Some pictures...thanks to Heba

Heba is using my camera while she's here as hers got stolen with her purse. She took these pictures around the UN camp here and in some of our nightly excursions into Juba.

Top picture is the infamous Bill Kelly in front of the Moosehead bammer he is so proud of. Heba thought it would hilarious to take a picture of me at the PX looking longingly at liquor. Ha ha ha, I can't stop laughing. The next one is all of us out at Da Vinci's for dinner, the next one Mark, Heba and I, and then me cooking on the hot plate that Dawn Boudreau, a Canadian Military Observer (UNMO) who was heading home to Canada from Juba gave to me. Notice the every present can of coke in my hand.

Look up "intense" in the dictionary and it will probably say to take with a grain of salt anything that has the word "intense" in it!

I was lying in my bed at 4:30 this morning trying to get back to sleep (had to go to the bathroom, only good thing about Khartoum was that because I sweated so much there I rarely had to go to the bathroom during the night) and I started thinking about what I should put in my blog. I’m going to try to follow my stream of thought of 4:30 this morning because it was profound, believe me.

I started thinking about an intense feeling of loneliness I felt right after supper; I had cooked for Jas and I and after he left to go to work (he works shifts in Regional Headquarters Operations), I was just sitting at my table, thinking how good it felt to not be rushing off somewhere when this intense loneliness rolled over me like a wave, it was like I didn’t have a friend in the world. In addition to depressing me, it confused me since I’ve been going almost non-stop since Heba got here on Thursday. I was getting up at 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning trying to get an Admin project ready for Saturday in addition to doing Charita, my Personnel Officer’s duties, staying up late every night talking and drinking, Scott was in town from Wau (pronounced “Wow” for a training seminar so I was trying to see him as much as possible for lunch and dinner and our evening beers, we’d gone out for dinner every night (including a great restaurant on the banks of the Nile, Da Vinci’s, the nicest one I’ve yet been to in Sudan), that was another beautiful evening, Bill Kelly, the ex-RCMP from Nova Scotia who is in charge of UN Security here was hilarious as usual, there was live music, Mark Goode, a good Australian bloke was along as well and his usual charming, witty self, the food was very good etc. Friday night Scott and Jas and I just wandered around the camp here inviting ourselves in where ever we found people sitting around and talking to them, we finally ended up speaking with the Germans and the Austrians (at least I think that was German we were speaking), Mark offered to go pick up Heba who was doing an interview in Juba somewhere so he left, then I got really tired around 11, went to sleep for a while, then got up at 1 and went for a couple of dances at Plan B, the gathering spot on the UN base here where there is usually music and dancing on Friday nights. To go back a bit, Mark didn’t come back to the Germans’ containers before I went to sleep so I was wondering where he’d dragged Heba off to and lo and behold, I run into Mark at Plan B and he tells me that on the Airport Road the way to pick up Heba he got held up by three men with AK47 assault rifles who demanded money. Mark had a Sudanese National employee here at the base who he was giving a ride home to and this person talked the three men out of whatever they were going to do and Mark got the hell out of there. This has happened before, as a matter of fact one of the Canadian Military Observers (UNMOs) who had been posted to Juba too, Chakar, had had the same thing happen to him earlier this year. (Melanie, if you are reading this, this is why you can’t come to visit me in Sudan. Not yet. Someday I’ll bring you back here, but not yet) Enyways, Mark was telling me this and I’m flash-thinking “Holy God, when he left the Germans’ container that could have been the last time I saw him alive!”, you know the fragility of life and finality of events and all that. That got us talking about being shot and having guns pointed at us and policing stuff like that. That set off a round of me telling him how glad I was that he was okay and “I love you man” and all the usual shit men tell each other when they’ve had too much to drink (and women think they have it tough!). And Mark had to go ruin the moment by trying to kiss me the stupid &%#^@$&$^. (He was just joking, trying to lighten up the moment, don’t you all go thinking we’re discovering unexplored aspects of our sexuality or anything, women still aren’t safe around us. Well. Well, okay, women still aren’t safe around Mark, with me they’re more likely to be puzzled to death.

