Maintaining Sanity

I’ve endeavored to provide you with something of a glimpse into the frustration, complexities and hardships I face in living and working here – as well as a taste of the adventure and excitement. It is fun, and I do enjoy it, but simply put, it’s darn difficult, and I work myself ragged most days. There are days I can physically sense the stress (and certainly the weariness) in my body. To offset this, we have R&R: a chance to escape every 8 weeks and fully relax, recover & rest. But one does need a little R&R in each day and week to refresh the spirit, and maintain one’s sanity.

So…how does one have a little fun in Juba? Well, it takes a bit of effort, requiring 2 steps: Step 1) Pulling oneself away from the office and one’s computer (my problem), and Step 2) Finding something fun to do (Juba’s problem).

Here, are a few solutions we have found:

Solution # 1: Community potlucks. For maximal creativity and enjoyment, these should be theme dinners to inspire the cooks and tantalize the palate.

Mmm...Indian food potluck, in honour of my place of birth on my b-day
(an occasion at which I made an appearance, and did my best to not
appear to be deathly ill, or having spent the former part of the day under
3 blankets shivering with a thermometer in my mouth despite it being
30C outside!)

Cooking in our teeny tiny new kitchen for our family of 16.

Solution # 2: Movie night. The old stand-by which never fails to please. Don’t forget to bring the office projector home and locate a white sheet. Choosing the film to please all is no simple task with a multi-ethnic crowd. Best bets are comedies and action.

Yes, that would be me with a blazing pan of fire.
I'm making flambed bananas for an "in-house" movie
night with my old roommates in our old house. Mmm.

Solution # 3: Drinks by the Nile. This is a historical favourite, started by the early pioneers of Juba at a time when there was nothing. Come at sunset to enjoy the views on the river, let the beverage be very cold, let the breeze play with the leaves of the mango trees, and let the conversation be stimulating.

Solution #4: Nile Cruise. For an exorbitant, but somehow justifiable fee, one can rent a boat for an hour or two for a cruise down the Nile. On my latest of such outings, I spotted some crocodiles – shall we rename this activity “Nile Safaris”? – though not the 3-meter long crocodiles who allegedly reside in the area. The latest development in Nile cruises is that one of the camp hotels has set up on an island nearby, with comfy chairs and cold drinks for a break along the cruise. (One can hardly justify R&R’s when you have this sort of luxury now available in Juba! – for a price)

Solution #5: Art Afternoons. This one is a new invention, and has proved to be entirely successful and greatly satisfying. My left brain can shut up about work and data processing and cargo calculations for a while my right brain roams freely, playing with colours and slowly slowly creating something new and – hopefully – beautiful on a blank piece of paper. Very therapeutic.




To be continued....

The Field, Part 4: Surprises

One of the other things I’ve been able to experience while in the field is something that keeps us on our toes and reminds us of just what kind of place we’re living in: a lovely little thing called insecurity. On my first field visit, there was a vehicle ambush on a road outside of the town, about 4 hours after I had passed along the same road. Apparently, it was an act of revenge over a boy that was murdered and found in the river the week before. In response, two men were arrested by the Southern Army, and in response to that, two men on camels were found getting weapons from the Northern Army barracks, and were thus detained. This was followed by rampant rumours that their friends would soon be coming to attack the town. Nice. We got some extra security for our place and slept lightly that night. Oh dear…are my grandmas reading this? The end of the story is that nothing came of it and I’m fine.

On my second trip (a different place), there was this wing-nut former military commander who took it upon himself to be the watch dog of all health services in the area. Prior to my arrival, he had been raising a raucous, saying that our organization hasn’t been providing services, were neglecting people during a cholera outbreak, and accused our staff of being murderers, responsible for deaths in the community. While I was there, he marched into the compound demanding a home visit for his wife who he was sure had cholera, and making all sorts of loud accusations and claims, making our staff feel very uncomfortable. That night, at 1 am, a woman giving birth was brought to the clinic. Our staff were called in due to complications and who should happen to be there (in the middle of the night, for the delivery of some woman completely unrelated to him), but the crazy commander. Very disconcerting for our staff as they tried to cope with a very difficult delivery. It turns out the baby could not be delivered, and the only hope for the mother and child was surgery, which cannot be done at our clinic. Without transport or enough time to get her to a hospital, there was nothing our staff could do for her. In the morning, the crazy commander made a terrible fuss about the situation, and in the end, the local authorities decided that a local “doctor” would be called in. This man proceeded to remove the now dead baby from its mother in pieces, using the crudest of tools and the crudest of technique. I won’t repeat any of the details. Amazingly, the woman lived, though we expected her to suffer from serious infection, if not from severe internal damage (I never did hear the end of the story). The next day, as our staff were contemplating whether it was safe for us to stay in the area with the threats of the crazy commander, a UN flight dropped in, and removed the threat himself. Apparently, they had some discussion with his superiors in Juba, and he wasn’t even supposed to be in this location anymore as he was re-assigned. Our staff were visibly relieved.

