quite right, but with a bit more practice, using my clip-on mic for interviews, and taking more time to think out my shots I should get it down. I’m getting a rapid crash-course in filming as I work. I just hope that these first few runs aren’t a total wash.

SC Alliance Kickoff Ceremony

This morning we had a kickoff party at the compound to celebrate the merging of operations between Save the Children US, UK, and Sweden.  The three organizations have operations in 8 of the 10 districts in Southern Sudan with not too much program overlap.  Beginning today, they will operate from the same compound and pool resources and programs to improve cost efficiency and improve communication.

There were a few government officials as well as the country directors for different NGO's and UN agency's in attendance.  From right to left: Country Director for Save the Children Sweden, Representative for the Minister of Gender, Social Welfare, and Religion, and the Minister of War Heroes.

The staff and invited guests listen to speeches and discussion of program areas:

Together, the new partnership, called Save the Children in Southern Sudan, will have 429 staff and operate programs in education, early childhood development, health, water and sanitation, child protection, and thedemobilization and reintegration of child soldiers.  

Mattito Watson, Country Director for SC US gives a speech before cutting the ribbon:

After the ribbon is cut.  From right to left: Country Director UNICEF Sudan, Mattito Watson Country Director SC US, Country Director SC Sweden, representative for the GOSS Minister of Gender, Social Welfare, and Religion:

Cake!

I will try to get some photos of Juba up but I will link them off of my Flickr page to avoid uploading twice.  The satellite internet is pretty sketchy and photos take about 20 minutes to upload.  I'll upload them at night so as not to eat up all of the limited bandwidth.