Peace Dancers

Credit goes to a friend of mine here, who has talent, and a camera with a big lens.

Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

I have just spent 2 days on a UN training course about preventing sexual exploitation of beneficiaries, and in the workplace. This is an attempt to fight the dirty under-belly of peace-keeping missions, the collateral damage caused by humanitarian aid. It is a positive sign that the UN recognises this problem openly (how could it not?) and is trying to do something about it.

Sexual exploitation can occur where there is a power imbalance, a gap between those who have power (and/or wealth), and those who don’t. The emergency context is evidently one such example, and the "you can have your food ration if you come to my compound after office hours" form of exploitation unfortunately does happen. There are also the unusually light-skinned 'peace-keeping' babies growing up with no fathers. Disaster breeds disaster, and there are many disturbing stories.

As the only foreigner participating in the workshop I got a bit of an insight into how relationships between Sudanese men and women work. There were of course the odd question like, “is it possible for a girl to be 'raped' if she is not a virgin?” I was pleased that the other participants were able to put the questioner straight on that one. But, in discussions many of the causes of sexual assault were generally blamed on the girl, with people commenting that “she was asking for it in those tight western-style trousers”, or “poor men, they can't control themselves, it's only natural” (Cue: lots of embarrassed giggling from the group). I bit my tongue for a while but finally felt I had the right to say what I believe, so I spoke up and said that men should assume responsibility for their actions. Let’s give men some credit; they can control themselves. Let’s not blame the victim/survivor, when surely the one who has power in a relationship of inequality is the one who is responsible for exploiting that power?

I pointed out that men must understand that no means no. To which, I found a surprising answer. The whole group agreed that the problem was not saying no, but saying yes. Women will never say yes, they told me. Only prostitutes say yes. A ‘real’ woman resists, and always says no. Of course, I understand every culture has its language of codes and signs, and that ‘no’ has many shades. Yet, I can see that establishing consent is problematic when no can really mean yes. So while men must learn to respect no, women must find the courage to say yes.

Honey Seller

A Honey seller in the market. This honey is thick and sweet and strong, and filthy! It is collected directly from the trees, and you find bits of dirt, honeycomb, and bees' legs all mixed it. But delicious. Funny how back home I used to inspect my lettuce for bugs, and now I just close my eyes and eat honey with bees' legs in it. Yuk! Standards are clearly dropping.

A Marriage Proposal

"Sorry, no cold coke here. But, would you like to be my wife?"

Basic Schools

I have just done an assessment of 20 Basic Schools. Basic meaning Primary, though basic is a more fitting description. Some schools are so basic you can barely even find them – they have temporary rakuba (grass matting) structures which fall apart every year. Where there are permanent structures they are usually roofs, doors and windows missing. The schools lack books, blackboards, chalk, and facilities such as latrines and water. I remember a teacher in Darfur once complained to me that people came into the classrooms at night and defecated under the desks. I naively told him that he should lock the doors, to which he replied "but look, we have no doors and no windows, people just climb in". Where do you start? The teachers’ salaries are not always paid, and some are shockingly low (about $50 a month, which really doesn’t go far here). And with up to 90 children in a single class, getting an education here is not easy.

Hand dug wells and hand pumps in South Sudan

where I lay my hat

ahh a place to call home...Just to give you an idea of some of the building work I've been dealing with here, setting up the new office. The 'kitchen' is now going to be a store. We're trying to block up all those holes in a battle against the relentless encroaching dust. The big pole is to attach a satellite dish onto (now finished - very inconspicuous really). At least I now have internet access. But I never thought I would learn how to make concrete here in Sudan. You can see the water tank is still lying idle... so I continue to lug buckets of water around. Internet access but no water, and no electricity (except a rickety generator). Yep, still a bit of a mess, but coming together, little by little.

Sweaty Sleepiness in South Sudan

Many people had warned me about malaria in South Sudan. One UN guy has had it 5 times in as many months. Apparently it is a rite of passage that every khawaja, and undoubtedly every Sudanese, must go through. But, I never thought my body’s reaction would be so immediate. In fact, no sooner had I entered Southern Sudanese airspace, in the noisy little UN plane flying from Khartoum, than I felt the chills start to relentlessly shake through me. Luckily I had bagsied the enviable 5 seats at the back of plane, so the armrests went up, I spread out, and I lay there shivering hot and cold waves and feeling very sorry for myself. It was in fact not a bad bed, apart from the aggressive armrest which crashed down on my head (I still have a lump) but that was just a minor added annoyance.

