Tales from the first week of distribution

[composed from my make-shift desk of sorghum bags on Thursday]

There are some times in Sudan when I ask myself—is this real?! The food distribution has, for the most part, gone very peacefully and without incident. People have been generally happy with what they have been given, and chiefs have generally been understanding that we don’t have enough food to give out to all those that are in need—there are just too many, and too little resources.

But the last two days of our distribution have been met with protests Toposa –style. While very peaceful, the entirety of this afternoon I listened as ladies made up impromptu songs and marched together on the road in front of our warehouse, using empty water bottles as percussion instruments. It sounded at least a little like a call to war. The chiefs tell me I should not be worried, but my Toposa colleagues have translated some of the lyrics: “Why are we not being given food? Is it because we are not educated? Who will write our names on the list?” The truth is, no one receiving food is educated, and it was the chiefs who wrote the names on the list. While I have been taking these protests personally (particularly because it is always ME they cry out to when I enter and exit the warehouse—darn my skin color!), I am also slightly amused to see that even in Kapoeta, even when 5,000 families have more food today than they had yesterday, the spirit of protest is alive and well and manifests itself much as it does the world over.

[and this, another snippet from an email sent to a friend today; there was also a small protest today by ladies, but not quite as organized]

I've had an exhausting day--the truck I hired to carry 50,000lbs of food out to a community had a coolant problem and had to stop every 4km! Then, when we got to the town, it was chaos and we nearly turned back, but the truck wouldn't make it, so we worked with the chiefs to calm the people and then distributed the food. But when we got down to the last two or three people, we had to high-tail it out of town and were still trailed for a good 5km by a mob of angry young men who wanted food from us. Right now all I want is a bath (hard, since I don't have a bathtub) and a pint of Ben and Jerry's (also difficult since I don't think they have a distributor on the continent).