Life in Shangil Tobay continues to roll on...

Life in Shangil Tobay continues to roll on…

Last night was my first night alone here as the Food Aid team (FA) and the Food Security team (FS) have gone home after their three days here in ST. Now we have some peace on our little base. So now I have the time and the space to give to things important to the Head of Base: like the re-establishing systems for logistics and supply chain management; human resources like how to get the drivers (who are not ACF drivers, they are ‘rental’ and come with the cars and are paid large sums by the car owners to live in the village – or not we are not sure) from taking advantage of living, eating and using water (water in the desert takes on different connotations eh?) which is for ACF purposes… Furthermore, the temporary replacement cook needs training in how to clean, cook and shop too; while the watchmen are prone to sleeping in later than me in the morning! Hubba hubba is the local speak for slowly slowly…(official Arabic it is phonetically shuaya shuaya). I have also brought a safe with money (a risky proposition in this security situation) so that we can function properly and officially as a base and can pay at time of purchase something never done here in ST for the past years. Up until now we have been relying on the goodness (and sharia law!) of our staff to pay from their pocket and then make a reimbursement request. Who really knows how that system has been used??? Our guys in EF are keen on repeating ‘the party’s over in ST’…

Oh and we have language issues where the best English spoken on the base is our assistant logistician who tries hard but is at say grade one level and so every day is hand gestures and babytalk jargon. My brain is already mush from the baby-speak and clearly it is time to embrace Arabic…

We have some other challenges to be sure as the FS and FA guys are national staff and of course when they are here they want to be treated as exceptional staff being from EF and all. Sugar. Life here revolves around sugar and the quantity they can stuff into their ounce of tea. For some perspective WFP give us 30 grams of tea per person per day in our distributions and yet our FS/FA guys can easily stuff 30 g into one teacup! The French have an expression that translates “give ‘em a finger and they eat your arm”; this is nothing new but it continues to rankle me as we always have contestations and bad moods as a result of the vying for position. The expats vs the nationals and you can see and understand the general frustration as expats fly in and fly out each one with a different system and philosophy and motivation thereby destabilizing any routine life as they know it.

Our system for the presence FS and FA teams are controlled by the WFP flight schedule; they drop in for only three days and two nights– in on Tuesday and out on Thursday. They come maybe two times per month on a fixed schedule for the General Food Distributions (GFD) but more often if things require. This system, until now, has been called ‘remote control’ as there has been no durable presence at the base or expat oversight. This has been a result of the unstable and disconcerting security situation, but now we feel better regarding the security and it is truly time to get a solid handle on our work in the camps – you can imagine with this ‘remote control’ we, as an aid agency, have no real way to monitor the distributions or the work and thus have no comfort that we are actually achieving our goals. Food (and water) is a precious commodities here and by giving our unsupervised staff control in the distributions how can we do otherwise than to believe that all the people targeted for distributions received those distributions wholly and completely and without prejudice? We are distributing to about 35 000 people but our MSF friends are suggesting that there are only 17 000 folks in the camps. So we know that there are some abuses of the distribution system, as we are clearly aware that some of our distributions are to people clearly known as living in the village. So as we leave our ‘remote control’ we will be redoubling our efforts to get a better handle on our registered population so that we can minimize our mis-distributions and control any abuses of the systems in place. We are supposed to distribute only to vulnerable people who are LIVING in the camps because of SECURITY reasons, meaning that if they choose to live in the camps because it is easier or in interest of profit then they are NOT permitted to receive rations. Only people who flee their home and farms as a result of the fighting and banditry are eligible. Good luck on finding that line in the sand and then fixing that line in the sand…

By way of explanation, the FA team does the general food distributions as defined by WFP to the two IDP camps in are area, and that is once a month for each camp. They are to register by IOM standards the new arrivals and to triage eligible and non eligible arrivals (and hopefully suss out those folks who are getting one distribution at one camp under one name and then trying to get a second distribution under a different name at the other camp). By the by, as WFP convoys continue to suffer regular hijackings of trucks and drivers, they are slowly reducing the food available for us to distribute. Rather than using helicopters to avoid known dangerous routes, WFP simply reduces the distribution ration to compensate for that quantity of food looted. We have no recourse to augment the difference.

The FS team does the voucher program to assist those people getting the food distributions a safe way to get their food milled, or ground into flour, by giving each family a voucher to get their food milled. Thus it is the millers come to ACF for money. In this way these ‘vulnerable’ people do not need to have money on hand – to prevent banditry against them – and with the voucher they do not have to pay the millers a portion – or tax - of the measly quantity of food they are provided. As well the FS team also promotes and teaches how to construct efficient wood burning stoves so there is less pressure on the environment and the women for collecting firewood. And finally the FS team has a veterinary program designed to protect the health of the local livestock – mostly donkeys but also goats and camels for the people in the camps. You can imagine for a migratory population just how important their stock is in their lives and status.