So all to say, its been an intense couple of days. I’m glad Charita is back. I can go back to sleep during the day now.

Not much to report

Its been hectic for me the last three or four days. My Personnel Officer, Charita has been away on CTO (Compensatory Time Off) in Khartoum so I've been trying, and I empahsize trying, to do her job plus my own, get in some visiting with Scott who was Juba for a training workshop, visit with Heba whose in town to do some interviews and witness for herself that there is a life, a good life actually, outside Khartoum, put on a going-away luncheon for one of our staff who has reached his End Of Mission date (he never showed up for it by the way), move into my own container (yay, finally after two months I can unpack my bags), etc. etc. etc. I still managed to catch a few hours sleep last night then get up at 1:00 and go get in a few dances at the regular Friday night party and watch the moon for a while before going back to bed. This morning brown mud poured out of the taps and showers in all of the "ablution" centres in my part of the camp and I have to wear my long sleeve uniform shirts because I haven't done my laundry for five days and all my short sleeve shirts are dirty. Every day kind of stuff, you know.

Had a great visit with Scott, funny how reinvigorating a good bitching session over a couple of beers can be.

Good times in Sudan.

Sorry Betty, I’m going to borrow from the email I sent you.

First a few pictures. My darling daughter Natalie who works for Tim Hortons sent me sent some Tim Hortons cups and the intrepid traveler Heba who went to Dongola with me brought me a humongous can of Tim Hortons coffee, so Jas and I had a cup one morning just like at home. Thanks to you, Nat, and Heba, for a little piece of Canada when I was feeling homesick and missing you all.

The second picture is my boss Tony, the former LAPD officer and Jas and I pretending to eat donuts. I haven’t seen a donut since getting to Sudan unfortunately (or fortunately maybe!) so we had to pretend to eat them with our Tim Horton’s.

Some of you mentioned my weight loss. I've lost at least 20 pounds, but I'm not alarmed, in fact I feel great. I don't have that much of an appetite; life doesn't revolve around food here. Very little junk food, much smaller portions, only a beer or two a day which won't kill me, lots of nice red wines in the PX but that's no big deal either, I only finished my first bottle on Sunday night and I had to share it with two others to do so. I came over here in the 190s in weight which is too heavy for me, but I knew I'd be losing weight so I overate a bit before leaving. I was 185 in Depot but most of my life I've been 175, this is my ideal weight. I feel great, did I mention that, I have so much more energy now, a spring in my step when I walk. I get out more, and am more active.

The third picture is a police vehicle stuck in the mud. When it rains here the ground gets really soft and the tires sink in pretty deep. I couldn’t get this one out with the four wheel drive but one of the Filipinos just jumped into it and drove it out no problem. Damn Filipinos. It was embarrassing.

The fourth picture is from a party Saturday night. Charles was in town for some medical attention and so we went to the container of a fellow Canadian Bill Kelly who is in charge of UN Security here (and in whose container Jas and I stayed for the first couple of weeks). Bill got this big Moosehead beer banner when he was home in Halifax and he plans to get all of us in front of it for a picture and send the picture to Moosehead beer and get two free cases of Moosehead beer at Christmas time….The detailed explanation of this idea doesn’t make any more sense believe me.

The last one was Jas, Charles and I, celebrating two months, can you believe it, two months in Sudan already. I don’t know how the other guys are feeling but the time is flying by for me.

I mentioned being homesick. It’s funny the things that make me homesick all of a sudden, out of nowhere. The other night I was looking through boxes and bags for something and found one of the girls’ hair elastics. It took me right home better than any time warp or wormhole, because at home I was always picking up discarded hair elastics off the floor, off, under, on behind and in front of the couches, in the bathtubs, the front entranceway dresser, out of the car, on the back deck etc. etc. etc. and throwing them on bathroom counters for the girls to reuse (do you reuse hair elastics??). Every so often I’ll think of something, hear something (not a tv thank god but maybe a cat, there are tons of cats around here) that gives me a real intense pang of loneliness and regret. Not often thank god.

