Shedding Skin

An alternate perspective on the last couple of weeks:

I left for my leave just as dry season came to an end. The first rain in 5 months came as a surprise one afternoon and quickly reminded me why those first few months were so challenging. Even after a brief shower the dust turns back to mud almost instantly -  like it’s only been pretending to be anything other than mud for the last 5 months.

It’s quite an assault on the skin. My palms seem to be peeling, but that might be a result of some skin infection. There’s also a slight rash on my arms that I hope, along with the sloughing skin on my hands, will come off with a good scrubbing and regular showering in clean water over the break. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt here it’s that these things, like the grime on my computer or my persistent, low-level diarrhoea, are only temporary.

The exit from Sudan was welcome. It’d been 13 weeks since my last trip out. I found the huge indecision about the project and potential for a future lack of money actually quite stressful, despite my thinking that everything was ok. On reflection I probably wasn't sleeping very well and the diarrhea had actually been a little worse than low-level. Each time my funder changed their minds about something (which was very frequent) we’d have to re-submit our proposal.  I practically wrote 4 in the last 3 months. It was like working for Bridget Jones. A 2-month gap in funding was becoming imminent.

I managed to work out and sign an agreement with another organization to take on some work in the gap. PSI has given us half a million to distribute mosquito nets (making the title of this blog invalid). But we know the area and how to do distribution, so I was hoping it will be kinda easy... but the mud seems to be reproducing, we’re supposed to hit every household in the state and it’s a shocking number of nets: 560,000. As I was lounging on my break one day, after being force-fed by my grandmother I got a call: “we’re delivering the 12 40-ft containers to you tomorrow. Where do you want them?” 

Oh crap, this is going to be hard.

On the flight back to London and again on the flight to Amman I found a new American comedy series: a little cheesy, but very funny. In Samantha Who, an amnesiac explores her old life, finding a lot of resentment and discovers to her shock how much of a bitch she used to be. Her mission becomes tying to convince everyone that she’s now a different person.

I’m finding a few parallels. I’d not seen and barely spoken to a Michael in Birmingham since my visit last July following a fall out. Rob seemed generally unwilling to lift a finger for me when I asked him to bring something back with him from the US. Dapo inferred that he’d only have 30 minutes free in two weeks to meet. Tola was happy to meet, but only at certain day, time and a place and told me honestly that she didn’t expect the meeting to happen.

Maybe it’s just city life, time is short and I’m filled will a little too much self importance, but while I don’t expect everyone to free their whole weeks for me, I’d like to think these friends would want to meet me in this limited opportunity. I genuinely sensed that I was being treated with caution, though. I asked Rob to suggest why this was the case.

“You’re a bit needy.”

?!

Tola: “Insensitive.”
Olu: “You can be a dickhead.”
Dapo: wouldn’t return my calls.

So this is a negative highlight of some much larger and actually positive interactions, but I have to heed the criticism. I’m not taking any as gospel (especially given that the last three come from Nigerians, one of whom is a woman), but taking some time away and returning to still find the people I used to see regularly has been very revealing.

In thinking about my past interactions with these different friends in different places I’m reminded of a lot of things. I don’t think was consistently the only wrongdoer, but I wholeheartedly participated in the interaction. My time away has given me both the objectivity and the confidence to be honest about what I did. I subscribed to the games of city life and considered most interaction a competition. I was very competitive. I sought reason to disdain others. I lived a very narrow life of work, gym, cycling and a few not so healthy social interactions. I gave very few people the time or the attention they deserved. I took advantage of their generosity, and was distracted by shallower but prettier individuals. I would routinely put my own needs above others or only gave on my own terms.

Again, a worst-case appraisal, but as the evidence mounted I felt much like the amnesiac in discovering how much of a bitch I, too, used to be.

But I’m not the only one. Everyone in London seems to be doing it to each other. You can see it in the interactions on the street and the phone conversations you overhear. This is how we treat each other there. Had my friends not subscribed and regularly done the same, even to me, they probably would have told me to piss off at the first and friendship wouldn’t have developed.

Far from a mea culpa, hanging out and seeing these friends again was a lot of fun. It was good to catch up on their job changes, new houses, responses to the economic crises and their weight loss/gain. I’ve said this before, but my fears about being away and missing life are unwarranted. Contact is diminished whilst I’m away, partly because communications channels are unreliable, but mostly because everyone now seems to have an iphone and corresponds with at most 2 lines of text. But life is still there: the shops and restaurants and streets remain. So do friends, I guess – at least the ones good enough to forgive my faults, hear an apology and recognize the changes for the better my time away is yielding in me. I feel like I’ve shed some skin…and my palms still are.

