Rainmakers & Kalashnikovs

"Do you have rainmakers in Italy?" ... You all know the answer to that one, so I won't repeat the one I gave, but what you probably don't know is that here in Sudan "sometimes they are liars.. they are just pretending". So if you are ever looking for a rainmaker, watch out! Gotta do some serious research... wouldn't want to get yourself one of them fake ones.
Even if you were sitting right next to me now I would have to be writing to communicate with you because unless I yelled, you wouldn't be able to hear me. The rain is coming down so hard on the iron sheets right above my head that the noise dominates the sound waves like when you are standing next to the Iguazu waterfalls on the Brazilian side... ok, that is not exactly a mainstream analogy, but if you ever make the trip, close your eyes and think of rain falling on iron sheets in Sudan. But seriously, it sounds like there are two guys up in the sky fighting over the faucet. For a while just now it looked like the anti-rain guy, who was turning it closed, got the better of the rain-lover; but no, looks like the rain God's protege came back with a vengeance and opened it all the way. Maybe the dry season comes when they break the faucet altogether and they need to call the plumber. Must be a Sudanese plumber because it takes him more than 6 months to get the job done. Reminds me of the only electrician around these parts. We were looking for him the other day, only to find out that he was in jail. Sounds like one of the other NGOs, Concern, might go try to bail him out... they really need him to work on their vehicle. Who knows how long that will take, but you know what shocks me about the fact that everyone is always late around here? The fact that even if it's 4:25 people say "it's almost 5". I mean, it's always "almost" such and such an hour, which would make you think that people are looking ahead, and would therefore not be late as much. I don't get it. Then again, when people come on time I don't understand how they do it considering they don't show up wearing a watch. When someone is wearing a watch you can't miss it though, because usually the watch is digital and somehow the alarm always goes off. What do you expect to happen if someone's watch alarm goes off? They turn it off, right? Well, not here. In Sudan it just keeps ringing the whole minute, full blast, and you look around and nobody even turns to look, as if nobody even heard it. My guess was that nobody knows how to turn it off, but I like David's explanation better: they want to keep it on to show people they have a watch.
Yesterday I saw rainbow twins. The two half-arches were right next to each other in the sky, very bright, but the order of the colors was reversed: one went ROYGBIV from left to right, the other from right to left. Maybe if I had been a better physics student that wouldn't surprise me, but it did. The beautiful sighting came seconds before we had to retreat indoors, where David and Lasu proceeded to discuss the advantages of the Kalashnikov, which even after getting overheated can be simply thrown into the water to be cooled and will be good to go. You can even shoot underwater! Do the Russians use them to hunt polar bears up there in the Arctic? Must investigate. As for in Sudan, we all know what they were used for, and could still be used for. Remember, it is not over till the fat lady sings, and there aren't many fat ladies around here, so it's no surprise that the headline on one of the Sudan biweekly papers reads: "The next war will affect Sudan's neighbors", "The next war will rock the North" "...a full-scale war". David actually recounted some of the past battles he was a part of, but I'll spare you the details. Let me just say the last story ended with him pointing out a piece of shrapnel, which will forever be embedded in his left forearm.
Once upon a time a man was relieved of his duties as a guard (in other words fired, or "sacked" as we say around here). At the end of the following month he came to his former employer asking to be paid. The exact conversation was not recorded, but this is clear: his former employer explained to him that since he was no longer employed and had not worked for the last month, he would not be paid. The former employee left and returned some hours later with two Kalashnikovs. He threw one in front of his former employer and held the other one over his shoulder saying, "I don't shoot an unarmed man...let's go outside". What year did this happen? 2007, you bet. You'll be happy to know that the employer was a project manager at one of the other IRC sites in Southern Sudan. I'll tell you one thing, I'm happy I'm getting out of here before anyone needs to be fired.
Trying to do all I can before I leave though. I got to play dominos at the local market today, where I found out that the team who let us play in their stead were nice enough to waste a donkey on me and my teammate (four people play dominos in teams of two). Turns out that the men from the two sides of the "road" play each other every day at this market, and they begin the day by deciding on a number of "donkeys" they will play till. I guess as a means to ensure they will not play all night. These "donkeys" are really just another name for "games", so since we lost a game, I can say that I made them lose a donkey. Sounds better than "we made them lose a game". Tomorrow we're gonna try to play soccer with the young guys from Darfur who live at the IDP (internally displaced persons) camp near our compound. I only have 2 days left here in Kauda!
I was hoping I could make it through my last week without getting sick, but... although the headache that was bothering me the other night turned out to be only as a result of too much "DOOM" being sprayed in my room, or so I have concluded, today I made a very unpleasant discovery. The water in the pot that I have been drinking from, is also home to a tribe of worms. Sounds like I'll be taking home some souvenirs in my stomach! Can't wait for one of those funny patriotic immigration officers to ask me "nothing to declare?"

