The dreaded mozzies!!

I recently got diagnosed with malaria after returning from the swampland and being eaten alive every night by mosquitoes! It turns out that it was a fluke, which I found out after I had already taken all of the drugs to treat malaria which was actually worse than the malaria itself (malaria is a commonly misdiagnoses disease in Africa). The whole scary experience and being personally affected got me thinking more about diseases here, because I know that I was very lucky compared to many others in that I have the resources and knowledge to get well. Additionally we are insured with medical evacuation by flying ambulance should one of us really fall seriously ill. Malaria infects more than 500 million people a year and kills more than a million— one person dies about every 30 seconds!! I'm sure that many people die in Sudan due to lack of proper health clinics and infrastructure. When I first felt sick I was lucky to be in Juba where there is more access to healthcare, relatively speaking of course. I went to a local clinic where I was the only Kawaja. That whole clinic experience in and of itself was enough to make me never want to get sick again! There was one doctor and about 50 patients waiting to see the doctor for the few hours that he is there during the night. The doctor works alone in a one room clinic attached to the lab where they do blood tests and give injections. Every patient gets about 2 minutes to talk to the doctor before you are ushered out to give your blood in the equally as crowded lab. The test for malaria is simple and takes about 10 minutes, but you do need lab equipment and some expertise to be able to identify the disease. The treatment is also simple and cheap (although not always effective for all types of malaria). It costs less than $10 in Nairobi, which for me is nothing but to the average Sudanese family is probably a lot. Not to mention the costs that most people have to travel in order to actually reach a clinic to get a test and get the medicines to treat it. Malaria can come on quickly and if you don't catch it early enough people are not able to recover. It made me think about what can be done to stop people from dying of malaria. I guess as in every other health problem, the best cure is prevention. I recently heard of this charity who has a very simple mission- giving everyone a mosquito net... If everyone could sleep under a mosquito net they would be much safer from malaria. The difficulty again is the cost, because although for me $10 for a net is not much. For the average Sudanese-way too much! The charity nothing but nets (http://www.nothingbutnets.net/) is a good place to start on preventing malaria. Then of course there is the fact that the West is focusing more on impotence than research on diseases like malaria. Drugs to treat malaria should be cheaper, malaria tests should be cheaper, and maybe someday it will be eradicated (wishful thinking I know...)

Tent life

This time in Sudan I'm living in a tent more than a hut. Every time I mention my tent to people they don't really understand the living in a tent concept. It's not a pop-up tent like you carry with you when backpacking. It's more of a safari style tent which you get in the nice hotels when you go on Safari in places like Kenya. (but believe me I'm still roughing it...) Some of the tents are even en-suite tents where you have a separate room as your bathroom with flush toilets and everything you have in a real bathroom. Of course you still end up showering with lizards and various other creatures, but when I can get a tent with my own bathroom I'm in heaven!

Jubalicious

Since I’ve returned to Sudan I’ve made 2 trips to Juba (the capital of South Sudan). I complained before about how much I hated Juba and the dirtiness, the trash, the cost of living, but almost a year later I feel a bit differently about the place. People are putting up buildings, roads are improving, restaurants and hotels are opening, and generally you can see development happening (the development is even sometimes Sudanese driven finally). On this trip to Juba I had what could be a typical weekend for someone living in a big city in Europe or America. I went to the International Juba Film Festival, had 2 great (free) yoga classes in an air conditioned office/ studio, got invited to spend a Sunday by the pool, had long lunches with friends of great Lebanese food, Chinese food, and Indian food, and went to a fabulous party! The party I went to was at an actual bar… where you could get real drinks… and even ice-cream!! I also visited 2 friends who lived in real accommodations. One friend has an apartment which had nice furniture imported from Ikea, art on the walls, her own kitchen, satellite TV and a porch which overlooks the Nile. I spent another afternoon drinking good wine with another friend with an equally fabulous place while playing with their pet Dik-Dik (a very small antelope which had been domesticated and was as friendly as a dog). Maybe it was the fact that I got to see some of the wonderful friends that I have made in Sudan, or maybe I’m just tired of living in a tent in a place where you have to make your own entertainment- but this time Juba was ‘Jubalicious’. (well aside from the usual Sudan things and the recent rise in insecurity there...)

Rest and Relaxation

Most jobs in the world don’t get something called Rest and Relaxation (R&R), but in the international aid and development world this is something everyone gets and needs…Aside from getting time off we get something which tells you exactly how to spend your time- resting and relaxing! (Luckily I was forced to rest and relax when I went to the Kenyan coast and spent four days inside due to the nonstop rain, mostly spent eating and sleeping.)

