Gorillas in the Mud

After a long hiatus, I’m back. Well, sorta. I’m still working on grad school applications, volunteering for Francis’ project, and trying to make this second Kapoeta Christmas nice (e.g. I’ve bought fabric to make a tablecloth for Christmas dinner). Needless to say, there might not be another post until January. But given the extraordinary nature of our recent adventures, I thought they warranted at least a pictorial posting.

Realizing that all work and no play makes for a dull life, we decided to take a bit of a holiday. Since visiting Rwanda in 2008, I’ve wanted to return. Though its notoriety is derived from the atrocities of the 1994 genocide, Rwanda is actually one of the most accessible, tourist-friendly spots in East Africa. It boasts comparatively excellent infrastructure, a hospitality industry geared towards English-speaking travelers, few (though I hesitate to say “no”) corrupt public servants, and laws that discourage begging/pan-handling. And, it is home to a good portion of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas and verdant, dramatic landscapes.

Thus, we decided to go for a long weekend to trek said gorillas and soak up scenic vistas along pothole-free roads. Rwanda did not disappoint (see pictures below). We opted for 2 days of gorilla trekking, and I’ve very glad for it, as the experiences were completely different. There are 8 habituated gorilla groups in Rwanda that tourists visit on a daily basis—a group of 8 humans (plus a guide and 2 trackers) are limited to an hour visit with them. But because these gorilla groups are on the move, it’s never quite certain how long or strenuous your hike to them will be. On the first day, we were assigned to the Umubano group and literally hiked straight up a volcanic mountain. Imagine that for 90 minutes straight you climb up a slippery extension latter, taking the rungs two at a time. Now, imagine that it’s not a ladder but rather some loose toeholds that the guide has dug into soft red soil with nothing but stinging nettle and loose vines to grab should you lose your balance. That was pretty much our journey. I thankfully had the assistance of a nice Rwandan porter named Simon who, despite his diminutive size, managed to pull me up the mountain. At the top, however, we were treated to amazing views of the valley below and to a mobile gorilla group. For an hour, we followed as they literally rolled down the mountain—the jungle was so thick that often times we (and the gorillas) weren’t standing/sitting on soil but atop 3 feet of trampled bushes. While I usually dread descents, the soft soil and thick foliage made it relatively easy to “fall” down the mountain without fear of bashing your head open on a rock.
Baby reaching for bamboo

Silverback

Nevertheless, after the tough climb, we requested an easier trek the next day, and boy did we get it! Assigned to the Kwitondo group, the most strenuous/technical component was breaching the 5 foot tall stone barrier separating the national park from farmland. Once inside the park, we spotted a silverback within 15 minutes. For the next hour, we moved through a maze of bamboo forest to catch the group as they snacked. Because it was feeding time, they tended to be spread out, but right before we left, the head silverback had assembled the group into what looked like a town meeting, providing an excellent glimpse of all of them at once (in panorama—I don’t think any camera could have gotten them all in since there were 20 of them and we were so close).

Oh, a note on proximity: the rules are that you are supposed to stay 7 meters away from the gorillas to minimize spreading disease to them and for safety. The reality is, though, that in the process of tracking, you often find yourself in the middle of the group and with such dense jungle, the guide can’t always predict when one of the gorillas will decide to come tumbling your way. On both treks, Francis and I came within a foot (which is sometimes scary, given that the silverbacks can weigh 400+ pounds).

Our favorite memory of the trip (though unfortunately there aren’t pictures to show) is only peripherally related to the gorillas. Apparently, if you are in elementary school, the thing to do to make money is to draw pictures of the gorillas to sell to tourists. I don’t know if it is illegal, but it is certainly discouraged, not only because Rwandans are uber-conscious of not wanting to hound tourists for money, but also because it encourages kids to draw pictures rather than do their homework (or worse, skip class and hang out by the trekking trails). Anyway, imagine our surprise when a 6 or 7 year old approached our car and flashed open one side of his jacket, not to display hot Rolex watches, but his gorilla art. Soon, there were three or four more “flashers”. It was the funniest thing ever that they felt the need to be so discrete.

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).

The food is out!!!