Mind you, it would help if I could get a permanent container to live in. Jas and I are moving back together, the people whose containers we were using have come back from holidays so we’ve packed all our stuff up and moved it into one container again. We’ll be sleeping standing up this time!

Otherwise I’m really liking Juba, hot during the day but cool evenings and mornings, nice gentle breezes, a refreshing rain every once in a while. Lots of greenery, relatively quiet in the evenings except for the bugs and birds. Most of the people here are really nice, interesting, world-traveled, positive outlooks on life. It’s like being in a colony of kindred spirits. And everybody thinks highly of Canada, everybody has a relative there or wants to move there or visit. Even the Americans grudgingly admit they like our country and our people, and that we have a much better image in the world.

In case I gave the wrong impression in my last blog, despite my mock exasperation, I'm very proud of Melanie; she really turned her life around and did it largely on her own. And she marches to own drummer. That's what I like about her the most; she's such a free spirit. An annoying, frustrating free spirit at times but a lovable one nonetheless. I love you very much Melanie and couldn’t be more proud of you. And you too Natalie and Stephanie and Adam.

I paid 80 bucks on Ebay for a dress...for this??

I want to congratulate my darling daughter Melanie on her high school graduation last month, which I couldn't attend because I was here. These are a few pictures of Melanie and her boyfriend Christian (he's the one in the skirt) on their graduation and prom days. I'm very proud of Melanie, she was failing most of her subjects two and a half years ago, she graduated with honours. And the dress and the shoes are just so...Melanie. Love you pumpkin.

Things getting back to normal here, Graduation Day for the South Sudan Police Service

Things are getting back to normal here, the UN people who were out of Sudan on leave are being allowed to return, the police who were relocated here from Khartoum are going back and we are being allowed to go on leave again. It was tense for a while but it seems okay for now. It forced us to do some much-needed emergency planning at least.

These pictures are from the graduation of over 2400 South Sudan Police Service officers here in Juba last week. They had completed six months of training (it was scheduled to be four months) and are being posted to various points in South Sudan. In RCMP terms, we did basic training in troops of 32 or 24, and when I trained the maximum amount of members in training in Depot was 600. This was the equivalent of four times all of Depot graduating at the same time.

The UN provided funding, accomodation, supplies, instructors etc. for the SSPS. Quite a task, my hat's off to our people who did it.

The first picture is some of us UN folks watching the Parade (yes, I'm in there somewhere), the second and third are the graduates parading obviously, the fourth is my boss, the Deputy Police Commissioner with me in the background and the fifth is the SSPS officers and family and friends celebrating afterwards.

Nothing new to report...

...other than my anti-malaria medication is getting to me (it's supposed to cause strange dreams or nightmares). Last night I dreamt I was looking at the top of my head and there were a whole bunch of bald spots there and I realized in my dream that I don't have as much hair on my head as I think I do (some of you probably think that as well).

Enyways, the reports I'm getting from Khartoum is peaceful protests, no violence.

I'm going to post my last set of pictures from Taitti. This is from my last day there, Mohammad arranged with a friend to take us for a boat ride on the Nile and then visit a farm on the other side of the river. Saw a mother camel nursing her baby (I don't know what a baby camel is called), a donkey, some more goats (God those things are curious!), a couple of local men cutting hay for the animals by hand. It was a nice evening. I rode on (actually sat on, it didn't move) a donkey. That is the way you ride them according to Mohammad, at least, that is the way he rode it. He said it had been 25 years since he last rode a donkey.

For those of you wondering about the hat I'm wearing (I don't usually wear a hat, don't like them), the last picture should clear up the confusion. It was perfect for covering my face when I wanted to take an impromptu nap.