Here are some other things that you only get at a job in the international aid field:

• Emergency evacuation lists of who should get to leave in case of an emergency (how do you decide?!?)
• Acronyms - from the names of different organizations to names of programs- it’s a whole other language
• Security trainings, weekly security meetings, daily security updates, security levels from 1-5 - you get the picture…
• You can go to work in gumboots/ wellies when it rains, and this is considered professional dress.
• You share your office space with chickens, goats, and numerous insects and lizards.
  We all know how to speak in radio code and have radio names.
• The only way to get around is the white land cruisers with the organization name on the door or motorcycle.

Standards of living

My friend recently called me “about the bravest girl on the planet”, (Thanks Christian!) because I’m living in a place which has one of the lowest standards of living in Sudan, (and Sudan standards are pretty low to begin with). It got me thinking that many people at home may be wondering what my standard of living is like working for an NGO in Sudan.

The place I live is beside a river (which is usually dry, until it rains) so it’s really green and full of trees. It’s actually quite beautiful and peaceful here. The stars at night are incredible! You can never imagine the sky could look like that until you are out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity for miles. (This is something that everyone should experience sometime in their lives.)

The best thing in our compound is our puppy!! It took a while for some Sudanese to get used to having a dog as a pet, but after a while he’s become like part of the family. Aside from our puppy and the goats and chickens that run around before they become dinner, there are birds, frogs, snakes, and sometimes monkeys on our compound. There are also bugs everywhere! Sometimes termite swarms will come through after the rains, we have a huge termite mound on our compound which we are trying to get rid of. There are lots of mosquitoes now since the rains began and there are always huge spiders, crickets and beetles. I’m slowly getting over my unreasonable fear of crickets- mostly because I have no choice but to live with them. (It’s been kind of like shock therapy)

When I took leave in Nairobi I was told that the only important questions about my life in Sudan were: 1. where do you sleep? 2. Where do you go to the bathroom? 3. And what do you eat? :) So on to the important things...

- Where do I sleep?
Living in the compound is sort of like camping all the time. There are a mixture of tents and permanent huts. (I live in one of the permanent huts/ Tukuls). The place is as basic as you can imagine- a bed, desk, and bookshelf and not much else. We have a staff of about 20 people that cook for us, clean for us, do our laundry, and fill our showers with water. We also have guards 24 hours. I go to bed and it’s about 92 degrees, and I get up in the morning to high eighties on a good day. No air conditioning, no fan.

- Where do I go to the bathroom?

The toilet is basically a hole in the ground. Those of you who have never tried it all it takes is good aim and some getting used to... There is no running water. Our water is collected from the borehole every morning by our water staff and put on top of our shower area so that we can have running showers, which are always cold. (which is really all you ever need in this heat)

- What do I eat?
The meals are boiled goat, fried goat, goat stew, goat with potatoes, goat with rice, goat with pasta, goat with Ugali (tasteless cornflour paste), and then every once in a while some beef. Not exactly the place for someone who is a vegetarian and someone who lives for good food … Although, don’t expect me to come home looking emaciated. If anything I think I will get fatter (I know those who know me don’t think this is possible, but I may yet prove you wrong…) All I can eat as a vegetarian is carbohydrates and lots of them. And the Sudanese love their oil on food which doesn’t help.

NGO compounds like ours are usually the nicest places in town, (so you can imagine how local people live.) But living in these basic surroundings makes you realize how little you actually need to survive and be relatively comfortable. It makes the excesses of the West seem so much greater when having so much stuff would really just be a burden here. I’m learning to really appreciate this simple life. I’m already realizing that going home will be such a culture shock!

This is not Paris, New York, or Tokyo!

Spending time in Juba makes me feel nauseous. It’s not only the huge piles of trash covering almost every inch of the town and the putrid smell that comes after it rains, it’s also the fact that the capital of South Sudan is also one of the most expensive places in the world. Having to pay 150-200 dollars a night to sleep in a tent is ridiculous! A tent! Imagine! 20 dollars for cold chicken and chips that you have to wait two hours for? Where do these businesses think this is? And the ones who are going to end up suffering are the local community in Juba. None of the money stays in Sudan, all the millions of dollars that the people are having to spend on these crazy prices are leaving the country with nothing if the businesses were to close up shop. For the price that they are charging to sleep in a tent many new buildings could be put up and actually give something tangible to the community after the aid agencies decide that South Sudan is not the hot spot to work in anymore. All of the money spent by NGOs and the UN on housing and food could be spent on programs that actually help people. As aid agencies continue to pay these prices because ‘my organization is paying for it and not me’, the vicious circle of overcharging continues. So please Juba, lower your prices! For the future of development in Sudan.