A stupid month & Mother Tongue Interference

“This is a stupid man” was David’s comment after the man moved away from our vehicle. God, what must he have said? I thought I had caught a little of the conversation in Arabic as he spoke to us through the vehicle’s half-opened window, but I guess I was wrong. I asked David why. I had never heard David insult anyone before; this must have been pretty bad. “Everyone gets sick,” he replied, “August, this is a stupid month”. I smiled realizing the misunderstanding.
I had heard that August was “famine month” because the crops were not ready and the rains made “getting to market” especially difficult. The dead goats we spotted on the side of the road in the morning only reemphasized this. Could the lack of food and the bad health be related? One of our cooks has malaria, probably something she caught from a mosquito coming from her daughter who had malaria before her. Our water carrier has yellow fever. A guy who shares our office has been bed-ridden for the past 4 days, probably with malaria, while everyone else, including myself, complains of headaches and stomach problems. This is a stupid month.
“Mother tongue interference,” what a brilliant expression! I will never say, “that person has an accent” ever again. From now on it’s only “that person has mother tongue interference”; and I can just use either “strong”, “noticeable”, or “slight” to describe the level of “mother tongue interference”. I suggest you do the same, although describing a specific type of mother tongue interference might become tricky, or simply ridiculous. For example, if you were to say, “Have you ever heard Sarkozy speak English? He has a really strong French mother tongue interference”… you might not find it so convenient, while trying to shorten it to simply “French interference” might get you in trouble. I suspect that in true DC fashion, if adopted, it will simply assume the form of MTI.
Speaking of acronyms, UNMIS is a great one around here. It stands for United Nations Mission in Sudan, and is pronounced “yunimis”. Their mission is not to prevent another war, that’s too hard… they just want to be ready for it. So last night, once it was dark, they were getting ready for an eventual evacuation and having one of their new helicopter pilots fly in and out of our airstrip. Some say it was to see if he could find it at night, but considering the fact that he was taking off from it, it would take an idiot not to be able to find it, especially with the beastly spotlight shining from the front of the chopper. I think at one point he might have even made it over the hills to the west of the airstrip and was still able to find the airstrip. They really chose the right guy for the job! Can’t wait for an evacuation during a normal evening with winds like the ones that make roofs collapse and lightning like the one that struck and burned homes the other night. One thing’s for sure, under normal conditions our new chopper pilot definitely wouldn’t be rescuing us since our compound is on the other side of river, which would probably be full and impassable, and anyway, how would they contact us to warn us? All these thoughts came to me last night as I heard the helicopter come in for it’s 4th or 5th test-landing… but suddenly I heard a familiar sound.
Every night after I turn off my computer I hear a sound similar to that of a nail scratching at my bag. The first night it was a mystery, what could it be? A frog like the one that slept in one of the other rooms? No, frogs make different sounds. A snake maybe, like the one we spotted in a tree and proceeded to kill yesterday? Perhaps. A mouse, even more likely, especially considering the baby mouse I’d seen outside my room last week. But there isn’t any food around, what would it be doing? Did I leave crumbs of something in my bag? I tried to spot the creature by shining my computer on it from my bed, but it was only last night that I finally spotted my friend the lizard, not the usual gecko, crawling on my bag. What was it after? Of course, my ant cemetery! By killing ants I was attracting this lizard, who has proven to be a superb cleaning service, leaving my room’s floor spic and span by the time I reach out to grab my alarm in the morning.