So, on my first evening in South Sudan, I asked the driver to take me to the UN clinic. Unlike Darfur, there are UN peacekeeping soldiers stationed here. I was taken to one of the battalions, where I eventually found a doctor (who didn’t speak English) and who was absolutely no help at all. I asked him if he thought I had malaria, to which he looked blank. I then proceeded, in my dizzy state, to act out being a hungry buzzing mosquito, which bites me, me scratching myself, then feeling delirious and pale (which didn’t take much acting). Still met with blank stares from the doctor. He didn’t think he could treat me as I was NGO not UN. I had to come back in the morning and go to a different clinic. I stumbled back into the car and home again. The next morning another military doctor at another battalion confirmed that I had malaria, which bizarrely I must have contracted in dry old Darfur (most unusually unfortunate).

My Sudanese staff told me that the khawajas are ‘too scared of malaria’ and really it’s not that bad. It is true that I’ve had bouts of flu which have been worse than this. All I need to do is take the medicine and eat ‘too much fruit’. So indeed, I have been eating too much fruit all week, sleeping too much, and sweating too much. I don’t yet feel too much better, but I’m getting there. Let’s hope next week is a bit less superlative than this one, because this week, for many reasons, has all been a bit too much.

Evacuation or Relocation ?

In December 2006 a total of 430 humanitarian aid workers were relocated from 13 locations across Darfur, due to the deteriorating security situation. In some areas it was an emergency relocation, in other areas staff were relocated as a precautionary measure. In some locations, people were simply said to be going on holiday. Most of these people are back again now, and working as before, assessing the situation daily. Due to the increased levels of carjacking during December (29 vehicles in one month) many NGOs have now chosen to drive around incognito in little local taxis rather than taking their big conspicuous NGO cars and risk getting carjacked.

There is much confusion over the terms evacuation and relocation. Security experts will tell you the difference is as follows- relocation occurs within the same country, evacuation is to another country. In reality this makes very little difference. From Darfur relocating to Khartoum is pretty much the same as evacuating to Chad. The reasons behind the evacuation/relocation are probably identical, it just depends on which areas you want to avoid on your way out, and therefore whether you prefer to go east or west (and of course whether you are in a plane or in a convoy of cars).

The difference between a refugee and an internally displaced person is similar. The factors that force a person to leave his home are the same. But whether from Darfur he goes west and crosses the border into Chad (and therefore becomes a refugee according to international law), or travels to another location within Sudan (and becomes an IDP) his legal status and hence his legal rights, are very different.

Evacuation still sounds more serious than relocation, and the word refugee holds more clout (and legal recognition) than IDP. Essentially it’s one and the same, which is why many journalists choose to use the word refugee to describe internally displaced persons. However, the lack of gravity around the word IDP belies the reality of the situation; without the same level of legal protection refugees can theoretically claim, the problems facing an IDP are often worse than those facing a refugee. Perhaps we should think of a new term for IDPs, one that is commensurate with the lack of recognition internally displaced persons receive, both legally, and in the media.

Careful where you point that gun

Careful where you point that gun… you may think it makes you look big and tough, but it looks to me like an accident waiting to happen

Who’s calling who a janjaweed?

I had a meeting today with local community leaders, and half the people turned up with whips. This must be one of the few places in the world where turning up to a meeting with a whip gets you fearful respect from your peers – if you have a whip it probably means you have a horse or a camel. And if you have a horse or a camel it means you are powerful enough to hold onto it. Those people who used to have them got them stolen by the ‘nomads’, or rather, by the sub-sector of nomads who are known to many as janjaweed.

The janjaweed identity is quite fluid – you need to ask yourself who’s name-calling and why. Linguistically I am told it simply means ‘men on horseback’. Negative connotations are not new, however, as there have long been groups of such men who roamed around this wild west rustling other people’s cattle. Now, JJ or janjaweed has become a label which is used by the ‘non-Arabs’ (or ‘Africans’) to describe all the Arabs, nomads, and cattle-herders. For example, when my driver points at someone on a horse and says JJ (or “Juliet Juliet Whisky”, as he likes to call them) I have to ask myself which tribe my driver belongs to. I don’t actually know the answer, though I have a few ideas –he must be ‘African’, certainly. To make things more complicated, though most of the ‘Arabs’ are also nomads, moving their herds of cattle from place to place, not all of them are; some of them actually farm the land. And although most of the Africans are farmers, some of them also own cattle, and they move with their cattle while leaving their families at home in the villages. So, the binary Arab/African distinction doesn’t match the nomad/farmer distinction.

