Sudans Story Time

They say "a picture is worth a thousand words." So how about I give you a thousand pictures and two thousand words--a bonus present! 

South Sudan and Sudan time for me is usually fun, and this trip is no exception. But it is stretching on a bit longer than I'd planned because of visa stuff (this time, surprisingly, not at all related to any Canadian interference), and I'm worried about the revenge that will be meted out upon me by the lonely Felix. I've been told that he has been amazingly mellow since I've been gone, but that makes me wonder if he is saving up all of his malice for me. Baby-sitting this cat has affirmed to me why I do not have pets: my travel life is spontaneous and frequent. Planning for someone to come and make sure the cat stays alive while I'm gone and does not tear the whole house to shreds is not easy. While I do want a pet (preferably a giant cuddly dog), I do not have a stable life. It's also why I cannot adopt any children at the current moment. Fortunately, as you will see, my friends have lots of cute kids that I can use to curb that maternal instinct. 

On to stories:

An Arabish pun. If you speak Arabic, you'll get it.
I thought it was kind of clever, but I am
someone who really appreciates car art and car slogans.

After figuring out a plan to counteract the visa issues caused by Canadians, I had to quickly change all my previous travel engagements, moving everything up a day. This had the unfortunate consequence of making it imperative for me to take public transport from Juba to Yei, a journey of about 5 hours over roads riddled with craters and fraught with armed bandits. For real. My boss called me nearly in tears begging me not to go. He reminded me that at this time last year I was running through the jungle because "I didn't listen to the voices inside my head telling me to leave." That is a paraphrase, not a direct quote. To be fair, I did listen to the voices, and I tried to leave, but MAF couldn't get there before the fighting started. Anyway, he never actually told me that I wasn't allowed to go by road and so we never found out if I would have obeyed his direct order. But I took necessary precautions: I left my expensive and important things in Juba with a friend (it's actually pretty entertaining to think through which of your possessions you would be ok with having robbed from you at gun point), and I wore a tan hat. I theorized that the beige color of the hat would match my skin, making it look like an outfit and not a rich khawaja. It must have worked because we were not hijacked.

The criss-cross of knees in the back of the car.

I climbed into the car, large mostly-empty bag clutched between my knees. I was on the edge, by the door. This is the worst spot for bouncing, but I like to be by the window, so I don't mind it too much. I like to look out and admire the scenery. But no one else seemed intrigued by the green green grass and pretty mud houses. Amazingly, several people actually slept on this ride, heads bobbing around. But I was most impressed by the man who stayed asleep even after we hit one more pronounced bump that sent my butt two feet up in the air. I was weightless for one moment before crashing back down. I looked across the car, and everyone was awake except for that one dude. I mean, seriously. He was that cool. Didn't even open an eye. I, on the other hand, ended up with bruises on my elbow and shoulder from crashing into the door and didn't enjoy the sensation of sitting down for several days after the journey. Did you know, your teeth really can rattle in your skull? I can testify.

And now prepare for photos of Repent's adorable kids because I like them so much. And they LOVE having their picture taken. And also playing with the Guitar Tuner app on my phone.

How cute is Halina? There is no answer.
But her head was covered in ringworm, which I fully
thought I would contract due to proximity and kissing her
all over her little face every day, but so far I'm good.
I got ringworm once from a little boy who
leaned his head on my arm and fell asleep on me
in the Mundri Express a couple years ago, but
this time I seem to come through OK.

Joy told me that the kids were running to every car that
passed by their house for 2 days looking for me. :)

Oliver is not sure he likes how he looks with khawaja hair.

Pulling on my skirt.

I spent too much money on this doll-more than
it was probably worth, anyway. It is all cloth and seems like
someone who knows how to sew (i.e. not me) could easily
make it. But last time I was in SSudan, I was searching for
a doll for Halina, who was rolling up clothes and pretending to
rock them in imitation of her mother with her baby brother.
I didn't even find one of those horrifying white-kid dolls,
but I didn't want to buy that for her anyway. I was happy
to find this doll, which I liked, in the airport in Ethiopia,
and I'm glad I got it. She LOVED it. She carried it
around everywhere and woke everyone up screaming when
she couldn't find it next to her in bed. A toy that one kid
loves that annoys the rest of the family=SUCCESS!

