Change you (might not) Believe

Holy cow! Has it really been over a month since the last time I posted a blog?! Woah, I’m seriously slacking. Well, not really. I’ve actually been really busy—it’s amazing how quickly time goes by when you are working hard and playing Laura Ingals Wilder all at the same time!

So, on my last post, I talked about 3 changes—the passing of a beloved tortoise, the coming of the rains, and my new job feeding the masses. Well, as is wont to happen in Sudan, shortly after writing, all three things changed again!

Change back #1: Soon after Clare’s passing, we were given another tortoise. This one is tiny—about the size of a grown man’s palm—and he’s so cute! He is just small enough to fit between the house and the foundations for our air conditioning units, and so we call him AC. I like to think of it as a throw-back to Saved by the Bell and AC Slater—Francis is less keen on that idea. But anyway, AC it is.

Change back #2: So, it was apparently fake rains that came in mid-February. After about a week or so of sogginess and daily downpours, the rains stopped and were replaced by the “March winds”—I’ve been told there is a single word in Arabic for this phenomenon. These were serious sand-in-your-eyes, hold-onto-your-hat type winds. Crazy. Well, now at the end of March, it’s out with the winds and back with the rain. I’ve taken to carrying flipflops with me and just wearing my galoshes/wellies outside. The mud is so sticky that it turns any shoes into weights. Though my white boots make quite a fashion statement (I’ll try to post a picture soon), I figure it’s better than risking ruining another pair of flipflops.

Change back #3: So, I still have a job, but I’ve been seriously delayed in feeding the masses. For my project, we are supposed to be getting our food from the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) and essentially distributing it on their behalf. Well, because the hunger situation is so bad here, WFP has a mandate to get out a lot of food in a short time, and it really isn’t in their program to deal with us. We want to do things in an orderly, targeted way; they basically give the food over to a chief and let him distribute it however he wants (some do it fairly; some give only to family and friends). So anyway, we’ve been waiting and waiting for them to tell us when we get the food, and still no word. I’m used to Sudan and the waiting game, but this is particularly frustrating because #1 people are really hungry and #2 I’ve promised the chiefs that I’d feed their blind/lame/widowed people and I don’t want them to get mad at me!

Rather than stewing around here with nothing to do since I have no food to distribute, I took advantage of the lull in the project to travel with Francis to Kampala, Uganda. It was lovely to have good water pressure and not have to think a day in advance about what I was going to prepare for dinner (do I need to soak beans? Bake bread? Pick veggies from the garden or market?). Though I’ve never been much of a shopper, it also was lovely to stand in a grocery store and have 12 different types of (outrageously priced) cereal to choose from and stand in the canned fruit aisle dreaming of making peach cobbler. I even found Duncan Hines canned frosting! Though it was again outrageously expensive, I bought a couple cans for emergencies. And, I found a very nice Serbian hairdresser who knows how to cut khawaja hair! She even blow-dried and styled it! I felt like a queen!

Like all things in Africa, there were snafus. I think something died in our hotel room’s air-conditioner. Francis and I didn’t say anything because we were busy shopping all day and too tired to deal with it when we came back at night, but apparently guests were complaining (they thought we were stinky!) and so we changed rooms. Also, Francis had chartered a small plane to take cargo (and me!) directly home on Saturday. Well, it decided to fly half-empty on Thursday instead, so I had to make other arrangements. It included an overnight in Nairobi giving me a chance to get my long-awaited sushi, followed by fresh strawberries and cream, so all’s well that ends well.

I’m now back in Kapoeta alone for a week while Francis finishes shopping and I try to bust some chops (is that the right expression?) at WFP. As I told my mother, there’s no need to worry; there are six American men to protect me here on the compound. But after spending every day of the past six months within 2 miles of Francis (well, except when I was out in the bush, but thankfully I’ve always returned by dark), I miss him.

So, that’s the update here. The national elections in Sudan are in a couple of weeks, and so we’re still trying to figure out whether we will stay here or go on a short vacation—I’m voting either for a big-game safari experience or hiking the snow-capped Mount Kenya. I’m pretty sure that my project will take a break since there are only 5 staff members and I’m the only non-Sudanese (everyone else needs time off to travel to their home district to vote). But I’m not sure what Francis needs to do. Someone has to be around to run the generator and make sure all that (again, outrageously expensive) cheese we just bought in Kampala doesn’t spoil…