And I forgot, I got my Sudanese driver's license today! So tonight, for the first time, I got behind the wheel of a big silver Toyota HiLux pickup, i put my Trace Adkins CD in the CD player, rolled down my windows, and cruised the streets of Juba, skidding through dust and mud and ditches the size of fjords, with my arm hangin out the window blasting the song Honkeytonk Badonkadonk.
I am SOOO the coolest person in the known universe right now.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Bring on the chintz
I have become slightly obsessed with the idea of chairs. Chairs and benches.
When I lived in Liberia, in the beginning, I lived in a pretty crap house. And it had all the local-made furniture that other Liberians would have in their homes. A couple WILDLY uncomfortable straight back chairs, a big table, a couple stools and a big bamboo bench thing outside under the tree. It was one of the things that drove me insane about that house, actually, there was nowhere comfortable to sit ever. Which sounds like a stupid thing to say, but think about it. Nowhere comfy to sit EVER. You are ALWAYS in a state of mild discomfort.
So now, driving around the back roads of South Sudan and hangin out in people's homes when I go to do monitoring and stuff I notice, again, South Sudanese don't have chairs. Usually, there will be a couple communal little chairs for a whole block which get trotted out for guests, but they are usually the rigid back wooden ones which are worse than standing, or they may be plastic ones, but only if you're lucky.
Everyone else sits on a couple low stools, on the ground or perched on the edge of the low wall that goes around their tukuls.
And of course, lest we forget, it isn't like they've got big ol' comfy beds in there. Lots of them are sleeping on the dirt on a mat to top it off.
Honestly, I have no idea why I am so enthralled with this idea, but it goes through my head all the time. Is it possible that generations and generations of Africans (and Thai and Burmese and Swedes, for all I know) have gone through their whole lives without ever having a comfortable moment of repose?
God how I love being not from here some times.
When I lived in Liberia, in the beginning, I lived in a pretty crap house. And it had all the local-made furniture that other Liberians would have in their homes. A couple WILDLY uncomfortable straight back chairs, a big table, a couple stools and a big bamboo bench thing outside under the tree. It was one of the things that drove me insane about that house, actually, there was nowhere comfortable to sit ever. Which sounds like a stupid thing to say, but think about it. Nowhere comfy to sit EVER. You are ALWAYS in a state of mild discomfort.
So now, driving around the back roads of South Sudan and hangin out in people's homes when I go to do monitoring and stuff I notice, again, South Sudanese don't have chairs. Usually, there will be a couple communal little chairs for a whole block which get trotted out for guests, but they are usually the rigid back wooden ones which are worse than standing, or they may be plastic ones, but only if you're lucky.
Everyone else sits on a couple low stools, on the ground or perched on the edge of the low wall that goes around their tukuls.
And of course, lest we forget, it isn't like they've got big ol' comfy beds in there. Lots of them are sleeping on the dirt on a mat to top it off.
Honestly, I have no idea why I am so enthralled with this idea, but it goes through my head all the time. Is it possible that generations and generations of Africans (and Thai and Burmese and Swedes, for all I know) have gone through their whole lives without ever having a comfortable moment of repose?
God how I love being not from here some times.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The other side of cliche
So this is an article about Myanmar and how, even though the humanitarian aid never got in, all the predictions of mass starvation and disease and death and horror never happened:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25379703/
Apparently, less catastrophic cyclones hit regularly and the people who live there have very strong coping strategies. So, even without all the food aid and water and sanitation programs and human rights trainings, nobody more really seems to be dying than would be expected with our help.
This is confirming the niggling fear I have that I am doing more harm than good.
If the junta had let all the humanitarian craziness in and we had all dropped out of the sky with our stuff and our registration and everything, these coping strategies wouldn't've been used. People would've become dependent on the NGOs and been organized in to little groups and lists and everything would've been disrupted for god knows how long.
Hmmmmmm.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25379703/
Apparently, less catastrophic cyclones hit regularly and the people who live there have very strong coping strategies. So, even without all the food aid and water and sanitation programs and human rights trainings, nobody more really seems to be dying than would be expected with our help.
This is confirming the niggling fear I have that I am doing more harm than good.
If the junta had let all the humanitarian craziness in and we had all dropped out of the sky with our stuff and our registration and everything, these coping strategies wouldn't've been used. People would've become dependent on the NGOs and been organized in to little groups and lists and everything would've been disrupted for god knows how long.