I have read that ‘Arab’ was a hazier concept in the early nineties, and that individual tribal identities were given greater importance. Now, every tribe has decided which side of the Arab/African dividing line they stand on. This change was exacerbated by government policies that trained and armed nomads in the late nineties, trying to foster a pro-governmental force in Darfur who could suppress local rebellions and generally carry out dirty work for the government. Nomads were taught about Arab superiority, and that their allegiance lay with the Arabs in Khartoum. Nomads became Arabs. Some of them became full-time janjaweed. Prior to 1989 the nomads of Darfur apparently felt very little affinity with central Khartoum government. (For a good concise account of these fluctuating identities see the Minority Rights Group Report, Lessons from Darfur, at www.minorityrights.org)

NGOs generally talk about nomads and farmers; it sounds less political and is more precise than saying Arab or African. It seems the only time we can comfortably say Arab is when we’re talking about Arab Militias. Arab as a label seems like an insult here. Maybe it’s just because we spend so much time working with and talking to the mainly African IDPs.

So how do the nomads and farmers, who live side by side, interact in daily Darfur life? Here’s a painful example. At this time of year, the farmers are busy harvesting their crops. Many of those who have moved into the IDP camps go back to their fields in the daytime, on donkeys (they only have donkeys and goats now as their horses and camels have been rustled by janjaweed). At night they return to the safety of the camps. Last week I was out in the villages trying to organise training sessions with the few people who have stayed in the villages, but most people were too busy and worried about bringing in the harvest quickly before the cattle came to eat the crops. I saw fields being eaten up by herds of cows, the remaining wheat stalks still standing taller than the cattle as they munched their way through. Later I saw a group of men in dark green uniforms, (hell, let’s be rash and just call them janjaweed), relaxing in the long grass with their guns propped up next to them, as their camels had a good square meal in somebody else’s field.

Darfur is going through a particularly dry period, and the fight for natural resources has become more critical than ever. The scarcity of fertile land means that nomads with hungry cattle naturally find the grass is always greener when it’s been planted and nurtured by farmers. Ultimately everyone is just fighting to get enough to eat. However, sending animals into a wheat field which has been carefully fenced off with thorny bushes is undoubtedly stealing someone else’s hard-earned dinner.

But when my driver points at a straggly-haired child with a big smile, standing next to her cattle at the side of the road in brightly coloured clothes and waving for all she’s worth, and he says jokingly ‘Little Juliet Juliet Whisky’ I know for certain that we can’t just call all nomads janjaweed. Yet I also know what a powerful force that word has for at least half the population of Darfur, and just how difficult it will be to dismantle these increasingly established identities, and stop calling people names.

Donkey Boy

This is how water is transported from the wadi (river) to our office, when the 'city water' runs dry (which is most of the time). This water is for the shower, for cooking, and to be boiled and filtered for drinking.

Rentacar

When you want to rent a car in a village with only one car to rent...

Hygiene training with a group of women, talking about how to look after children with diarrhoea, one of the primary causes of mortality for under 5s.

It's all strangely normal

My daily life is plodding along in a strangely normal sort of way here in Darfur, though of course I know there have been a number of attacks on IDPs recently, not so far from here. The coordination meetings have focused on what we can do, and how we can access those areas which are often out of bounds security-wise for all the NGOs. So there’s a lot of work. Life is busy. The weeks fly by and already it’s Thursday afternoon again – the weekend.

But it’s hard to know what to write as my environment doesn’t quite evoke the same feelings in me as it did at the beginning. I drive around town, rush from one thing to the next, and everything I see is starting to look pretty familiar. As we drive past various armed vehicles, I practice identifying them, and say to the driver ‘Chadians?’, or ‘JJs?’, or ‘Government?’ or ‘Police?’. Or even, the lesser known, ‘JJ police?’ I’m starting to get the hang of it. There are still mysteries of course, like why do soldiers wear those red berets? And often you see groups of armed men walking along the street together, all with Kalashnikovs slung over their backs, all wearing different uniforms, or just normal clothes.

The mornings are chilly and the cold shower is an ordeal that now has to be planned into my day, rather than appreciated, as it was before. The best time is just after work when the water is still warm-ish from the day’s heat. I am discovering small luxuries, like a local chocolate biscuit called Kiko, which I am currently devouring between every meal. I am also trying to create a little garden in the courtyard next to my room – I have been digging away in the sandy soil, trying to sift out the biggest stones. I’ve planted watermelon seeds and sunflower seeds (just what was available here). Now I am watering hopefully and frequently, but so far nothing has appeared.

I’m still learning odd bits of Arabic and chatting away in simple disjointed phrases. After lunch I make coffee and practice writing in charcoal on the concrete next to the kitchen, and the cooks laugh and correct me.

