Here's the thing...

We lost another vehicle today... In a security meeting a friend leaned over and whispered, 'so, were they [the hijackers] armed?' I was indignant. 'Yes! Of course they were armed! We might be losing a car a day but it's not yet to the point that we're giving them away to people who don't have guns!' However, there's now talk that maybe the no-vehicle club should start hijacking our own vehicles to get them back. We're trying to think out of the box here.

Dear [Name]: On behalf of the board of directors and members of the South Darfur Chapter of the No-Vehicles-Club we would like to extend a kind invitation to join! We are eager to get to know you and together forward the mission of delivering humanitarian relief without vehicles. You might be asking yourself, what are the benefits and advantages of membership? Well, membership has it’s privileges. The first is our snazzy logo which can be made into shirts and worn by staff as they travel on donkey carts and hang off buses. It makes a statement and that statement is, ‘Vehicles, shmehicles! Vehicles are for wusses! We don’t need no stinkin’ vehicles to get to remote locations and dig boreholes; carry medicine and food!’ Second, at gunpoint, have you ever found yourself struggling to find the words for: ‘thanks for the kind offer to hijack our vehicles…but we already gave…’? Simply post our logo on a sign outside your compound and the roving militias will know that they...

A very elite club has been formed in Nyala. The agencies-who’ve-had-vehicles-stolen club. I can hardly think of a softer target than a bunch of westerners driving around in very expensive vehicles with very expensive communications equipment with no-guns stickers on the window. We might as well have a sign in Arabic that says, ‘steal me, please! We can’t protect ourselves anyway!’ Another two land cruisers were stolen at gunpoint last night making it 12 that have gone missing in the last month in South Darfur alone - not counting the West and North. Now, the problem is that if it’s going to be an elite club not just everyone can join – but so many vehicles are being stolen that everyone’s clamouring to get in. I think we’re going to have to up the ante and make it that, while you used to gain admittance by having two vehicles stolen, now you have to have three. It’s the only way to preserve the elite nature of the membership.

I’m not sure why I find this so funny. It could be the late hour. I could be loosing it. It was about 11:00pm and I was sitting at my computer this evening after having a lovely day off. We had a bunch of friends over for a brunch, I laid out in the sun, did a bit of painting, went for a run and then sat down to work my way through some e-mails. I got a text from a friend which read: ‘You left your radio in my vehicle. Buzz before you come to get it or I’ll drop it off on my way to jail.’ The funny thing is he’s not kidding. He might be going to jail tomorrow. It’s a long and complicated story/lawsuit in which the organization for which he works is being sued and, as the head of that organization here, the government has decided to arrest him. (I could wax eloquent about the rule of law but it would all be completely sarcastic and unhelpful.) Then, the security officer for another organization calls me to ask what I know about the evacuation of one of our field sites tomorrow. ‘Evacuat...

Things like: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Or, why won't pineapple and Jello be friends? Or, why are Grape-Nuts neither grape nor nuts? http://www.neatorama.com/2006/07/24/the-25-most-important-questions-in-the-history-of-the-universe/

I wish there was a school for humanitarian aid workers. In this school they would tell you all the things you’re supposed to know, and don’t, when you arrive in any given disaster or war. They would tell you that your job will not be even remotely exotic, adventurous or exciting. They would tell you that you will spend a great quantity of your time finding out if, and how, people are stealing, how to catch them and how to fire them. They would tell you that you are not going to save anyone’s life – that you are not helping the war you’re going to and, in fact, that you might be prolonging it. They would tell you that you will spend a lot of time with other people, exactly like yourself at coordination and security meetings. They would teach you important things that help you get by – like how to enjoy drinking lukewarm water, how to change a tire, stop a leak, tie a knot, what all those gadgets on your pocket knife are for, how to remove splinter without tweezers and how to smuggle mor...

There is no internet access. Well, given that you’re reading this, that isn’t entirely true. I should say that there is intermittent internet access. By intermittent I mean out for days at a time. And this got me thinking all day about a conversation that I had months ago with a friend in DC. We had just seen a movie about some Americans who were killed in South America and I said, “Well, what did they expect? Traipsing around in someone else’s war. They had no idea how they were perceived or whose side they were on.” “Isn’t that what you’re going to do?” she asked. And we both laughed. Touché. The internet access made me think of this conversation because no one has any idea why the internet is out. It might be out because of electrical failure, it might be out because of military movements, or it might out because of incompetence. Who knows? We don’t. We just sit here at the whim of the powers that be and we don’t even fully know what those powers are. I have a cha...