I had a great time there obviously. Mohammad emphasized that they've never had any violence in their region, they resolve there disputes peacefully, Arabs, blacks, everyone lives there harmoniously. They've been waiting forever for electricty to be installed and they quietly but persistently press the local govt. for it. I like to think of Taitti as the real Sudan.

Saturday morning, my vacation was over and I took the bus back to Khartoum and then flew back to Juba on Sunday. It was a six hour bus ride, but on an air conditioned bus on a paved road, it wasn't a bad trip at all, except for the non-stop music in Arabic. I was asked to produce my passport photocopy at one stop (yes, the only one on the bus asked to produce it and coincidentally I was probably the only non-Sudanese person on the bus. I wonder how they knew.).

The situation in Sudan

As you've probably heard, it is expected that this week the International Criminal Court, which is part of the UN, will announce an indictment against Sudanese President Al Bashir and some other high ranking Sudanese Govt. officials for Crimes Against Humanity over the events in Darfur over the last three years. It s expected that there will be a reaction to this announcement, possibly directed against UN personnel. We've spent the last few days discussing and preparing for the worst. Contingency plans are in place. There are also rumors of troop movement and buildups in other parts of the country. In the event of a resumption of hostilities, a decision will be made on evacuating UN personnel.

Jas, Rory and I have been declared essential and will be remaining in Juba and Yambio respectively in event of a general evacuation of UN personnel from the south of Sudan. However, I must emphasize that we're believed to be safe in the south for the time being. Nonetheless, Canadian peacekeepers including RCMP and other Canadian police hung in there in East Timor and the Balkans and other trouble spots around the world when things got rough, we will simply be trying to maintain that tradition.

I've heard second hand that the situation is very tense in Darfur and the Mission members there are expecting to be attacked if the indictment of the President is announced. They and the people in Khartoum are probably at the greatest risk right now.

As much as I'm thinking of us, the UN peacekeepers at a time like this, and I'm certainly keeping all of our safety and security in mind in every decision, I'm thinking more of the people of Sudan: friendly, cheerful, helpful people despite decades of debillitating civil war. They need peace and order here more than we do.

More on Taitti

On the third day of my visit we went to Dongola for Heba to interview some govt. types (an exhilarating 7:30 AM ride on the back of the pickup on patchy pavement at 100 kms. an hour because we were late for an appointment. Don’t you do that girls. Or Adam! Enyways…) We were stopped in a Sudanese army checkpoint and I had to produce the photocopy of my passport (the actual passport being in Khartoum with my application for my multiple entry/exit visa. Without that ME/E visa, I would not have been allowed to return to Sudan when I left on my first holiday). Enyways, that was a tense couple of minutes. Heba, as she so smugly remarked, didn’t have to produce her passport. I didn’t care, in fact I wanted to show them my passport photocopy.

Enyways, we drove around the town of Dongola (population 30,000) a bit, had a good lunch of something brown in a bowl that we all ate out of (as Mohammad says, sometimes its best not to know what you’re eating, if it tastes good just eat it. My sentiments exactly. I know what you’re all thinking and you’re all wrong, I never got sick once up there, no upset stomach (other than from eating too much), no gastro-intestinal distress (I love that term), nothing. It was like being back on my parents’ farm again, eating well (and often, too often in fact), slept well, felt well rested, relaxed frame of mind, everything in good working order. Enyways....

After the lunch we met up with some govt. officials and they took us with them on the ferry to the other side of the Nile, then we drove an hour and a half on unpaved, rough roads to see the ancient fortress/town site/burial site of Kerma. Check it out: http://archaeology.about.com/od/kterms/qt/kerma.htm

These pictures are from the trip up there, touring the site and the last one of me is on the ferry ride back; also on the ferry there were three army pickup trucks with 50 caliber machine guns mounted on the back and the boxes was full of AK47s. You can see one of them behind me in the picture. The soldiers were telling Heba that the high school students, after their graduation, have to undergo six weeks of military training including weapons instruction. Nothing personal Melanie, but I just can’t see putting assault rifles into the hands of you and your friends…

Then back to Dongola, Heba and I (belatedly) registered as tourists, (it took so long I thought we were applying for citizenship), then another not-so-exhilarating ride back to Taitti. We were out in the sun most of the day and quite dehydrated and tired that night. I could barely stay awake till 10:00 o’clock to eat.