(My apologies for just copying the email I sent to my bosses. After a rather sleepless night worrying about this day, and then an early wake-up, I'm pretty tired right now, but wanted to share the news. Finally, the feeding of the masses commenses!)

Dear Friends,

It's my pleasure to report the successful completion of our first day of food distribution. Today, 231 families from Katico Payam, Kapoeta South County, received roughly 13MT of sorghum, oil, and salt. A very talented and disciplined local staff upheld the highest standards of accountability, and the day passed peacefully, with both beneficiaries and chiefs walking away smiling.

Over the weekend, 8MT was delivered to 6 schools, and distributions are scheduled daily through this week and next. After that, we'll be back in the bomas/villages recording stories of our work (I already have a couple ideas), documenting food-for-work progress, and passing out cards for the next distribution.

Best,
Sarah





Right, so this picture has nothing to do with feeding programs, but it was on my camera and I thought Katie and Ryan would enjoy. This is our guard! On a series of consecutive rainy days, out came the UofM windbreaker. People were astonished that that coat was from "my place"--Sudanese-speak for your tribe's homeland.

Catching up - Spring 2010

Things here are moving along. Though there have been a series of steps backward (that, really, is the MO of working in Sudan), I think I'm close to being able to do my first food distribution. The pictures below are of some of the people who will receive food.

In late April, one of Francis' employees (in fact, my favorite employee) had a baby--the first born son--that he named Francis. The picture below is visiting with Stephen's family. We brought them some groceries, a couple onesies (bought from the second-hand clothing "tarps" in the market because there were no infant clothes for sale in the regular shops) and a pair of new shoes for Sophie--their two-year-old. In visiting them, I was so happy and surprised to see the alphabet sign on the wall. It got me thinking that, while people are always asking me to buy clothes for their kids, I really should be giving them children's books. Any reading material is rare (and thus precious) in Sudan, but I've NEVER seen children's books. A recent trip to Nairobi had me spending hours in the book store picking out durable and Sudan-appropriate childrens books (stories of lions and hippos, but also a couple stories of fairy princesses because even little Sudanese girls need to dream.)


The delay in getting food for my project also gave Francis and me a chance to go on a short break in Kenya. We spent a day in Nairobi, dining at fancy restaurants and tool shopping (he was in heaven) and then went on a short safari for 3 days to Lake Nakuru. Though lions and leopards are reportedly there, the grass was too thick to see them. We did, however, see lots of zebras, buffalo, rhinos, flamingos, some giraffes (from afar) and a hyena (which is much bigger than The Lion King makes them out to be--they are somewhere between the size of a big dog and a small-ish bear).

Goodbye Negative Nancy

So, this blog has often recounted some of the more frustrating things about living in Sudan. It’s true; life here is hard, and sometimes scary (I found 2 more scorpions in the house this week), and generally challenging to get used to. However, living in Sudan hasn’t turned me into a super Negative Nancy. On the contrary, the last couple of months since we’ve been settled in our house have been some of the most satisfying months in my adult life—not the absolute best because, let’s be honest, nothing can really beat a year in Cambridge, but quite nice nevertheless. Now, I know that this seems like an outrageous statement since I live in a place of extreme poverty, no formal entertainment, and an overly circuitous path to get ANYTHING done. However, we are blessed to have both the means and foresight to overcome most of the hardships, while still enjoying the benefits of life off the grid (in more ways that one).

Take, for example, this week. It’s election week in Sudan—3 days (turned into 5) of voting followed by at least a couple days of counting ballots. The economic activity of the country is essentially at a standstill so that workers can vote. But, even with the classic Sudanese inefficiency, it doesn’t really take anyone 5 days to vote; people could take a day off (or maybe 3, if they need to travel home), but that is not the way around here. Much like Christmas time, people revel in extended holidays. Which is great for someone like me who has a job that relies entirely on input from Sudanese staff and liaising with government folks! I’ve had a week to just bum around the house. Sure, I’ve done some work: I’ve made curtains and some little beanbags to put at the base of exterior doors to keep out bugs and dirt, and I’ve helped out in the garden. But mostly I’ve been listening to news (and watching the last season of Grey’s Anatomy), cross stitching, and testing out new recipes. It’s been lovely. How can I ever go back to a paltry 2 weeks vacation, and 8 bank holidays in the US?