Two hundred forty-nine days ago was my first day in Sudan . I wrote about it on one of my first days here so I thought I would also write about day 250. 7:00am – The alarm goes off. I hit snooze 7:10am – Repeat the above. 7:30am – Repeat the above. 7:45am – Resign myself to the inevitable and crawl out from under two mosquito nets (one just wasn’t doing the job). Turn my VHF radio up to hear the goings on in the world that is Nyala, pull my hair back into a pony tail – the only hairstyle I now wear – look through my closet at the same six outfits I wear every week and pick something. 8:00am – Our administrator returns from taking someone to the airport, asks if I want some breakfast. I don’t and so we go to the office. 8:15am – There is no phone network meaning there is no way to do e-mails so try to get our RBGAN (satellite phone connection) working but to no avail. 8:25am – Give up in disgust and go make some coffee. 8:30am – Daily meeting with our Logistics Manager...

Let me tell you the main difference between men and women. Women can multi-task. Tonight we're hosting about 30 people for a Thanksgiving dinner. We also have intense fighting near one of our base locations. We are trying to follow which towns/villages have fallen and who controls which areas, how we would evacuate if it comes to that, and who has our vehicles. It's about as hard as trying to follow a soap opera that's updated by the minute. In one particularly amusing moment I'm up to my elbows in apple pie crust, phone tucked under my chin as I knead, and I explain to the head of OCHA how we had just been talking to one militia commander when he says to us, 'uh, can you wait a second?' Another guy takes the phone and identifies himself as being the head of another militia and declares, 'we're now in charge here and we have your vehicles.' I relay the story and put down the phone and start making some stuffing. Another call comes in, rumours and in...

So, after my last posting my Thanksgiving day got decidedly worse. We lost contact with a convoy in an area where there has been increased fighting. Turns out that last night 10 gunmen broke into the house and took the vehicles and all the communications equipment. Our staff escaped by taking donkey carts to another town. Spent most of the day running between OCHA, UNDSS, and the AU trying to get a secure way to get them out. Things are still unclear. Not shaping up to be a good weekend. I need a normal job.

Today is like pretty much any other day in Darfur. It's sunny and hot. There's not going to be any turkey or mashed potatoes or pumpkin pie. Half of the people I talk to maintain that the real Thanksgiving was about a month ago. The other half have no idea it's a holiday. (There aren't too many Americans here). So, I got an e-mail this morning from a friend who works in Geneina. She wrote: happy thanksgiving. i assume from your email that today is in fact thanksgiving for you. seeing as the day is called THANKSgiving I think that you should have to send me 10 things that you are thankful for.... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 i'm waiting..... So, here they are: 1. Sunshine and plenty of it 2. Good coffee 3. That I am not hungry, don't live in poverty, am not chronically ill, don't live in an IDP camp 4. FG Wilson - our generator. With it we have light and have connectivity to the outside world. Without it we are in darkness and alone. 5. Word just ...

For all those who know that I've taken up gardening and painting as a means of retaining my sanity I wanted to show you how things are coming along.

When I think of the Nile I generally think of it as a river in Egypt. Flat, placid, calm. A meandering river that slowly winds its way to the Mediterranean. I have never thought of it as a wild river and I am glad for that. My friend wanted to go white water kayaking and, not knowing any better, I thought I would go along. I should have been scared, but didn’t know it at the time, as our guides showed us how to strap into the tandem kayaks, how to paddle, how to stay centered, and how to roll. It all seemed a bit mundane. Another experience that one should have because one could. The rapids on the Nile varying from one to six. One being little more than a bump and jostle, six being rapids that will kill you within a minute. We never did anything more than a five and nothing really prepares you for it. Nothing can prepare you for being underwater, upside down, with water beating the air and life out of you, clinging to the kayak hoping that your guide will flip you back upright because ...

In my book there are three types of achievements. The first is the type that you can be proud of because out of sheer determination, sweat, hard work you have achieved it on your own. A university degree, completing a marathon, founding an organization fall into these categories, in my mind. The second type is the type that is slightly harder to tout because it is given to you for absolutely hardly any/no reason at all. A honorary doctorate, a knighthood, getting to speak to the Security Council on Darfur (apparently) fall into this category. The third is, by far, the most glorious. These are the things that are thrust upon you, the bizarre accolades that you had no idea that you were up for, that you did nothing to deserve, and of which you’re not sure whether you’re supposed to be ashamed or proud. I’ve had one of these given to me a couple of weeks ago. Unbeknownst to me some friends put together a ‘Darfur Babe Calendar’ for 2007. (Let it never be said that we don’t have our fun in ...

