Great Moments in Time
Some great moments in time from this week:
Staying healthy despite two colleagues falling ill with redeye/conjuctivitis as an epidemic hits town
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Carousel number three
There is a certain hell that only airports and air travel can conjure in one’s psyche. Having spent the better portion of 19 hours breathing recycled air, 12000 metres above sea level, I arrived safe and sound at Jomo Kenyatta. What weary travellers we all were, for to arrive in Nairobi requires a connection and then a connection and then some for most East African bound passengers. Struggling through a lazy immigration point and shedding tears over wrongly filled forms and incorrect currencies, the passengers of EK 721 arrived at the baggage claim frazzled but joyful that we had reached the end of our epic adventure. What followed in the next hour or so was hell – a hundred odd passengers stationed around a sushi train of luggage waiting for bags that took forever and ever to arrive. I swear that magical hole in the wall gave birth to my luggage last of all, and if it wasn’t for the hymn humming of the elderly lady next to me, there very may well have been blood shed at carousel number three.
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My friend Ben
I had lunch today with my friend Ben. He and his family came from Sudan to Australia as refugees, and in 2007 I had the opportunity to go back to Sudan with him for the first time in over 20 years. We hiked around one of the most remote mountainous regions in central Sudan called the Nuba Mountains. Ben is a church pastor and works hard to support other Sudanese refugees living in Brisbane, as well as mobilizing them to contribute to the lives of Sudanese people who still call the Nuba Mountains home.
day 001 without coffee
Reading of ceasefires, yet hearing of heavy fighting; there’s a sweet smell of flowers in town and our neighbours hosted a wedding last night, no gunfire, must be the ceasefire in effect; logistics pipelines are failing, we can procure nutella that doesn’t go mouldy and cheese that doesn’t melt in 45 degree heat but I’m still waiting for my jabbana from Khartoum; going to be an interesting week…
Ballistic vests, swollen feet and job satisfaction in contemporary aid work
A few months ago a UNAMID friend of mine let me try on a blue helmet and ballistic vest they usually keep draped over their office chair in case of emergencies. I’ve seen plenty of them around, all the UNAMID troops are issued with them and I supposs civilian staff have to don them when the world starts falling apart. I’d never really given it much thought, but found the straps pushing down on my shoulders, the ceramic plate grating against my ribs and the kevlar helmet crushing my skull to death made me realize how bulky and and immobilizing these ‘lifesaving’ devices really are. It gave me a new appreciation of the fellas who patrol around in them all day long in the Darfur heat.
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the footsteps of the poor
He humbles those who dwell on high, he lays the lofty city low; he levels it to the ground and casts it down to the dust. Feet trample it down— the feet of the oppressed, the footsteps of the poor.
tweets from the desert
in an attempt to escape the brainpower required to put together a meaningful blog post, ive compiled some recent tweets from my twitter* feed if you’re not already following me! Enjoy:
Arabic awesomeness: “Hubba hubba.” means “Step by step.”
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The Internationalization of me (part 2)
I think I came to the realization that I was a little bit too globalized when I started eating my dinner with my hands the other night. There were dinner plates, knives, forks and spoons aplenty, yet I just dug in with my ‘Sudanese spoon’ (my right hand) and squished the food into a ball and popped it in my mouth. When I finally realized what I was doing I stopped, hoped nobody had noticed and promptly picked up the fork and spoon and kept eating like nothing had happened.
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Perfectly Normal
A drunken guy started shooting his ak-47 at the gate of our compound around 9:00 pm on Thursday night. He was shooting over the roof of the compound just for kicks I suppose. This was the following conversation I had with security over the VHF radio moments later:
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The Internationalization of Me (Part 1)
Yes. I’ve been away for a long time. Moving right along…
More and more I’ve been noticing how I’ve changed and grown as a person in many ways. As we get older we shed certain habits, ideas and aspirations and take on new ones. This is a pretty normal and expected process and for some people it’s a good thing as they learn to function successfully in society, while for others it is a slow stifling of the creative or irrepressible gifts they once had.
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the good sudani
In Darfur it may shock or suprise you to know that we don’t actually drive around in the quintessential NGO/aid vehicle, the white landcruiser. In fact, we haven’t for years. the simple reason being that people like to steal these vehicles so they can kit them out (cut the roof off and mount a machine gun on the back) and drive around doing what bad bad people do – kill other people.
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I dream of Janjaweed
The long line of followers snaked through the scrub. Despite the exhaustion they hauled, carried or dragged as best they could their few possessions. We stopped momentarily for breath and were carried forward by those behind us, always onwards and never looking back.
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Prison.break.season.1.finale
I guess one of the things I was looking forward to with my work was the liberal R&R schedule allowed to me. I get a lot of holidays and maybe it’s because my org is really nice, but it’s definitely also because Darfur makes you crazy.
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Lessons learned
As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower in the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
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10 signs it’s time to take a break
For any other workers in highly volatile and ridiculously stuffed up situations, here are 5 warning signs that it’s time to probably take a break:
Billy’s shop
On just about every street corner of my town is a store of some kind. Those fortunate enough to live at an intersection and have money can usually construct a concrete shack with iron doors and sell the same things as every other store in the suburbs of my town – soap, softdrink, melted toffees, coffee, sugar, rice, beans and a few other nick nacks like razors and perfume. They are pretty much the local version of a 7-11 but in true Darfurian form, they’re closed just about as often as they are open.
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Satellites
My family taught me how to look for satellites on Fraser Island. You have to judge whether a ‘star’ is moving by its proximity to the other stars around it – is it moving?! It’s a great game when you’re camping and also a great game whenever the sky is dark enough to see what lurks out deep and yonder in our amazing universe. So naturally in Darfur, when I’ve finished dinner and the city power goes off, I lie out under the stars listening to music and watching satellites criss cross the sky.
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Darfur Disease
I felt a bit like a lawn chair these last few days, ready to be folded up and stored away in a dusty shed for a few weeks or months. Truthfully, the reason for curling up at my work desk and head-lolling in meetings was that I had simply drained my body of all those salts and minerals (call them ‘electrolytes’ if you will) necessary to function normally. After drinking so much water and sweating it all out I had simply run out of gas to keep going. It first came as a headache, then joint pains and finally the whole fast and furious digestive system came into play at both ends. I thought it was food poisoning, but in his defence our resident ‘cook’ claimed it was most likely the dreaded malaria.
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The Rain
It started at around 4:30, I thought it was pigeons doing their morning laps along the tin roof. But sure enough after a few seconds the tapping became a complicated cacophony of noise, it was raining. The smell of soil filled my bedroom as raindrops hit the desert dust in the alleyway behind my bedroom. The temperature plummeted to somewhere in the high 20s and I gladly grabbed my sleeping bag and curled up for a few hours longer. Mmm, very nice to wake up not covered in sweat for a change.
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the calm before the storm
A relative calm anyway; my visa was finally approved this week.
I thought that it could go either way considering the current circumstances, not sure why they would be letting anyone in considering they are busy pushing everyone OUT of the country. Good good news despite the bleak outlook.
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