Speaking of the garden, holy cow—the harvest has come in. We can’t keep up with the yield of summer squash, cucumbers, green beans, butternut squash, snow peas, and cherry tomatoes (I’ve been getting about 2 pints every two days! I’m running out of things to do with these tomatoes!). I have regularly lamented about how I have missed winter and snow. However, in Sudan, it’s possible to have sweetcorn and veggies fresh from your garden year-round. That’s pretty nice. We did our first planting on November 18th (I remember because it’s Katie’s birthday!) and since then we’ve had 2 crops of cucumbers, corn, peas, and beans, and now that I’ve gotten a system down, we should have a near-continuous supply of all of the garden’s harvest starting next month. AMAZING! I think I would still prefer distinct seasons to a year-round growing season, but only just.

A third (and final for this blog) benefit of living in Sudan is a boost in our social life. Again, it’s a bit counter-intuitive since the social circle here is so much smaller than anywhere in the US (except perhaps the smallest Alaskan village). However, there’s very little after-work entertainment, and so we have much more time to devote to chatting with neighbors. Luckily, the expats that have found their way to this town are a very friendly bunch with great life stories, so it’s quite lovely to hang out. It’s given us a chance, too, to improve our hosting skills so hopefully we will return from the depths of Africa even more “cultured” than when we left.

So, the moral of the story is that it’s not all scorpions and heat waves here. Though I know many of you think we’re “roughing it”, sometimes I think that we’ve stumbled upon a corner of the world where it’s easier to live a more satisfying life.

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…

The times, they are a-changing

Where to begin? Shana’s visit really ushered in a whole new “normal” here.

Change #1: We are now a one-tortoise family. We arrived from picking up Shana at the airport in Kenya to find Clare, the first tortoise and the one that laid the eggs, dead in our backyard. For a couple days she’d been doing some serious hibernating, first on our porch and then on the edge of the tortoise pond. We try to let the tortoises do their own thing and so we’re not exactly sure when she died but she was pretty stiff (hence, the tortoise rigor mortis reference in the last post). I’m a little nervous now about caring for Morty, though he’s always been more active and at least once a week will eat up a storm on whatever grassy weeds are growing in the yard. If only there were a tortoise whisperer (or veterinarian!) in town to assure us that we’re not being bad tortoise tenders…

Change #2: The rains have come. Today marks the third rain in four days, turning this dusty town into a gooey mud bowl. Seriously, I have never experienced mud this sticky. The clumping of mud on your shoes is like walking around with 10-pounds on each foot. Since this mud is a sure way to kill a pair of flipflops (and makes for lots of dirt under your toenails) I’ve taken to wearing big rubber boots around—quite a fashion statement, I know. On the positive side, the rain thankfully has brought some relief from the heat and hopefully will keep the dust down in the house for a while.

Change #3: I am once again gainfully employed. Earlier this week, I started a job with an NGO organizing and overseeing emergency food distribution to 10,000 people living around Kapoeta. The rains never came last year, and so people have been running out of food. Today, I went to a boma (village) and found the grain stores empty; people have been eating these bitter almond-size fruits (like the ones on our Christmas tree) and tree leaves. It’s very sad. Most of this week I’ve been trying to pull together lists of people to receive the food, which included lots of meetings with government people and even a meeting with all of the local chiefs. [During this meeting, one of the chiefs indicated that he hoped after the program, his people would look “as healthy” as me. While at first I was appalled and embarrassed, I decided it better to take it as a sign of how lovely it is to be in a place where big is beautiful.] In the coming weeks, I need to hire myself a staff and work on putting together a system for efficiently and transparently distributing 970 metric tons (that’s 970,000 kg or about 2 million pounds!) of food. Needless to say, this food distribution job means that Francis and I won’t be having quite the gourmet meals we’ve become accustomed to while I’ve been playing housewife. But really, when you see people starving, even coming home to a peanut butter sandwich feels like a luxury.