Our Car is Here!

Thursday, June 19, 2008
So Emma and George came back yesterday with some pretty funny stories and a lot of good information about Lafon. Lafon might actually be an easy place to distribute items because it is so dense with people; the only real obstacle is getting the nets there since the road is so terrible. Also, the educated people of the village really advocate the use of nets. But we also learned that the primary health care center over there is pretty useless since it is so far away for the women to carry their babies by foot, and so we had to realize that maybe PHCC are not the best places to distribute nets and medicines.

We were all so tired from our work, that we just fell flat asleep at about 8 PM. We woke up today, and Ed wanted to set up some more meetings. Unfortunately, our driver from Uganda still had not come yet after all these weeks because now he was stuck in Nimule with no money for gas. Stupid. So we just met with Bishop Akio, who came over. We basically gave him an overview of what we were doing, and Father Vuni suggested a great idea of maybe putting some of the 5000 nets in some of the boarding schools as an educational tool. George’s portion took the most time because he is dealing directly with the Diocese and we need to haggle the Ministry of Health (MoH...I think I might start to abbreviate from now on) to pay our staff salaries since the staff is sucking up all of our funds and donations.

Then he left, and then Father Vuni and Father Harold left. We said our goodbyes. I hope Father Vuni gets his Visa for Britain really soon so he can come back quickly. We did not do much else today because it was too late to go anywhere…and we didn’t have a car. I got some more emails out to Malaria Consortium and Emmanuel (who is actually safe and working on Round 7 TB, surprisingly!), but that was really it.

Friday, June 20, 2008
Because the car we ordered to drive us around had still not arrived, we had to walk to town to get to our meetings today. It would not have been such a bad walk if it were not for the sun beaming down on our heads the whole time. By the end of it, Ed, George, and Emma were sweating profusely. I guess I am used to walking three-quarters of a mile. Anyways, we reached MoH first to see the Director of Primary Health, who also had a list of PHCCs and PHCUs…but of course, he did not know which ones were functioning and which ones were not. I went to see the Malaria Head, who was not there because he had to go to a funeral (man I really feel sorry for this guy…first his computer and now a funeral). When they told me I had to come back on Monday to see him, I was so surprised today was a Friday. I forget that we have weekends here; everyday seems like a weekday to me. For a minute I was thinking, “I can’t wait for another two days!”, and then I became worried because I sounded like Ed. So Emma and I planned to go to the market with Lucy tomorrow as a Saturday treat.

We then waited and waited until the Minister of Health was finally free for us to meet with her. We were curious to find out why 40% of their budget last year was sent back to the Ministry of Finance, when evidently, their health care system is not perfect. We figured they sent back that money because the NGOs were paying all their salaries, but we really do not know. She did say that the Ministry mainly focuses on the hospitals (the few they have) because all the NGOs take care of the primary health facilities...which really ticked me off. Primary facilities form the base of health care over here, not the hospitals! And then we had to break it to her that even we are facing problems from our donors and that we really need the Ministry to help us. But because they did not use their 40% last year, the government thinks they do not need all that money, and they are facing a severe budget cut this year. So now they have even less funds, and it has became a lot more complicated then we thought. Even the ACTs did not come in from Juba yet. You know, I came here expecting to make some big gains in helping people, but it is just so difficult when there is so much bureaucracy involved! All the donors and well-wishers of this world dream that they can help people in other countries; all they think they have to do is simply pour more money and then poverty will forever be terminated. But donors, and the majority of people, really do not think beyond what happens when their money gets here. They do not realize how much bureaucracy non-profit agencies have to fight with, how much of their money needs to go toward logistics and overhead, how many places we must reach and how long it will take given the infrastructure, and how much staffing and training we must have to make this dream come true. This all makes our basic goal of helping others the most arduous task in the world, and people do not realize this. It is so frustrating and just so disappointing. As of now, the Ministry of Health spends only 5-6% of the government’s budget because the government thinks infrastructure and education are more important. But if children cannot live past 5 because they are dying of malaria, how much is school going to matter to them? Health is never something to overlook, and it is sad that it takes something as stupid as bureaucracy and paperwork to get in the way of us trying to help people obtain what they desperately need.

So there goes my rant for the day... We then walked to cold chain on some narrow paths through some tall grasses, with no sense of clear direction, and with workers, children, and police officers all around stopping their work to get a good look at the khawajas. We met the computer guy who had a list of vaccination spots, which was surprisingly less than the number of Bomas in the state. We then went to the state census, which solved all our problems of trying to get a complete list of all the Bomas and Payams in each county. It was wonderful. But then again, we still have to check it with the list that SSRRC is getting.

We started to walk back towards our compound for lunch when luckily Father Andrew drove by, spotted us, and gave us a ride. We met a woman chief, elected by a council of males, who came to the Diocese for lunch. She said that a lot of her people were not counted in the census, which really sucks. Ed spoke in Arabic the whole time with her, and we just nodded our heads.

Later on in the day, when the generator was off, Ed and George went off to LWF and CRS (Catholic Relief Services) next door to get to know them...and maybe get some information out of them about any of their distributions. I was rereading the PSI proposal when all of a sudden I heard a car outside. It was a Pajero! Our car was finally here! I met Mark from Nairobi again, Jerome our driver, and Bishop Paride’s niece.

So now we have a car and we no longer have to depend on other people anymore! I can’t wait to go to the market tomorrow for some shopping. yay! haha :-)

-Neesha