Movin' on...

Here's Rory and Wayne Plimmer at the hippotherapy place we went to last week.

Our barrack boxes have arrived so we're moving to Juba tomorrow (Wed.). I have to repack my stuff, take what is essential with me, the rest gets shipped to Juba (I know, here we go again). I'll post again once I'm done repacking or when I get to Juba, whichever comes first.

Wayne

Too much time on our hands...

Hello everybody

I thought I'd send along a few pictures of life in Sudan for your amusement. The first is us drowning our sorrows in the Canadian Embassy pool last week. The second one is Rory and his latest blowup doll. Actually, that is Australia House's mascot, which we are now in possession of. There was another Happy Hour at Canada House on Thursday night. The Canadian Forces guys had abducted the Australians blow-up kangaroo (don’t ask) from Australia House at the birthday party last week and hung it from a chandelier in the front foyer here (one of the CF guys sang "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" in French when the Australians arrived); of course you know, this means war! The Australians are plotting revenge even as we speak (or read and write, whatever!)

The third one is a pciture of the Haboob (dust storm) that blew in a couple of nights ago.
The last one is our "ceremonial" passing of contingency command from Chris Beamish to myself. The stick is for beating the other guys with when they won't get out of bed in the morning. Actually, its to beat off the women who are attracted to the power of the position. I know, I know, that was sexist, okay its to beat off the men and women who are attracted to the power of the position. Double actually, its to kill the cricket that was in our bedroom last night chirping up a storm. We thought our air condtioning was conking out (everything sounds like our air conditioning conking out).

We're still sitting in Khartoum, still waiting for our luggage, still waiting to go to Juba. The power went out four or five times last night, once for a half hour to 45 minutes. It got pretty warm pretty fast I'll tell you.

Wayne

A bleary-eyed posting...

Morning all (6:15 AM here). Was wakened seveal times last night by some squeaking noise. I thought at first it was some demented bird but I realized it was mechanical, probably our air conditioning unit conking out on us. Our barrack boxes didn't show up yesterday so we're still waiting for them before we go anywhere. Its been over a week since we finished our training, and although the past week went fast, it certainly is getting boring just waiting around to deploy.

A haboob (wind and sand storm) blew through the night before last, the military CO (Commanding Officer) invited us up to his roof top patio to watch it, it was very spectacular. It rained as well and the air was quite fresh and cool all the way till yesterday morning. Coincidentally or not, Thursday and Friday felt like the hottest days since we've been here so it may be that the haboobs result from the severe heat. Enyways, there was some thunder too and a rainbow at one point; it was an eclectic weather event to say the least.

As hot as it is during the day, the cooled down a bit last night, we ate at an outdoor restaurant and it was quite pleasant.

We're trying to pool all our pictures, so I hope to have some new ones to post on the blog soon.

Wayne

An oasis of mercy…

The day before yesterday, Elsie, a Dutch woman we met here who works for the Leprosy Mission, took us to see some handicapped children undergoing hippo-therapy, riding horses. An English woman named Jane-Ann, who is married to a Sudanese man and moved to Khartoum about 20 years ago, began rescuing abused and neglected horses and donkeys about 15 years ago (there are donkeys everywhere here, they pull wagons and carts and people ride them). Jane-Ann has four children of her own, has adopted or fostered three other children including one really cute deaf boy and is pregnant again!. It was like Grand Central Station at her farm with goats, geese, cattle, horses, dogs, donkeys etc. etc. all over the place, plus all her own kids and handicapped kids and other kids that I never did figure out where they fit in.

Jane-Ann has about 20 horses now and she provides riding lessons for a fee to help pay for the feed but she provides free riding therapy to handicapped children on Wednesdays. The theory is that the motion of the horse walking stimulates the back and abdominal muscles of a child and exercises and strengthens them. Elsie says it works, she’s seen some children who couldn’t walk before the therapy able to learn to walk after months of riding. The children seem to really enjoy it. The horses they use for riding are very docile and good natured. Wayne P., Jas and Rory came along too. Wayne ended up holding one child as he rode around the pen and Rory went to make sand castles with Jane-Ann’s kids in the sandbox. It was a humbling experience. We think we’re here to help the people of Sudan but Jane-Ann is someone who is really making a tangible difference in a lot of lives. If anyone knows of a Canadian charity or service club that is looking for a project sponsor in Africa, I’ve got a suggestion…her blog is at http://miraclessudan.blogspot.com Check it out.