On the whole I had a wonderful time in Birmingham, London and with family in Amman. As friend Olu said – “it only took about a year and a half to clear the air”.

So I’m better off from being out here. This is the point at which I want to pause things, though. I’m at a turning point, I think, in which I could return to life in London quite easily.  A year away wouldn’t look so anomalous on CV if I were applying for work.  More importantly, though I’d like to be able to put into effect what I’ve learned about myself and be a new and better (though much less fit) person with the people who care about and matter to me.

Reading past entries, though, I can see I’ve said this before.

But jobs seem to be drying up, even in the public sector. Some of these friends will be out of work in 2 months. I’m not sure hoe long I could remain invested in a desk-job in London again, especially in a Local Authority. That would be the easiest route of return. I still don’t know what I want to do in life. My indecision is illustrated by the jobs I’ve applied to recently in: Makasar, Indonesia; Hilla, Iraq, Niarobi, Kenya & Barnet Council, London. There’s a lot I dislike about the aid industry and it’s very easy to spot those who have been in it for too long. I don’t want to be part of the crowd.

Like anything, if I want it to happen I can make it so. Nairobi seems like an exciting and realistic opportunity that would bring me back a little bit towards civilization. I need to start looking at London jobs too. I’m sure there’s something out there that would entertain me.

Again, I’m caught between the personal reasons to come back and the professional reasons to stay. Coming back here form some satisfyingly personal interactions with family and friends makes the prospect of staying very hard. Despite the fact that I stocked up with over 50kgs of tea, honey, dried fruit, toothpaste, facewash, books, music and porn, the next few moths of distribution are not going to be easy. I hope that my mesoderm toughens up fast.

Complacency

I had 2 phones stolen the other week and with them all of my work contacts. I was in Juba at the mosque at the time. I’m surprisingly unfazed by this. I’ve been here almost a year…in fact I’ve never had a phone stolen, so I reckon I’m due. I left them in the glove compartment of a locked car as I went into Jumah prayers. When I came back the car was still locked but the phones were gone. I guess if I’m stupid enough to be separated form my phones and the thieves are industrious/socially responsible enough to get into a locked car and lock it again on the way out, it’s fair.

I left my sunglasses on the counter of Nairobi duty free.

I have worms again – second time in 3 months.

I’m getting complacent. After almost a year I’ve grown comfortable and accustomed to a lot of things. I no longer crave fruits and vegetables like I used to and barley notice that a week or two will pass without my having seen either. I never use sunscreen and I stopped taking malaria prophylaxis. I carry my passport, wallet, cash, laptop and identity documents all in the same backpack.

Getting comfortable definitely has its advantages. I’m no longer panicked by the day’s events and I’m having trouble remembering a day that involved even a moderate level of stress. Getting to this point hasn’t been easy and has involved a lot of work. I’ve trained my staff as best I could to carry out the program so it’s no longer a one-man show. We now function very effectively as a team and the objective feedback of some visitors in the past weeks has confirmed this.

But comfortable and complacent are not far apart, and as the intestinal parasites and lost goods show, there is a cost. I’m thankful that it’s a manageable condition and a replaceable item. If it were my computer or passport lost I’d probably have cried.

Am I getting so careless that it’s just a matter of time before I allow something much worse to happen? I keep coming back to this – try to think of it as a recurrent theme rather than an incessant whinge - but is it time to come home?

If on the whole I’m about as happy as I am in London, it’s better to come back, no? At least there I can eat normally, exercise enough and not worry about intestinal parasites.

I resolved to take a cerebral sabbatical and just go on leave. I booked an ambitious trip: Nairobi for 2 days of meetings, London for a day, Birmingham for 2, in London for 4 days, Amman for a week via Dubai, back to London for the weekend, then to Nairobi for 2 more days and then back to Sudan.

The trip started well. Productive meetings with my boss’, boss’ boss and on the night I left a playful and very smiley little man at the airport suggested that I could get something for a small fee. I bribed him $200 and got a first class upgrade. He even followed me on board to ensure I got the seat I wanted. Does that mean I overpaid him? I tend to question self-indulgence (save for in my writing), but had no qualms reclining and drifting off in my rearward-facing sleeper seat as Africa and its parasites fell away into a beautifully moonlit night.