On this trip, all is calm thus far, though they had issues last week with a drunken wife-beater abusing one of the camp cooks and threatening the safety of the camp.

We’re in an area inhabited by cattle-keeping warrior tribes, and everyone has a spear if not a gun. The day before yesterday, I saw groups of long-legged, spear wielding young men with funny hats, leaping, running and singing on the road past our compound. Our staff tell me they’re off to war with another clan. There are long traditions of who fights with who here. If it’s not civil war and the South is fighting the North, then its inter-tribal warfare, and most likely the Nuer and Dinka raiding one-another’s cattle (back and forth and back again). And if that activity is quiet, then you turn within your tribe and war with other clans. Makes good sense right? Sigh….Sudan. A little love, a little forgiveness…is there hope? We cling to it.

The Field, Part 3: We’re Actually Doing Something Good!

Being in the field has also given me a chance to see first-hand what it is we actually do in South Sudan – who it is we’re serving, and what we provide them with.

I’ve been able to spend some time in our clinics, following our staff around.

I got to see a brand-new, soft, clean Sudanese baby - skin smooth and silky like chocolate milk.

I observed as a group of patients waiting under a tree listened to a health education message about STIs and engaged in some lively discussion on the topic.

I saw a man the day before he died from a gunshot wound from an ambush on the road just outside the town I was in and a woman with a gunshot wound in her hand, the consequences of a roudy dispute where a gun was too close at hand.

I watched as one of our staff dressed the severe burn on the entire back of a woman who fell on a fire during an epileptic seizure.

I got to see a very beautiful, but nasty schistosomiasis parasite under the microscope in the lab. I met some giggling girls splashing in the stagnant river/swamp water and watched as one of our staff explained about the dangers of getting schistosomiasis.

I got to listen with a stethoscope to a baby's raspy breathing due to pneumonia, and played with babies waiting in queue for their vaccinations so that we don't see them later in their lives as victims of polio or a measles outbreak.

And I stood in on a children’s club under a tree as they sang songs about peace and loving each other, after learning about hand washing.

It’s encouraging to see on this end that some things are indeed working, and the services are being delivered. It’s easy to get all tied up in politics and donor reports and emails and meetings in Juba, and not realize what’s coming out of it all in the end.

The Field, Part 2: My Little Project

My field trips thus far have been primarily for one purpose: to train our field health staff in basic computer skills so they can enter the statistical data from the clinics we support directly onto the computer themselves. On the side I’ve done some inventory-taking, re-organizing drugs store-rooms and attempting to solve, or at least lending a sympathetic ear to all the many problems faced by our field staff.

The computer training has been going excellently. It’s a very rewarding little project as most of these guys have never touched a computer before. They’re all very eager to learn, and frequently express how happy they are to “learn computers”. Thankfully, it’s pretty cool to know how to use a computer, so I have a zealous audience of students with big smiles on their faces, even though I spend most of the time teaching them the very mundane task of copying numbers from a piece of paper to a box on a screen. It’s simple stuff, but they love it. Yesterday I even got an applause when I finished the lesson! :)

I’m certainly not going to point out that it might be dull. Each set of reports that I receive electronically, is one less tedious stack of reports that I have thus far been entering myself from all 7 of our locations. My new favourite field site is the one which perfectly grasped what I taught them and now sends one tiny flash disk with 12 beautifully neat and clear electronic reports on it, rather than a torn envelope stuffed with a stack of illegible, tattered, dirt-smeared paper reports that look as if they’ve traveled for several years to get to me (the “Sudan Effect”). They’ve also been sending me little notes on the flash disk – it’s almost like getting email from the field. I return the stick with my replies and new files. I’m liking the new system. One more field site and I’ll have them all trained.