I was listening to Alabama 3 sing, ‘Ain’t Goin to Goa’ which I think is appropo because I am not - going to Goa, that is. I am going to Jinja and I have not slept for 36 hours. Sleep deprivation plays with my mind in strange ways. It is as if memory has taken all of my memories out of a file cabinet and strewn them all over the floor of my mind. I have been to Goa, several years ago, and I remember standing out on the edge of the Indian peninsula with my feet in the sea looking at all the millions of bright stars. Jinja also sits on the edge of somewhere, of Lake Victoria, and the source of the White Nile that runs right up into Sudan. Everything on the road to Jinja reminds me of something else. Kampala reminds me of Pristina. The Ugandan countryside reminds me of Thailand. The smell of the forests along the road reminds me of Indonesia. The rolling hills reminds me of driving in Missouri with my brother listening to Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars’. ‘Let’s waste time…I don’t quite know h...

The world is a cruel place. I have a friend whose citizenship I just discovered last night.Well, not citizenship so much as lack of one. He’s what we call an a-pat. Ex-pats are those of us who are expatriated from our countries – by choice we live somewhere else. In-pats are those who choose to live within their own country but away from their homes. A-pats are those without a country. By sheer virtue of being born somewhere that the rest of the world doesn’t recognize they have no country of origin. They don’t have passports. They are offered little protection. If things got ugly the U.S. government might go to bat for me. If I go to jail sooner, or later, someone might show up to find out why. When push comes to shove they might even evacuate me. A-pats have nothing. Isn’t it strange that by simply being born on one side of a line you can have so much handed to you on a platter and if you’re born on the other you get nothing but a shrug, maybe an apology, but you aren’t going to be o...

Anna Politkovskaya has been found murdered. BBC LINK I cannot recommend her book, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, highly enough.

For the biographer writing the history of the epic battle between me and the ants I would like it noted that: I won.

I have nothing against fasting, in general. I think it's a good discipline. Good for the body, soul, etc. However, Ramadan in Sudan is just a bridge too far. First, you have to fast from sun-up to sun-down. Now, that's all fine and good in, say, Finland where the sun sinks early, but here that means you're going without food for 30 days about 14 hours a day. Second, it's hot here. And by hot, I mean 90-ish and bone-dry so that you can almost feel the water being sucked out of you. However, you're forbidden from drinking water during daylight. Then, you're allowed to eat at about 7:20 which the Sudanese do - in abundance. Huge, greasy, meat, beans and oil-laiden meals. Then, they stay up late into the night partying very conservatively. The next day everyone's sleeping late and shops don't open until nearly noon and people show up to work looking lethargic and cranky. Now, call me crazy but this doesn't seem like fasting so much to me as a change in s...

Ok, I like a good lock-down as much as the next person but this is getting old. And, now, they're starting to mess with my Fridays. No one should mess with Friday. If you're going to have a protest PLEASE conduct it during the working week!

I just got told off for not blogging and leaving you all to wonder if anything has happened to us. So sorry! We’re fine. Or, as fine as you can be in a situation where you’re preparing for the worst. I’m sitting at my desk this morning drinking coffee. I’ve just threatened to fire someone, yelled at WFP for not booking people on a flight, and am now sitting here looking at a ‘threat/action matrix’, ‘individual evacuation responsibilities’, ‘overall security plans’, and ‘sector contingency’ spreadsheets. And, all before my first cup of coffee. (For those of you who know me and how I function in the morning you’ll know what a feat this all is.) It’s really a strange time here right now. The days seem to fluctuate between the normal and terribly tense. There might be two days where everything is fine and we’re driving around the streets, going about our business. People wave, we wave back. The next day we’re in lockdown behind reinforced gates and barbed wire. And I wonder if it’s those s...

I thought I should preface this entry by letting everyone know that I’m ok. Everything is quiet now. We expected protests today against the deployment of UN troops in Darfur so we were under lockdown again. I have to admit that I’m becoming quite fond of the lockdown because it means that we can sleep in. I woke at about 8:30 to the sounds of trucks and people in the street chanting, ‘down, down USA.’ Ashley came in rather sleepily and said, ‘they’re calling for you. They’ve just announced that 2000 troops are moving into Nyala today.’ I rolled over and pulled the sheet over my head, ‘I assume that they’ll still be moving troops in at 10:00,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to sleep until then.’ But, of course, I couldn’t go back to sleep. It’s rather hard to sleep with the roar of mobs in the distance and the radio squawking with security information. So, I got up and then things began to go wrong. Another NGO hit their emergency button which means that you can hear everything happening in th...