Empowering Vulnerable Groups

What is a day in Kauda like? I wake up at 7-7:30 to the sound of the little square alarm clock I bought from an Indian in Nairobi. I switch it off after untucking my mosquito net from the side of the bed, usually to find that at least one of the corners of the net has come untucked... probably the reason for the early-morning itching. I proceed to untuck the entire net and tie it in a knot above the center of my bed. Time to open one of the two windows. One of them I keep open all night to let the air in, while the other I have to close because the netting that was originally put there to deny bugs access, is now big enough for a bird to fly through, or better still, a bat. Throw on my morning shirt, and head out the door with my Hawaianas flip flops; in one hand the solar lamp, in the other the solar panel, which I place on the ground outside my room facing East, with the lamp serving as the stand. I then grab two sets of keys: one to open the "office" for the cleaner who is already here by 7:30, and the other to open the "store" where we keep the foodstuffs, so that the cooks can prepare breakfast. That storage room is also where the batteries for the solar lamps are kept... that early in the morning all blinking lights are red. We'll have to wait until at least past 8 to get a flashing green light on one of the indicators. Back to my room to grab my toothbrush and head towards the latrine/shower area where we have a jerry can filled with water, which serves as our faucet. A shower in the morning is optional. I mean, if it's kinda chilly I prefer not to pour kinda chilly water all over my head. We finally got a carpenter to come and fix the door to the shower and latrine, the latter of which you previously had to hold onto to keep closed. A "short call" is what we say around here when we want to say "nature calls", and since toilet paper is no longer sold in the Kauda market (who needs toilet paper when you have soda) the alternative is either to use soda bottles filled with water, or as I taught Lasu, to use old paper, Kyrgyz-style. So now, anytime he is off to the latrine he just grabs a piece of paper from somewhere, raises it up in the air as a sign of victory and all he says is "Kyrgyzstan!" It makes me laugh every time...
It's still not 8 am yet... At this point I change into my "day clothes", grab my laptop, my book, and my camera, and proceed to the office. Everyone is supposed to show up by 8, but of course 8:30 is usually when you see the last person come in, and by then the first people who arrived are already heading out to grab their "morning tea". "Morning tea" for a Sudanese means taking a small mug and filling it with 3 giant heaps-of-a-teaspoon of powdered milk and 3 giant heaps-of-a-teaspoon of sugar and then filling the remaining space with hot water. I prefer 2 barely-teaspoons of sugar, 2 decent-sized teaspoons of powdered milk, and 1 decent-sized teaspoon of Cadbury's chocolate powder. If we're lucky enough we have eggs, but we have to make sure to have them sent from Kenya. There are no eggs to be found in the market here, not because there aren't chickens who lay them, but because, as David told me, "who would buy them?"
So by 9 or 9:30 everyone is back in office for work. By now we are lucky to have had some sunlight and might have enough power for internet. Some days we have trainings, so people come to us and we spend the day with them training them in finance, leadership, organizational development, gender & vulnerability, or whatever the flavor of the month is. Some days we go to visit partners, to see how they are doing on their projects, to pass info to them, or to discuss a certain issue. Sometimes they come to us for the same reasons. The best part about the job is the interaction with the partners and seeing their progress. But now that our vehicle is grounded (I think I forgot to mention that during our "full war" the vehicle's reverse gear got messed up as we tried getting the Land Cruiser out of the mud), we are borrowing NDI's vehicle and their deaf driver that comes with it. Yes, deaf. We need to empower vulnerable groups I guess... at least he's not blind. He's generally ok, except for the times when he drops us off, we close the doors, and we yell after him to stop because we forgot something in the vehicle... but he just keeps going.
Work is over by 5, the power is also gone by then, so then what? Sometimes we walk to the airstrip with radio in hand, listening to music, or more frequently, the news in either French, English, German, Russian, or Arabic. On a couple occasions we headed over in the opposite direction to watch some wrestling. Usually, though, we go to town to play volleyball or dominos, walk around the market, or just sit around and watch people, and OF COURSE, ALWAYS, drink soda. At this time in the afternoon among the passer-byers you see military guys with a flashlight in one hand and a nice black stick in the other, meant for hitting dogs or any other creature they might encounter as they walk at night. Lasu and I are the only 2 people on the compound nowadays, so after the deaf driver has driven us to town, I drive us back. One of these days I personally started a new "road", which has now become the "main road". I guess that's as good as the World Bank building roads...gotta find a place for that on my resume.
Back home usually by dark (7:30) and time to take out the solar lamp. Sometimes we are lucky, like tonight, and still have a little power left so we can conserve the solar lamp. When we have "a little power" that means the light blinks every 10 seconds or so. Try it now; blink every 10 seconds; you'll see what it's like. See, after a while you don't even realize you're blinking. Dinner by blinking-light usually includes bread or Ethiopian-like bread (called kisra) or if we're lucky chapati. Rice is almost always included, and sometimes beans, peas, or lentils. Finally there is some kind of meat, either the chicken we were running after this morning to kill, or goat or cow meat, usually in a stew-like form so that we have some "sauce" for the rice. Silverware is not included, but water to wash your hands is always available, along with soap, which is replaced by detergent at the food joints at the market.
At this time over the Eastern hills a battle breaks out... or at least I thought it was a battle the first nights I was here. The lightning does not look like lightning, but like blasts of light, like a bomb going off, while the thunder only confirms one's suspicion. (Don't ask me where I learned about war-zone light effects). A wind starts blowing and it's time for me and Lasu to run to our rooms and hide... A quick shower with a flashlight lighting the shower room, and I'm back in my room tucking in my mosquito net under the mattress. Before going to take my shower I usually spray the room with DOOM, to kill any bugs that might be around, but the name of the product doesn't scare them all off. An ant colony has established its base in a hole in the floor of my room, so I usually have to make an ant cemetery out of them before going to bed. I usually try to read between 9 and 11 using the screen of my laptop for lighting, since the solar lamp is too bright and attracts lots of mini-bugs that can fit through the mosquito net. At this point just waiting for malaria symptoms since they're sure to come before any shipment of insect repellent.

