Airlines that are based out of the States are SO FREAKIN' BAD. At least Northwest and Delta, which are the two I've flown into the States in the past few years, are. The seats are small, the in-flight entertainment is awful, the flight attendants are rude, mono-lingual and inattentive.
It is kind of embarrassing when you're on KLM from Kampala and everything is lovely: the food, the free booze, the in seat entertainment system with a zillion things to watch, the flight attendants who speak 5 languages a piece, etc. Then you get on Northwest and its all just... bad. Bad bad bad. All that patriotism I was feeling a few weeks ago? Northwest more or less killed it.
Glad to be back in the States, though.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Down to the wire
Ahhhhhhh, lovely Nairobi. Its a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL day, I'm sitting out on the porch of a Java House indulging in eating (I can eat again! I've put on a stupid amount of weight in a very short period of time) getting buffeted by the breeze and wishing, as I often do, I lived here.
I faced a real crisis yesterday. We've decided, on the basis of my assessment and some serious information spinning on my part with a UN agency, to do an immediate emergency intervention in Matanda, the transit center. It will start next week and go on for five weeks and be brutal and intense and extremely necessary.
When I was on the conference call with HQ pitching it, the country director and I both agreed that an expat would be required, the culture of emergencies is such that a national staff would not be listened to as much. But who would give up their Christmas to work 20 hour days 7 days a week in the middle of nowhere? I could feel the people on the other end of the phone willing me to say "I'll do it" and agree to come back on Thursday, after my Boston conference. I could practically see the words on the tip of the country director's tongue.
It would be an amazing experience. And so good for my career. And the sort of thing I really love, so much more than the dull meeting-filled existence of post-conflict world. But I have committed to my family I'll come back for the holidays. For the first time in quite awhile.
So I stayed quiet. I'm going to make a decision for once that is less about what I want than promises I've made. But MAN it would've been cool.
I faced a real crisis yesterday. We've decided, on the basis of my assessment and some serious information spinning on my part with a UN agency, to do an immediate emergency intervention in Matanda, the transit center. It will start next week and go on for five weeks and be brutal and intense and extremely necessary.
When I was on the conference call with HQ pitching it, the country director and I both agreed that an expat would be required, the culture of emergencies is such that a national staff would not be listened to as much. But who would give up their Christmas to work 20 hour days 7 days a week in the middle of nowhere? I could feel the people on the other end of the phone willing me to say "I'll do it" and agree to come back on Thursday, after my Boston conference. I could practically see the words on the tip of the country director's tongue.
It would be an amazing experience. And so good for my career. And the sort of thing I really love, so much more than the dull meeting-filled existence of post-conflict world. But I have committed to my family I'll come back for the holidays. For the first time in quite awhile.
So I stayed quiet. I'm going to make a decision for once that is less about what I want than promises I've made. But MAN it would've been cool.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Death by getting squished
My car flipped today. The driver was going too fast and, most likely, drunk. So when he took a hard corner the car flipped right over. He was thrown from the door and hasn't got a scratch on him. We were out talking to people and came back around the corner to find the smoking wreckage. Took ages to get UNHCR to come and flip it back for us, then figure out how we were going to get back (a tiny sedan), then actually GET back.
My strange lucky but unlucky karma strikes again.
Death by falling jerry can tower
I went up to the transit center for all the very newly arrived refugees today – 7,900+ people in a green fields site that didn’t exist one week ago. I’d never been to a brand new site before, my previous knowledge of influxes has always been into sites that were well established.
Well, wow, chaos.
The organizations there are doing as good a job as they can, really, and things were relatively organized. But just imagine, we’re driving down a road, village village village, jungle jungle jungle, I’m looking off to the left at some kids when the car stops suddenly and I turn to my right and oh-sweet-jesus. A huge, newly cut field is there, hemmed in by low hills on all sides and, in the middle, white tarp huts as far as the eye can see. Out of nowhere.
We pulled in to the middle of it and park next to a two story high pile of yellow plastic jerry cans, the jugs refugees use to hold water. Around that are huge piles of wood, stacks and stacks of rice and beans and, everywhere, women in kangas waiting in lines. Lines as far as the eye can see. Lines everywhere. People are waiting in lines and they aren’t even sure what for. On the outskirts Save the Children has set up some sports fields for children to play and they’re kicking balls, occasionally shanking one into the queues of women.
We get directed to a big tree under which sits the government representatives, who very kindly give us a briefing and give us permission to be in the settlement. Then we go out and start talking to the refugees.
Every time my team and I stopped somewhere we’d be mobbed by people. All desperate to have someone listen to them. We told them over and over we couldn’t so anything for them, but they didn’t really seem to care. They just wanted to share.
“The rebels came and my family and I scattered, I went back and my children were gone, then the rebels came again. I had to run, now I don’t know where they are.”
“We haven’t received food in a week and don’t have a shelter, my children and I are sleeping outside and it keeps raining” (It was raining and blowing a bitter wind at this point)
“My wife and children got taken somewhere else, I don’t know where, they got on a different bus. They have all our things, I have no clothes and no money.”
