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...