Hounslow 6am. Cold, drizzle, gray: THAT’S why I left.

Within a few hours I met my mother and brother from FL who booked a trip to coincide with mine. Sweet, huh? Well, not really: my brother broke his cheek bone in a Muai Thai fight and decided to indulge in a little medical tourism: whilst the UK is not renowned for facial corrective surgery, it is for free healthcare to its residents (taken liberally in my brother’s instance). I’m sure I factored into their decision to come and in the end it was my fault for not spending enough time together.

I don’t think I watched any news of read a newspaper whilst away. I think I was anxious about being back and rushed around in a slight panic trying to buy everything I could think of and ensuring that I spent as little time alone as possible. I got a new phone within hours of arriving.

Seeing family in Amman was good. I think it is a blessing, but absolutely no one has changed. My cousins are a bit taller and aunts a little fatter. My grandmother is still going strong. My aunts, uncles and cousins were all interested in my life in Southern Sudan, but on the whole seemed more concerned with my brother’s boxing injury than with the fact that I live in a war zone. No, I’m not jealous.

My cousin, Kholoud, won the Dead Sea marathon. I didn’t even know she ran. Apparently, she doesn’t. She planned on running the 10k, but her sister entered her online in the full marathon. She showed up and was given a blue marathon number but was told that it was too late the change. She just went to the 10k start and thought nothing of it.

She took her time to finish – a comic 2h 46m. After finishing she strolled back to the organizers tents to see what the commotion was about. She was quickly swept up in a small crowd of photographers and officials screaming, “you’ve won!”

The winner of the marathon distance had overcome the oppressive heat and pressure of the Dead Sea basin to compete the 26 miles in 2h 51m. Kholoud soon realized what had happened, and tried to correct it. Her sister could hear her shouting over the noise from the winner’s tent, “but I’m not blue!”

It really wasn’t long at all before her father had started calling his friends to express his pride in his daughter. By then there was no going back. When she told me the story she was trying to contact the actual winner to apologize and was considering whether to not accept the winning $1500 or donate it to a charity.

I remembered that I don’t like Arabs. My family is lovely but not immune form the very unpleasant characteristics of Arab culture hat seem to prevail more and more as Jordan’s wealth grows. Arrogant, condescending, snobbish, judgemental, living in perpetual fear of being judged. I see every quality I don’t like about myself magnified 10 fold in a nation. I also see the qualities of my father. There is one particular characteristic that I don’t share though, neither did he, and that is the almost unfailing ability of most Arab men (normally the slightly wealthy) to identify the underdog in a situation and make him/her feel even worse. As long as I stayed inside I was fine – and this was much to my grandmother’s approval. She fed me at least 5,000 calories a day.

I was a little anxious about the trip as I really wasn’t supposed to be taking the additional time off work. On the way there in Dubai at around 6:00am I was spotted in the departure lounge by the Country Director of the organization that’s giving my team a good chunk of cash to distribute mosquito nets for the next couple of months. Marcie, who manages a good few dozens of millions of dollars of funding in Sudan, spotted me whilst I was picking my nose I think: It was 6am and I live in Africa so have no qualms doing such things in public.

“Aren’t you supposed to be distributing my mosquito nets?”

I said I’d get right on it after a little break with the family. She was going to a 4-day long conference that was going to trap her in a very plush hotel, but all week. I insisted that she join me the following Thursday to get out and see a bit more of the town. My family arranged a big dinner for that, my last night, so I just invited her – aware that the results could either be very positive or absolutely disastrous. The personal/professional barrier had already been crossed at the nose-pick, I think.

Aunts’ verdict at the end of the night was: well dressed, very professional, but too old for me. My uncle and cousin suggested that she should  make a plan for her life to progress from her administrative role. She took that mis-assumption well, but I fear the wedding’s a non-starter. I think she had fun.

After dinner we went to a bar/café downtown that has a reputation for a very liberal crowd. Amman has become absolutely beautiful, and the social scene is thriving. I was so happy to bump into a friend who I’d met in Amman a few years ago and not seen since – but disappointed when the rules of Amman social interaction seemed to come back into force. He spent more time looking over my shoulder to see who was noticing us talking together. This is a common element of public social interaction – the thoughts go “who’ s looking, is it ok for me to be seen talking to this person, what will people say..?” One of the last times we met was at this café some years ago. We left and 5 minutes later he got a text message form an unknown number saying “what, you’re too good to hang out with Arabs now?” and I got one from an unknown number saying “who was that with you, is he single?”