“We’ve been given one plate for me and my seven children, I don’t know how to feed them all.”
On and on and on. We would dutifully write everything down, say we would be sure to report it and then say “you know we can’t do anything about this?”
They would all say yes, but they just wanted someone to listen to them. Sometimes they would clap for us, just for writing it down.
Well, wow, chaos.
The organizations there are doing as good a job as they can, really, and things were relatively organized. But just imagine, we’re driving down a road, village village village, jungle jungle jungle, I’m looking off to the left at some kids when the car stops suddenly and I turn to my right and oh-sweet-jesus. A huge, newly cut field is there, hemmed in by low hills on all sides and, in the middle, white tarp huts as far as the eye can see. Out of nowhere.
We pulled in to the middle of it and park next to a two story high pile of yellow plastic jerry cans, the jugs refugees use to hold water. Around that are huge piles of wood, stacks and stacks of rice and beans and, everywhere, women in kangas waiting in lines. Lines as far as the eye can see. Lines everywhere. People are waiting in lines and they aren’t even sure what for. On the outskirts Save the Children has set up some sports fields for children to play and they’re kicking balls, occasionally shanking one into the queues of women.
We get directed to a big tree under which sits the government representatives, who very kindly give us a briefing and give us permission to be in the settlement. Then we go out and start talking to the refugees.
Every time my team and I stopped somewhere we’d be mobbed by people. All desperate to have someone listen to them. We told them over and over we couldn’t so anything for them, but they didn’t really seem to care. They just wanted to share.
“The rebels came and my family and I scattered, I went back and my children were gone, then the rebels came again. I had to run, now I don’t know where they are.”
“We haven’t received food in a week and don’t have a shelter, my children and I are sleeping outside and it keeps raining” (It was raining and blowing a bitter wind at this point)
“My wife and children got taken somewhere else, I don’t know where, they got on a different bus. They have all our things, I have no clothes and no money.”
“We’ve been given one plate for me and my seven children, I don’t know how to feed them all.”
On and on and on. We would dutifully write everything down, say we would be sure to report it and then say “you know we can’t do anything about this?”
They would all say yes, but they just wanted someone to listen to them. Sometimes they would clap for us, just for writing it down.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Death by bucket
There is no dignity in being a patient during a cholera epidemic. The place I’m at right now, where 10,000 Congolese have rocked up in, essentially, the past two weeks, is having (or, possibly, is ending) a cholera epidemic. As most of you know (I think, do normal people have intimate knowledge about cholera?), when you’re sick with this particularly yicky disease you lose all control of bowels and have gross, dehydrating, eventually killing diarrhea.
The standard protocol for dealing with this?
Rows and rows and rows of beds with holes and buckets and rows and rows and rows of naked tushies hanging out of those holes.
It is just… demeaning.
The standard protocol for dealing with this?
Rows and rows and rows of beds with holes and buckets and rows and rows and rows of naked tushies hanging out of those holes.
It is just… demeaning.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Wander in the woods
In an unexpected turn of events, I'm off to Uganda tomorrow. As you've all read here, if not in the news, there's trouble in Congo and, as a result of this trouble, people are moving across the border into Uganda. My organization would like to see if there is anything we can do to assist the refugees, so guess who gets to on a week long road trip talkin to people and seeing what the needs are and generally going wey hey!
Should be fun (and yes, I realise it is sick for me to say that I think seeing people's who whole's lives have been destroyed is fun), I'll keep everyone posted.
Should be fun (and yes, I realise it is sick for me to say that I think seeing people's who whole's lives have been destroyed is fun), I'll keep everyone posted.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The blank stare always wins
Illegal checkpoints have become a bit of a problem here in Juba lately. They are run by a combination of army, police and random guys with sticks and are usually shakedown operations where they'll charge you indeterminate amounts of money for violating a non-existent curfew.
Last night I was chauffeuring, as per usual, and was heading back to my house at about midnight, a perfectly acceptable time to be on the road WELL before the UN-recommended bed time of 1.00 am. I'm cruisin' along the airport road, listening to my music, when I round the corner and see a wall of lights and men with guns and sticks.
Damn.
Not being my first checkpoint, I immediately slowed down, dimmed my lights, turned on the inside dome light, turned off the music and put my hands on the steering wheel with my ID in one hand facing out at them. The come up, smacking the car with their canes and generally trying to be scary.
"Get out, get out." I get out. Proceed with waving the canes in my face. "Why are you out? It's past curfew." "There is no curfew" "Where do you live." "Hai Tomping" "Why are you out so late?" "I am going home." "Why are you violating the curfew, you must pay." "There is no curfew." etc etc etc.
This went on for a good bit, with me just holding my ID out in front of me and saying there is no curfew and him hollering and waving his stick around and getting more agitated that i wasn't going for my wallet.