Shocking!! Great swaths of the earth left untrod! create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands

I cannot count how many times here I’ve been asked when I’m going to get married. The Sudanese seem to think it’s a personal affront that I haven’t gotten hitched yet and are determined to be offended for me. ‘Why aren’t you married,’ they ask in an unnervingly direct way. ‘Well, no one’s ever asked,’ I say, which seems to get me off the hook. That all changed yesterday because someone did ask. Paul, who asked the typical question and to whom I gave the practiced response said, ‘ok, then, marry me.’ Paul is southern Sudanese, amiable, kind, probably a decade younger than me, our mechanic, and perhaps one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met. It seemed a reasonable offer…but first we had to get a few things straight. ‘You’re not already married, are you?’ I asked because being a second (or third, or fourth wife), while perfectly acceptable here, is something I feel that I’d probably dislike. ‘No.’ ‘How many cows would you give my family?’ ‘200.’ (Not a number to be scoffed at!) ‘And...

Today there will be ‘demonstrations’ in Nyala, Khartoum, probably all over Darfur. Demonstrations are a nice way of saying, ‘riots’. Flag-burning, car-burning, rock-throwing, general anarchy in the streets. At least we knew about it in advance. It’s the spontaneous ‘demonstrations’ that are worrying. So, we’re under lock down. No one allowed out of their compounds from 7am until further notice. Flights are cancelled. Travel forbidden. Offices closed. The thing that no one tells you is how much preparation and coordination a good lock down will take. What if we’re not stuck inside for four hours but for four days? How much food and water do we need for that sort of thing? And, even if it is for four hours what, exactly, are we going to eat for lunch? Not matters of life and death, per se, but important nonetheless. Well, in case you ever find yourself in the same situation, let me tell you what I recommend purchasing: 10 snickers bars, 5 cans of Pringles, 10 cans of tuna fish, 10 instan...

Meet Francois. In this picture, he’s being a little bit camera shy; hiding in the corner between the door and the wall. He moved in while I was gone and took up residence in the corner of my room between the mattress and the wall. He must have thought it was a rather nice place – quiet and dark with no one bothering him and asking all sorts of questions like, ‘who are you?’ and ‘what are you doing here?’. And then I come home and burst in. Seeing that my mosquito net is covered with dead bugs and my mattress soaked by the many recent rainstorms I go about making lots of noise, taking the net down, moving the mattress and, suddenly, there he is. Trying to hide; completely taken aback by all the light and noise. Although he gave me a start we became quick friends. He didn’t try to hide or run off - just kind of sleepily and warily eyed me as I stood there and eyed him. I’d like to say that we had a moment, Francois and I. But then, I came back to my senses and took to eyeing all the hedg...

If you haven't seen, Lord of War , yet you need to. It has crept into my top five favorite (yes, Lizzy, favorite may be spelled without the 'u'!!) movies of all time. Not only because, poignantly - for me anyway, the last scene is them rolling into Sudan. It is also well written, beautifully shot, engaging, compelling and, in my opinion, true. Read more about it: http://www.lordofwarthemovie.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5264566.stm

As part of my civic duty, I would like to use this public space to make all Americans aware that the British have a tendency toward preciousness about the English language. (Of course, anyone who has spent any time at all with the British and have experienced their charming, if not patronizing, pedantic fondness for the English language, already know this.) I digress. The point here is that I have, at some point on this blog, used the word 'drug' as the past tense of 'drag' which is, apparently, a serious offense to all British sensibilites of the language over which they - quaintly - feel ownership. Therefore, I would like to clarify the following... The past tense of the verb 'to drag' is, in fact, 'dragged'. Unless, according to some very knowledgeable people on the internet, you are, "trying to render dialectical speech to convey a sense of down-home rusticity", or, according to Random House use the "nonstandard" past tense, or, a...