I’ll go back many times to see my family, I think, but my desire to try to live there is gone. I’ve now seen much nicer places.

I think I’m getting old: the overnight airport stops take time to recover from. Arrived in Dubai at 9pm (via business class, but without having to bribe anyone), left for London at 3am steerage, arrived Gatwick 6:30am, cold, grey, drizzle…ok, I get the hint. The weekend was fun, but too short. I picked up a cold. I left on Monday at 10:20am…you got it: cold, grey, drizzle. It was a helpful shove to get on my way.

reality check

I’ve still got blood on my shorts and shirt. It’s not mine. It’s dried now, looking a little less shocking. Talk about gaining perspective…

We came across a car wreckage on the side of the road about 20km from Aweil in Northern Bahr el Ghazal. The 5 or 6 passers by and 2 police officers that had gathered around had dragged the passengers into the shade of the shrubs alongside the wreckage and the road, and strewn up cloth to shade them from the sun. No one had done anything else for them and the crash had happened an hour and a half before. The first passenger had some bad scrapes, especially on his head, but the bleeding was subsiding. The second was in a similar situation but also with a broken upper arm. They were brothers.

The third was lying on his back struggling for air – it sounded like he had fluid in his chest. The first thing I noticed was his eyes: half open, vacant, cloudy. His left eye had a minute mound of orange dirt piled over the pupil. His right pupil had no shape. His arms held tightly to his chest. It was over 35 degrees and he was shivering. He was vacant but whimpered in pain when I tried to examine him. His pulse was strong and fast. His head was misshapen and spongy to the touch. What could I do for him?

The fourth was lying on his side in a semi-foetal position. He had an open fracture of his lower leg with a good portion of the bone protruding and was spilling bright red into a small growing pool at his feet. Small globules of fat reflected the sun’s light. It covered my hands as I tried to bandage him with a rag someone fetched for me. He couldn’t move for the pain in his hip, but he could talk. His jaw looked broken and the skin had been shaved off his hand.

The fifth, the driver, was completely unscathed.

20 or 30 km to Aweil. A dirt and bumpy road. Two would be ok but had sufficient reason to complain about pain. The guy with the leg breaks I was worried for because the bleeding wasn’t stopping. I expected the guy with the head injury to die at any moment. I dithered, remembering that one of the most damaging things you can do for a person is move them…. but reasoned that that’s when you have alternatives of ambulances and paramedics. Here they would definitely die. Picking them up, moving them to my truck, piling them in, bumping them over 20 or so Km would do some damage, but we should reach the hospital fairly soon… I hope. A local guy’s impression of near or far is completely relative.

We waved down 2 other cars and put three passengers amongst them, laying the guy with the broken legs on the floor of a minibus. I put the guy with the head injury in the back of my car on the floor. The driver, a now-terrified looking Darfuri, held his head. The police officers looked on.

10 minutes into the journey he was foaming at the mouth. We were killing him but there was nothing we could do. I couldn’t put him into another position, hold his head back, or do anything that would help. We kept driving. When I looked back the police officer had covered his face with the sheet we’d carried him into the car on. It’s a cold equation of life, I suppose. A head injury like this will kill you and no matter the intention, strength, clarity or desire of those nearby, there is nothing they can do for you. I cried.

Our small convoy pulled up at the police station and the driver was plucked out. We continued to the hospital and after a 5 minute verbal battle with an administrator, found out where we should take them. All were still alive, even the guy with the head injury! Revival or presumptuous declaration of death? I had little time to reason as my hands were full and bloodied by the guy with the leg injuries I was carrying. Me moved into a dark room with 2 shuttered windows lit by a single incandescent bulb. The last patient’s blood was still on the metal exam table, his blood-stained dressings 1/3 on the table, 1/3 on the floor and 1/3 in the open, plastic waste paper basket. Had I really done these guys a favour by brining them here? The single medical assistant present looked terrified and to the yelps of the patient, moved his leg around which bent in inhuman ways.

The bones grated. The blood stank. A number of spectators piled into the room. Amongst those who came in was a mild mannered, handsome, well-dressed northern doctor who shouted only at the medical assistant. He was very interested in my involvement with his patient and offered to let me reset the bones. Civility returned to situation, they found the patient some morphine and I accepted the offer. He was stitched, bandaged and plastered quite quickly and quite professionally, but I still I thanked God it wasn’t me.

