Corruption, Revised

So I took out a lot from my previous post. I do not know what I should be open about anymore, and I am becoming more cautious with each post I enter now. But this hinders me from expressing my feelings the way I had originally wish I could on this blog. Whatever, I do not want to bring trouble to the team and ruin all our hard work here.

So this is my revision, and again, it still includes as much as I thought was acceptable (but you can correct me):

Sunday, June 22, 2008
This was our first real weekend. We could not do any work today because the generator was not on this whole day until late at night. But by that time, we always get really tired and sleep. So I played Madlibs with Emma and George, read some stuff, and hung out under the mango trees with some of the Fathers. Father Amayo thinks the South would vote 33% for independence, which means it will most likely not happen. He is the first man I have heard who has said that, and I hope it is not the case.

Yeah so we are back to having goat for dinner again. It is fine, there are good vegetable dishes. I tried to work on a spreadsheet of all the malaria statistics we gathered for S. Sudan, E. Equatoria, and possibly the Diocese, but I got tired and went to sleep.

Monday, June 23, 2008
Biggest news for the day: Emmanuel and Joseph are here!!! I couldn’t stop smiling after I saw Emmanuel in the morning. After getting robbed on the way to Torit, I was afraid of him traveling alone at night. But he stayed over in Kapoeta, and left for Torit at about 4 AM when all the robbers are off the road. I am so glad he is safe. Now we can start drafting, and I can help him with the UNDP interest. But besides all that, they will take us around all the clinics, from Isoke to Kapoeta to Narus to Kuron (where Bishop Paride is)!! I am pretty cheerful with the both of them here; Emmanuel’s expressions make me laugh. I really can’t stop smiling. haha

With the both of them here, we set up a meeting with our team. Here are some stats for you: 62% of our total budget is on salaries, 13-14% is on medicine, ACTs make up 30% of our medical supply ($4.5 a course on this expensive drug), and out of the 10,ooo some patients that come into our facilities every month, 30% of them have malaria. From Emmanuel and Joseph, we find out that we are operating at 49% of the staff recommended by the MDTF, meaning we need 193 more workers. But obviously, we do not have the money because our own donor is now going to give up its funds to the MDTF starting next year. However, we would rather maintain the quality of care that we currently have rather than just hire a whole bunch of personnel. At the same time, the government is pressuring us to open up another PHCC.

We later present all of this information to Bishop Akio.

Then we go to the cold chain, and Emmanuel and Joseph notice that the vaccines are not refrigerated at the right temperature. We were supposed to be sending these vaccines throughout East Kapoeta County, the biggest and most difficult-to-reach county in all of Eastern Equatoria, but these vaccines were now spoiled.

We went to the Ministry but the generator was off, so I could not get files from the Malaria Head again. There is also a cholera problem in Torit, but it has not been reported yet. Emmanuel and Joseph met a lot of people they knew at the Ministry, but it turned out, many of the people Emmanuel fired for poor performance in the Diocese were now working for the State Ministry! Emmanuel has some serious guts to fire people, a dangerous thing in Sudan. But it is disappointing to know that the Ministry has hired the same people he fired for being drunk at work. We also find out where the ACTs were that were supposed to arrive from Juba. They had been dispatched in March and arrived in Torit at April, but they have still not gone out to all the counties because of disorganization and incompetence within the Ministry.

I never thought drunkenness was that big of a problem here; it did not seem to be that big of a deal. But in retrospect, I should have realized the magnitude of it. First in Lafon, Emma and George note that the people have beer everyday with breakfast, lunch, and dinner because the water is too unsafe to drink. So they saw people drunk even in the afternoon. Second, I remember there was an old woman in the market coming behind George and yelling incomprehensible Latuko words at him. Lucy told us to get away from her because she was drunk. Third, today at the Ministry I saw the Director of Primary Health, an old man, acting very strangely. He grabbed my arm and pulled me in to ask my name, and then I find out from Ed later on in the day that the man was drunk. I could not believe it.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Today Emmanuel and Joseph left, again, on a short notice. Those guys are way too busy. Before they left, however, our team had a scheduled meeting with the Minister of Health to discuss salaries. Emma and I did not go because this was George’s field. George said that it was a completely worthless meeting…and he also noticed that the Minister had new furniture and fans in her office (where did all that money come from?). It was a three hour meeting, but nothing big was accomplished. It was kind of frustrating because we wanted to get all our information in before the next budget cycle.

Anyways, we end up working the rest of the day. I nearly complete my spreadsheet, but I get really disappointed with my results for calculating the number of children under 5 who die from malaria each year. The four different methods I used to calculate this number should all match, but they did not! I get a range from about 3000-9000 children because I figure out that there are major discrepancies between data in all the sources we compiled. And these were all legit sources, from the government, UNICEF, WHO, the UN… So annoying.

Then I go to sleep because I do not know what else to do about it.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
We continue working. I think we are pretty much done with all our intro meetings and our researching. We have already started working on our RFP (Request for Proposal) based on the format of the CCM proposal, even though the actual RFP has not come out yet. Considering that we are only going to work on this until the end of next month, we do not have the time to wait around for it anymore.

I continue on the spreadsheet because my portion of the proposal is really short and can be done later. I get more emails out, and I start on another spreadsheet that organizes a potential training budget for community health workers.

I work until my battery dies, and then I go next door to Swiss Karatas with Ed just to change pace a little bit. I did not want to be stuck in the Diocese all day. We met with an epidemiologist, Dr. Monica Benti, who studied in the U.S. She looked at my business card, noticed I was from Berkeley, and asked me if I worked at Livermore. HA I wish! Haha. I had to tell her that I was still a student…yes, I am still so young. Haha. She was great, and she does a lot of cool work traveling from epidemic to epidemic in various counties.

Now I am too burnt out to do any work. But I will have to get back on it tomorrow. I can’t believe it will be already a Thursday. Days go by quickly here now.