1. Home office lackeys at immigration who have perfected being horrendously rude and humourous at the same time. 2. Ample amounts of the four food groups: wine, cheese, bacon, chocolate. 3. After banging on for several hours about the evils of Darfur my friends who offer a cup of tea as the genuine remedy. 4. Transport that might not run on time but still gets you where you need to go. 5. Marks and Spencers. 6. The fact that it's August and it's grey and rainy. 7. Internet that works all the time...seriously...all the time. Can you imagine? 8. Tony Blair. 9. The telephone - which I hear the British think they invented - that also works...well, all the time! 10. The 16 hour, BBC version of Pride and Prejudice that I intend to spend 16 hours watching before going out to the pub for a beer and some greasy fish and chips, doused in vinegar and dipped in ketchup. Mmmm...

It is early on a Wednesday morning and we are going to El Fadous. After the events of the previous week, someone with enough foresight (that I’ll never admit to the wisdom of) decided that it might be good for me to get out of the office. And so, in the early morning haze, I am packing water, and toilet paper, and a couple of snacks into a quick run bag while the drivers stand around chattering about the latest market gossip and checking tire pressure and fuel levels. At 9am we are out of the compound and by 9:30 we are out of the town – driving through vigourously guarded SLA territory on a road that is little more than a sand track through ankle-deep shrub that stretches off the end of the earth in every direction as far as you can see. South Darfur is green, at the moment, golf-course green from all the pounding rain of the wet season. We drive through Dinka villages populated by those who fled one civil war right into the next one. We drive past farmers out planting their fields wi...

When you watch the news about Darfur the conflict generally gets boiled down to being between a bunch of Arab nomads who, backed by the government, have mounted a genocide against a bunch of African farmers. But this oversimplification is unhelpful . Let me tell you a story – pure fiction – but one that might better help explain. There was a tribe that lived in this rural area – let’s call them the Red Sox. They are poor, Muslim, and farmers. Right next to them live a tribe – let’s call them the Yankees - that is also poor, Muslim, and farmers. They hate each other. From time immemorial they launch raids on each others small plots, villages and flocks. The children of both groups die from preventable diseases, don’t have enough food, inadequate health care, and little clean water. Simple enough so far? Every winter a bunch of different nomadic tribes (say…the whole American League) show up on the scene, passing through with their herds, both trampling and eating crops but also bringin...

I’ve started several times to try to describe the past few days but the words don’t come – or rather, too many words come – and so I give up and try to sleep instead. It’s been something of a blur – well, not really, more like a flood of incredibly lucid events interspersed with a thousand forgettable things that have to be done. But it is these events, or instances, that keep me awake at night wrapping and rewrapping a rosary around my hand. Trying to forget. But it is impossible to forget. Like a helicopter ride on Saturday. It was me, a paramedic, the South African pilots, a man that had nearly been beaten to death the day before, and his mother. She was blind in one eye and stared out the window with tears dripping off her chin. I had my IPOD on under the headset. Berber’s Addagio for Strings was playing – over and over – and there is a point in the music where all that is heard is a single violin stretching a note out so perfect and beautiful that it alone could break your heart. ...

I’ve decided to redefine my definition of a bad day. Two vehicles, four staff went to an IDP camp to do public health clubs. They go nearly everyday. However, there’s a rumor that NGOs are trying to poison children. So, the IDPs torched the vehicles, killed one driver, beat the other so badly that he’s hospitalized, and injured the other two. And if that wasn’t enough to qualify as a bad day, about 15 angry men – the family of the dead man and not very happy - later showed up at my door. UNDSS sent a patrol, GoS sent a patrol. It was just a tense, sad, and generally exhausting day.

Yesterday was my birthday. It also happened to be the birthday of one of the only other expats with whom I work. In light of this, the President decided to visit Nyala and declared it a holiday. We were flattered, of course, no one has ever declared a holiday for us but then was a bit put out when he didn’t even have the courtesy to drop by. When he declared it a national holiday he added the caveat that if NGO’s determined to continue working then they would be considered in direct defiance to his orders. (That seemed a little odd to me considering that humanitarian organizations are feeding people, providing medical care, education, protection, etc. but now is not the time to quibble). So,finding myself with a day off I decided to chronicle all of the lovely events that made up the day and you’ll find those below: A card from Fernandez... I received a lovely Sudanese purse from Ashley... Also a box made out of WFP food tins so my books don't get dusty... My new laptop arrived fro...

The President even sent some gunships... Then to out to dinner... Back to the house for specially imported carrot cake...mmmm.... All in all, a great day!!

