In this place of cattle songs and bridal bartering,
There is blood in the air and conflict between the clods
Of sun-dried equatorial earth.
It may not yet run red, but give it days.
This place, barren, flat and empty, is marked by dichotomy,
Binary seasons and sudden shifts in message and intent.
Our pronouncements and activity plans fall short.
We fill collapsed latrines with the evidence of spent efforts,
Expired chemicals whose dates ring out a chorus of our failure,
A procession of missed targets,
A cavalcade with hubris at its head.
We skirt around the periphery of it all, oblivious,
The inheritors of far flung fancy and colonial folly –
The cattle lands and peace-stick prophets give us short shrift.
We do but meddle.
We sit each evening behind iron fences
Oxidising to the echo of battered calf skin.
‘Mobilisation’ has rarely carried such ominous portents –
We hear the beating as villages empty.
This is the rush before the run of red.
…..
In the hurried breath that precedes the storm
Iron sheets grate against uprights,
The wind a diaphragm whose movements conduct
A chorus pitched as a choir of women in labour
Ushering forth something terrible and new with their strains and tearings.
This evening tukuls will collapse under the weight of bad weather,
Fence posts will snap in the face of it all
And nature’s theatrics will be accompanied by an entirely human counterpoint
As cattle raiders and neighbouring tribes sneak in beneath the cover of the rolling skies.
These are not my people, and perhaps I should never have come,
But this evening will find me sheltering alongside strangers,
Lying between a circle of concrete six feet below the earth
And watching tracers pass overhead
As automatic writing fills the skies.
No, these days the nights are never still.
Even for a dark-dweller as myself the mornings come as welcome relief. Maale, Murle – hold off another day.
The unspoken rules of war have dissolved over decades
Leaving innocents at the heart
Of a cycle of revenge and revenge
And staked through wombless women.
Please, Lord, give us days.
And so we wait, filling backpacks with essentials and the keys to flee –
We hold onto our own days here,
And we guard them jealously.
…..
In the aftershock of the storm
My mud hut swells and creaks.
The plastic sheeting hung over the wire mesh windows
Drift and press against in the breathing out,
Rhythmic and redolent of the ocean.
I am all at sea.
R & R: Rest and Recuperation. Every aid worker’s favourite acronym.
The bright shining beacon at the end of three months in a mud hut, refugee camp or the pressure of a country head office, these three little syllables hold forth the promise of a return to normalcy, or at least a couple of weeks on a beach somewhere, drinking margaritas until you forget about the intensity of it all for a while.
A couple of years ago a wise and experienced friend told me that the humanitarian system is geared around taking people who are energetic, hard working and care too much and wringing it out of them. There was a wry smile as my friend imparted his semi-serious warning but now, a year down the line, and I can see that there was a grain of truth to his pronouncement nevertheless.
Before I came to South Sudan I thought of R & R as something of a humanitarian perk. A bit of cash to fly somewhere interesting, a few additional days leave to explore the more pleasant corners of whichever region you find yourself posted. Something worthwhile and enjoyable, sure, but by no means essential.
Now, however, I have seen too many of my friends and compatriots burnt out and exhausted. Unwilling to give up until the next target has been met, the next grant secured, they keep going and keep going until they come to a sudden and abrupt halt.
Dublin – Eden Quay at Night
There is joy to this life, of course – joy and the privilege of service which I wrote about in my first few months are very much present. But self-care is mostly an abstract concept in this line of work, and saying no often doesn’t come easy, or without a cost – for you, for the project, or the beneficiary – or so our inflated sense of self says, at least…
And so the very drivers which make people want to do this humanitarian thing can be the thing which pushes them that step too far.
I have read several critiques of humanitarian work in which the author pins the emotional hook of the piece around their disdain at the sight of an aid worker walking around a refugee camp or similar with a hangover on a Sunday morning, as if this were somehow an abnegation of their duty to or belief in humanity.
I now see that this is getting the whole thing back to front and upside down. The desire to escape for a brief moment is not a dereliction of duty but a very human response to the inevitable suffering with which you are confronted, or undergo yourself. At some point there must be a break, or something will snap.
People sometimes say to me, ‘it [aid work] must be so rewarding’. More like a sense of pouring cement into an ever-widening crevice. Even as we struggle to cover the very basics, the feeling is that we are barely papering over the cracks of problems much deeper than we can begin to address. Hence the sense of barely suppressed despair that is palpable among many aid workers.
After only a week off in my first seven months, I was running on empty myself when I first went home, at Christmas.
Home has much to recommend it, all of which is highlighted and intensified after three months of long drops and boiled goat. The bitterness of freshly ground coffee, leavened with a single sugar. The warmth of a city wrapped up for Christmas, all knitted jumpers and sparkling lights. Old friends and familiar places, weighted with memory.
But the return brings with it its own particular set of challenges.
The past few times I have come back I have alighted in London, and the drop off point is jarring.
One week – Jonglei: mud huts, pitch black nights filled with stars and drumming and the occasional Antonov overhead, carrying with them portents and probably weaponry.
The next – London: several million people jostling for position, watched over always by false advertising, everyone constantly in motion, seemingly with little destination. Everything seems at once familiar and artificial, a little too real to be trusted.
When you are away, relationships get put on hold, and the details that are missed between the frames of the time lapse snapshot can be hard to recreate upon return.
This disjunct, the sense of being an outsider looking in on your own life, is strange and unsettling.
The Liffey at Sunset
One of my closest friends, who had herself left behind the comfort of the familiar in the past year, put the word on it thus:
When you are so far away, even if you are doing what you want to do, there is a certain element of holding a part of yourself very still and careful until you are safe back in a place where you can fall apart and let all the shit you had to go through take its toll.
I have termed the adjustment period Mud Hut Head – it takes a while to build up the courage to poke your head outside again, and after so much time spent in a particularly intensive environment and headspace, the results when you do are not always pretty.