I found the guy with the head injury next door with a small group and a small American doctor attending to him. His heartbeat was still strong and fast, but they were breathing for him. They said he had no chance. They were about to stop ventilation when I left.

Whilst the lack of emotion certainly helped in getting them patched and to the hospital, it also meant that I felt such little compassion as almost not to stop for them. I struck the right balance by accident this time. I hope I have the sense, and the heart, to consciously do it again if ever I have to. I hope that’s not anytime soon though.

Surfacing – closer to life

I’m not down with this. I come up for air only every two months allowing myself to be the person I think I am, rather than the person I need to be. It’s starting to hurt.

I fell in love in Cape Town and not with the city. This might not be entirely on this individual’s merits, though: it might just be because it was the first even semi-intimate human contact I’d had in months.

I have a bad habit from my upbringing: I have a poorly defined sense of what’s good for me. I take notions transiently from whoever’s in reach. This one was very different from any others I’d met; an artist: expressive and emotive, although quite self-absorbed. Beyond that (which I think is a result of the career) I found a lot of substance to a weak physical presence. I was indirectly and unintentionally led into feeling the moment. I followed willingly.

I’ve not done this for a long time. I’ve come to pride myself on my ability to detach emotion from the situation. Here it’s absolute necessity not only to stay happy, but to function. The fact is that I’m lonely – professionally and socially isolated. Why feel? What good will it do? More significantly, being here is an exasperation of what I’ve felt for a long time: I feel very much alone and have done so in most places I’ve lived.

One part of me alienates the other. Muslim friends and family wouldn’t accept a significant part of my life. Many struggle with the fact that I’m a practising Muslim and lead a very separate life from my family – or worse, they pity it. Muslims I know like me are very few and given their minority in a minority status, when we get down the person we just don’t get along. If you don’t drink, smoke or do any drugs, you tend not to fit in at parties. In most social gatherings people are demonstrably uncomfortable if you’re not drinking. If you don’t have an expensive enough bike you’ll be shunned when trying to join a cycling club. If someone is attracted to you and you can’t reciprocate, interaction is very awkward. If you don’t like football you won’t have anything to talk to other guys about. If you don’t watch TV you’ll have nothing to talk to colleagues about.

The biggest contributor to my alienation, though, has always been my disdain. I’ve considered interactions or friendships completely unsustainable if there’s something not right. I passed judgement based on someone’s single fault – whatever it may be and often far less serious than one of many of mine. I passed judgement on countries on an uninformed, assumed impression. Money mattered too much.

I learned to occupy a lonely space when a teenager. I was 15, foreign, thin, awkward and trying to find some way to express the misery and regret that was almost consuming me – it was largely teenage angst, but there was bit more to it. I expressed myself then mostly by listening to music. It hurt, but not as much as hearing that my father would refuse to speak to me a few years later. My father’s disowning me was the most painful thing that I experienced. It was 8 years ago, now. I survived by not feeling the pain.

So I progressed in life: clear, specific, reasoned, objective. Here I am.

I was unarmed to interact with someone so emotive in Cape Town. Maybe it was the nerves involved in sitting opposite someone I think I liked, but nothing I thought of could be called deep. I felt bland, plain, shallow, boring, clinical, cynical, petty, sullen, stunted, combative, sterile, dispassionate and monotone. I felt genuine envy for someone with such a strong integration into a culture, a belonging to something, and being amongst a community of friends.

We left things ambiguously – or rather dispassionately. Why get caught up if we’re in different countries? If not being together is the answer, what does it matter what we’re feeling, if we have any questions or with any of the other bullshit in-between?

Actually, it matters because stunting it hurt. It matters because here what do I have? Am I growing more literate, more informed, am I meeting new people ? To a degree, but I can’t grow in the ways I want and I’m certainly not integrating. I can fool myself into thinking I belong to something by sitting in a mosque, but in reality I can’t make an effort at friendships. I can’t make an effort with this one. Life is on hold again.

I’ve forgotten how unhappy I was 10 months ago in London. 10 months ago I’d forgotten how miserable I was when in the bush. I need to write things down more – hence this slightly more personal (and perhaps whingy) entry.

Life here is easier in many ways, or rather, I exonerate myself more easily from the blame of feeling lonely, detached or alienated. That is a significant relief. But an easier and more sustainable solution might have been to just get over it and continue living a real life in London.

