Here's the thing...

Joseph Epstein once quipped that he felt that the amount of celebrity that he had was just about right. He was surprised to find that he was somewhat famous and lucky that hardly anyone knew about it. Anyone who has travelled in places where outsiders are rare will tell you that being a foreigner has something in common with Epstein’s feelings. Just by being foreign gives you a certain amount of celebrity. My friend Jen is the one who pointed this out to me while in Indonesia. There are people to carry your bags, people to drive you from place to place, people who want to try out their English or French, people who want to touch you, who point and stare and whisper and wave. I think of this because of two things that happened today. In the first, I was being introduced to a group of women who were eating separately from the men. I was ushered in and conversation ceased. They hurriedly made a place for me to sit and brought me tea – not in the glasses that they were using but in a cup w...

Yesterday I took a helicopter from Nyala to Garsilla. Garsilla is in West Darfur and the security briefing we get on arrival went a little something like this. The field coordinator stood by a big map on his wall and sweeping his hand over different locations. “We are 60 km from Chad and it is unstable but we will only be in trouble if Chad chases the rebels into Sudan. 10 km south of Garsilla is a Janjaweed training camp. 25 km northeast is a Janjaweed training camp. The western corridor is off limits. Basically, there are problems all over West Darfur and all around us but here is quiet. But, here is your evacuation bag anyway.” I am here to do audit preparation and find out how to support the administrator. His name is Robert and he is the tallest man I have ever seen. Serious and soft-spoken he comes from the south and would like to return as most of his family is still living in refugee camps. This morning all of the office staff were invited to the house of Saliman and Hawa for b...

It takes very little time here for your ears to become acutely sensitive to the sound of water. Any sort of water. In the shower, the sink, out of bottles or water filters it simply isn’t a sound that you can take for granted where water is in short supply. And that is why when it starts to rain someone shuts of the TV and we all look at each other, stunned, and go outside. It’s like we’re aliens who’ve just dropped into the planet and have never seen anything so exciting and miraculous as water falling from the sky. “Is it raining?” someone asks. “I think so,” I say holding out my hand to catch a drop. The guard comes inside the gate and motions at the sky. ‘It’s raining, it’s raining!’ he says, or we assume he says. He is speaking Arabic, afterall, and might be telling us that an air raid is about to occur. But, by his excitement I think we can safely assume that he’s talking about the rain and that he’s as delighted by it as we are. So, we all stand there listening to it tip, tap on...

4:30am – Got up. 5:00am – Logs took six of us to the airport. Mad crush of people packed into a room the size of a kitchen. Managed to get our bags through the x-ray machine by forming a human chain and passing them over, around and under others. 5:30am – My bags are overweight. The UN flights allow only 15 kilos (30ish pounds) of luggage. I have 25 kilos. I tried to look pathetic and said it was because I was moving for a year. ‘A year?’ the South African WFP staff said. ‘In Nyala? Oh, I’m sorry,’ and he waved them through. 7:00am – Flight departs. I try – fairly unsuccessfully – to catch up on sleep. 9:30am – Descend into Darfur. The landscape is flat, and dusty, red-brown intermittently dotted with scrub. Dry river beds wind toward the horizon. Burned villages compounds are the only evidence of violence until we fly low over the largest IDP camp in Darfur. From the air it looks like a peaceful suburb of tents arranged on interconnecting dirt roads. Seeing things from the air can mak...

“So, I said to two of our logisticians plunking myself down in a chair in their office at 5pm on Sunday. “How would one go to church if one wanted to?” Our weekends are, well…Friday – not so much a weekend really according to popular usage as much as a day off. “Well, girlie,” one said after several sardonic comments about redheads confirming both that political correctness has its bounds and that redheads are a victimized people-group. “One would take local transport like everyone else.” “One couldn’t get the keys to the car or a driver?” I asked. “Not unless one is Khartoum staff or an approved driver.” “Hmmmm,” I said. “Get a guard to go out to the road with you and get a taxi,” came the helpful, if not slightly patronizing advice. “They speak English?” I asked, meaning either the guard or the taxi drivers. “Oh yeah, no problem,” they said. I should have been more dubious. However, naiveté won out over pragmatism and I trooped out to the road armed with a guard and all the Arabic I ...

Anchor touring up the Nile On the boat trip Washing A Dust Devil on the Nile

[I find myself in a bit of a tricky situation. All the things that I want to say and tell you about the situation here I’m disallowed from saying. Namely, because it’ll be better for me (read: alive and in the country) if I don’t. So, some fair warning lest you think I’ve become passive, uninteresting and without opinion. (You should be so lucky!)] Arrived at five Thursday morning and Khartoum from the air is unimpressive and, well, dark. We went straight from the airport to the team house which is a five-bedroom, concrete behemoth that was originally built for a Dutch company during the colonial period. Anywhere from three to twelve people live here at any given time. I’ll be here until I get a travel permit to go to Darfur. In the light of day – and there certainly is a lot of light – Khartoum is dusty, dry and hot. Not as hot as I had been led to believe but everyone says the temperatures will climb. The air is full of a fine, red dust that settles absolutely everywhere. The mosquit...

Ack! And just when I was hitting my stride with my plan to bore you with details of life in London I get a phone call. It goes a little something like this, "Allo?" "May I speak to Kelsey please?" "This is she." "Oh, it didn't sound like you." "That's because I'm practicing my British accent. How do you think it's going." "Hmmm, great..." (sounds unconvinced) "We have your visa. Can you leave tomorrow night?" At which point I experienced about fifteen emotions at once. I was thrilled, and a bit unsettled, and excited, and disappointed - because however much I enjoy complaining about London I really have a soft spot in my heart for it and I doubt very much it will be quickly replaced by Khartoum. You see, it simply doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Khartoum, Khartoum. (My only consolation is that I have a party invite in Khartoum on Thursday night and it looks like I will be able to attend...

Good morning! It's Monday and sunny here in London (and is expected to remain that way for the next 3.5 minutes!) With an apparent lack of anything else to do I'm going to regale you with the minutiae of my life until I get a visa and am able to leave the country. At which point you will all breathe a collective sigh of relief and only have to look in on the blog once or twice a month. I caught bus number 1 and took it to Tottenham Court Road to meet with a friend who is visiting from the states. We made a key mistake...we decided to walk around Oxford Circus. Oxford Circus is, well, a circus. If you ever wanted to be pushed, jostled and generally man-handled by a succession of Japanese, Poles, Italians, or Russians, Oxford Circus is the place to do it! After an afternoon spent avoiding crowds of people - including clumps of Italians (they are never alone but always in clumps!) - I had dinner at a charming restaurant in Westminster with a friend who has a blog you should visit ...