But I am incredibly fortunate to have friends magnificent enough to offer me the patience and love and space that I require, and help me tease out the threads and patterns that have begun or been exacerbated by the muddied surroundings.
In essence, R & R, this return, it offers an essential lifeline, providing a run-up to get you through the insecurity, under-resourcing and eighteen hour days.
In the absence of systematic pastoral care or psycho-social support structures, R & R is an essential attempt to enable people to rest and forget in healthy, rather than destructive, ways.
It enables you to find the joy in the thing again. Otherwise, what’s the point? It is near impossible to offer anything of value from a place of emptiness or exhaustion.
And so I find myself back in Jonglei, with an immediate procession of targets and reports, infinitely grateful for the rest I have just received.
We have had visitors in Jonglei. Our Logistics Manager and our roving technical genius were out with us to review the project, and to identify areas where there are room for improvement. There are, it transpires, many such areas, all of which are – unexpectedly – now my purview.
At the start of this year our venerable logistician, who had been with the project for five years – an aeon in humanitarian terms – found himself a new job, and ventured off to pastures new. And, due to the essential combination of proximity and willingness, I now find myself responsible for all of our project logistics.
First among the many challenges facing us is the state of our fleet, for one of the difficulties with operating in an environment such as Jonglei is that it takes a tremendous toll on vehicles, upon which you are reliant for essentially everything. The compound of hostile terrain and unsympathetic driving combine to drastically curtail the lives of our trusty Land Cruisers.
Stuck
Through a combination of ingenuity, stubbornness and duct tape some of the vehicles are now pushing five years old, and it shows. So, after six months of sitting prone in axle-deep mud we conducted a review of the fleet to determine the functionality or otherwise of the vehicles now that movement is possible once again.
We found that in our fleet of five we had only one fully functional vehicle, a year old three seater pick up – Mobile 4. The first weekend back Mobile 4’s HF radio mast sheared off. As the radio is the only reliable way to contact the base or Juba when in the field, this left us with a grand total of zero fully functioning vehicles.
Leaving the mechanics to their Sisyphean task, Fernandez, Alick and I decided that it would be worthwhile to conduct a driver training exercise wherein we tested both the driver and the vehicles’ ability to drive handle the unforgiving terrain. And so we headed towards the remnants of the river which for much of last year separated us from the project sites.
Where once the river was chest deep and took two hours or more to cross, now the unrelenting equatorial sun had withered it to knee deep and several hundred metres wide. Deciding to see how far we could get we ploughed straight on.
Sunset Over Swamp
We didn’t very far, of course, but that was the expectation, and at first it was all an awful lot of fun – splashing around in the embarrassingly shallow water offered a welcome relief from the heat of the office. But after an hour or so of utilising the jack and mud plates and alternating between coaxing and brute force it became apparent that we weren’t getting out. The four wheel drive wasn’t working, we didn’t have a winch and all we were succeeding in doing with each attempt was further embedding the wheels in the thick clay, and amusing the onlooking children.
As three of the five vehicles were on the other side of the river at far away project locations and the one remaining vehicle in Yuai was completely non-operational we were stranded. Fortunately, we had another NGO staying in our compound at the time, so we radioed base and waited. As the sun went down there was a burst of AK-47 fire from across the river.
In the end we got back without too much trouble – the oft-repaired towing rope snapped on the first attempt, but we were soon on our way. But it was a reminder of how easy it is for a series of simple oversights to potentially spiral into an altogether more serious situation. Without a torch between us, no backup at base, no spare food or water in the vehicle, broken four wheel drive and a broken winch, we were helpless.
In an emergency, these are the basics upon which you need to be able to depend.
Our WASH (WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene) team were staying in our sub-base in Motot this week, carrying out mobilisation to engage the community in beginning the process of replacing the latrines that were destroyed in last year’s floods.
Some of the chemicals that are used for water quality testing had expired and needed to be destroyed. As one of the latrines in our compound in Motot collapsed during the rains it is now used as a rubbish pit.
Usually when incinerating rubbish, a small amount of diesel is used as fuel for the fire. In this instance, however, the guard used petrol instead, and a lot of it.
The critical difference between the diesel and petrol is that diesel, of course, is much more stable, and therefore burns more slowly. Petrol ignites immediately upon contact with open flame.
The instant that my friend struck the match, the pit erupted, engulfing him in the flames.
The news came in over the radio while we were eating breakfast. We immediately got in touch with Juba to arrange a medevac via the UN, who diverted a flight for us. But the airstrip in Motot is apparently too short for UN planes to land on – despite the fact that identical planes flown by other aviators can land there without difficulty – so the team had to travel back to Yuai by road, over the cracked and pitted tracks, bathing the patient’s wounds with water in the absence of proper medical care.
Four hours after the accident the flight arrived, and our brave and uncomplaining teammate – smiling and joking throughout – was whisked back to Juba for stabilisation and onwards to Nairobi, as it transpires that there are no facilities for the treatment of burns in South Sudan.
As traumatic as the whole incident undoubtedly was, we can consider ourselves fortunate that the outcome was not more serious. Our teammate is going to be fine. And there are many ways in which this could have gone even more badly wrong – returning to Yuai the gearbox broke, and we had to send another two vehicles. In this case the delay was incidental as the flight had not yet arrived, but in a genuinely life threatening situation these are the moments that count.
The whole thing has underlined the need for care and rigour. As NGO employees we are fortunate to have access to an infrastructure that other Jonglei residents could only dream of, but nevertheless, we are isolated, we are vulnerable, and we need to take responsibility for ourselves.
Tomorrow we are taking the guard, who himself suffered minor injuries, to the MSF hospital in a neighbouring county. Next week we will carry out training on the identification and handling of different fuels, and we shall spend our Saturday carrying out a review of all our safety and security procedures.