Laundry drying in South Sudan.
I'm going to post lots of photos like this on Neverthirst instagram.
I do not have my own instagram because my life cannot involve
too many social media platforms and I'm already used to Facebook
(I'm old).
But I like to look at the followers for our Neverthirst page, and
I get really competitive about it, so follow Neverthirst on instagram, OK?

Painting Halina's toenails. She is very serious about it.

Gadi and Oliver and the cheap plastic
car I bought the boys in the market in Yei.
I had to buy them something, since I got the doll.
I predicted it would break the first day, but it's still going strong!
Made in China.

Painting Tabu's toenails. I actually brought the
nail polish because I wanted to bond with her.
She works so much, I don't often see her play, and she's only 10!
But this time, she really relaxed around me and we had fun.
She is beautiful, just like her gorgeous mom.

That's the kitchen in the background.
I had some amazing food, cooked by the wonderful Joy.

And then the boys insisted on getting their toenails painted too.
So we did. Because why not?
I can't remember who took this photo, but it's too bad
you can't see that I'm painting Ruben's toes here.

Jungle-running friends!

And sometimes you got to put three people on a motorcycle,
and go to work. We took this motorcycle-selfie, so
you can't tell that we are on a motorcycle at all, but I can testify that
we were, and my butt still has a dent in it from the metal bar
on the back of the bike.

Yes, I took this photo of the chicken with her babies all lined up.
I took it for my nephews and nieces, but I haven't sent it to them.
Maybe my sisters will show their kids this photo on the blog.
Meanwhile, you all can enjoy this photographic masterpiece.

We happened by this flipped over car on the road.
No one was hurt, so I took the photo.
It is a good reminder of why you should always pray
for me when I'm traveling because this could easily happen
to anyone driving too fast over dirt roads.
And of course, everyone drives too fast over dirt roads,
even me.

New baby goat born just an hour before this photo!
(Also intended for the nephews and nieces)

I think Ruben took this beautifully centered photo.
I like it because Tabu and I are bonding while Halina tries
to rub her ring-worm head all over my face.
This is Repent and Joy's room behind me and behind their house,
is the tukel I stay in (mud painted green and blue with grass roof).

Of course Oliver is a happy baby--he's Repent's kid!

Oh I love these crazy boys. I want them to grow up in
a peaceful country, go to university and have happy successful
families--like their own happy family, but without having to
run to the jungle to get away from fighting.
I want them to have a future and a hope.
And I want to buy them lots of candy. I can't help it.

The open road! Isn't this a beautiful country?

I love riding miles into nowhere and suddenly you see some grass roofs
popping up behind the elephant grass, and you know that people are out here,
living and working the land. I want to see development come to South Sudan,
but I hope they don't lose all of their traditions. I don't really like calling these houses
"mud huts" (though I probably have done that before, even here on this blog). They
are beautiful houses, most of them made with care. And they are cool in the summer time,
and the rain falls softly on their grass roofs, not loud and angry like tin roofs (though I also like that),
obscuring conversations. Repent pointed out the rain thing to me--he likes grass roofs too.

I love this photo. Joy is a beautiful and wonderful mother.
I bought that outfit for Oliver. I searched every shop in the
market in Yei to find one selling clothes for babies that
were new and clean. Youngest babies spend most of their lives in hand-me-downs,
but Oliver has a new cute outfit just for him.
And he is too much cute.

Gassing up the motorcycle before our trip from Morobo to Yei
(about 2.5 hours). Just prior to this we were warned that
a motorcycle traveling the same route the previous day
had been hijacked. So we watched the road carefully ahead of us,
and we made it. I wasn't even wearing my hat!
(I learned the hard way that you don't wear hats on motorcycles.)

