In TORIT!

I know that I have to post up what I wrote during my days in Juba, but I have not gotten around to finishing it. I figure let me type down what I remember most while I am still in Torit, so here is what I have so far...

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I woke up today at 5:30 AM (as usual) to get ready for our drive to Torit. We were supposed to leave the Camboni House at 7 so that the Bishop could get to his meeting on time, but we actually ended up leaving at 8:30 because we needed to fix the car engine. This gave me some time to set up an email account for Father Hector, but it was difficult to teach Father about yahoo mail when he clearly did not have much experience with the internet…or even with the mouse. So I just taught him how to click inbox, delete messages, and compose new ones—the very basics. I think I am going to look after his account to make sure once I leave Sudan.

We wished everyone goodbye, including Brother Hans, and hopped inside the car for our three hour, bumpy road trip. But bumpy does not even come close to describing the road condition; the road had pools of water and ditches that we had to go over or around. And so the car ride was a series of deliberate swerves, up and down jolts, and inconsistent speeding. The scenery, however, was absolutely beautiful. I have road tripped with my family all over the United States, but I have never seen any land so lush and green as the African country. I heard that further north of Sudan, in Khartoum, it is actually very dry, but because we were so close to the Nile River, the land is very fertile. There were so many green mountains; tall grasses; and fruitful trees. We also saw a lot of hut villages surrounding the main road in various regions, and of course, people stared as we passed. This was also the road Bishop Paride led a convoy of people to Torit while being attacked by the SPLA. Oftentimes they had to bypass the road, and it took days longer. We also saw a lot of danger signs for landmines around the road, and the Bishop told us that there were dead people in the bottom of the rivers, below the steel bridges we were crossing. I think Ed said that Bishop Paride built the steel bridge we crossed over the Nile, but the Bishop has built bridges somewhere.

It was often a surprise to see power lines or even a cellphone tower at times, which the Kuwaitis installed for millions of dollars under the assumption that this peace will last for another 50 years. Torit is definitely a lot less developed than Juba. There are less people, and Brother Harold (a man from New York who we just met) told us there are no power lines, water pipelines, or sewage developed for the whole town. People have their own generators and wells, as in the Diocese of Torit compound we are staying in right now. It is much cooler here, but still quite hot. This location is made up of two housing buildings and tents. George and Emma wanted to live in the tents for the experience of it, but the caretaker Lucy already prepared rooms for us in one of the buildings. I definitely underestimated the quality of living here in Africa because these rooms are really nice. There are two rooms which are self-contained (have their own bathrooms and shower) and best of all—outlets! I already love it here, although I miss having many different city people surrounding me at all times. A lot of the people we met in Diocese at Nairobi are here, including the man who speaks only Spanish and French. I can practice Spanish in Sudan again! We had lunch here, surprisingly the first lunch here without any meat (which is good for me), and talked about the plane crash in Khartoum. Supposedly 50-100 people have been either wounded or dead from it. It is disappointing that the only time I would ever care about a plane crash in Sudan is when I have actually experienced the country firsthand. It is my home for the summer, after all.

Bishop Paride is leaving us today. He is going to Nimule (sp?) and we will not see him until the end of the month or so. I am really going to miss him, and honestly I do not want him to leave. In fact, I started to cry again! But he is a busy man, and hopefully Bishop Akio will be just as good to me. How am I going to deal with Ed?! Just kidding.. But the great thing is that Father Vuni is back! It is one of the greatest comforts to have him here because he is very knowledgeable about the area and will take us around the best spots in the town to relax. He will also help us greatly with this proposal and teach us more words in Arabic. By the way, “Kev” means “How are you?”, which is actually very similar to Gujarati.

We met Ydo, a Dutch man who has been living in Sudan since the early 80s for the Diocese. Our team updated Ydo and Father Vuni about all our meetings in Juba and what our ideas were so far. Ydo and Father Vuni then took us into the town, where the market place was (and where the SPLM were as well) to get bamboo for our square mosquito nets. As we were driving into town, there were so many people staring at us as and calling us khawajas. The school children would chase our Land Cruiser and wave to us. We found a place to get our 16 bamboo sticks, but they were so long that we needed to get a saw or machete to cut them. Ed decided to get off the truck and follow a man who said we could get our bamboo cut for a cheap price, but we ended up losing Ed. You would think it would be easy to spot a big white man amongst all the Sudanese, but we went to the Bishop Akio’s place and back just to search for him. We finally found him at the market, but it was already dark. The marketplace was still alive and there was music playing; I heard Beyonce and even some Indian music, “Chaya chaya”. There were no street lights, but some people lit fires to burn their trash and many vehicles had headlights on. Ed told the people to cut the bamboo shoots to his arm level, but they ended up cutting it much higher. George, Lucy, and I had to hold them down in the car all the way to our compound because they were sticking out of the back. The sight was really funny, and we have pictures of it. The sticks were even taller than our room ceilings, so Lucy found a machete and chopped off the extra length for us. She helped me post up my net onto the sticks, and we used ropes that looked like strips from the bark of a tree to tie the sticks to our beds. It was a real workout, and I was wondering if people in rural areas had a tough time putting up their nets if they did not have the materials. Emma and I thought that it would be best to have a tutorial for people on how to put up their nets using tools from their own villages on the day of net distribution.