Guests of honor drink soda

"The guest of honor has not arrived [notice the label on the empty chair] so we cannot begin. Welcome, feel at ease, feel at home, feel KTTC". KTTC is the Kauda Teachers Training Center and I'm not sure they really wanted us to "feel" the training center, but I definitely wasn't feeling it. At that point we had been waiting 40 minutes for the graduation ceremony to begin. The organizers proceeded to hand out sodas and pass around plates filled with dates and cavity-balls (I can't really refer to them as candy). Soda, by the way, is to Sudanese as coffee is to Americans. If you have money for it, you will buy it. It doesn't matter if it's 9 am or 9 pm, "every hour is a soda hour". If you ask me, Coca Cola and Pepsi don't even need to have ad campaigns in Sudan. Much like Starbucks in the US. I don't watch much TV, but I don't ever remember seeing a Starbucks commercial. Anyway, as I sat there and planned my next trip to the dentist the time passed, and 20 minutes later, at 12 o'clock on the dot, the next announcement came: "we have received news that the guest of honor is waiting for the minister of education who will be arriving at 1". "I'm out of here" I thought. The ceremony was supposed to begin at 9, but we had expected delays, so we arrived at 11, only to find that the guest of honor was not coming till 1! And that's a Sudanese 1, which really means 2 or 3. I'm sure some of those South Asian UN police guys (don't ask me why, but they are all from South Asia: Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan) got there at 9 and waited for hours with nothing better to do. Yes, it's true that another war will probably break out around here, but having the funny UN police here is not going to change anything. At this point you might be asking yourself what this talk of war is all about. I won't bore/confuse you with the situation, but let me just quote (unedited) a couple people to give you a sense of what I mean:
"How can we emancipate from slavery; since childhood we have never seen freedom" (yes, this is a direct quote!)
"We take the guns, we Nubians are not cowards!"
I think you get the idea: people are not happy with what they see as discrimination by the Government in Khartoum and are ready to pick up their arms again!
So in case you were wondering, no, 21 years of war doesn't make people tired of war. If you don't get what you fought for you'll fight again until you get it.
As for me, I'm just fighting mosquitos. Life goes on: geckos in my bed, snakes in the "office", mice & bats in the eating area, and work to keep me busy. What work? Well, I've been serving as "acting Project Manager" since the new guy has yet to come. The story with this is quite classic. Apparently he's a Ugandan, but since IRC will only hire national staff, he needs to get himself a Sudanese ID card. How do you get one? Well, all you need to do is find someone with your same last three names (in other words, same father, grandfather and great-grandfather name). That's not as hard as you might think since there is not that much variation in names around here. All first-born (more or less) are given the name Kuku if a boy, while if it's a girl, Kaka. The second born son also has a special name, Kodi. So, having easily found someone with your same 3 names you talk to him and convince him (I'm not sure if you convince with a monetary reward) to serve as your witness. He will testify that you are in fact Sudanese. Now you probably don't have a birth certificate--or you say you don't have one since that's very likely--and you go to a doctor for a age authentication. The doctor writes a note that says you were in fact born on whatever date you choose to make up, in whatever place you choose to make up, and then the doctor also serves as your 2nd witness so that the authorities can process your "documents". The word on the street is that this process takes a while and that's why the new Project Manager isn't here yet. My guess is that when the system was invented they weren't thinking about people trying to pretend they were Sudanese because who in the world would go through all that trouble to become Sudanese? If you think about the system, given the fact that little official documentation is required, you could completely change your identity and make up a name (like my new names, which include Johnson, Jona, Jackson, and "Italian Wizard") to match your best friend's names and say you are cousins. It all depends on how badly you want to become Sudanese. All I know is that you better like soda.