Elsie also took us to her mission to see the setup they have for treating people suffering from leprosy and related problems. So many people, so many children. The medication to treat leprosy is provided for free by the World Health Organization, WHO, but the people have to transport themselves and their children here. Some of them travel 2 hours to get here for treatment.

Interesting how politics comes in to play here. The number of people with leprosy is constantly underestimated as it is considered a reflection of the scale of social development and hygiene in a country. Unfortunately, this results in an inadequate supply of medication being ordered and sometimes they run out at the clinic. Sad.

Wayne

My mother will be so proud….

Last night I attended the longest mass I have ever been to. It was in the south side of Khartoum, a really poor area that reminded me of the pictures of the shantytowns in South Africa that you see on the tv news sometimes. What I’m going to say will sound like Greek to non-Catholics but believe it is very significant for a little Catholic boy from Eastern Ontario.

The Canadian military guys we are staying with sponsor a charity at this particular church and they were going to see a mass of celebration last night; so I invited myself along. The church was the Church of the Ugandan Martyrs, which reminded me of course of the Canadian martyrs of southern Ontario. Sure enough, when I started talking to Father Carl, one of the priests presiding at mass (a 70 year old originally from Holland), he and the other priests were Jesuits, as were the Ugandan martyrs and the Canadian martyrs. Despite the fact that one of my favourite priests was an Oblate (Father Ken Stephens of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate or OMI, I love that name. Do any of my siblings know what order Father Roy Valliquette belonged to? He was my other favourite priest, along with Father Sammon, the priest who gave me my first communion and confirmed me. But I digress...). Anyway, Father Carl and I had a great chat about Catholic stuff. There are 10 Catholic churches in Khartoum and there are five Missionaries of Charity houses in Sudan (the Missionaries of Charity are sometimes known as the Sisters of Charity, Mother Theresa of Calcutta’s order) and 20 MOC houses in Ethiopia. They run schools, orphanages, palliative care homes, as he put it, for everyone that no one else wants.

I was also introduced to the Cardinal of Wau (pronounced “wow” and it was kind of a wow for me, believe me, I’ve never met a Cardinal before, as my kids would say, he’s one of the dudes that elect the pope!) The mass was a mass of Confirmation for about twenty young people and there must have been at least 500 people at this outdoor mass. It went on for 2 hours and 45 minutes, all in Arabic. The people were all black, no Arabs, as it is still a capital offence in Sudan for a Muslim to change to another religion. Father Carl said there is no restriction on converting black Sudanese from their traditional religions to Christianity, I would estimate that 90% of the crowd were under 20 (I know this because we sat in the youth seats instead of the men’s seating area by mistake lol. The men, women and children are all supposed to sit in separate seating areas). Quite a difference from the composition of the parishes back home. And the children were quiet as mice, for the first hour anyway. Fascinating.

It was a high mass which means they sang most of it except for the readings and the homily. And children went up on the alter and danced during some of the singing, dressed in bright blue and yellow and red, what a feast for the eyes. It was very upbeat, very inspiring, very enjoyable despite the heat and the uncomfortable metal benches. Some of the other people in my group took pictures, being a Catholic I felt funny doing that so I didn’t but my discomfort doesn’t extend to obtaining the pictures from the heathens that did take them and posting them on my blog.

Sam or Brenda, can you pass this on to Mom, I’m sure she will be thrilled to bits that I went to a mass in which someone wasn’t being married or buried.

Tuesday morning blues.

We had our driving tests and received our UN diver's licenses yesterday (but not until after the car to be used for testing broke down and had to be repaired); now we have to just sit and wait.