I got to see my good friend Mary and her new baby in Yei.
We went to church together in Mundri and she was one of the
few who actually came over to my house occasionally to hang out.
She is now living in a refugee camp in Yei. 

"Be at the airstrip at 8:00am" said Momentum Air ticket.
The plane arrived at 1pm. Even with the flight only taking 30 minutes,
I would have arrived in Juba earlier if I had just taken public transport again.
Oh well. Yei is scenic.

Got to hang with this guy in Juba! He is back in South Sudan after spending the last several years studying in
the US. He left behind the good life to go back and help build up his country. I'm proud of him,
but I know that it won't be easy. Once you live somewhere else, it enters your heart, and you change
and your home changes, and you will always miss somewhere you're not. But it's worth it to have a bigger heart.
I think so, anyway.  

After I got back to Juba, I went back to immigration and waited hours in line to finish a bunch of stupid paperwork. But I didn't wait as many hours as the other khawajas who do not know how to cut in line. Suckers. I overheard one guy standing in line quietly like a moron on the phone with someone, "I've been here for hours but I still haven't been able to pay. I can't get to the window and people keep going in front of me." Poor little American boy. He didn't want it enough, I guess.

In the end, a combination of Arabic and mostly non-existant Moru got me through. And many prayers and somehow Badr Airlines got me to Khartoum. Khartoum has been hot, dusty, and often without electricity. But I found gummy bears in the store, so who's complaining?

Also, I've realized that the Asian is strong in me these days. On my way to Morobo in a small taxi sedan, I was sitting up by the driver and I said something about how he must have gotten his car from Uganda because it has a British-side steering wheel, though South Sudan decided to go with the Sudan system, which is American-side. He looked over across the man whom he had sat down on the armrest in the center of the car, between whose legs he was calming shifting gears, and said, "Oh, what side of the road do they drive on in China?"

I was a bit startled because I didn't know that he was aware of the time I had spent in that country, and I didn't want to assume that he assumed I was from China. I said, "It's the same as South Sudan and America. Do you think I am from China?"

"Yes," he said. "How do they drive there?" We continued to have a conversation about China, and I never enlightened him as to my actual origins.

Fast-forward to the shop I was at the other day, talking to the man selling dates that I'm going to have to buy as presents for people in Chad. "So you're Japanese, right?" he said to me, after telling me the price of the dates.

"You think I'm Japanese?" I said, smiling.

"Yes, you look Japanese. You mean you're not?"

To be fair, though, all us Asians look alike. 

Shopping with Abdelrahim. Last time I went shopping  here it was with Abdelmukaram.
Once I went to this souq with Selma.
I don't want to gender-stereotype, but I'm going to.
I have to admit that here, I would much rather shop with men. Selma walked my legs off in this souq.
This is the Selma who collapsed on the floor after 5 minutes of yoga and laid there for 30 minutes.
I thought I'd killed her. But she killed me in the souq.
I am not a huge shopper. I like to know what I want, go in, and get it, and get out.
Shopping with Abdelrahim and Abdelmukaram was great. Once they knew what I wanted,
they helped me find it, helped me bargain down the price, and helped me find my way out because I was
completely lost in the maze of shops.
Look how nonchalantly he stands in this lingerie store where I was buying a jacket.
For real--I was buying a jacket! I don't know why there is also lingerie hanging around.

I have enjoyed screen-shotting the weather here. It's mostly impressive if you look at the time it was when it was 113/45, 106/41, 100/38.

I still managed to buy ice cream and walk home before it melted.
And then eat it for dinner.

And we had no electricity, so no AC or fans.
But it was NOT clear at all--it was a raging dust storm.
Stupid App.

Finally it updated, hours later, to show the dust storm.
It didn't do it justice.

Can you see my footprints?
I took photos once the electricity came back on.

The dust always blows in under the door.

Usually you go to the bathroom to get clean, but not this time.

Should have put a cover on my toothbrush

I told you that I appreciate car art.
This one says: Don't forget to remember God.
Such a grandiose slogan for such a non-descript car.