So, Italy won the World Cup. This made me very happy. It made me very happy because I was supporting them (at the time) and because they beat France. It takes very little to make me happy these days. Unfortunately, they won on penalties which means that the game drug on and on far past our organization’s curfew, the UN curfew, and even the town curfew. This was bad. However, the situation was compounded by the fact that we didn’t have a car and that it rained – and I’m talking bucket-drenching downpour, not your normal rain – for about two hours during the game. It didn’t bother me that the room we were sitting in was slowly flooding or that there was a constant drip on the television. What was slightly alarming, however, was hiking home that night, after curfew, through calf-deep sewage water that clogged the streets. Seriously, there are some things you can live your whole life without doing and walking through sewage at midnight in the middle of Africa hoping not to get shot is one ...

So…if you leave a book on the floor and then the room floods and then it dries out but the book starts to get a funny black mold growing inside the front cover, and then you leave it on the floor again and the room floods and then it dries out but the mold keeps spreading and then you leave it on the floor again and the room floods and the mold seems to be trying to take over the front cover what do you do about it? The mold, I mean, not the obvious fact that I have a drainage issue and am a slow learner.

3000 miles Tracy Chapman “Good girls walk fast in groups of three Fast girls walk slow on side streets Sometimes the girls who walk alone Aren’t found for days or weeks On the busy boulevards Bad boys call you names and cruise you hard Bullies laugh and grin and beat Your soft skin against the cold concrete … Knock you down, make you bleed Make you cry and make you think I’ll die here soon if I don’t leave If I don’t leave, if I don’t leave This patch of sky and native ground Take turns to push and pull you down Forget trying to live and be happy I’ll take safe and terror free … Hit the floor shut off the lights As the bullets fly Terror rules the dark of night bouncing from the trees This training ground for punks and thieves Our pools are full of razor blades Fools and innocents believe Love and faith and truth and beauty Can make a garden of this human factory … Bad girls run fast leave home alone No trace or clue of where they’ve gone Sometimes these girls are never found Never fou...

[If you ever ask yourself why you read this blog – just remember that this is the sort of value-added material that you can get nowhere else!] 1. Start early. Go to the market around noon where you will find hardly any food – there’s no refrigeration so dairy products are out and the nomads have taken the animals away for the rainy season so no meat either. 2. At the market you will find (in alphabetical order): limes, onions, oranges, peanuts, potatoes, and, literally, nothing else. 3. Buy onions. 4. Return home and raid the ‘emergency evacuation’ food in the storeroom. Take out cans of: pineapple, tomatoes, baked beans, mushrooms. Also take a jar of curry paste, some rice and a tin of ‘chicken luncheon meat.’ 5. Read the directions on the curry paste that calls for yoghurt and chicken. 6. Vow revenge on the dolt who ordered the ‘emergency’ supplies. 7. Decide powdered milk will work in lieu of yoghurt. 8. Find a can opener. When you realize there isn’t one see step 6 and beg a logist...

It was cool tonight in Garsilla. The rains have come – settling the dust, bringing temperatures down below 30 C, and inviting the multiplication of a thousand and one flying insects. Four of us sat outside after dinner in the dark listening to the drone of another NGO’s generator and discussing the war. Being out in our field bases it becomes easy to glean a lot of information from locals who know exactly what is going on. This information will only turn up later in security briefings and in the media after the fact. In this case, we were discussing a massive rebel offensive that has the possibility of wreaking havoc in the region. We knew when it was planned to happen, the rebels knew, the government knew, the people knew and yet there was a terrible inevitability about it. In the end, all we could do was shrug our shoulders and look up in the sky and talk about how you prepare communities for heavy artillery fire or air bombardment. And this is how you prepare them – you don’t. You c...

My office smells like something has crawled into the walls and died.

Every now and again I’m stopped by a phrase that I can honestly say I never expected to hear in my lifetime. (Tops among them are, “I’m really crazing a non-alcholic beer” and “Don’t forget about the wildebeest migration.” This last one really cracked me up. ‘Don’t forget’ would imply that I knew anything about the migration in the first place and that I knew whether it was something to be seen? Avoided?) The most recent was at a UN coordination meeting where it was announced, “the acute watery diarrhoea meeting will be held directly after the camp coordination meeting.” With a straight-face my base manager looked at me and said, “I don’t want to go to the watery diarrhoea meeting.” “I’m not going,” I say. “You go.” This exchange took place in unsmiling solemnity. There is a cholera outbreak in Darfur. Only, we’re not allowed to call it ‘cholera’. We have to call it ‘acute watery diarrhoea’ for a whole number of political reasons that I won’t go into because they infuriate me. Cholera’...