The dry season has begun in earnest, and with it conflict, drought and hunger.
Our assessments before Christmas indicated that the widespread flooding had decimated crops and food stores, and that household supplies would begin to run out in January. With the next harvest season not until August-September time this would leave many families facing a hunger gap of over seven months. Now, come February, these predictions are proving all too accurate.
The Nuer are a pastoralist people, and each year the men and youth head out in search of water for their most important assets: cows. But with the move to the cattle camps goes an important source of food – milk, often mixed with the blood of the cow for extra iron, is a dietary staple – and the protection offered by the men along with it.
For this is traditionally the time when the majority of interclan and intertribal violence occurs – ‘security incidents’, in bloodless NGO parlance.
The Bridge on the River Pathai
This year the always-fragile environment is further complicated by the continued presence of former SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army – the South Sudanese army) General David Yau Yau, who defected for the third time last year. It is frequently alleged that Yau Yau receives arms and support from Sudan, who are keen to ensure Jonglei’s continued instability in order to prevent South Sudan from being able to access the oil reserves that lie beneath the swamps.
Regardless of the source of his provisions Yau Yau has proven extremely effective at disrupting the functions of the state, engaging in skirmishes with the SPLA across Jonglei, while simultaneously upending civilian life by re-arming the youth of the Murle tribe.
Seen as the main antagonists by the Nuer, the Murle are a small tribe who frequently face marginalisation and discrimination as a minority in a country still broadly split along tribal lines. The SPLA faced international condemnation for its human rights violations against the Murle during the 2012 disarmament campaign: a report by the NGO PACT and the South Sudan Law Society alleged that the disarmament was “accompanied by beatings, intimidation and harassment but also more serious reports of killing, torture, and assault (including sexual abuse) in multiple locations across the state”.
Yau Yau has played on this discontent to rearm and recruit the Murle youth to his cause, while the Nuer do not trust that the SPLA are capable of or willing to protect them, and rumour has it they are beginning to rearm themselves. Whether this is precautionary or in preparation for pre-emptive measures is unclear, but either way the portents are not particularly encouraging.
Panorama
Last week the largest attack in over a year took place, with 134 mainly women and children reported dead, and another 500 people still missing. (See this AP report for a sense of the scale of the attack.) Facts are still emerging, but the consensus is that Yau Yau and the Murle youth were involved.
Such insecurity has lead to people in the more vulnerable border regions fleeing their homes. Combined with the shortages of food and water that many are experiencing and there are growing numbers of Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Stripped of their traditional social support structures and coping mechanisms, these people are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition and disease.
Situated at the only bridge across the main – dirt – road across the state, Pathai is one such destination. Offering a market, the possibility of work, proximity to water and relative security, thousands of IDPs have arrived in the past month, putting pressure on the already strained resources of the host community, and conditions are deteriorating rapidly.
Emaciated Cow
One of the two handpumps, each serving approximately 5,000 people
The only piece of rainwater harvesting infrastructure…
Young Fisherman
Blue Dress
The Road
Last week our WASH (WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene) and Nutrition teams carried out a rapid needs assessment, and the findings were not good. 37.4% of the children were found to be malnourished, with another 35% at risk of malnutrition. The World Health Organisation’s threshold for a nutrition emergency is 15%, which makes the severity of the situation very clear indeed. Without rapid intervention, these levels of malnutrition, combined with the lack of adequate water and sanitation facilities and an almost complete absence of healthcare, means that loss of life cannot be far away. And this is only the beginning of the hunger gap.
On Friday we shared the results of the report with the other NGOs active in Uror County, discussed the appropriate interventions and divided out responsibility for the different sectors between us. We shall be leading on WASH and Nutrition, and working alongside Care International to provide Non Food Items (NFIs) – mosquito nets, blankets, cooking utensils and other such essentials. Another NGO are carrying out a Food For Work programme, employing the recent arrivals to repair the flood-battered road, which is essential if we are to get supplies through, while UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) are sourcing food to distribute through the World Food Programme.
The final step in the process was to get a more accurate picture of the number of arrivals, which we attempted on Saturday. The process was rushed and the organisation somewhat lacklustre, while the sheer amount of languages involved lead to crossed wires about who was meant to be being registered. I’m not all that confident in the accuracy of our findings, but they’re a start.
But this is humanitarian aid. It is messy and improvised, simultaneously hurried and too slow, conspicuous for both guesswork and bureaucracy. Marked by contradiction, yes, but it lessens human suffering and it saves lives.
It is Remembrance Sunday, and the competing tribes have gathered again, dancing their warlike steps just outside the fence. I can see heads darting, spears thrusting as I write. The air is thick with drums and ululation.
The temperature is edging ever upwards these days, heading inexorably towards forty in the shade with another ten degrees to come. Despite previous predictions the dry season hasn’t yet arrived. We are currently in a humid in between in which there are sufficient showers that insects abound but insufficient rainfall to make the reptiles go to ground.
After a feigned retreat the locusts are back, and they have brought reinforcements. They travel in packs, this unnamed foe, their sharp odour fouling the air, while the discovery of another snake is fast becoming a daily occurrence.
Snake of the Day
There are larger creatures in residence as well, a variety of noisy corvine beasties that caw through the morning, claws scratching against the tin roof, while hawks perch atop fence posts, casting a possessive eye over all they survey. Hedgehogs snuffle around at nightfall, the quintessential autumnal animal transposed to swampy South Sudan.
The most prominent animal in our compound, however, is the goat. Knowing that they are destined for the dinner plate they fill the air with plangent cries and gnaw at the ropes that bind them in a last desperate attempt at freedom.
I myself have been feeling flighty of late, with itchy feet and an intermittent urge to escape to nowhere in particular. A couple of years ago a friend went to work in Darfur, managing a multi-sector project. When she came back she said that of all the new and valuable experience she gained, above all she learned about herself. Halfway through my first year in South Sudan and that observation rings increasingly true.