The Sufis have been noisy recently, I hear them singing and chanting at night. They sound like the wander round the streets, but I don’t know exactly where they congregate, and from the safety of my compound, after curfew time, I can’t go out to find them and see what’s happening. They start chanting repetitively at about 10pm, and go on till late. One night they were singing non-stop until 7am, which initially was interesting and atmospheric, but soon became a bit tedious really. I’m going to ask around, and see if I can visit them.

Eid Mubarak

Ramadan, helas – Ramadan is finished and now it’s time for Eid, 3 days of feasting, eating biscuits and dates, drinking guava juice and visiting everyone you know. There seemed to be some confusion about when Eid actually started, some people had seen the crescent of the new moon and some people hadn’t yet, so the end of fasting varied slightly, either yesterday or today. In the morning the prayers started as usual at 5.30ish but with a little more fervour than on other days. Then at about 7am (on both days), to celebrate the end of Ramadan, it was all guns blazing, for about an hour. I heard a variety of gun shots, the single sporadic shots from handguns, and then the machinegun rounds chuddering into the air. 7am strikes me as a funny time to want to shoot in the air for joy; you know, you’ve only been up a couple of hours, maybe you’ve been praying, maybe you’re drinking some tea… and suddenly you feel the urge to grab the gun and fire rounds into the air. The kind of release, and violence, I associate with gunfire seems totally inappropriate at 7am. Obviously not. The atmosphere is so festive that gunfire is starting to sound like exploding fireworks. Of course the only really scary thing is that you realise just how many of your neighbours actually have guns.

The bustle in the market just before Eid felt like Christmas Eve in Europe. I went shopping to prepare for everything being shut for a couple of days. By the time I got there, on the morning of Eid-eve, there were no eggs left, for example (bit of a shame seeing as eggs are about all I eat, still, I’m making up for it in biscuits). I feel sorry for the only guard who is working here today, sitting in the courtyard, all on his own. He came into the office this morning with a big smile and a glitzy tray of sugary biscuits and insisted on spraying us all with strong perfume every time we took a biscuit. Things are quiet now, in fact I’m the only one in the office so it might be time to call it a day and try and Eid it with someone else!

Drinking water

The Sufi Mosque in Omdurman

Camping it

Staying in one of the largest camps in Darfur. There is no running water, it is brought by donkeys, and put in these big blue barrels in the middle of the courtyard, to wash and cook with. No electricity either, (except with the generator) and no phone network. I loved being here. At night it's hot and people sleep on mats outside.

Holy Ramadan

I am now half-way into my first experience of the holy month of Ramadan. Though I am not actually fasting myself, when I work in the field I am obliged to be very discrete about eating or drinking. Usually I don’t eat at all, and in order to drink I have to find a corner to hide in (the car) and secretly slurp water. Not eating is not too difficult in this heat, but not drinking makes you feel thoroughly terrible. My staff told me that for the first few days they have bad headaches, but then their bodies adapt. I haven’t yet done a full Ramadan-day-fast. I guess I should try it. It may help me understand what everyone is going through.

I find myself really attracted to the rhythm of praying. It is not particularly the relationship with God that attracts me; it is more the discipline of the daily rituals that I find appealing. Everything stops for prayer time – we have to organise workshops so that they finish in time for 3 o’clock prayer, and during Ramadan that means the working day is pretty much over. The rest of the day is devoted to praying, resting, and then feasting.

The day begins at about 5, in order to eat before the sun comes up. I became aware of this routine early on in Ramadan, when I awoke at 5ish to the sound of a mob of children on the street, banging pots and pans and shouting loudly. I had no idea what was going on. I listened, in the darkness, and I started to panic. There were lots of very over-excited children just outside my window, with threatening sounding kitchen utensils, and from what I could make out they were shouting “Huwaji, go home, huwaji, go home”. (huwaji meaning foreigner). Oh my god, I thought, this is going to be the most embarrassing security incident yet - I’m going to be attacked by twenty hyper eight year olds. I leapt out of bed, quickly put my shoes on (I had been advised to always sleep with something decent on, just in case) and ran outside into the courtyard to ask the guard what was going on. The children were just on the other side of the wall. The guard laughed and told me that all was ‘tamam’, that all was OK. He reassured me. Soon the children moved on, to go and scare another sleeping foreigner no doubt, and I eventually went back to bed.

The incident played on my mind a bit, and I didn’t understand what had happened until two days later when the guard came into the office and asked for someone to translate for him. Through the translator he explained that the children had been chanting “huwaji gaum” meaning, “foreigner wake up”, which is by all accounts a very friendly thing to do, during Ramadan. The children go through the streets to wake everyone up, so that people get a chance to eat before fasting begins. I suppose they think I’m fasting too, and they just wanted to help. They haven’t been back since then, but there’s generally so much movement on the street, and blaring of mosques at that hour, that I wake up anyway.