A short video of Heba the celebrity

I forgot to add this video to my previous post. Heba was a big hit at the school and in the village in general. Mohammad told her and I that her prescence in Taitti was having a significant effect on the community. It couldn't be any other way. Good for her.

Wayne
(she's still a shit for videotaping me signing along to my mp3 player!)

My visit to Taitti cont.

For those of you asking, me and my fellow intrepid peacekeepers are safe in the south of Sudan. I don’t have anything to add on the situation in Sudan yet, I will in a couple of days. In the meantime, I have a few more pictures and stories from my visit to Taitti I’d like to relate.

In the top photo, Mohammad is taking the cover traditionally used to put over the food before it was served to keep the flies off of it. Its very colourful, I wish I could have bought one but I never saw it offered for sale anywhere. The second picture is his family's pigeon coop. Yes, I ate pigeon one night, it reminded me of the Cornish Game Hen's we used to get in the cafeteria in Depot during basic training. Not much meat on them but it was good.

As I mentioned, I was treated very well in Taitti, the people all wanted to meet me and shake hands with me and have me to their home for tea or a meal. Very kind, friendly people, I quite enjoyed them. They have a distinct way of shaking hands, first they clap each other on the left shoulder with their right hands, then they shake hands. It took me a day or two to catch on to this (I’m a slow learner). I met most of the women when we arrived at a house, they greeted me and most of them shook hands with me but they usually went to sit in another room with the other women. Heba was able to move back and forth between the groups of men and the groups of women; I wasn’t, I never got the opportunity to speak to any of them other than in greeting. That is the culture there. As Mohammad was explaining, they don’t “date” in the sense that we do in Canada but they don’t have arranged marriages either, they have arranged introductions instead in which family members will introduce them to each other and they discuss whether they would be interested in getting married. It (marriage) is voluntary on both parts however. I noticed a few younger people holding hands or walking together after dark but in general I didn’t see any displays of affection between the men and the women.

One day I was there, we went to the elementary school in Taitti, Heba wanted to interview some students and teachers. As you can see in the pictures, the buildings were in rough shape by our standards. Nonetheless the students were all very bright looking, very disciplined, they all stood up when we entered the room, they kept quiet while the teacher or someone was speaking etc. Something like our schools used to be. Segregated classes may make this possible. When we went into some of the classes in the school, all of the kids stared at me at first. When I smiled at them they all smiled back. They are very attractive, big brown eyes, beautiful smiles. They reminded me of my kids when they were that age (notice that everything seems to remind me of my kids, I’ve missed them more than I thought I would. My kids that is, not the kids of Taitti although they were very nice too. Nice teeth.).

I found myself wishing I could have taken my kids with me to Taitti so they can see what is important in life; not tvs and Internet and clothes, although I must admit I longed for some word of the outside world on some days. The only means of obtaining world news is newspapers, which are in Arabic.

I also never sweated so much in all my life. Even though Mohammad’s family washed my clothes once when I was there, when I came back to Juba my two pairs of cotton cargo pants were discoloured from the salt in my sweat. I only wore sandals when I was there because it would have been too hot for shoes, but the soles of my feet started to dry up and crack open. Fortunately I had taken some moisturizing lotion with me because I read in Heba’s blog that her feet were getting quite dry and calloused; usually when my feet are that dry little cuts appear in the soles and they are painful and hard to heal up. I only had one thank goodness.

Been back since Sunday...