I want to get closer to living and move back to London. This time I’ll unpack some boxes rather than keeping them ready to move again. I might hang some things on my wall. I’ll make myself a facebook profile. I’d like to buy a house and a car. Maybe they’ll even grant me a credit card…

Ah, who am I kidding? I’d get bored after a few months. I still have the attention span of a gnat and back in London I’d have a lot less to bitch, moan and write about. Actually I’m blessed for having a stable job and good income, insulated from the global economic meltdown, and to have good enough health to be left with a decision of where to go and what to do. That’s something to be happy for.

Ok, back to work. Dive, dive, dive…

Finally pubished

Ok, not really - it's just a blurb that I wrote (and they edited poorly) on our website.

http://www.chfinternational.org/node/32849

(nearly) Washed Away and (very) Sucked In

I got back to Sudan well rested, well fed and to good news. My employer offered to bring me on as a real employee. No more un-benefitted, un-insured consultancy status. Now the need to go to DC to attend orientation. A little silly, given that I’d been working for them for 6 moths already, but who am I to refuse a free flight?

Over the next couple of weeks we had training in Juba for our community workers so the decadence of a real abode continued, although for the same price of $200 in Sanaa I stayed in the beautiful 5* Movenpick. In Juba this gets you a Chinese pre-fab room that smelt like the open drain that was the shower. At least there was air conditioning. The UN royally messed up our flights, so I ended up having to send vehicles on the 26 hour trip to collect all the people we needed to Juba and take them back a few days later. The journey back was particularly eventful.

A bad spot on the road where trucks had got stuck had started to flood: construction of a nearby bridge having been halted because of political wrangling. The Government of South Sudan (GOSS) had contracted a Chinese company to dam the river in the dry season and construct a bridge across it. The Chinese had then sub-contracted to a North Sudanese company. The North Sudanese company had halted work on its government’s instruction because it feared the completion of the bridge and road would allow the south to transport arms (tanks from a Ukranian ship, perhaps) northwards to the border. Given that this is the only road in the country that connects the north with the south, a few things other than weapons travel that route: like me and my radios. On the way north we managed to squeeze by a bad spot after a few hours of delay, a lot of mud and the digging out of one stuck car.

Three days later we returned to the same town (called Wunrock) to find the road closed. The rising water had washed away sections of the road and flooded all the surrounding villages. Hundreds had been flooded out of their homes that now stood under 2-3ft of water. The temporary dam that has been put in place (that was also the road across a section of the river) was just about holding up under the of water that was collecting from rain miles away, but to the detriment of everything around it. We met there another group who had been waiting for 2 days – a mine clearance NGO headed up by a middle-aged, ex-military Canadian and a similar South African. Helen Fielding, the author of Bridget Jones, once wrote that development workers can fall into one of 4 categories: missionary, mercenary, misfit or broken heart. These guys were definitely number 3, and perhaps the most racist, bigoted and arrogant people I’ve ever met. Does it take one to know one?

They told us that work was ongoing and they hoped that the road would open within the next few hours. We parked and brought out our camping gear: we knew not to be optimistic.

We waited 3 days next to the rising water. Some army guys had arrived and felt it their responsibility to take over the management of the road reconstruction. They seriously delayed matters because the workers downed tools (or rather parked bulldozers) in the face of the military’s physical threats. The issue was quickly resolved (I think because the commander’s car had had been blocked by the heavy machinery), but work continued at a slow pace. We were held far away from the work by a roadblock, but snuck through occasionally (very difficult in big white cars) to see what was happening. Each time the soldiers berated us, but even that was better than the mind-numbing boredom of knowing and doing nothing.

I had a flight to Nairobi on Friday morning. It was Tuesday and there was no end to the repairs in site. The workers were building up mud on the water’s side of the road. As you looked down it, you saw now a 5ft high wall of mud on the right (and an equally high wall of water held behind it) and open space on the left. If that wall gave, everything along its 3 or 4km stretch would be washed away. As pressure built up along this lower-lying section, other sections of the road gave as the rising water undercut it. The construction team had been going back and forth between sections of the road and adding to the wall for days and getting nowhere.