Hmmmmmm.
Friday, June 27, 2008
God who needs a better rat-trap? Me!
You know what I get sick of? Everything being gross. Wet, dirty, dusty, sticky, moldy, sweaty, smelly, nasty gross.
Last night I was lying in bed, trying to learn the well known zen art of hearing a billion mosquitoes whining in my ear and not going mad. It was approximately the temperature of a bakery oven in my room, so I was sticking to my sheets and just not happy, when I hear a ratatatatata across my floor, followed by, in rapid succession, the sound of my metal door violently shaking, my mosquito net tearing and more skittering across the floor.
I grabbed my headlamp and turned it on to find:
Rat A - medium sized, brownish, sitting right above me on TOP of my bed net
Rat B - gigantic rodent of unusual size, blackish, grooming is whiskers in the middle of my floor
Rat C - smaller, perched above my door, having climbed up my towel to get there and now running back and forth in a rather distasteful way
For a moment, as the light hit them, they froze. Then they started scurrying around (or freaking out and being stuck in the case of the one above me in the net). Which then continued all night long.
At one point I had to use my feet and pillow to get the one above my bed off. That was the moment where I suddenly saw the appeal of having someone around where you can go "ewwwww, RAT" and they'll come take care of it for you. No spending your whole night sweating, swatting mosquitoes alone, in the dark, with only the dim light from your headlamp and a pillow to protect you from the marauding army of bloodthirsty plague carrying beasts.
Last night I was lying in bed, trying to learn the well known zen art of hearing a billion mosquitoes whining in my ear and not going mad. It was approximately the temperature of a bakery oven in my room, so I was sticking to my sheets and just not happy, when I hear a ratatatatata across my floor, followed by, in rapid succession, the sound of my metal door violently shaking, my mosquito net tearing and more skittering across the floor.
I grabbed my headlamp and turned it on to find:
Rat A - medium sized, brownish, sitting right above me on TOP of my bed net
Rat B - gigantic rodent of unusual size, blackish, grooming is whiskers in the middle of my floor
Rat C - smaller, perched above my door, having climbed up my towel to get there and now running back and forth in a rather distasteful way
For a moment, as the light hit them, they froze. Then they started scurrying around (or freaking out and being stuck in the case of the one above me in the net). Which then continued all night long.
At one point I had to use my feet and pillow to get the one above my bed off. That was the moment where I suddenly saw the appeal of having someone around where you can go "ewwwww, RAT" and they'll come take care of it for you. No spending your whole night sweating, swatting mosquitoes alone, in the dark, with only the dim light from your headlamp and a pillow to protect you from the marauding army of bloodthirsty plague carrying beasts.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Roxanne - the aid worker edition
Sorry, one more rant, then I'm done for the day:
Prostitution is gross. Prostitution with underage girls is really gross. Prostitution with underage girls who are victims of wars or genocide or extreme poverty is both gross and exploitative and just plain yicky. Nobody wants to see that. Seriously. And I KNOW everyone talks about how it is economically successful for the girls and they would rather do it than starve and blah blah blah and I agree. Most of these girls are super excited to get a foreigner as a client who can treat them better and pay them more, inshallah. And I'm not even sure I agree with the rule many of our organizations have that any person who goes to a prostitute will be fired automatically.
But you know what? Still gross.
Please can we all remember that?
Thanks.
Prostitution is gross. Prostitution with underage girls is really gross. Prostitution with underage girls who are victims of wars or genocide or extreme poverty is both gross and exploitative and just plain yicky. Nobody wants to see that. Seriously. And I KNOW everyone talks about how it is economically successful for the girls and they would rather do it than starve and blah blah blah and I agree. Most of these girls are super excited to get a foreigner as a client who can treat them better and pay them more, inshallah. And I'm not even sure I agree with the rule many of our organizations have that any person who goes to a prostitute will be fired automatically.
But you know what? Still gross.
Please can we all remember that?
Thanks.
Like being in the durn grotto
You know what should never happen? Meetings about HIV treatment and prevention while you are wearing a swim suit. THAT, my friends, is what should never happen.