The Field: An Introduction

"The field.” Whenever I use this term – everyday lingo in the NGO World, used to refer to the places one works that are not your headquarters – it brings to mind images of skipping through a field of tall waving grasses and perhaps a few happy daisies. The reality? …A little different. Shall we replace that image with one of being scorched by the sun while trekking across a crusted plain of parched, barren soil? Or if it’s rainy season, make that plodding through ankle-deep muddy water and foot-sucking mud as tadpoles flee your giant “gum-boots” (as we call them here) and male frogs sing out their love songs all around you.

I’m in the field as I type this. It’s rainy season now. When I woke up this morning and stepped outside into ankle deep water, I discovered that the rain plummeting down most of the previous night had not gone anywhere, but stayed right where it dropped, making a giant muddy puddle of our compound.

The daunting trip from my room to the WC

Sudan excels at extremes: unbearable dryness, heat and inescapable dust most of the year, then suddenly, torrential rains, a miraculous appearance of green life, flooding everywhere, inescapable mud, mosquitoes and plagues of frogs, and why not throw in an outbreak of cholera or a profusion of malaria cases to boot?

Before
(I took this photo at our compound in this field site in May)

After
(Taken of the same tree on this trip)

Being in “the field” is a good thing: an escape from vehicles, internet, electricity, the demands of a busy office. And this week I needed it. I’ve been catching up on sleep and limiting my computer time due to solar power restrictions. It’s a blessing. It’s not easy though. Liken it to camping: it’s relaxing, and a refreshing escape from the norm, but it’s also a considerable amount of work, it’s uncomfortable, there are challenges to bathing effectively, the food is not always the greatest, your clothes are always dirty, and you have to use your flashlight and mosquito repellant frequently. But you embrace the rustic-ness, and thoroughly enjoy the unique bonding moments you have with your fellow “field-dwellers” under starry skies as you sing songs together during evening devotions, or tell long stories over dinner time.

Sharing a meal under a tree at the home of one of our staff
who lives in the area.

The conversation is always interesting. Today after lunch under the big tree I learned all the step by step process of getting a wife from the Kakua tribe, if you’re a man from the Madi tribe (involving sitting cross-legged for 3 hours, paying in goats, chickens, bows and arrows, kerosene and matchboxes, and throwing a lot of cash around in an arduous detailed ceremony. I also learned how one of our staff recently “stole” his wife-to-be from her family, flying her half-way across the country without paying the necessary dowry. Apparently this is an acceptable move if you’re Nuer and want to marry a Dinka woman. You pay the cows later and it’s all fine, but if you had gone through the usual process, you would have been instantly refused. And some good news for the girls: I also found out that if you’re a Dinka girl, and you have bids from 5 different men, you can choose to marry the guy you like who’s only offering a few cows, rather than the creep who’s offering a hundred cows (if you have a kind and considerate family who are not desperately poor or exceedingly greedy and are thus willing to let you make the choice). Since I’m still in the bidding process myself, I’ll keep this useful caveat in mind. ;)

One of the handsome Nuer cows exchanged in dowry transactions,
and someone's good wife milking it for her family's daily
sustenance of milk and sorghum.

Eligible young ladies

Nuer lady with impressive facial scarification.

a furry friend

It’s August 4th. And I so desperately wanted NOT to miss my first of the month deadline. And I don’t want to leave it un-done until next month. And I don’t want to admit that my work entirely rules my life. And so: as an act of rebellion, I am hereby writing a few short lines….

Not enough time to write about the field….not enough time to write about what I do to stay sane, my efforts to have a little fun and my poor excuse for something resembling a social life…Aha. I shall write about my cat.

Meet Toby. He’s really cute. I fell for him.

He came to us all alone, and all little, with an empty belly, a sorrowful cry, an infected eye and a whole herd of small black creatures under his fur.

I found a veterinary supply shop in Juba
which provided me with a flea/mite/tick/
lice treatment solution good for bovine,
equine, sheep, camels, poultry and dogs.
Thankfully, it also seems to work for cats.

Today he is de-flead, has pus-free eyes, and a plump well-fed belly.

Toby sleeping in his self-claimed
bed among the dirty laundry.

