The Work and the Inspiration

A lot of you have asked about what is it that I really do, okay so not a lot, but some of you have indeed asked and today I will try to answer that question and also state some of the more important things.

For those of you who don't know, I work for this organization called "The Carter Center". It has "Peace Programs", that primarily deal with conflict resolution, election observation, that kinda stuff, and "Health Programs" that are geared to eradicating and mitigating certain diseases. The biggest health program is the "Guinea Worm" program, which is as the name suggests aimed at eradicating guinea worm from the world.

Guinea Worm is a very painful disease where worms that enter your body have to be physically removed by a trained health officer and then preventative steps such as providing access to clean water, not washing or bathing in contaminated water, and purifying the existing contaminated water sources with chemicals need to be taken to eventually eradicate the disease. The disease which was even feared by the pharaohs way back in the day (only the second disease ever to be eradicated - I think small pox being the first) is making its last stand in South Sudan where it is extremely hard to track it. You guys can go nuts and read everything on this link.

So my job is to provide the operational and logistical support needed in South West Sudan to help eradicate the disease. The Rumbek base where I am the Operations Manager, (I like my title, its pretty fancy right :) ) services 10 - 14 substations west of the Nile in South Sudan. Substations comprise of a Technical Advisor, usually a young ex-pat with a Master's in Public Health who reports on outbreaks and trains local community workers and volunteers on how to fight guinea worm. So millions of dollars worth of medical supplies and equiptment, along with trucks and motorcycles are here at my compound in Rumbek and are passed on to the sub-stations around the endemic villages where the actual fighting the disease is taking place - and all of this is managed by yes, you got it, yours truely :).

So we get requests here everyday for something or the other, vehicles breaking down, generators needed, solar panels needed, pipe filter running out, personnel issues, management issues, you name it, and they have to be taken care of by the Rumbek office or if we can't take care of it then the head quarters in Juba Sudan will send us what we need and we'll pass it on, and if they don't have it then it comes in from Nairobi. Obviously there's a lot more to it and I don't want to bore you with the nitty gritty of why this is soo hard to do but lemi just say that there are no paved roads in South Sudan and it is the BIGGEST SWAMP in the world - so half the year (rainy season) you have tremendous problems in moving anything.

A friend of mine asked me what would otherwise be a logical question. Why was I so distraught over forgetting my $40 dollar Swiss army knife and couldn't just buy another one? Well to give you folks a clearer picture, a substation needed 10 meters of rope yesterday and the price of 50 meters of rope (shitty rope i might add) in the local market was almost US $70, so you can imagine that a swiss army knife at this rate would be no less that US $200 dollars if availible.

There's a few semi decent restaurants in town, where most of the WFP (world food programme) pilots and other NGO people go to eat and drink, and a normal meal and drinks there for 2 people costs around US $50 - $60. So its like paying $50 to dine at a place no better than Waffle house or maybe IHOP. In short, the age old problem of pricing because of the laws of Supply and Demand has never been more evident to me than in Sudan.

Well now that I've kinda explained a little bit of the stuff that I will be doing, (I'm sure I'll add more as I get to know more) lets move on to the more important stuff. This past week I've been trying to figure out how the records are kept, where everything is? how to track it? how the finances are working? what personnel issues can arise? how to better manage the place etc etc, which by the way by graduate degree was all about - (MPA) and I used to think when the heck is this going to ever help me? Well it will now, and I guess I should have paid some attention to what the old men were talking to us about in class - little did I know.

So when you have all of these things on your mind you sometimes tend to loose track of what it is that you are really doing here, but every now and then something amazing comes up and you realise that your life here doesn't merely comprise of waking up, walking over to a metal container (office, pic on right), making sure all the sub-stations are functioning well, eat and then go to bed. That my friends is where Dunya comes in (pictured below)

She is who we call the gift of God to the Carter Center, Rumbek. She is very very tiny, I honestly don't even know how old she is and her mother passed away recently. Ayesha, the assistant cook/cleaning lady is her step sister who now looks after her. With Ayesha's salary there is no way she can afford to raise Dunya and that is where I guess I come in. So if I accomplish nothing in my two years here (which is to help eradicate guinea worm from Sudan) I will atleast be happy that God gave me the oppertunity to witness that little girls smile every morning and maybe, just maybe be able to make her life a little better.

If anyone wants me to give something to Dunya on their behalf, I would love too - ya'll can just put money in my account or we can figure out something - she obviously needs all the baby stuff milk and clothes etc.

A few interesting facts:

- So we don't have a fridge, (not enough power) but I was taught how to make a local fridge, pictured here. The way it works is that we wrap some bandages around the Nalgene bottle you see there and then put water in it. At night before we sleep we wet the bottle from the outside as well. During the day its like 100 degree but at night its pretty pleasant and the wind is blowing. The wind blowing causes the bandaged up bottle to cool and when I wake up for fajr I have nice cool 1000ml of water.

- The bathroom is open air, and there is obviously no shower. But lemi tell you, taking a cold shower under the stars after a game of soccer with the staff, is something that I cannot put in words. The sky over here seems so much starier (don't know if that is a word). And pouring water over yourself while looking up to a billion stars - priceless

- The staff and I have started playing soccer on the compound after work. It's been good for bonding with my staff. I seem to have gained their trust and respect, at least for now. Which reminds me that most of them DO NOT have any cleats for soccer or shoes for that matter so if anyone is interested in donating cleats or money for them, they can be shipped to Nairobi or bought from there and then brought into Rumbek when our trucks start moving to and from Nairobi in November.

Okay well this has been longer than what I intended it to be and still I haven't covered everything that I wanted to. I'll put up albums online but its very hard to do it from here as the internet seems to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it works and at other times it chooses not to.

Until next week, Kwaheri.