After a period of relative calm things have ramped up rapidly. This month there are two proposals due, the success of which will determine whether or not the project continues next year. On top of this we have donor, HQ and Juba staff visits; the handover of our health activities to another NGO; and the post-harvest health and nutrition survey, a two week effort on the other side of the still-swollen river. We have experimented without success with building rafts out of empty oil drums, which means a two hour walk through chest deep water to cross to the other side.
Of late logframes, indicators and results are the last thing on my mind before I fall asleep and the first thought upon awakening in the morning. Over the course of the past six months, however, I have become more familiar with the mechanics of my inner workings. I am learning to recognise symptoms of exhaustion or an impending crash, and which coping stratagem to utilise to best head it off at the pass. I have spent years rushing around cities, filling my free time with places to be and people to see, when what I actually needed was to learn to sit and be still. For the first time in a long time I have had the head space to experiment with solitude. It felt like a breathing out.
I have always worked well under pressure, and I do enjoy the seductive sense of swollen significance that comes from feeling like what you are doing is both urgent and of grave importance. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that without at least a vague approximation of balance both my state of mind and the quality of my work deteriorate rapidly. Stating the obvious, I know, but it is gratifying to be able to recognise my tells, those mental twitches that give away the permeability or otherwise of the terrain beneath the feet.
These checks and balances, they are simple measures, easy to implement. The hint of cabin fever is easily dispelled by getting out of the compound, so I have started going to collect our water from the MSF borehole in the evenings, which has the added benefit of meaning that I get to drive the pick up. Crashing around the rutted tracks at ten miles an hour has a way of bringing a smile to the face. At the borehole I am usually greeted by staring kids, fascinated by my skin colour and earring, and vaguely horrified by my tongue stud. I am an anthropological study here as much as the other way around.
At the weekend I finally visited the market, a sparsely stocked affair with people selling their wares out of tents and tukuls. There wasn’t much on offer, but I counted at least 350kg of grain in WFP branded sacks. A legitimate coping mechanism or evidence of UN largesse? I’m not sure, but after several days of focus group meetings with government officials, tribal chiefs and community members it is clear that dependency is very much a reality here. The combination of conflict, low levels of education and years of direct handouts has had the detrimental effect of discouraging initiative and suppressing human capacity. Not enough to negate the need for what we do, but there is the potential to do harm as well as good. Good intentions are not enough.
On the Road
Otherwise, I have reverted to an old favourite pastime, one which has too often been edged by less worthwhile but more instantaneous pleasures – namely, reading. This too, however, requires a degree of adjustment, for in my current environs a certain amount of caution is necessary.
Much literature tends to deal with the dark corners and crevices of the human psyche, which isn’t always helpful at the end of a day in which you are trying to suppress the sense of having fallen off the edge of the earth. Meanwhile, it transpires that spending your days reading security reports and your evenings novels about the civil war is a recipe for the jitters. And so I have shifted tack and am currently balancing out some rubbish fiction with Hamlet and Keith Richards’ fascinating autobiography. But having unintentionally immersed myself in accounts of conflict, what I cannot comprehend is that the lived experience of violence and war seemingly does little to dull the appetite.
On Friday night the air was thick with insects and the office was a no go zone – somebody had left the strip lights on and the door open, thus attracting all the winged irritants for miles around. From floor to ceiling the air was black with beating wings. So we switched off the generator, doused the solar lights and sat beneath the stars. Inevitably the conversation drifted to security, politics and tribalism.
This particular discussion took in the full range of South Sudan’s myriad socio-economic and political problems – intriguing if typically depressing subject matter. It was the proposed resolution, however, which took me altogether by surprise. A number of colleagues from several organisations put forth that what South Sudan needs to solve its problems is a civil war. The argument, in essence, was that it took forty years of fighting to bring forth the Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ushered in an independent South Sudan, so why not another go around? Even people working on peace building initiatives offered that it is all but an inevitability, and perhaps no bad thing. It was one of the most disquieting conversations that I have yet been a part of.
Dusk
I am becoming increasingly aware that I am seated in the lap of tragedy. Beneath the surface the majority of people you meet and work with have their own tales to tell, or at least to nod at in passing. It is easy to miss amidst the donor reports and the insect bites, but you come to notice the references to growing up in Uganda or Kenya, to recognise the names of civil war era refugee camps. It is not my place to pry, and these are not my stories to trade, but there were multiple generations uprooted, displaced and extinguished by conflict, that great bringer of misery and destroyer of development indicators. And the aftereffects continue to be played out in front of us today.
In our conversations this week a room full of tribal chiefs held up the inter-community gatherings as evidence that the underlying architecture for peace is stronger than it has been in years. Simultaneously the rebel militia of David Yau Yau is engaged in open conflict with government forces in a neighbouring county, while cattle raiding has begun to ratchet up. It is hard to know which way is up, but we are dusting off the VHF radios and reviewing our security procedures; my quick run bag is packed and sits by my bed.
At this stage I will admit that I am looking forward to Christmas. I am looking forward to going to bed without the possibility of small arms fire disturbing my slumber. I am looking forward to the Mourne Mountains and the Irish Sea, to old haunts and centuries old pubs, to family and friends and all that is familiar and weighted with memory. After six months, I am looking forward to coming home.
In the meantime, however, I find myself intrigued, entranced and appalled at this place in equal measure, and I will continue to hold out hope that the predictions of civil war do not come to fruition.
Lest we forget.
……………………
Aftermath
Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same – and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz –
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench –
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack –
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads – those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.