This is what I find most terrifying about life here. In the UK or US we trust the structures on which we rely: the bridge has been tested, it will hold your vehicle’s weight and it will tell you clearly before you’re on it by way of a sign if it can’t. The roads are well constructed, won’t wash away and (excepting black cabs) are generally safe to travel on. If anything happens, there will be a price to pay by those responsible. This, reputation and a general respect for life ensures these standards are met. Of course there are exceptions, but those make headlines. I pondered travelling that road in our cars. The thought of getting stuck on that stretch scared me. It would have been impossible anyway with huge trenches of water cut across the path ahead.

Plan B: foot it. Early the next morning Samuel took one car back north to the safety and comfort of Leer. The Catholic priests there would put him up and could make use of the vehicle. Victor in the other car bedded in with the racist deminers (their team of Sudanese staff were actually very friendly and welcoming), and waited for the construction team to finish work. I and two others hoisted our bags onto our heads and walked through the water, waist high in some places. In others I don’t think it was just water I was wading through. It was about 10km to the next town. I regretted packing so many pairs of shoes – I’m kidding, I left them in the car. We hitched a ride back to Wau and took public transport from there, arriving back in Rumbek on Thursday.

Although only 4 weeks since my last break, I felt like I’d earned that hot shower and comfortable bed in Nairobi. A day later I was in the bright lights and big city of DC -- gripped by election fever. Poor Victor was stuck at the roadblock for another 5 days. But like all around me I forgot about all else in the world, was sucked in by CNN (who also seemed to forget about all else in the world), and watched America do the right thing.

DC was a great experience. I liked the city and had the chance to catch up with a friend. We had fun on election night. I also had a blessing in the form of an overnight visitor. I didn’t realize how much I had missed human contact. We just clicked in the way that allows an instant social and physical attraction. It was the easiest, most enjoyable and most satisfying night I’ve had in a long time. Maybe because I was desperate. Maybe because we knew we couldn’t see each other again. As has happened before, circumstance pushed me along and I started to really regret losing my US residency.

I then went to Florida for a week to visit my mother and promptly remembered why I’d left. I don’t miss Florida, but it has its advantages: cheap shopping and good medical services. The day before I left I managed to squeeze in a visit to the same dentist I’d convinced to take out my wisdom teeth during the 2 days I last had dental insurance just before I left for Ghana in 2002. I went in just for a cleaning, but given that it had been 4 years since I’d last had anything done I was expecting the worst. He suggested I have 4 small fillings and was amused by the repeated urgency as I was leaving the next morning. He kindly did them for me over his lunch break….and charged $900.

I stopped in London on the way back long enough to see a couple of friends, my uncle and family, and to apologize to my brother for the fact that my boxes will be staying with him for more than the previously agreed 6 months. It wasn’t enough time, but having been gone for as long as I’d been at work in the last 2 months, I needed to get back to Rumbek.

I’ve come back to what looks like a different country. Dry season is officially here and what was vividly green, verdant and overgrown the last time I saw it is now beige, dusty and wilting. The place seems generally calmer. It’s a bit like being at the beach. In all honesty, I’m a bit relieved to be back. I feel relieved to know the world I left in both the US and UK is still there and still just how I left it. When here I have this persistent nagging feeling like I’m missing something important. While I do miss all that goes on with friends and family, I am missing little else. Everyone is still consumed by their daily routine. Everyone is still hung up on appearances and impressions and money. I am too, but being outside it for a while is what brings me the relief. That’s one of the things I was looking for by coming. For the last 6 months I’ve not worked out, not eaten well and not flossed. My time in the US reaffirmed the importance of these things – and I’ll admit this – it’s the social reasons that have resold me on them. And also for my well-being. Maybe I’ve not come too far after all. And that might be a good thing – lest you relegate me to the category of misfit, too.

A khutba in pidgin, a wudu in heels

I’ve not been keeping up with this. I think that’s a sign of contentment in that there’s not been enough to whinge about. I’ve also observed that my happiness seemed to be inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend in any one place.

This was probably the oddest Ramadan I’ve completed with some serious challenges and some easy rides. In terms of ease I had someone cooking me dinner every night. I never underestimate the value of not having to cook dinner for myself when I’m tired, cranky and incredibly impatient with innocent things like tomatoes. It was a quiet couple of weeks and we were nearing the end of the distribution. By now we were all doing this with our eyes closed and 2000 radios a day was the norm. I fulfilled my role of big man and dispatched the team to the distributions while I busied myself less easily defined program management tasks. The fact that I can’t remember what I was doing for the month shouldn’t suggest that they were unimportant…ok, maybe they were…but there was always enough of engaging stuff to do to ensure that the hours of the day to melted quickly away.