10. Logan International Airport...seriously, people, the floors are so clean you could eat off them. 9. Starbucks Coffee. You say evil, global capitalists I say, yummy mocha frappachino! 8. Food. Ok, granted there's better food in a lot of other places but there's quite a lot of decent food here. 7. Being able to accomplish more than one thing a day. Today I checked off about four things I had to do - and one of them even involved a govt. bureaucracy. It was beautiful. 6. Television. Say what you want about Hollywood but I'm finding 398 channels deeply entertaining at the moment. 5. Nice people. I'm not sure whether I find the general level of optimism, happiness and kindness comforting or disconcerting but in my less cynical moments I quite enjoy people being nice to me. 4. The USD. It's pretty. 3. Walmart. I won't go into my theory on how the American desire for cheap goods is complicit in the continuation of the war in Darfur but I will say that sometimes you...

I had a conversation today that might seem odd to be having at work. A guy I work with and I were discussing some of the accidents our vehicles have been in. This wasn’t unusual, in and of itself, vehicles crash. We even refer to the crashes in the third person, like ‘the car crashed into a tree’ as if it crashed of its own accord. Into trees, into ditches, these cars flip and roll. By far the majority of humanitarian aid workers who are killed die in these types of accidents rather than in the violence all around. We were discussing one vehicle accident in particular – vehicle 13 – that was severely damaged in an accident. It rolled three times. Luckily, no one was hurt. My friend had gone back to investigate the scene hoping for some clue as to the cause of the accident. There was none. It was a flat road – no sand, no ditches, no curves or hills. It was inexplicable. The next day another organization’s vehicle flipped at the same spot. People went back to talk to the villages around...

There are some things that you will just never understand. Not even if I could find the right words to describe them. Like today, the feeling of realizing that our freezer had defrosted. It was gutting. We haven’t had electricity for over a day now. Not that you miss it much. It’s pitch black at night but then that’s what kerosene lamps are for and not having a fan on does make for a miserable night’s sleep, but apart from that we have a generator at the office so we can get through a day’s work without too much discomfort. So, it’s not surprising that I didn’t think about the freezer until this afternoon and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Not so much the freezer itself (that would hurt) but the realization of what was in the freezer. Bacon. Four packs of bacon to be precise. The saying is true that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone and there are luxuries we simply don’t have here – mostly because they’re illegal. Bacon and alcohol being the two that spring to mind mos...

I’ve never been good at killing insects. Especially large ones with things called ‘exoskeletons’ that crunch when you smash them (how have I forgotten every word of high school French but remember things like that from Biology?) When I was younger and came across a large bug I would immediately get my father and have him dispose of it. I bring all this up because this evening I was sitting, typing away at my computer and this strange wind blew through. Seriously, it was like being in one of those creepy horror movies where the wind blows and shutters bang and you just know that everything is about to go terribly wrong. It wasn’t a dust storm. It was just a long, slow, strong gust. I got up to close the door that had blown open and went back to my typing. When I looked up again the ants on the floor were behaving strangely. And by strangely I mean there were thousands of them. Not the normal few hundred that wander around disoriented. Thousands – small ones, large ones, black ones, red ...

13 pieces of bamboo, 300 dinar. 1 mosquito net, $30. A whole lot of duct tape, $8. No longer being eaten alive by mosquitos, priceless. Ahh, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.

I’ve spent a lot of time watching the ants here because they’re so interesting. Ok, well, not really. I spend a lot of time watching the ants because I don’t have anything better to be doing. And I’ve begun to develop a sort of affinity toward them. They are like no other ants I’ve ever seen - they aren’t malicious, they aren’t goal-oriented, and they aren’t even particularly well regimented. I’m pretty sure that most of them have ADD. Take these red ones I’m watching now by way of example. They are charging all over the floor in different directions as if they’re searching furiously for something that they never find. Two seconds in one direction, four in the next, two back the way they came. One would think that they’re looking for food, or for water, or even for paper products – for which they seem to have a strange fondness – but when they find one of these things they investigate it for awhile and then take off again. The only thing that really holds their interest for any amount ...