Yuai is larger than I expected: tukuls stretch across the flat earth, reaching out beyond the compound perimeter for about a kilometre in each direction. The epicentre of the village is the runway, the primary connection with the rest of the country, carefully maintained by the community. When it is dry it is possible to drive from Juba to Yuai, but it is a two day trip, mostly through the bush and areas that have not been properly demined. Not the most appealing of prospects. In the rainy season even that option is unavailable, so the runway is the sole entry and exit point, enabling the transportation of supplies – both commercial and humanitarian – and people. Little flippy flappy planes ferry NGO workers into and out of the village and, in the occasional event of an overlap between a medical emergency and an available plane, transport patients to the MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) hospital in Lankien.
As the county capital Yuai is home to the Commissioner’s office and entourage, while the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (SSRRC) have a basic operation here as well. In spite of this honour there is little in the way of infrastructure, essential services or commercial trade in Yuai. MSF Holland run outreach activities in Uror County, so there is limited access to basic healthcare, but as their nurses split their time between three villages the clinic is only staffed ten days a month; the rest of the time services are provided by semi-skilled local staff. There are no roads here, no electricity, no shops. This is the first place I have been where the seemingly infinite reach of Coca-Cola’s grubby corporate tentacles has not yet penetrated. There is, however, a weekend market, presently understocked and overpriced due to the logistical difficulties presented by the rainfall. The recent revelation that it may be possible to buy a – London priced – beer may well expedite my first exploration.
Action on the Runway
Nevertheless, while facilities may be basic Yuai is a lively place. On my first Sunday there was cheering and the sound of rhythm outside the compound. It sounded much like a crowd before a football match – urgent, pulsing. It transpires that, with the rains subsiding somewhat, my arrival coincided with the resumption of an inter-community gathering, a combination competitive dance and marital selection ceremony.
Before I go any further, a brief explanation of the administrative structure of South Sudan is necessary. South Sudan is made up of ten states, of which Jonglei is the largest and most remote. There are six counties in Jonglei, which are further broken down into payams (sub-county districts, of which there are eleven in Uror), bomas and, finally, villages.
On what appears to be alternating Sundays people from three payams come together in celebration and competition. On this particular Sunday I ventured out, feeling distinctly conspicuous and equally curious. Now I am not very good at estimating the size of crowds but my colleagues and I agreed that there were over a thousand people present. There were flags and sporting uniforms and young men running and dancing in unison along the runway. The County Commissioner was leading the way with the chants and ceremony, welcoming the competitors and spectators alike with patriotic evocations. The soldiers, present to maintain order, seemed coolly removed from proceedings. Of course, as soon as I started taking photos a large group of kids gathered, mugging for the camera and generally showing off. There was a sense of community, of identity and civic pride. Unfortunately I was unable to stay to watch the completion of the competition and the following marital selection elements but I hope to catch those next time around.
Global Handwashing Day, Yuai
One civil institution which Yuai does have is a primary school. Last Monday was Global Handwashing Day, and our WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion) team organised a celebratory event at the school. The event was charming, well attended, and tremendously impressive. The pupils and teachers had evidently put in considerable effort, conjuring up drama, dance and song to mark the occasion. One MC wrote a sort of beat poem which he delivered in English, directed towards the County Commissioner, the guest of honour who sat centre stage in his suit and sunglasses, watching over proceedings.
And this, alongside the apparent quality of the education the children were receiving, was the most encouraging element of the event. This was not just a token gesture organised by a few teachers. There was evident buy in of community and government leaders, a genuine recognition of the scale of both the problem and the possibility of progress through relatively simple – if fundamental – behaviour change. Present were members of the SSRRC, senior county health and civil officials, representatives from other NGOs, and various community and tribal leaders. All at an event encouraging the use of soap and latrines.
For while it may not be glamorous, diarrhoea is the leading cause of child mortality in Sub Saharan Africa. It is estimated that one child dies from the illness every 20 seconds, and as 87% of people in Jonglei do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities there is still a long way to go indeed. (For further information, in collaboration with PATH Tearfund have recently released a report, the Diarrhoea Dialogues.)
The Commissioner again took an active role in proceedings, demonstrating how to use a simple homemade tap – a ‘tippy tap’ – and made a speech emphasising the importance of good sanitation practices. He spoke about how he, along with many others, used to practice open defecation in the bush, but how they always did so at night – which was evidence, was it not, that the practice was inherently shameful and detrimental to the health of one’s community?
The use of shame to drive behaviour change is something which doesn’t sit comfortably with many in the West, especially those like myself from a country whose national psyche is in many ways marked by a very Catholic sense of guilt. However, when it arises naturally as a result of a recognition of the consequences of one’s actions – rather than being externally imposed – it can be a tremendously effective driver of positive change, and it plays a central role in many sanitation behaviour change efforts. In aid speak this is known as fostering a demand-led approach – for what good is it if an NGO spends time and money building facilities that nobody uses and quickly fall into a state of disrepair?
In order to build sustainability – another buzz word. Durable, lasting results, in normal language – agencies strive to ensure that the impetus for change comes from the communities themselves. One of the processes that we use to do this is called CLTS – Community-Led Total Sanitation. Or as one senior colleague memorably put it, Community Leaders Talk Shit. With CLTS you take, as the name suggests, community leaders for a walk where you visit open defecation sites, examine the stools, their proximity to water sources, where the flies might go next and how such things contribute to the spread of disease. Then you run sessions where you teach people how to dig a suitable pit for a latrine using locally sourced materials. As an incentive Tearfund will provide the cement slab that covers the latrine, and soap and jerry cans for handwashing facilities, but only to those that have constructed the rest of the latrine. An element of competition is also injected into proceedings as whichever village has the most latrines is rewarded with a bull and a celebratory party is held. All very ingenious, and it is proving encouragingly effective. This really is only the start of the process, but seeing the tangible results of several years work played out in drama and song was most gratifying indeed.