the peaceful and calm caribbean...

Can't say I've gotten anything stuck lately, but I did cruise around on a dirt bike for the day with a wannabe professional motorcycle rider. When I asked for a helmet, they just laughed and shook their heads. That is about as exciting as it gets. I think I have examined maybe 50 pig projects since I have gotten here now. The latest email is below...


Thursday I returned from 2.5 days in the field. It was a very refreshing trip compared to the trip I took the week before, both literally and metaphorically. Last week, I was visiting an NGO that works with an afro-Antillean population called the Garifuna that lives along the North coast of Honduras and a couple of stray communities in Guatemala and Belize. This ethnic group has a very interesting history as it is composed of escaped slaves, Venezuelan indigenous, and some Carribbean indigenous. For its first hundred years, they lived on some Carribbean Island, but then were forced to the Honduran coast in the late 18th century. Google "Garifuna" and I am sure you can find a better description. Anyways, the main point though is that they are "poor", losing their unique culture, and Trickle UP with its partner is trying to help them generate other sources of income.

Unfortunately, the NGO on the ground Trickle Up is working through isn't doing such a great job. The NGO is focused on promoting and protecting the territorial and human rights of the Garifuna, so the Trickle Up seed capital project wasn't necessarily their specialty nor receiving much attention or resources. That was obvious when I went to visit. The groups organized to receive the funds hadn't been trained at all, didn't know how much money they were supposed to be receiving, and in one group, more than half didn't show up to the meeting. It is common that members of groups don't show up to meetings, but when they have recently just received cash in hand, it is rare that they don't show from my experience on this trip. 1. They usually want to show their appreciation; and 2. they want to know if there is more cash from where it came from. There is a bit of an organizational culture clash one might say between TUP and the Garifuna NGO; US NGO which is very transparent, time oriented, and procedural versus the laid back and non-transparent culture of the Garifuna run NGO.

The towns we visited are located on an undeveloped swath of beach on the Caribbean which was beautiful. Once the electricity arrives (only 20km away), I give it 5-years before the ex-pats arrive and purchase the majority of the land. The interesting part was that there were some beautiful houses in all of the towns owned by some Garifuna with significant amounts of money, while their next door neighbors lived in dirt floor wooden or adobe shacks waiting to be blown over in the next storm. Of course you have the Wall Street banker passing the bum in the street in NY and have the same disparity in wealth, but not usually living next to each other. I paid $4 for my "room", which wasn't much, but have a bucket shower and its own toilet. I was hoping to eat some great seafood with coco, but was only served fried chicken and bananas. The coconut trees were infected with some virus and recently all died. Thus, they have had to adapt their diet and bring in a new species of coco from the Pacific side of Mexico that is supposedly resistant to the virus. I was able to see how the women process the local variety of cassava or yucca. It takes them two days to do it by hand, which many still do. The result is a disc "bread" made from the processed cassava flour which tastes like the host at church or a very grainy, thin pita.