Zuhoor's beautiful new baby.
She is called Ashaq--starts with an ع ends with a ق,
two of the hardest letters to pronounce for an English speaker.
I was entertained by Paul and Almaz trying to say it.
But more by how patiently Zuhoor repeated and repeated it for them,
as if she expected them to be able to get it right. 

Me and precious Baby.

The beautiful Almaz and baby Ashaq, who is
enamored with Paul, not pictured.
On an unrelated note: Almaz makes amazing Ethiopian/Eritrean food.
Paul just admitted it is how she won his heart. But I mean, he's an Irish guy from
Boston, so it probably wasn't that hard.
In conclusion, I work with interesting people.

It takes a long time to write thousands of words and post thousands of pictures. I'm finally done and I'm going to go eat Cheezballz for dinner. The first day I got here, I was sitting in my room naked (because no electricity and it was 115/46 outside) also eating Cheezballz. The electricity came back on, and I thought, "Should I put on some clothes now? Nah. I'm eating Cheezballz." And the moral of the story is "Eat Cheezballz. Wear clothes if necessary."

That Chad is so hot right now (OMG)

When it rains in Chad, you take photos.
This is from last week's trip to Oum Hadjar.
If your car doesn't have a faux-fur dash cover,
you aren't cool.

It’s hot season in Chad. It is the season that is spoken of by natives and foreigners alike in gasped groans. Expats share tips for “making it through” the hot season, and natives constantly ask if you are going to be OK, not being used to the hot season as they are. Years before I ever came to Chad or ever thought about coming to Chad, I heard someone talk about coming home from work while he was living in Chad and wanting to be able to open his head like a Pez candy dispenser in order to re-hydrate himself more quickly and efficiently. I thought it was an evocative image.

I, as you know, like the heat. I genuinely prefer it to the cold. People often say cold is better because you can always put on more clothes, but I don’t mind walking around the house in my underwear. I do, however, hate having to wear socks. They pinch and rub my toes and make my feet feel claustrophobic. But if I don’t wear them in cold weather places, I can never warm up. I especially loathe sunny cold days. It feels like the sun is lying to me, and I don’t like to be lied to. If it looks warm outside, I want it to be.

Post dust-storm clean up

I wasn't the only one in the car taking pictures
Even Chadians marvel.

Here in Chad, there is no deceptive weather. You look outside and it could either be sunny and hot or dusty and hot. It was chilly and dusty back in January, but I still was ok without socks. But I will admit to you that it is hot these days. It is hotter than most other hot places. Outside the sun pounds heat into your houses, turning them into crackling fire pits, without the fun of an actual fire. And we aren’t exactly an air conditioner type of country here. I have fans in my house and fans in the office that supplement our AC, which doesn’t actually work (but we leave it on anyway for morale). Without these fans, I am a sweaty mess. I mean, it takes about 10 seconds away from the fans to start sweating. You feel it first trickling out of the pores under your hair before it slides down the back of your neck and soaks into the back of your shirt . You notice every time you stand up that your skirt is wet and sticking to your legs. Actually, that is true even when you have been sitting in front of a fan, because your butt is blocked from the air by the chair you’re sitting in.

We ate mangos in this garden while visiting project sites.
It's a hard life out here.

Hot season is not all bad. I mean, it is also mango season, which I’ve enjoyed much more now that I figured out I could tell people I prefer the hard mangos to the gushy ones. People are happy about this because they all prefer the gushy ones. Also, I spill things a lot but never worry about slipping on puddles because they dry up in seconds. My hair also dries quickly coming out of the shower (aka bucket bath), which is great because I hate putting up my hair when it’s wet. Someone once told me that if you braid your hair while it’s wet, it will mildew. That really sounds possible to me, so I like to let it dry before I lump it on top of my head in a ball. And speaking of showers (or bucket baths because there is not enough water pressure here to make the shower work), they are always warm. Water that sits in plastic buckets is heated to the temperature of the room, which is usually 90-100 degrees (I’m skipping Celsius right now because let’s be honest: Fahrenheit just sounds hotter). And who doesn’t love a warm shower? 