One final thought. In his address one community leader spoke out against tribal scarification. Himself marked with the deep parallel lines that denote that he is Lo Nuer, he spoke of the birth of a new nation and of the need to move away from old tribal divisions. Scarification is both a signifier, a mark of belonging, and a rite of passage for young men. It is becoming less common in much of the country, but in some places it continues to be practiced. In an area such as Jonglei, however, where tribal conflict is an ongoing and ever-present threat such sentiments, when expressed by a respected community elder, are a welcome and encouraging sign indeed.
It is the beginning of the dry season and Jonglei is re-emerging from the the mantle of water that has cloaked its surface for six months. Large parts of the state are still flooded, but in some localities the waters are subsiding. Next month we may be able to cross the river and visit the project locations for the first time since May.
Yet this evening it is raining in Yuai. I love the smell before rain. It is the smell of fresh starts and possibilities. There are thunderclouds rolling across the sky and thick forks of lightning dashing themselves against the earth. Raindrops are drumming against the tin roof, fireflies are circling and there are frogs hopping across the floor of my office. Everything is new.
I have arrived at an opportune moment, in the pause before the resumption of activities, evaluations and funding proposals. This is an ideal time to get to know my teammates, to get a good overview of the project and the sectors in which we the work, and to find my feet.
Taking advantage of the comparative calm I am taking things slowly at first, allowing myself the time and space to let it all to sink in. I have had briefings with the project managers and we have identified areas for me to get involved in, from evaluation of the damage done by the flooding through needs assessments and planning for next year, while from Thursday I shall be handling all of the project’s finance functions for a month. There is a lot to learn, things that I have wanted to get involved in for a long time – useful, practical, how-to-run-a-project type things. After an extended period of reading about and reporting on the projects from a distance it is a relief to be in the field at last.
Irishman in the Rain
On the other side of the compound, I have unpacked my bags and settled into my room – and contrary to expectations it is in fact a room, albeit one made out of mud and cow dung, rather than the tukuls (mud huts) we had in our previous base. I have done my best to make it feel like home. I have lined the sills in front of the mesh windows with mementoes, and I spent a good chunk of my first weekend carrying out improvised home improvements, plastering the cracks with mud and The Irish Times to keep the locusts out. Inside I have a plastic table and chair, and a bed with a mosquito net. There is an electric light, the primary function of which appears to be to attract a vast array of insects, and a socket which provides intermittent power in the evenings, when the generator is on. It is enough to get my laptop, with its constantly whirring fan, through an episode of Newsroom anyway, for which I am profoundly grateful.
The compound itself isn’t much to look at, maybe twenty five metres by twenty five metres, with one concrete building – the main office, containing the all-important safe room – and a variety of mud constructions and corrugated iron outhouses; all of which is surrounded by a four foot fence of iron sheeting. We have a combination of solar and generator power, while ablutions take the form of long drops and bucket showers.
There is, however, less of a sense of privation than one might expect. While certainly challenging – I found two scorpions in my room last night – overall my new living conditions are rudimentary but not unpleasant: as one recently-departed Jonglei veteran put it, “I feel like I’ve been camping for two years”. No, what is hardest is the mindset shift, the psychological distance. I am acutely aware of how far away I am from everything that’s familiar, and there have been a several moments where I have had to stifle a sense of rising panic. But these are already diminishing in frequency.
While I appreciate that this may not be the case come dry season and the concomitant intertribal tension and cattle raids, for now all seems calm and quiet. The night sky alone makes it all worthwhile. Uncorrupted by light pollution, the sense of infinite space above seems an accurate reflection of both the sense of possibility and the scale of the problems below.
Tukuls
For we are operating in a fragile and volatile environment, at the confluence of a series of recurrent crises that conspire to keep Jonglei in a state of chronic humanitarian need. The situation here is what we call a complex emergency – one borne not out of a sharp, isolated shock, such as an earthquake, coup or tsunami, but a combination of structural vulnerabilities that leave a legacy of conflict, hunger and disease.
Uror County stands at the nexus of three recurring emergencies: flooding, on an annual or biennial basis; drought, which alternates with the flooding; and intertribal conflict, the frequency and severity of which is traditionally exacerbated by drought. Combined with a massive shortfall in governmental basic service provision and an almost total lack of infrastructure, further limiting access to services and markets, and these cyclical crises combine to keep the people of this area in a state of severe under-development and near-perpetual humanitarian need. And as in many parts of the country, the situation is getting worse.
In July Oxfam released a report, Tackling the Food Deficit in the World’s Newest Country, that found that half of South Sudan’s 9.7 million population are facing food insecurity. Despite the scaling up of aid efforts, at the time of publication the situation had already reached emergency (pre-famine) levels in parts of five of South Sudan’s ten states, including Jonglei. Oxfam predicted that the “emergency classification means that people will lose their livelihoods with little chance of recovery; there will be a significant increase in severely acute malnourished children [the most serious level of malnutrition] and mortality rates”.
This analysis is borne out on the ground. WFP (UN World Food Programme) have recently completed an analysis of Uror and the initial findings are far from positive. The floods have had a severe impact on the Food Security outlook in the region, causing a shortfall in the annual harvest and destroying existing stocks. The implications of this are serious: WFP calculate that household food supplies won’t last beyond December. Considering that the hunger period traditionally doesn’t start until February or March, the expectation is that there will be a nutrition crisis next year. We are likely to be in humanitarian mode for some time yet.
Nevertheless, I want to be careful not to overload the negativity or to present a picture of a stereotypical helpless African village. No, while there are problems on the horizon Yuai is a place with a sense of energy and community that really is a pleasure to be a part of. But more of that in the next post. For now it is a privilege to be here, and I only hope our foreknowledge of the coming shortfalls will translate into successful proposals and donor support. As there was in Juba, there is a lot to do – but here it all seems much more tangible. I suspect that the adjustment period may have to come to an end rather soon.
So I have made it to Jonglei. A fleeting visit, little more than a landing really, but now at least I have a concrete image on which to pin my expectations.
