Here's the thing...

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