We’re still waiting to go to Juba because there is no accommodation for us there at the present time, plus we don't have our mosquito netting and DEET so it would be dangerous for us to go, the mosquitoes (and Malaria) are really bad there right now because of the rainy season. Our equipment sits in Sudanese Customs here in Khartoum and we sit at the UN base, reading and watching movies. I've read one novel already and more than halfway through a second.

I plugged my USB flash drive into one of the computers at the base the other day to save some powerpoints we had seen in class and went to one of the chipheads (technical assistance) to get it scanned before downloading it onto my laptop; sure enough it had a couple of viruses on it. There are supposed to be a lot of viruses on UN computers so I have to be careful not to infect my own.

I went to the local "mall" here a couple of days ago, the Afra Mall, and it was really hot inside, there was no air conditioning. It wasn't a very big mall; there were only about 20 stores or so. One big dept. store with not much merchandise, there were large aisles between the tables and shelves. I have a slurpee at the coffee shop and it cost me $7.

Don’t have much appetite these days, probably because of the heat and the lack of variety in the food. The cafeteria on the base isn’t bad, but there is no choice and we get rice and lentil soup every day. I don’t like lentil soup that much. Even the Golden Gate restaurant which is just off the base has a limited menu; I’m in the pizza/hamburger/spaghetti cycle. The sheesh kebab was a bit tough to chew on. We’re supposed to check out a restaurant at lunch today that has more North American fare.

This is what I sound like when I'm tired...

Some random musings this evening, I'm tired and want to go to bed soon. I woke up at 4:30 this morning for some unknown reason (probably because I had to go to the bathroom!) and I thought "Oh well, I can go on the Intenet for a while" but when I came downstairs there were already two people on the Internet. "Arggghhh" as Charlie Brown would say.

Today I went to meet the Charge D'Affairs at the Canadian Embassy and had a pleasant chat with him and two of his staff. He commented favourably on the fact I brought a book with me, he said its a good habit to get into as we do a lot of waiting here. Sure enough, I have to wait for two hours for my ride back to UN headquarters after our meeting, I read about 4 chapters plus a Maclean's magazine they had at the Embassy.

We didn't have our driver tests yesterday, we had some practise driving the four wheel drives and preparing for our driver's tests tomorrow. That's one more hurdle to overcome before we can move down to Juba. I'm not sure what I'll be doing yet, hopefully supervising a bunch of UN police who are mentoring a bunch of South Sudanese police, accompanying them on their patrols, watching how they do police work and making suggestions on how it could be improved. Its going to be a slow process. We've been in Kosovo for 10 years, this is going to take at least as long...

A few of you have commented on the danger in being here. There is a risk to being here, no doubt, there are lots of people running around the countryside with guns, none of which are us, we are unarmed, and every so often we hear of UN people being robbed or much less frequently, killed. The only UN soldiers with guns are what are called the Force Protection units; in Khartom they are from Rawanda of all places and they guard the UN facilities and can shoot back if they are attacked. We just have to be docile and not resist robberies, ambushes etc. Yeah I know, that's not very reassuring. Yeah, I did volunteer for this. I minimize the danger but it is there.

My spare time here has been filled with laundry, working out to get back into shape, shopping and cooking, and trying to stay cool, the heat is unrelenting here. I don't go out much, we stand out because we are white and the danger here is mainly after dark from common criminaliy, during the day I don't feel insecure. Besides, once I'm in an air conditioned place I don't want to leave it. It doesn't cool down much in the evenings this time of year.

There's not much greenery around here although occasionally I see people watering lawns and gardens. Come to think of it, that is only at the UN compound I see that happening, and usually mid morning when the water evaporates right away!

The way my schedule works is that I work continually with no days off for a month and then get six days off, which I will probably spend in Cairo or Amman, Jordan or somewhere like that, somewhere where they have good food and cold beer and soft beds. For one set of days off I may go to the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Shaik (sp?) as well, yes to overeat and overdrink and oversleep. Nothing against my roommate but it would be nice not to wake up to a freezing cold room from the airconditioning or snoring!

I'm going to head off to bed. Hopefully I'll have more ambition tomorrow and I'll download some pictures off my camera to post on my blog.

Wayne