It came about because the project needed money. In Yuai there is no bank, no handy ATM, and so when reserves are low somebody has to transport cash from Juba. Not the most secure method of asset transferral, but in the places in which we operate there is no other option. And so I was enlisted to act as courier.
I was to fly out on an early morning flight with MAF, a small aviation agency whose magazine we used to receive when I was a kid. On the back page was a cartoon featuring Maffy, an anthropomorphic single propellor plane. Back then I wanted to be a pilot, and I wanted to fly Maffy. Maffy was always smiling. I was looking forward to meeting him, even if it was to be as a passenger rather than pilot.
Maffy and Me
We had the paperwork to confirm that I had permission to carry large amounts of hard currency, so I wasn’t expecting any bureaucratic impediments. But this being South Sudan, as my bag was going through the scanner in Juba’s chaotic airport I was pulled aside: I lacked an essential stamp, without which the money couldn’t travel. Wandering the back alleys around the airport with a backpack full of cash looking for an unmarked hut was an interesting experience, but fortunately it passed without incident.
In the air I was able to appreciate for the first time the vast empty scale of Jonglei. The largest of South Sudan’s ten states, Jonglei is similar in size to England but with about two percent of the population. Flying in a small plane offers an excellent vantage point as you keep low, well beneath the clouds. Along the way we crossed over a white UN helicopter; it looked like it was skimming the treetops, so low did it fly. There was little but scrub and verdant marshland as far as the eye could see, with expanses where even the trees petered out. No sign of life. None discernible from 5,000 feet anyway.
We were very nearly unable to land. As we approached Yuai the pilot became concerned about the runway. Flights had been cancelled for several weeks due to flooding, and whoever assessed the state of the landing strip was rather more optimistic than the pilot would have liked. We did two flyovers, and after some hasty calculations it was decided we could attempt a landing. We made it, but the pilot didn’t think we were going to be able to bring people back with us. I didn’t want to have to break the news.
The runway was lined with people. While the pilot drove off in one of the Land Cruisers to determine the usable length for takeoff we unloaded the plane’s precious cargo – fresh fruit, tins of vegetables, coffee, eggs and other welcome supplies. This done I handed over the money to our logistician and, waybill signed, took in my surroundings.
Members of the community were gathered loosely around the plane, some chatting away to our team, some hanging on the edges. There were a lot of tall, stringy people, the majority of whom were marked by the distinctive forehead scarification common in South Sudan. There were kids in football shirts. One or two were naked. Many looked in need of a good meal, and some, yes, appeared prime targets for flies. Then again the flies didn’t appear to be particularly fussy.
As I hadn’t shaved in a few days I had the beginnings of beard poking through, and I noticed some of the kids pointing at my chin and giggling. I am the eldest in my extended family so I’ve always been good around kids. I like their unapologetic enthusiasm, their energy and their lack of pretence. I like running around and spinning until I’m dizzy. So I smiled and tried to make friends, indicating that there was nothing to fear from my mildly stubbled jawline.
Soon the pilot was back and the runway was indeed too sodden to allow a fully laden takeoff. Several members of the team who had been expecting to go on leave had to stay behind, and those who were able to come onboard were only able to bring one bag of hand luggage. It was a pretty unpleasant situation, but as the pilot pointed out, it wasn’t his decision. The laws of physics are the laws of the physics, and there was nothing that could be done.
And so less than five hours after taking off I was back in Juba. My time in Yuai was very brief, and several weeks after the fact my memory of the initial experience has dimmed somewhat. But I do remember that the overwhelming impression was of distance, an acute awareness of the gulf between my experience and theirs. What, really, do I have to offer these people, whose lives are about as far removed from my own as one can conceive of in this day and age?
Soon I shall have the opportunity to find out. Runway saturation allowing I am heading out on Thursday. It’s short notice, but I am excited, and a little nervous. A lot of Jonglei is flooded at present and tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. We are the main agency in Uror County and so we are taking the lead in the emergency response and are undertaking NFI distribution – Non-Food Items, in aid speak. Mosquito nets, water containers, sleeping mats. The essentials to help people get by until the flooding subsides. I’m looking forward to helping out and learning how these things are done.
In the meantime I have a few days left to say my goodbyes and fatten myself up in anticipation of an impending diet of rice and goat. Juba, it’s been a pleasure.
Life in Juba occasionally feels like an experiment in communal living, a monasticism with new and interesting methods of self-flagellation, and significantly less silence. There have been a number of occurrences of late which have given me pause to reflect upon how reliant we are on the kindness and sensitivity of those around us. When you live in such close proximity to people a certain amount tension is inevitable, and with the continuous movement of people team dynamics are constantly shifting. It is a fragile balance, easily damaged and difficult to repair. It is at times like these that I am deeply grateful for the existence of Björk.
However, the community most on my mind of late has been the one which I am going to be living amongst come September. I am increasingly aware how little I actually know about Yuai, my soon to be home. I have read reports and proposals aplenty and can tell you all about the PHCUs (Primary Health Care Units), nutrition needs and WASH (WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene) projects that we run. I have read books on the history of South Sudan, about its colonial past, and the extended civil war and factionalism which lead to its separation from the north. But the reality is that I know very little about the Lo Nuer, the Dinka and the Murle, the main tribes in my locality in Jonglei – the state in which Yuai is located – as communities or as people.
If there is one thing I do know about Yuai, however, it is that it is an extremely isolated place. If you Google the name of our previous base in Jonglei the first result is not a news site, or even an agency report, but my friend and predecessor’s blog from two years ago. This is not somewhere with international media attention, or indeed international anything.
I have recently noticed that when I tell an experienced field worker, especially one nursing a beer, where I am going to be based their instinct is to chuckle knowingly and remark that if you can survive Jonglei you can survive anywhere. One Jonglei old hand posed the most challenging question I have fielded so far: ‘What are your motivations?’
