Happy anniversary Darfur

15 February. Almost one month in country.

Today I am feeling sick. This is the third day I am suffering steady headaches. I keep thinking it is the sun and my continued failure to drink enough water. It is a strange place…it is very hot but the air is so dry that dehydration is always possible yet I never feel thirsty. It is very much like hiking in the Nepalese Himalayas having to force drink water due to the dryness of the air. I rarely sweat here as it is so dry even though the temperatures reach the high 30s (I am guessing). Far from the heat is the brightness of the sun. For some reason I find myself outside frequently without my shades and that causes problems, I wonder why this happens because as you know I am rarely without my specs.

So now I am with a bit of a fever and begging MSF for piles of paracetamol. They, the nurses and doctors, always leery of issues, keep suggesting things like malaria. By the by I am not on prophylaxis as we are in the dry season and there are no mosquitoes about. Now I am paranoid… but this happens to me every several days leading me back to the original self-diagnosis that it is dehydration and heat stroke. Thursday, our day before the weekend, I spent the afternoon cleaning out the compound burning garbage, tossing other old wheelbarrows and kerosene lamps bent and destroyed over time. While I am very excited by this little piece of progress, I am now suffering the consequences. Or maybe I am having a REAL stroke?

So in the end I missed out on Valentine’s Day. I give my self a hug.

Last night I couldn’t sleep for the headache…having munched all my remaining ibu yesterday. I was up after midnight to find that the guards were sleeping… and outside the compound. They have this deal (we will be changing this deal over time) where one sleeps outside in a hut while one stays inside and watches for me. Yet this time, the guard finding no bed to use inside the compound was outside. Rather than to face the demon of sleeping guards I simply locked the door; and thus they missed their morning tea in their efforts to come inside.

I am trying to be less fascist over this sleeping guard issue – it clearly is global – but we are inside a sketchy place here in ST yet the reality is that the guards will not prevent a thing. In fact, for perspective, during the MSF robbery last December, the bandits scaled the walls, opened the safe, took the money and then rescaled the walls all while the guards slept. Nice! Well it is time to make the guards sleep inside so that they, too, can be as safe as possible/while under my watchful eye! Maybe I will not deconstruct their little house outside – but I will remove the top half of each wall (they must be able to see if things arrive) and I will also remove their bed inside…if they choose to sleep they must not have all the creature comforts, not that it makes any bit of difference.

Sunday is a big day for me. I have finally come to a point at my time here in ST base to gut the three tiny stocks we have. I have included all the necessary people, discussed endlessly how we are going to do it, received all the necessary permissions…this is all too much. I will hire two hired hands for heavy lifting, spew all the contents of the three stocks into the middle of the compound, triage each item as it is identified for Logistics/Food Aid/Food Sec programs; garbage will be tossed over the fence for any lucky passer-by. Anything that can be salvaged will be sent to our local market (souk) to be rehabbed. This is a big deal and I fully expect to find a few hidden treasures in the mess.

Like last weekend I was poking about the kitchen and I found a GAS cook top with three burners. Dude! Now I can cook on the weekends. I hate charcoal as it is dirty and such a big effort to do any cooking (not to mention the environmental ramifications for the desert) – while I was in the DRC I simply didn’t eat on the weekend or I ate straight from a can of tuna or something. Just to avoid the whole cooking thing.

We did our general food distribution (GFD) in the Shangil Tobay camp last Wednesday. I went to visit to see how things were going. I didn’t really see any people at risk for malnutrition. We are suffering from a big problem with registration of beneficiaries. I think I noted once that we are distributing in the ST area for some 35k people (both camps together) but the real camp populations are around 17k. One guy, one of our FA team who lives in the Shadad (SD) camp figures that if you truly knock back all the people who live in the surrounding villages who set up a tent in the camp on distribution day the true number of beneficiaries would be more like 8k. Regardless, our challenge is to weed out the people who are eligible from those not eligible. Seems that folks here are not even reticent regarding spilling the beans regarding their living situation – that they are NOT in the camps and this leads to questions regarding whether they actually understand that the distributions are for vulnerable people on the lamb due to security threats? Maybe they do and simply are not worried as they have received rations for years and have no reason to question continued supplies. This is all together frustrating for our FA guy, Pierre.

This lack of subterfuge is clear and present. During the distribution Wednesday past we saw donkey carts loaded with food crossing the highway heading for ST town. Trains and trains of donkey carts; this is just a slap in the face of the good intentions for ACF and WFP. People are people never the less, and the sad fact is that four years ago, during the true emergency, the food aid went to the camps AND also to the local villages who support those camps in other ways. Then one day WFP changed the eligibility rules and we have been struggling to keep up since. What to do? Thus, we are in a clear example of how humanitarian aid actually does harm. For clarity, the food is to stay INSIDE the camp.

Pierre was here to supervise his first distribution in ST Camp. To add insult to injury he continued to be challenged by people to represent beneficiaries and as emissaries also the delivery men. Imagine that the ‘beneficiaries’ not actually coming to collect their rations themselves? Finally at the end of two days of distributions, some 28 000 people came and took away their food. And after all that 60-70 people did not receive rations…sorry folks, don’t know where you came from but our food requests, based on last month’s distribution, said we only require food from WFP for the amount distributed. Bummer.

The distribution is an interesting and unique affair. Due to the historic regional food needs, and the need to be ‘remote controlled’ as a result of the security threats at the time, our distribution was in what is called ‘heaps’ as apposed to the more common ‘scooping’ method. When the very flash WFP trucks show up on the Monday before the Tuesday distribution, local men (who should be from the camps but this is another glaring issue) line up to start unloading the trucks (paid by the WFP truckers, ANOTHER glaring issue paying people to receive their food).

Unloading consists of creating heaps of food – piles sufficient for either 20 persons or 60 persons. This heap is composed of per person per month: 13.5kg sorghum, 0.9kg pulse, 0.9kg oil (one litre), 0.3kg salt, and finally 0.45kg sugar. Thus during the registration and subsequent distribution, families are clustered in collectives of some combination of 20 or 40 or 60 member groups. These clusters enter the registration, produce their registration cards proving right to distribution, having names cross checked between the cards and the printouts, and then given a plasticized ticket for a particular heap. They then enter the ‘heap zone’, simply a square of land perhaps a hectare in size, and identify the pre-marked heaps. Their cards are validated with a fancy punch and the heap ticket is recuperated and folks are assisted off the grounds with this ration. It is then up to themselves to ensure each member of the group has their fair share.

It is felt that having the group members doing the distribution themselves is a faster and our efforts made more streamlined by having folks cart off unopened bags of cereal or unpacked cartons of oil. Still there is no real validation that each member of the group was ACTUALLY present or ACTUALLY receives their portion.

It is, by the way, a great industry for the local donkey herds. Or camels or the rare horse, as well as the guy with a wheelbarrow. These industrious folks simply offer to take your heap where ever you like for a price.

As a comparison, the ‘scooping’ method is an assembly line where each person goes to each station in turn – cereal, pulse, oil, salt, and sugar – and receives their ration before being pumped out the door. This is what you see on TV and is a good way to ensure that at least the beneficiaries actually have the food in hand in the beginning. What happens later is a different story…like how in the DRC a local soldier taxed a woman with a starving child some of her rations AT THE ACF COMPOUND GATE! I fixed that situation but quick.

SD camp will be this coming Tuesday. There is only 12k folks there insh’allah. Peace.

NOTE: It was a common flu and nothing more. All is tamem!