The US compound here opens up their pool and gym from 2-6 pm on Sundays to let us riff raff in, which is awesome and I love them truly madly and deeply for it. But you find yourself in the oddest position of standing there in your saggiest, most faded, most de-elasticized manky excuse for a swimsuit trying to look professional while the guy who represents your donor, who, I might add, is ill-advisedly wearing those kinda boxer-brief swim trunks Daniel Craig wore in the James Bond movie, asks you about progress towards your indicator of reaching chronically ill in the rural areas.
And by you, of course, I mean me.
Seriously, WHY can there be NO separation of church and state here? We do NOT talk about work when we are wearing spandex. That should just be the rule.
Or are swimsuits made of lycra? Anyway! You know what I mean. People in Juba need new conversation topics.
The US compound here opens up their pool and gym from 2-6 pm on Sundays to let us riff raff in, which is awesome and I love them truly madly and deeply for it. But you find yourself in the oddest position of standing there in your saggiest, most faded, most de-elasticized manky excuse for a swimsuit trying to look professional while the guy who represents your donor, who, I might add, is ill-advisedly wearing those kinda boxer-brief swim trunks Daniel Craig wore in the James Bond movie, asks you about progress towards your indicator of reaching chronically ill in the rural areas.
And by you, of course, I mean me.
Seriously, WHY can there be NO separation of church and state here? We do NOT talk about work when we are wearing spandex. That should just be the rule.
Or are swimsuits made of lycra? Anyway! You know what I mean. People in Juba need new conversation topics.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Lost
Just had the most RANDOM memory. Last year, when I was Darfur, we were doing a team meeting when one of my community mobilizers, a wonderful teeny tiny little woman, just collapsed in to, I kid you not, a coma. We had been joking 10 minutes before, and then, all of a sudden, she's out.
Chaos ensued, needless to say, we hefted her in to the back of a Land Cruiser and rushed down to the hospital.
Checking her in was a process in and of itself, which we won't go in to. But, the rest of the day was spent reading policy documents sitting on a plastic covered mattress next to her and trying to convince nurses to take her blood pressure.
Whilst I was sitting there, there was a huge commotion outside. An unconcious woman was brought in, siezing, while a group of older woman followed behind screaming, shaking their arms at her. Immediately, the doctors shoved rubber tubing down her throat, which woke her up a bit, I'd say, and shot a charcoal solution down the tube causing her to, of course, throw up suddenly and everywhere (a theme this evening).
The story, apparently was that this young girl who was, I'd guess, no more than 15 or so, had been recently married and, one would assume, it wasn't working out too well for her. So she'd swallowed an entire bottle of cleaning fluid.
Her mother-in-law had brought her in, along with a selection of aunts and cousins and such, but they weren't exactly crying tears of remorse. More like throwing fits of rage.
By the end of the day, the poor girl was awake. Seriously, never have I seen such an unhappy person in my life. She lay there, on the hot, sticky plastic mattress, on her side, curled up in the fetal position, staring blankly in the middle distance while five different women screamed at her in different volume and tone levels.
God knows what it was like before and god really knows what it is like now.
Chaos ensued, needless to say, we hefted her in to the back of a Land Cruiser and rushed down to the hospital.
Checking her in was a process in and of itself, which we won't go in to. But, the rest of the day was spent reading policy documents sitting on a plastic covered mattress next to her and trying to convince nurses to take her blood pressure.
Whilst I was sitting there, there was a huge commotion outside. An unconcious woman was brought in, siezing, while a group of older woman followed behind screaming, shaking their arms at her. Immediately, the doctors shoved rubber tubing down her throat, which woke her up a bit, I'd say, and shot a charcoal solution down the tube causing her to, of course, throw up suddenly and everywhere (a theme this evening).
The story, apparently was that this young girl who was, I'd guess, no more than 15 or so, had been recently married and, one would assume, it wasn't working out too well for her. So she'd swallowed an entire bottle of cleaning fluid.
Her mother-in-law had brought her in, along with a selection of aunts and cousins and such, but they weren't exactly crying tears of remorse. More like throwing fits of rage.
By the end of the day, the poor girl was awake. Seriously, never have I seen such an unhappy person in my life. She lay there, on the hot, sticky plastic mattress, on her side, curled up in the fetal position, staring blankly in the middle distance while five different women screamed at her in different volume and tone levels.
God knows what it was like before and god really knows what it is like now.