At the end, a very interesting cultural experience, but organizationally and work wise depressing and not worthwhile. This week's organization though was exceptional and should probably be studied in the US. Central Cultural Hibueras is the name of the organization and they work in the region surrounding the town of Santa Barbara. A beautiful town which I am surprised hasn't been over run by ex-pats yet as it is identical to Boquete in Panama, a town now known world wide as a place to retire. The field trip took us about 2 hours away, up to about 4500 feet and to the base of a large mountain which is a national park. There wasn't electricity, so I was returned to my Peace Corps days of early to bed and early to rise. Coffee in the morning was mixed with direct from the cow milk, which was a treat. Fresh un-pasteurized milk is something that everyone should have at least once in their life.


Back to work though… Central Cultural Hinbueras focused the Trickle Up seed capital in 5 neighboring communities and had dedicated substantial time and resources to training and selecting the recipients. Many recipients had chosen pigs to fatten as that is what they are most familiar with, so I visited probably 15 different sets of pigs. I am now familiar with all of the different breeds of pigs in the area and possible combinations of food to fatten them. Surprisingly, no one names their pigs. I did visit one participant with 6 school aged daughters that all lived in a two room "shack" (in every sense of the word) measuring 10ft by 20ft with one large poster of some beer girl scantily clad that dominated one wall. The participant though had built a small pig pen (about a quarter the size of her "shack") for her two pigs, cleaned it daily, and provided the pigs with fresh straw to sleep on each night. The daughters probably sleep very similar to how the pigs sleep, on mats on the dirt floor in the "living room" of their "shack".

When I visit a group or an individual with their business, there is a certain series of questions that I go through, I want to see the business, and if possible, sample product. No pigs were ready for slaughter, so I wasn't able to sample pork chops or chicharrones, but I was able to sample one lady's chilies. They were very small chilies that she sells to a large Tabasco sauce producer. Being the adventurous Gringo, I bit right into one to prove my manliness in front of my counterparts and to sample the product. The sample was plenty fiery and I ended up crying and dripping snot for the next 5 minutes to the amusement of everyone. Even though the chile lady is offering employment through picking the chilies in an area with scarce income opportunities, she can't find any labor to help her harvest because people are afraid that they will become incapacitated for life by harvesting chilies. Other small businesses started included a small bread making operation, vegetable wholesaler, a lady selling women's delicates door-to-door, and plenty of small plantings of potatoes, beans, and corn.

After hours, I found Honduras to be a soccer mad country. The sports pages have 90% of their sports copy dedicated to soccer and the rest to all the other sports. I laced up my hiking boots for a game at the village and unlike in Peace Corps where I was one of the better players, found myself being dribbled around by 50-year olds. I did score a goal which saved some face and respect for the Gringo and US soccer in their eyes, but it was a humbling experience. It was my first time playing in a couple months per doctor's orders, thus I lump some of my poor showing on just starting my recovery, and my lack of cleats of course (always blame faulty equipment, right?).

Other non-work activities did include going to mass two Sundays in a row. I was pleased to find a priest who still was dedicated to some form of Liberation Theology. The Catholic Church in Honduras doesn't seem to have lost as much ground to the Evangelicals like in Guatemala and Panama. I was told this is mostly because they are much more active socially and organizing the people to fight for justice and equality, which I have found to be true. The priest in his homily did rail against the mining companies which are polluting the land, but also had an environmental component for the congregation that they should be working their land in a sustainable manner too. Much more the poor man's church in Honduras versus the wealthy's church it seems to be in the other Latin American countries.

Only ten more days and then it is back to the US. All of the traveling has been great, but also tiring having to constantly move. I am looking forward to being in one spot for a while.