As for me, things are good so far. Now I am ensconced here I can start to rebuild our base in a meaningful way. I shaved my head finally last night and now I feel much better as it has been more than a month without grooming. Imagine! It was almost time to braid the back while the top looked like a sad autumn corn patch. I cut my thumb badly the other day and it is healing. I was truly afraid that I was going to lose my thumb as this place is so dry and dusty and just looking for an infection but I have survived. Funny, as that is twice now in the last two months that I have seriously cut myself and I am wondering what is going on?

The base or compound is a tiny affair. We are walled 2 meters high with pickets and barbed-wire netting another meter on top. The compound is 20mX25m and when you place the two room house (5x8m) and the three tiny warehouses (3x3m each) and then the three raquabas (essentially lean-tos made from 2inch plumbing pipe, sticks and grass mats to form tiny houses) to house the national staff FS/FA teams when they come and the two rental vehicles there is not much room to move. We have two latrines with home-made cement floors with a tiny hole for aiming (lately I am getting more scores than misses!). We have two ‘showers’ but the truth is that the are tiny cubicles, about the same dimensions as a latrine, with a brick formed seat in the centre of the space … where you take your bucket of cold water and give urself a scrub down. The staff, the guards, the cook or the national FS/FA guys generally don’t shower but do ritual ablutions of the feet and hands just about anywhere they find an open ground. So our base, when everyone is here is generally one big kitchen sink…. Oh, speaking of which, we have no sink so we spit and splash into the few hardy plants and thus the plants thrive. This is unique in all of ST town as generally any water to be found is not used for plants! The weather is clearly changing. Two weeks ago when I first came to visit ST I was wearing my fleece every day and all night and braying for a second blanket. Now it is only a bit chilly first thing in the morning and it is getting hot during the day. Imagine the change in only one week and projecting that into next month we will be facing new challenges of hydration and sunstroke.

We generally eat en masse, and it is in the local custom. We get a large platter set in the middle of the crowd, on the ground, on which are bowls of food – one salad of coarsely chopped tomatoes and local herbs and cukes, one bowl of ‘foool’ which is beans and potatoes stewed into a mush with meat chunks, or more accurately smashed meat covered bones, and if you are likely another bowl of real meat bits. Bread comes in flat discs about 15 cm in diameter and you can have as many as you like at four breads per 50 cents CDN. And finally there is the ubiquitous bowl of rice or pasta cooked into gruel with too much sugar! Using your hands in the communal bowls you dip and scoop with the bread or your fingers (right hand only please!) then suck, lick or gulp then burp, gargle or slurp. When the salad and the meat bowls are licked clean then you head off to the rice or the pasta. You eat until you are finished and then you leave the others to continue – no begging excuses to leave. You wash our hands with local water, then take a mouthful and swirl it around then spit (into the plant) making as much noise as possible. Maybe you swirl and spit twice… What ever, it is no surprise that I had giardia two weeks ago giving me a fit of vomiting and discomfort. Hubba hubba and I will be immune like the others to the waterborne problems. Since ST is the half-way station between EF and Nyala (NY) we have a series of six roadside restaurants collectively known as “The Station” where you can buy your breakfast (11hrs to 12hrs) for 4 or 5 SDG (new Sudanese pounds or colloquially as guinea) where two pounds is generally considered fixed at 1 USD.

On a side note, imagine the strategic importance for ST as an area between two government held centres? Should the ‘non signatories’ or the other militia factions choose to start a fight to overthrow Khartoum this would be the place to hobble the government, no?

Finally a note on our base reconstruction ideas: The place we thought was perfect, a flat square of land empty of everything except sand and one sad tree, turned out to be unavailable. The current easing of security constraints means that the locals are in a building frenzy too. So we have found another property, this time owned by only one person and so we have an agreement in principle for the space. Now we need to go to our lawyers to draft a clear agreement and then we can start building. I hope this takes less than two weeks (inshallah, nice dream fella) and then we can go to work. We are concerned about the coming rainy season that is expected to arrive in May – but really with the latest desertification we may never actually see the rain. In the mean time it makes for a good excuse to pressure the construction asap.

Today is Friday and thus it is the holy day, or Sabbath. There is to be no work done and thus we consider Friday and Saturday our ‘weekend’. I should say that the new labour laws have made Saturday an official no working day for the locals as well. This arrangement is taking me a bit of time to get used to it but it is good to take a day off without thinking about work and this is something I have learned and am getting better at. So today is quiet and I see that the watchman today is cooking ‘breakfast’ and it looks like he will make something for the whole crew here – Chris, the two squatting drivers and the guard. So being impolite to refuse I will eat… I have to eat with my left hand because of the cut on my right thumb but it seems that they understand….

Peace and love
Chris