After this exhausting task, we went to eat dinner and met Bishop Akio for the first time. He is the current Bishop of the Diocese now, but I did not get to speak to him as much because he is more aloof and has more on his hands than Bishop Paride (who retired but still does voluntary work). Earlier today we saw goats tied around their legs and brought to the compound. Those same goats, apparently, were killed and eaten today for dinner. I do not eat goat, so I just ate the chapatti, rice, and chips they had, which is enough for me since I have survived through fasts that have less food than this. After dinner, we went to sleep under our new nets. Ed promised me that there would be thousands of stars in the sky, but there were very few. I guess because it is rainy season and the clouds are up, we could not see them.

Thursday, June 12, 2008
Today was the first day I slept beyond 7 AM. I actually woke up at 7, but I forced myself to sleep an extra 2 hours so that I could adjust to the time. When I got up, I noticed the number of insects in my room. Insects love light, and I had to deal with the cricket in the shower. I went to get tea for my late breakfast, and Father Vuni, Emma, and Ed were already going over the meeting yesterday with Ydo (who left already) in more detail. We then went to SSRRC (Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission), but found the assistant director who could not give us any census data of the Boma and Payam in Eastern Equatoria. These are tribes we would like to get numbers for, but Ydo brought up the problem that many people do not like to confess how many children they have because of cultural reasons. The guy said it would not be a problem for us to pre-register people for net distribution if we tell them the reason for it. We then went to the Ministry of Health of Torit (we already met the Minister in Juba who said she could help us possibly), and the man there said that they often go to the main primary health care centers in the counties and do immunizations there.

We then went to the main center for cold chain, which is where they refrigerate vaccines for 8 days, and they told us they can give us a list of the centers they give these vaccines to. Ed believes that we can use their centers as another place to distribute our nets, but George and Emma believed that depending on the government centers was not the best idea since we have centers of our own which people trust more. Because Ed throws out ideas during meetings without first consulting our team, we decided to have a team meeting during lunch about the draft of our plan. Lunch, by the way, was really good. We had fish, a tasty cabbage dish, rice, and dead ants. Well, the few dead ants happened to be in my food but I didn't care. Anyways, we separated our jobs in to more definite, solid roles for the team. I am in charge of obtaining information from the Global Fund, PSI, and Malaria Consortium on examples of proposals from previous rounds and on pilots from different regions in Africa. Ethiopia and Rwanda have had successful results in their reduction of malaria, and we want to see their model and implement something similar for E. Equatoria. George is in charge of obtaining statistics on the Diocese of Torit primary health facilities, and Emma is in charge of obtaining statistics about other organizations that have worked in E. Equatoria.

Emma had a lucky start on her portion of the project because the Director of SSRRC called us back about a meeting with him. It was extremely awesome because no one had as much helpful information as he did. His name is Rex and his background is really impressive. He used to be a boxer in Uganda, a bodyguard for Nimeiri, and then worked as an intelligent for the SPLA. He was really high up in the army, trained at Fort Benning in the U.S. (like Garang and other army members), and his military style was clearly evident in the way he ran the SSRRC. He had all the data for the Bomas and Payams in E. Equatoria by day, week, and month. He even had detailed maps of Southern Sudan that displayed village names, and we could not find that anywhere! It was seriously the more uplifting meeting we had ever sat through, and he will help us so much. He said that he does not know if there will be peace even until 2011, especially since there will be elections next year, and he hopes that he Sudanese in the south will not fight with each other. We are going to a village on Saturday that has been burned down because we will see the way they distribute kits to the 500 people displaced there. There will non-food items and nets in the kits because they are at high risk of catching malaria. We are so excited! I also learned from him that a Bangladeshi was also a commanding general in the SPLA, and a Pakistani stopped by to give some paperwork to him. Anyways this is off topic…

We then went to drop off Bishop Akio’s laptop at his place and to get his approval on whether we should even take on such a big project for the Diocese. He seemed fine with it. About a month ago, lightening struck their houses because Ed installed a satellite on the roof for them a long time ago. Luckily no one got hurt, but they say the lightening is the reason for the internet not working there. Apparently, solar panels had been stolen from the place as well, and they found them at the border. The Bishop is also very brave. In places like Imatong and Ikwotos, there are landmines on the roads, and the Bishop nearly stepped on one. People insisted that he leave the area, but because he said he would feel guilty if he left the mine and someone else after him stepped over it, he dangerously stayed behind to mark the position of the mine. These people are amazing.

By the way, the compound is low on fuel and so the generator is on only in certain times. I charge this computer when the generator is on. I really feel pumped to get this project going. I have to go for dinner. Adios!

YES! Ed got wireless! finally he got something going with the internet! We also got two more SIM cards today from Father Ben, whom we just met today at the Bishop's. good good :-)

Reminders:
Sohil or Ryan, how are the Lakers doing?? I saw a boy wearing a Spalding shirt and another guy wearing a Lakers jersey (but with Clippers colors), and it reminded me about the playoffs haha.