Here's the thing...

When I finally got around to eating last night I found several of my colleagues sitting - plates in lap - watching the food channel. Correction: torturing themselves with the food channel. Nigella was on with her lilting accent making some sort of salad which involved blueberries. It was almost physically painful to watch. But what amazed me was that - even as I sat picking at my cold, fried fish head and cutting my coagulated pasta - I didn't even have to watch. Nigella could still torture me by just describing the food she was making. When did we start using words like: dulcet, luscious, rich, savoury, and succulent. There are phrases like: Dinner tonight was adventurous and intriguing. Are we describing the hike to base camp or food? But it did get me thinking. How would I describe our meals? Looking down the fish head stared plaintively back and all I could come up with was: "Dinner tonight was challenging but uninspiring."

Seriously. Good stuff: He ventured forth to bring light to the world.

There is lizard poo all over my bed. For you long time readers you'll note a trend. A wildcat pooed on my bed in Indonesia. A hedgehog in Darfur. And now, I seem to have a lizard pooing on my bed here. Or several lizards because it's impossible that one benign, reptile can be creating the amount of poo there is on the bed. In fact, I suspect that an entire lizard clan is up there aiming their droppings at my pillow. You wouldn't think that lizards can poo so much but let me assure you, they can. Now, lizard poo dropping from above I can handle. I draw the line, however, at actual lizards raining down on me. This afternoon I left to office to come back to my room in order to concentrate on a report. Little did I know that I was trading the din of of office staff for the din of lizard wrestling. No kidding. Several of them were balancing on the roof beam that runs across my room having a fight. The WWF of the lizard world going on above my head. I choose to ignore them and

It’s also a river in Sudan. While the source of ‘de nile’ is still up for debate what is clear is that it flows out of Uganda and into South Sudan where it spreads its fingers out in thousands of tributaries and inlets that make much of the surrounding area a vast, lazy swamp. Somehow, it manages to pull its act together again somewhere prior to hitting Khartoum where it meets the Blue Nile and manages to carry on acting like a proper river all the way to Egypt. But it’s really most interesting in South Sudan where it doesn’t behave itself, doesn’t stay within it’s ban ks and that is where we are today - on the Nile, headed for the Kingdom of Shilluk. Shilluk is in the state of Upper Nile and if you asked me to point to a place where north and south Sudan meet I would probably point to Upper Nile. We arrived into Malakal early in the morning because we have to take boats to Shilluk. Driving through the streets of Malakal we hear the Friday prayer call from the old mosq

While I was in Shilluk three disconcerting things happened. The first was the attack on the peacekeepers in Darfur which has led to the subsequent pull-out of all non-essential staff (why ‘essential’ staff stay to get shot at is something that has never made much sense to me). Everyone is denying that they had anything to do with it. The second is that Sudan conducted a census in order to figure out how much of the South’s oil profits it actually has to share with the South. The figures have come back and, surprisingly, the North has declared that there are 38 million people living in Sudan. 3.8 million of them live in the South. Now, I’m no statistician but I’ve been in the North long enough to figure out that they haven’t got 35-odd million people up there. Unless they’re keeping them underground. Which they might be. This means that Khartoum must be larger than New York City. Another clear case of denial - mostly of reality. I doubt the southerners are going to stand for this and I

I managed to escape Juba where birthday tradition dictates that you get doused with water at some unsuspecting point during your day and thought I would keep things mum in Kodok to avoid any other unusual birthday traditions. This plan went well until I spoke to my boss by sat phone in the morning. ‘Happy Birthday!’ she announced. ‘How’s it going?’ ‘Great!’ I replied. ‘Got a couple of e-mails and have a series of meetings. You know, work and stuff. It’s good.’ She turned serious. ‘Have you told the team?’ Geez, she made it sound like I was dying. ‘Ummm, no.’ There was a pause and I knew what was coming – either I told the team or she would. ‘I’ll tell them tonight,’ I said. So, as we gathered around in the evening I told everyone that it is my birthday. They all congratulated me and then proceeded to shuffle around mysteriously. Right before dinner, our health coordinator starting fussing around the table. She put down a lace cloth, started stacking biscuits on a tray and

T he land rover is about to pull out of the compound with our health team in the back, lined up on seats like school children on a bus headed for school. They are going to our health clinic in Panthau . “Please tell Agam that we said hello,” I told Dr. James, a cheerful man and brilliant doctor from Uganda. “I will,” he promised. “I will send her consolidarity.” Agam came to our clinic in medical unit in Wathmuan yesterday when we were conducting a nutrition feeding. She sat on the ground outside the building with her legs helpless and swollen to one side. Her eyes were bright and she smiled up at us as the community health worker, her mother, and countless members of the community gathered around to see who at whom all these ‘khwajes’ (foreigners) were looking. She had walked as far as she could and could not walk anymore – even with the help of her mother and we were determining how to get her to our clinic in Panthau which was 16 km away. “We will drive her,” a

5:30am: The sun is not yet up and it is already hot. The generator is not on so the still air inside my tukel has grown even hotter. I hear the scuff, scuff of the water man dragging his feet pushing his heavy wheelbarrow outside my wire mesh window. He unloads four or five 25 gallon plastic jugs of water, dropping them on the ground with a thump. I open my eyes and ensure that my mosquito net is still tucked in to protect from the bugs, bats, snakes with whom we share our space. Satisfied that I am alone I roll over and go back to sleep. 8:30am: Scuffling inside the plastic ceiling of my grass-thatched tukel wakes me up. It is probably a lizard crawling around making a racket. Others are up already and moving about. The builders from Kenya have begun banging nails into the roof of the cement block kitchen they are building. There are no builders in this part of South Sudan and so we have to have them come to build anything other than the mud tukuls in which we normally live and wor

Have you ever wondered how difficult it would be to simply disappear? Not very, let me tell you. Ok, so maybe in the states or Europe it wouldn’t be incredibly easy but if you are willing to live in Sudan you can be gone….easily…poof…just like that. I have this thought because I am in Rumbek which you have probably never heard of and neither had I until WFP unceremoniously dumped me, and the six or seven other passengers from my plane, here. “You have missed the plane to Juba,” they announced. “Could have been because you were 3 hours late in picking us up,” I said. I think I’m getting more acrimonious with the UN every day. “We could not hold the plane for another hour for you,” they said. “You could, though, tell us where your plane disappeared to for three hours while we were sitting on the landing strip in the scorching sun for that time,” I said. I do not say that an unexplainable, unaccountable three hour jaunt might be one of the reasons that they haven’t enough fu

We left Lokichoggio before dawn. Or, Loki as it is called. This outpost Kenyan town that looks like most outpost African towns with men idling in front of dilapidated shops and children running barefoot rolling tires. The only difference being that I am here. And thousands others like me. Flying in and out of this border post as we make our way into Sudan. Today, we were flying a MAF charter into Jongelei state to a place called Motot. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Don’t bother trying to find it on a map. It won’t be there. It’s not even on most UN maps and they have a vested interest in knowing where it is. Our pilot finds it by doing what all good pilots do when they have no idea where the landing strip is: make wide, sweeping turns over where it should be until he sees it.  One of our area coordinators describes to me the pros and cons of snake-killing. A skill he is convinced that I should possess. “The key is,” he says making a chopping motion with his arm. “You hav