And the melting was the biggest challenge: 30+ degrees in the shade with no air conditioning meant I sweat persistently. There aren’t that may Muslims in the South and I’m the only one in my team, so like London, it was again quite a lonely experience. Especially the morning meals before sunrise. I’d bought a paraffin stove so was able to cook breakfast for myself, but it was still raining in September so I either had to cook inside (despite manufacturers claims those little Chinese stoves are not smokeless, fumeless and odourless), or outside in the rain. No electricity meant doing it by candlelight. I’m still not sure what the crunchy things in the eggs were. I stepped on a wasp. I knocked over a candle and burnt a hole in my bed. While it was nice to be able to make as much noise as I liked, the lack of conveniences such as light and running water to wash plates and myself just took a lot of time and effort. In some ways it was nice to be so far away from the developed world: my thoughts were oriented in the direction they should have been – upwards.

But the lack of good food began to take its toll. My diarrhoea was persistent and the cook’s evening meals not particularly balanced. Come the end of the month I’d lost about 8 kilos, and had sores on my tongue that had taken on a deep red colour: symptoms of vit B deficiency.

I found another mosque on the UN camp. On most occasions all visitors to the UN compound are searched, ID’d and questioned. Tell the guards you’re a Muslim going to the mosque, tough, and you’re waved straight through – an oddly backwards experience. In the mosque (a corrugated iron-roofed, mosquito net-walled shack that is leagues above and beyond the construction site that passes for a mosque in the town), I found a bizarre mix of worshippers every shade of human: black, dark brown, beige and white, from all the nations represented in UNMIS. The Imam was Nigerian and the Khutba given in pidgin:
“you have to ask for forgiveness, O! Behind the forgiveness is giving, O! Ramadan is about what? Forgiveness and Giving!.” No one really seemed to be following the very circular argmet and the small Banglaeshis to my right seemed delighted to have a new member of the community joining them.

My Somali friend Hassan, was a good source of company and evening meals throughout the month. One night he suggested a change from the Somali shack/restaurant and invited me to the house of a friend. I expected to meet the host and eat his wife’s food. The host wasn’t in his one-roomed house when we arrived, but Hassan welcomed me in and sat me next to a small, but impressive, set of wigs. Our host was a woman. She cooked for us a delicious meal from the outdoor kitchen and kept herself secluded from the strange men she was hosting. . I shouted my greetings and thanks across the rain smacked and muddy courtyard. She shouted back an invitation to use some sandals she had outside the door to go and wash for prayers. I jumped down into a small pair of women’s kittly-slipers. It felt very odd performing a wudu in heels, and the rakahs in front of a makeup stand, but I hope my prayers were nonetheless accepted.

I was looking forward to the end of Ramadan mostly because it marked the start of my next vacation. I got to Sanaa two days before Eid. Yemen was stunningly beautiful in every respect: the scenery, the architecture and the warmth of the people. I’m not sure how tourists are able to be kidnapped here: as well as being generous, respectful and friendly, most people were no taller than 5’7” and perpetually strung out on Qat. Now that is an impressive national habit. Every afternoon most men start chewing the leaf. By early evening they’re all acting like space cadets and not face passes without the huge bulge of the Qat in the cheek.

The beds, the hot running water, the beauty of the city and the warmth of the people that made it a nice break. What made it particularly good was that I was understood when I spoke. My efforts to learn Arabic in Amman some years ago appeared to be really quite fruitless as any conversation I tried to start in Arabic would only yield strange looks. Unable to speak, I’ve always felt a little fake. I tended to crumble under simple questioning by Syrian border guards as they try to understand why the individual in front of them looks like the one in the Jordanian passport they’re holding, but doesn’t seem to be ale to do more than stumble over a few words. There, I am an illiterate Arab.

In Yemen, though, I was a Briton who spoke some Arabic. Their hospitality meant that they tried to understand what I was saying, or at least they pretended to. It was an easy and relaxing week, despite very little English being spoken. That would have been a hard trip in the past. And I think that’s why I enjoyed this trip so much. As well as beautiful scenery, this was the first objective measure for me that I’m better off after my time in Sudan. My Arabic hasn’t gotten any better, I’m just a bit more confident. And it’s all relative: after the self-flagellation of a month of Ramadan in Rumbek, any break would have felt good. Why keep beating myself? Because it feels so good when I stop.