But without the fans, life is tough.

So imagine my deep distress this week when not only did I lose electricity (which had been amazingly and impressively constant over the weeks since I’ve been Chez Naomi), but I also lost solar power. This means that I no longer had fans or the means to charge my electronic devices—two of the things that are an important part of my good nature.

We slept together.
I only pushed him off the
bed one time.

The first night I made do with the little battery fans, like the ones that I used in Mundri. Fortunately, I’d bought some batteries in Kenya in anticipation of a trip to the field with a Danish man who was worried about temperatures rising above freezing in a desert climate. That trip didn’t happen but the batteries definitely saved lives. I slept at night clutching the fan in front of my face. I still woke up more times than usual, feeling extremely dehydrated on soaking wet sheets. Once I woke up when the cat yowled and I thought he was going to get annoying about going outside, but he just was upset about getting hit in the face by a pillow I threw off the bed in an effort to have less things touching me.

If you are reading this
from your iPhone,
then this photo is
actual size for this fan.

 Without electricity or solar, it is also a lot darker at night, which I do prefer because I sleep better without lights, but it also caused me to be completely disoriented one night when I heard a cat fight that I wanted to break up, fearing the involvement and/or near-death of Felix. Suddenly I found myself walking into a door that I didn’t know was there. I spun around in circles, running into things and trying to figure out which direction I was walking. I had a brief moment of wondering if I could ever make it back to bed or have to sleep on the floor with the cockroaches (though Felix had eaten one earlier that night to prove his merits to me—it is a good merit to eat the roaches). After some time, I found the shelf and realized I was holding the little hippo knick-knack that sits on the book stand in the living room, and then managed to turn myself back into the bedroom where I found the bed and my phone, charged by the beautiful and hardy battery that I’d dropped on the concrete floor earlier and put back together later in the office. (Thanks Cherry for the Christmas present, and Kandos for fixing it, even though I kept gasping and telling him not to break anything whenever he snapped something on the plastic casing.) I flipped the light on my phone and saw Felix limp his way back inside, tail all poofy and bits of white fur stuck to his neck. I did a quick check of the kitchen to make sure that no foreign cats were inside and went back to bed, clutching my fan.

Bedroom solar fan, which
I initially thought didn't work
very well, until I compared
it to the battery fan.

Finally, yesterday, after many attempts, the amazing Rich brought over a new battery and hooked it up. So I had solar power that worked, and this time, it worked all night. Not like the time he’d fixed it and it had worked until 2:23am and then I had to go back to clutching my battery fans. This time I had real lights so that I could cook in the kitchen without a headlamp and see all the places I’d missed trying to shave in the dark for Pool Day at the Hilton N’Djamena (yeah, we’re fancy). And solar-powered 12-volt fans are a step up from battery-fans. But you know what is even way better than 12-volt fans? Actual fans, powered by electricity.

BURN ALL THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Because The Children are smart. They will figure out a way to make more powerful solar-powered fans by the time we have used up all the oil.

In the meantime, I’m sitting on the couch and the beautiful fan is blowing in my face. I’m not sweating. I am thirsty, though. (It takes a long time to rehydrate.) After 5.5 days of fan-clutching and darkness, my power is finally back on. I no longer hate everybody I hated before. Now there are one or two people that I can forgive while basking in the cool fan air.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to thank my fans. None of this would have been possible without you. You really are the best fans in the world. Never forget that. You keep me going every day. Keep it real, fans. Peace and Love.

And to leave you with a sermon, since I skipped church yesterday: my life is fine. It is way easier than most people's. And Antani's electricity STILL isn't back on, but at least we have access to clean water here in N'Djamena, while these kids in Oum Hadjer go out to the river bed to dig holes for water for their families. And it's hot there too. And I bet they don't have fans at home that they can go sit in front of. Tell Neverthirst you want to support a biosand filter project here. If I ever finish the budget for that project, it is coming soon. 

In a few months this will be a river again.
Next year they will find and dig-out these holes again.