Something inside me just gave up today. I don’t know why. I can guess, but I’m not sure. After being completely healthy for nearly seven weeks my body decided to break down. I understand, from others, that this is completely normal. Our digestive systems struggle and fight to keep a stiff upper lip for about six weeks and then they just stop trying. In essence they say, ‘right, I can see how it’s going to be. I’ve done my best to keep you from being sick but I’m tired and now you’re going to get what’s coming to you.’ And what’s coming is usually either vomiting or diarrhoea – both if you’re very lucky. However, I think my body had another reason. Yesterday, my friend Mike and I were sitting outside having dinner and he told me about his day. He had been working on a nutrition programme to which a Sudanese woman had been bringing in her baby. The baby had been doing well but that day the woman also brought in her seven year old – a girl so malnourished that the nutritionist immediately...

I wish I had a picture of all the things that I have seen that have made me stop and go, ‘What? Why?’ Usually, these things pop up when I am driving around Nyala. Take today, for instance. I was driving to the airport and I had to slow practically to a stop because there was a child of maybe four years old in the road, wandering like a drunkard, with a box on his head. Why? Further on, I again had to slow because there was a donkey pulling a full cart of water completely alone across the road. Why? Nearing the airport, I glanced to my left out over the sweeping, flat, empty African expanse and noticed that there is a street light – sitting about forty feet from the street, facing the wrong direction, disconnected from any sort of electricity. Why? These things – the lamppost especially – remind me of living in Narnia. They remind me that we haven’t a clue as to why things go on as they do here and that we are the outsiders, the interlopers, the aliens plopped down in some fantastic wo...

One of my favourite people in the world is a professor of holocaust studies. He is also, inexplicably, one of the most tirelessly happy and optimistic people you could hope to meet and he shares my birthday. (I say all this because I’m about to grossly misquote him.) I remember reading one of his books on the holocaust and in it he says that he was struck by how much of the culpability for the holocaust came down to mundane people doing mundane things far removed from the actual atrocities themselves. I think of this because the inevitable tedium of office life has overshadowed my day. If a hot wind weren’t blowing through the window, covering my computer with a fine dust, and I couldn’t hear the children shouting in Arabic in the streets, I could be in an office anywhere - New York, London, Hong Kong. There is payroll to be counted and month end reconciliations to be done. A trip to the bank is inevitable. A UNICEF cheque needs to be cashed. All of the routine and trivial things that ...

I like to think that I have a fairly high tolerance for foreign foods. I rarely get sick and follow the sound advice that if you can't tell what it is don't ask, just eat it. However, I have just returned from lunch where all the sound advice did me no good at all. On the table was a pot - of slime. There is no other way to describe the stuff. I'm pretty sure it was made with spinach of some sort - so it was green slime. It dripped off the spoon like snot. And, as we all stood around watching it the cook came out proudly beaming, announced what it was and (oh it gets better) it was supposed to be eaten with soggy pancakes. Great! Snot AND soggy bread!! Does it get any better? Some of my better colleagues choked it down. I put some on my plate with good intentions but had to sneak out to the garbage and get rid of it. Luckily, I have a power bar in my bag.

I’m a proponent of using as many drugs as necessary to allow you to function normally. If God had intended us to feel pain he would have given us painkillers. I can hear the comments now, ‘oh no! Pain is your body’s way of telling you it’s not healthy.’ No kidding! I’m happy to let my body tell me something’s wrong but then I want to be able to tell it to shut-up. That’s where drug use comes in. To me there is no reason to justify experiencing pain if you don’t have to. I write all this because I’ve just had a whopping dose of muscle relaxant shot into my bum (which might also explain why this incoherent rambling is posted on the blog). I had a raging head and neck ache all day and by 1pm couldn’t take it any longer so went to the UNMIS clinic where the doctor told me that it’s either stress or driving on the roads and that a shot of muscle relaxant would do the trick. Unless, of course, it’s malaria, he says by way of parting and that I should come back if it doesn’t go away. Unconvin...

I’ve become a bit obsessed with donkeys of late. I don’t know what it is about them but I think they’re adorable and rather put-upon. A friend I work with from Kenya described the Sudanese donkeys as depressed and swears that they’re perkier in Kenya. I have to agree with him. While I can’t comment on Kenyan donkeys, the ones here do seem somewhat gloomy and, for lack of a better term, Eeyorish. They do have good reason to be so. They do all the grunt work while being whipped or beaten by drivers of the carts they’re pulling. A guy I know is a IDP camp manager and he makes a practice of buying a donkey whenever he moves to a new location. He finds someone – usually an IDP - who will feed and care for the donkey during the week using it for small-business and then has him bring it around on the weekends so he can take it out for rides. (Mind you, this guy is Scottish and also brought his kilt with him so I’m not vouching for his sanity.) But I have a respect hare-brained donkey-owning s...