I thought it might be therapeutic to have a cat: someone to come home to, a baby to remind us of the simple things in life, a creature to cuddle. It turns out he’s an incredible nuisance with very sharp claws and piercing teeth, a perpetual cry for attention, a habit of peeing in only two places – his litter box (good), or the couch (bad), and an inability to judge space and his ability climb or leap onto objects, resulting in frequent smacks on the concrete floor.

Toby and I bonding over late-night work.

But he’s very cute. And so we forgive him for all these flaws. And when he finally falls asleep in your lap at the end of the day, it is very nice, after all, to have a small furry creature to love.

Juba: Is There an “Ordinary Day”?

What takes place approximately 56 times between R&Rs

My first awareness of the new day begins at 4 am. I’ve been rudely awakened by a rat…or 2…or 15 (my imagination argues for the latter) scratching about in the ceiling boards. The boards are made of styrofoam, so the slightest movement is amplified and I’m convinced they’re jumping, tearing, digging and using ratty-power tools in an attempt to break through the ceiling. Any moment, I’m going to have a flying rat burst through the boards and land like a clumsy trapeze rat – thankfully not directly on me – but caught in my all-protective mosquito net shroud.

….a wonderful way to begin consciousness.

Being conscious brings to mind the 95-item to-do list lurking in the back of my brain, and particularly the most salient 3-5 items that are eating away at me. This begins a noisy barrage of thoughts that cycle again and again through my semi-conscious brain. This internal noise is accompanied by a soundtrack floating across the compound walls. On a good night, the soundtrack consists of far off drumming from a funeral wake. On nights that require an extra dose of tolerance, it’s an all-night revival that sounds like it’s emanating from my living room, complete with loud exclamations of “HALLELUJAH!!!!”, impressively off-key singing, and frequent sound system feed-back. Eventually, consciousness surrenders and my body is able to return to sleep for the last remaining hours of rest.

Around 7, I wake up without an alarm, as I’ve lost my ability to wake up at any other hour. If my running buddy is around, and both of us are in good health, we begin the day with a 20 minute run through the waking town, past tooth-brushers on the street (public tooth brushing is an important neighbourly bonding event in Sudan).

A man watching the morning world go by as he
brushes his teeth outside his compound.

Breakfast consists of a cup of tea or perhaps some Ovaltine (a tradition I picked up in Thailand), and long white bread/bun from the “Salvation Automatic Bakery” (such a fantastic name, the bread surely has miraculous nutritive value).

Can you read that sign? Well, it says "Salvation Automatic
Bakery", sadly, it has since fallen down and they've
replaced it with a boring name, but it will always be the
Salvation Automatic to me.

My house mates and I enjoying a special Sunday
morning breakfast one day in our usual breakfast
spot on the veranda.

At 8:10 (the exact time that keeps the most people happy), I head out the door and round up the carpool to head to the office. Most days, I’m the designated bus driver. I drive a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck. It almost makes me feel Albertan. Who knew I’d have to go all the way to Sudan, leaving behind my former compact VW Golf, to finally fit in with my own culture and drive a pick-up!

The fully-load back seat, ready to be
jostled and jiggled.

The drive to work is conducive to promoting digestion, exercising core muscles for balance, and getting concussions. It’s impossible to drive more than 30-40km/hr, as the craters, ravines, mountains and gaping pits in the road would never allow it. We drive past school children in their green and white uniforms, with bright pink plastic chairs being carried to school on their heads. They shout ‘MORNING!! making us smile at their earnest waving as we drive past.

After a round of “good mornings” at the office, I settle down at my desk, download emails and open up my 95-item to do list to try to decide where to start. I generally make an over-optimistic (or, as my colleages and I have taken to calling it, an “under-pessimistic”) prediction of what I can accomplish, and set an impressive list of priorities for the day. I start on item 1, and rarely get past 2 or 3. Day after day, I forget that in Sudan, item 1 is accompanied by parts 1a to 1x which consist of impossible problems and frustrating complexities that must be overcome in order to achieve item 1. This gets to be discouraging after a while.

At my desk, hearing the woes of my partner
in logistical crimes.