See, what I knew was that, unlike the poor Sudanese guys standing over on the curb looking miserable, I am a well dressed, respectable, non-drunk white girl with all documentation in order and a blank stare. I might as well have been wearing kevlar for all they could do to me.
I finally was shoved in my car in disgust and they all started banging on my car with their canes as I drove away.
Last night I was chauffeuring, as per usual, and was heading back to my house at about midnight, a perfectly acceptable time to be on the road WELL before the UN-recommended bed time of 1.00 am. I'm cruisin' along the airport road, listening to my music, when I round the corner and see a wall of lights and men with guns and sticks.
Damn.
Not being my first checkpoint, I immediately slowed down, dimmed my lights, turned on the inside dome light, turned off the music and put my hands on the steering wheel with my ID in one hand facing out at them. The come up, smacking the car with their canes and generally trying to be scary.
"Get out, get out." I get out. Proceed with waving the canes in my face. "Why are you out? It's past curfew." "There is no curfew" "Where do you live." "Hai Tomping" "Why are you out so late?" "I am going home." "Why are you violating the curfew, you must pay." "There is no curfew." etc etc etc.
This went on for a good bit, with me just holding my ID out in front of me and saying there is no curfew and him hollering and waving his stick around and getting more agitated that i wasn't going for my wallet.
See, what I knew was that, unlike the poor Sudanese guys standing over on the curb looking miserable, I am a well dressed, respectable, non-drunk white girl with all documentation in order and a blank stare. I might as well have been wearing kevlar for all they could do to me.
I finally was shoved in my car in disgust and they all started banging on my car with their canes as I drove away.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Americana and Stan
I can not even tell you how ill, yet happy, I feel right now.
As I believe you all know, Stan, my friendly stomach something or another, was with me for the past few months, cutting me down to about half a meal a day, stripping me of around 30-35 pounds, and, apparently shrinking my stomach to the size of Posh Spice's.
Knowing all this, once my American friend and I decided we were going to go to one of the many Thanksgiving dinners being provided by different camps around town, I was determined to do it proud. I would gorge myself, no matter what.
Oh. My. God. I sat by the Nile, staring at my plate with the kind of determination usually reserved for hostage rescue missions and ate two pieces of turkey, a mound of stuffing the size of my head, green bean casserole and... wait for it... pumpkin pie.
I immediately, of course, thought I was going to die and spent most of the night writhing around in my bed groaning, but still, TOTALLY ROCKED.
As I believe you all know, Stan, my friendly stomach something or another, was with me for the past few months, cutting me down to about half a meal a day, stripping me of around 30-35 pounds, and, apparently shrinking my stomach to the size of Posh Spice's.
Knowing all this, once my American friend and I decided we were going to go to one of the many Thanksgiving dinners being provided by different camps around town, I was determined to do it proud. I would gorge myself, no matter what.
Oh. My. God. I sat by the Nile, staring at my plate with the kind of determination usually reserved for hostage rescue missions and ate two pieces of turkey, a mound of stuffing the size of my head, green bean casserole and... wait for it... pumpkin pie.
I immediately, of course, thought I was going to die and spent most of the night writhing around in my bed groaning, but still, TOTALLY ROCKED.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Chronology of Sudan time
I attend a lot of meetings. It doesn’t sound quite a glamorous as I save small children with my bare hands in war-torn villages, but, well, it’s the reality of the job. To put even more of a spin on this, I attend a lot of meetings in
Such as the one I am in right now. It was supposed to start at 8.30 am. I asked the organizers if that was a real 8.30 or a
Its 10.00 right now, the organizers haven’t even appeared yet, I’m being ostracized as the only non-Sudanese in the room and making very good progress on getting through the e-mails in my inbox.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Lager lout
I'm back in Juba, wildly busy and insanely bitter and depressed about being here, so I'm going to tell an anecdote from London until I get off my little stroppy horse.
I'm sitting in a pub garden with one of my best friends, her boyfriend and all of his mates, who have all just spent the day at the rugby and are hence very... what's the word I want... ebullient. We were sitting out back, telling inappropriate jokes, mocking each other mercilessly and, quite regularly, when someone said a word that made them think of a song lyric, they would all burst into loud, off key and absolutely hysterical singing. There is something about being in a cold but cozy pub garden at 10.30 at night surrounded by four lads in Rugby jerseys laughing and singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs which is just priceless.
It was the first unabashedly happy moment I've had in, probably, eight or nine months.
I'm sitting in a pub garden with one of my best friends, her boyfriend and all of his mates, who have all just spent the day at the rugby and are hence very... what's the word I want... ebullient. We were sitting out back, telling inappropriate jokes, mocking each other mercilessly and, quite regularly, when someone said a word that made them think of a song lyric, they would all burst into loud, off key and absolutely hysterical singing. There is something about being in a cold but cozy pub garden at 10.30 at night surrounded by four lads in Rugby jerseys laughing and singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs which is just priceless.
It was the first unabashedly happy moment I've had in, probably, eight or nine months.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