I got back from Dongola on Sunday and I've been really busy since. I thought I'd spend a couple of blogs on my trip. I really enjoyed it. That's Mohammad on the right in the first photo, some friends of his with he and I in the second, me standing in the street (?!?!?) in Taitti in the third, the bed I slept on in the fourth and the goat pen in the fifth (if you look closely, you can see one of the goats sticking his face through a hole in the gate to watch us. They're very curious creatures. I didn't grow up with goats on my parents' farm so it was a learning experience for me with the goats!)

I really enjoyed myself there. I was visiting my friend Mohammad Said (who some of you may know, he’s on our advisory committee in Ottawa) in his home village of Taitti (pronounced Taytee), near Dongola in Northern Sudan. I went along with a friend, Heba Aly, whose mom is Tyseer, another good friend in Ottawa. Heba is an independent journalist, here doing stories on us in the UN and the life of the people of Sudan and a whole bunch of other stuff. Mohammad just lost his dad a month ago or so ago and was back to spend some time with his mom and family.

I took the bus with Heba from Khartoum, it left at 4:45 AM but Mohammad’s brother Ibrahim got us up at 2:30 to make sure we were at the bus stop on time. We were kind of tired on the five hour bus ride there; it was a modern bus and paved road for the most part but they played music and videos all the way up and I couldn’t sleep. If you check out Heba’s blog (http://hebasenegal.blogspot.com) I think she took a video on the bus ride of me with my headphones on, singing along to a song on my mp3 player to drown out a video of a child prodigy preaching in Arabic. She thought the whole thing was hilarious…she was very tired and getting giddy.

Mohammad and I slept outside under the stars (on our beds) at night. It is very hot during the day however, 40+, so we stayed inside and read or slept during the afternoon. We visited many of Mohammad's friends, who all seem to be cousins of his. We had to eat and drink something everywhere we stopped. Typical village. There are about 5,000 people there. They all live in homes made out of dried mud. Some of the rooms have dried mud or cement floors, some have packed earth floors. Some of the rooms have roofs, some are open. The toilet is a hole in the ground. The shower is a tank of water on the roof hooked up to a shower head. We had to shower in the morning or the evening because the water gets scalding hot during the day.

The food was very good (notice I always talk about food), Mohammad's mom is an excellent cook. Mohammad's mom is like my mom and most moms I suspect, always trying to get us to eat more. We had tea and biscuits when we got up in the morning, then coffee and biscuits an hour or so later, a full hot lunch that they call breakfast at noon, tea and biscuits at 5:00-6:00 o'clock and we ate supper at 10:00 o'clock at night, then went to bed. They don't have electricity but they have a generator that they turn on for a couple of hours at night. No tv, no phone, no fridge, no Internet. As is traditional, at every meal we ate from the same bowls as everyone else who was eating. There was always a meat dish, some vegetables, some delicious bread. One night I was particularly enjoying a meal at a cousin of Mohammad’s, I thought I was eating some kind of beans (again, I think everything is beans) and Heba said “Mohammad, did you try the intestines?” Gulp. Intestines??? I didn’t eat them with as much enthusiasm after that but they were still good. Sheep liver is very good; I’m not fussy about cow liver but sheep liver is excellent.

There are donkeys and goats and sheep and some cows and dogs, in Taitti and yes even a couple of cats (that was for my daughters Stephanie, Melanie and Natalie, they always want to know about the cats). We were about half a kilometer from the Nile River. It’s a very slow pace of life, much like what living back in my home village, Dacre (27 kilometers past Renfrew, way back in the bush of Renfrew County) was like when I was growing up. It reminds me a lot of Dacre actually, except it is in the desert and the people are Arab and speak Arabic obviously. I think I was the only white person in town. They are mostly Arab with some black people. Everyone gets along very well. They work very hard, especially the women, they seem to do most of the work there. Many of the men go away to work: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Canada and the United States and just come home on their holidays, so they only see their families once a year. There is not much work in Taitti except for farming.

I'll write more tomorrow.