My regular tasks consist of things like preparing drugs and medical supply cargo for the weekly flight to the field, compiling statistical data from clinic reports for quarterly donor reports, writing proposals, making security plans, and various other tasks that fall into my newly self-named “Department of Inter-Departmental Affairs”, of which I am the lone and vital member. I’ve decided “Program Assistant” isn’t quite descriptive enough for what I do, and since I’m in essence the “catch-all” to support all program activities, logistics, security, IT, and basic office operations…head of the Department of Inter-Departmental Affairs might better sum it up. Another suggestion for my job title has been “the Glue”.

In addition to my regular and planned tasks, I’m bound to get a few dozen interruptions and unexpected surprises during the day. Things like…our flight today has been completely disrupted due to rains making airstrips un-landable. So we have to plan a new route, provide last minute cargo for new destinations, and throw out a week of well-laid plans….Or things like: “Kendrah, there’s something wrong with my computer, can you have a look?”, and finding the “blue screen of death”, not knowing how to respond to the “blue screen of death”, and spending several hours researching on line, getting online support from IT-wise friends, and exercising trial and error problem solving techniques….Or things like: one of our staff is deathly ill this morning – we need to figure out if he has malaria, if we need to evacuate him, if he’s been taking enough fluids”… Or things like: there’s some shooting around town today, we don’t know what’s going on, we ought to stay put, things might escalate… Or things like: a sudden massive deluge of rain from the heavens, which turns our road into a river (complete with a newly-created waterfall), our bridge has collapsed and the water is backing up into the compound, and we need to do something quick to avoid a flood….Or things like….I think you get the idea.

This is my desk. And this is two men trying to
capture a rat that has decided to hide behind my
desk. Note my absence in the picture.

Me getting an RDT test, to see if I had malaria on a sick day.

The road by our office, turned into a rushing river.

At 2 pm, I realize that I haven’t eaten lunch yet and I’m growing faint with hunger. Rice and beans…my favourite. It really is. The food is good and my tummy is grateful. If my late lunch coincides with any other late-lunch eaters, we chat about how many cows fetches a bride in Sudan, compare R&R plans, share the burden of the morning’s frustrations, talk about our plans to get a pet goat, or dream of ways to solve Sudan’s problems.

Lunch time.

Back at my desk, and 100% absorbed in the tasks before me, 5:30 appears out of the blue. If it’s a pre-flight day, a little extra oomph from adrenaline spurs me on, rushing out to collect boxes of drugs from our drug store room, printing documents to send to the field, making inevitable last minute changes to our plans, and trying to squeeze in my “real work” in between the madness.

Loading drugs at the medical store room.
Thankfully, with a few extra hands on this occasion.

At 5:30, the conscientious among us, suggest that we ought to go home. At this point, the wise people make an early trip home, and the admitted workaholics among us, keep going on most days until around 7…7:30…8:00, when we pack ourselves supper to-go from the office dining room, and make the bumpy journey home.

Home sweet home at the end of an early day.

If I’m having a “wise” day, I come home early. I realize I need a break, and so I play a game of badminton, do some pilates, do some gardening or have a cup of tea and compare days with my housemate. Taking a shower to cleanse myself of the day’s grime is an integral part of the winding-down process.

My running-buddy, colleague and favourite neighbour,
watering our newly-planted garden plot.

On an “admitted workaholic” day, I stay at the office until the abovementioned hours. I come home utterly exhausted, and realizing I need some kind of break, I eat my pre-packed dinner accompanied by an episode of West Wing. This works wonders.

My living-room. Excellent for a book-read, or
West Wing at the end of a long day.

After option 1 or 2 for the close of a day, being more often the “admitted workaholic” than the “wise one”, I frequently revisit my computer for a late night session. I’ve discovered that I’m a highly effective worker in the night’s late hours. So I spend my day collecting things for the to-do list, and spend the night trying to achieve them. It’s a bad habit, resulting in ever decreasing amounts of sleep. But it does allow me to get a few things knocked off the troublesome list. (This blog is about confessions, right? Well…my name is Kendrah, and I’m a workaholic.)

Finally, my head hits the pillow, with a prayer for deep rest and that the rats will simply want to sit quietly and whisper to one another this night.

My bed. With my all-protective mosquito net above.

~~~~~~~~~~

Coming soon in future entries:

“How Kendrah Survives: things that aren’t frustrating, joys, blessings and coping mechanisms”

And,

“Field trips: What do we really do here? The Sudan beyond Juba”