Digestive pyrotechnics - with tusks
I'm back in Juba after a very VERY early flight and feeling very very tired. So, ya know, I'm lying in bed, watching the great love of my life, Hugh Laurie, on the DVD (by the way, I TOTALLY want to be the parents from Fortysomething) and start hearing the most terrifying coming from outside my room.
I, who am rarely at a loss for words, can not think of a single way to describe it. Imagine the sound a a walrus coughing up a lung, a liver and part of the small bowel all whilst trying to sing amateur opera. And, perhaps, someone is stabbing him at the same time.
Oddly, this cacophony didn't distract me at first. I mean, yeah, in the back of my mind I was vaguely aware that someone was murdering an operatic, ill walrus in the compound, but this didn't really register as someone that needed to be investigated.
Finally, I realised it was rather unlikely that arctic aquatic mammals were being slaughtered in my tropical courtyard, so I plopped on some flip flops and went outside. Our house is surrounded by a sort of low grass fence and just on the other side there was an extremely thin, deeply ill man throwing up everything he's eaten. Ever. Since the beginning of time. In a truly spectacular manner.
I'm not too sure what his affliction is and I feel abso-freakin-lutely awful for him. Not to mention he's going to be doing it all night. How restful.
I, who am rarely at a loss for words, can not think of a single way to describe it. Imagine the sound a a walrus coughing up a lung, a liver and part of the small bowel all whilst trying to sing amateur opera. And, perhaps, someone is stabbing him at the same time.
Oddly, this cacophony didn't distract me at first. I mean, yeah, in the back of my mind I was vaguely aware that someone was murdering an operatic, ill walrus in the compound, but this didn't really register as someone that needed to be investigated.
Finally, I realised it was rather unlikely that arctic aquatic mammals were being slaughtered in my tropical courtyard, so I plopped on some flip flops and went outside. Our house is surrounded by a sort of low grass fence and just on the other side there was an extremely thin, deeply ill man throwing up everything he's eaten. Ever. Since the beginning of time. In a truly spectacular manner.
I'm not too sure what his affliction is and I feel abso-freakin-lutely awful for him. Not to mention he's going to be doing it all night. How restful.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
What things go
There was a session today where refugees who have started their own organizations in their camps gave talks about their lives and the challenges of being a non-traditional provider of care.
One of the men giving a talk was showing things about his life, and all of sudden, up there on a screen, in a power point slide, was a picture of a man standing in the middle of the forest with two small children, next to two mounds covered in wild flowers. "When I was a young man, all I wanted was to have a wonderful wife and beautiful children. Life doesn't turn out the way we think. This is a picture of when I buried my wonderful wife and my beautiful daughter. My wife was raped by soldiers and she didn't want to worry me so she didn't tell me and she didn't get care and she was given HIV. My daughter was born with it too and they both died when we were fleeing the war."
It was such a stark, horrible thing to just have said like that. Just out there. People do go through some absolutely wretched things.
One of the men giving a talk was showing things about his life, and all of sudden, up there on a screen, in a power point slide, was a picture of a man standing in the middle of the forest with two small children, next to two mounds covered in wild flowers. "When I was a young man, all I wanted was to have a wonderful wife and beautiful children. Life doesn't turn out the way we think. This is a picture of when I buried my wonderful wife and my beautiful daughter. My wife was raped by soldiers and she didn't want to worry me so she didn't tell me and she didn't get care and she was given HIV. My daughter was born with it too and they both died when we were fleeing the war."
It was such a stark, horrible thing to just have said like that. Just out there. People do go through some absolutely wretched things.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
I'm a Carrie
One thing I forgot. On my night off on Friday I went to see Sex and the City at the movie theater in Kampala. A Real Movie Theater. In Kampala.
For two hours, sitting in that theater, eating my popcorn, laughing at the dirty jokes, I totally forgot where I was.
Then I walked out and had to engage in full contact negotiations with the wretched little boda boda drivers which reminded me exactly where I was. Not too often in DC or London I have to cling to the back of an insanely driven dirt bike to get home.
For two hours, sitting in that theater, eating my popcorn, laughing at the dirty jokes, I totally forgot where I was.
Then I walked out and had to engage in full contact negotiations with the wretched little boda boda drivers which reminded me exactly where I was. Not too often in DC or London I have to cling to the back of an insanely driven dirt bike to get home.
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