Now I have been asked that question, or a variation thereof, plenty of times, and considered it independently many more, but this time the question was put in a concrete context. The seasoned aid workers I have talked to, their stories – or the ones that seem to mean something at least – are not about well managed projects, balanced budgets or sociological observations. The stories that mean something are those that tell of feeling welcome, about trust, warmth and connection. And this particular aid worker, who has worked in Darfur and on the Kenya – Somali border, outlined why Jonglei was the most difficult context he had worked in. He touched upon the many impediments to working that I am well aware of, from the rains that turn it into a sodden and impassable swamp for five months of the year, to the sheer scale of the place. But he also talked about the more personal elements – the inherent suspicion bred of decades of civil war and intertribal violence; the absence of a hospitality culture and concomitant reticence of the communities to allow you to participate in their lives; the tendency towards entitlement and aid dependency that meant that engagement, initiative and buy in to the projects were frustratingly difficult to achieve; that he had never once been invited into a family’s home for a meal. And it was the second group of frustrations that made Jonglei so difficult and dispiriting. His advice was that I need to be sure of my motivations, and clear on what I want to achieve, or else I would invariably get frustrated and demotivated by it all.
Now his experience may not be representative, but the larger point still stands: in a context such as this the pat “I’m here to help” answer just doesn’t cut it. Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t contain some truth – idealism definitely motivates many people to get into this line of work, but it’s not enough to sustain you. Bleeding hearts don’t last. And if we are honest with ourselves, neither is it entirely true.
The most difficult response I received when I told people that I was moving to South Sudan was when people expressed the sentiment that I was doing something brave, heroic or sacrificial, which wasn’t uncommon. This was difficult firstly because of the stirrings of pride that accompanied the praise, as the ego was burnished a little too brightly. And it was also difficult because I disagree, for reasons that are difficult to express succinctly. What I am doing is not heroic, it is not a sacrifice, and it is not even particularly unusual – there is a veritable glut of us out here.
By presenting or seeing yourself in such a way – as heroic and benevolent, with wholly altruistic intentions – you are painting yourself in a position of power: you are someone here to right the wrongs that the South Sudanese cannot, you are here to solve a problem. In doing so you strip those around you of their agency and autonomy, not to mention their dignity. Uncomfortable colonial overtones abound. We are not saviours, and we will not be welcomed as such. Nor should we expect to be. In fact, where I am going it sounds as though I may not be welcome, at least at first. But there should be joy in what we do, regardless of whether or not we experience an emotional affirmation in recognition of our efforts.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and found that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” – Rabindranath Tagore
In his elegant and challenging piece for the Atlantic, Teju Cole points out: “…there is much more to doing good work than ‘making a difference.’ There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.” The ‘here to help’ chestnut makes it all about us, about our need for validation and fulfillment, and it defines our purpose by what we are able to achieve. And when we are faced with our inability to effect change, as we inevitably will be, such thinking sets one up to become bitter and cynical as we are confronted with the seeming futility of our efforts.
“If you believe you’re going to… change the world, you’re going to end up either a pessimist or a cynic. But if you understand your limited power and define yourself by your ability to resist injustice, rather than by what you accomplish, then I think reality is much easier to bear.” – Chris Hedges
To return to the point about being honest about our motivations, and the problem with the ‘sacrificial saviour’ narrative. There are of course things which I have given up to be here, important things, comfortable things, safe and secure things. There will be things I will miss – weddings, birthdays, late nights chewing the fat with old friends, and myriad similar moments, and these are things I value and do not set aside lightly. But the distinction needs to be made – this life is not in and of itself a sacrifice.
I have chosen to be in South Sudan, and I want to be here. I find it exciting to be somewhere new again, to be back on the continent where my interest in justice, development and the wider world was kindled. I like living somewhere where the everyday has an edge, and less bubble wrap to soften the edges than it does in Ireland and the UK. I enjoy observing the chaotic bustle and colour of the streets and marketplaces, the three people per motorbike approach, the feeling of a city bursting at the seams. I love the smell before a storm, and how the rain here has a weight and heft where back home it is most often grey, dank and half-hearted. I love the interesting people you meet: people who have done things of value and whose character and authority speaks of their knowledge and experience; adrenaline junkies who’re addicted to the buzz of chasing the latest disaster; people who have seen too much and succumbed to the cynicism that I spoke of above – the range is fascinating. I love my job, I love that I’m learning all the time, and I definitely enjoy the intermittent feeling that I am actually quite good at what I do.
All of which makes the frustrations and disappointments that much easier to bear, and makes it all the more gratifying when you know you have contributed to something worthwhile. For our projects, the good ones anyway – the ones where the internal and external circumstances align sufficiently with good planning and available funds – they do do good. They make a difference. But it is incremental, it is slow, and it is difficult to quantify or to measure. It is difficult to determine causality, and even more difficult to watch your efforts and hard-won improvements be wiped out by events outside of your control.
Being honest about the range of your motivations can also keep attitudes in check. If you think you are somehow doing people a favour by deigning to work and live in their country the implication is that they owe you something, whether a debt of gratitude or some form of preferential treatment. And such attitudes will inevitably spill over into your behaviour. Whereas if I am honest about the fact that I am benefitting from being here, and that it is a privilege and not a sacrifice, then I will treat others accordingly, with respect and a willingness to actually listen to the needs of the communities we are serving, rather than imposing my ideas of what is best upon a context about which I can ultimately only ever know very little.
In other words, the cultivation of humility is essential to doing good well. It speaks of trust and integrity, and like anywhere in the world trust has to be earned. Now it may just be that in this particular place there are more impediments to relationship than in most. But such is the privilege of being here.
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Photographs courtesy of Ali Wood and Lucy Young, my friends and predecessors in Jonglei
Seasons of Migration 