360 or full circle

These vehicles are privately run and roll through a route picking people up and dropping them off along the way. They typically have silly, poignant or pop culture refrences on the rear windshield.

I am in my hotel room in Nairobi right now, the TV on CNN in the background. Fulltime coverage of Hurricane Ike. When I arrived in Nairobi there was fulltime coverage of Hurricane - oops, just forgot the name. These storms are really tragic - disrupting lives, destroying homes. However, the storm coverage by TV announcers drives me crazy! For all these storms the correspondents stand in the windiest part of town and talk about branches falling, winds blowing and "ow wowee" the damage.

Anyway, am doing a bit of work and trying to reflect on the last couple of weeks. Here are some pictures that make me think of the positive and negative:

A rainbow in Kuajok. You can't tell from the photo here on the blog but this was a temporary camp set up by a demining group. They all sought refuge in the car while the rain poured down for several hours.

Cattle on the road from Wau to Kuajok. Animals and people travel along the road to home, market and pasture. During the 90 minute drive there was almost no break from people, cattle, goats and potholes. Particularly potholes. This is a 45 km drive - that's how slow we were going going.

On the banks of the Nile, people leaving their laundry to dry. I am not posting pictures of people bathing, but the river is used for everything! For some it provides drinking water, bathing, car wash and laudry mat. The rivers in Sudan provide important modes of transportation for refugees returning to their homes - many of the villages along the river are primarily resettled families. This presents a whole different set of problems as those that stayed find their access to pastureland and water reduced by the new-comers.

The next picture is a bittersweet memory. These women are learning skills in cultivating vegetables that will help them feed their families and hopefully supplement their families' income with marketable products. However, I met one woman here who had cut her finger and two weeks later it was still an infected yucky mess. She cannot afford to go to the medical clinic and has been using alcohol to treat it. I really wanted to give her money - the medicine is readily available now in towns like Malakal, even though it is relatively expensive. But I couldn't give her money - it would have been unfair to my colleagues. Everytime somoneone needed something they would have turned to the people I was with since I would no longer be there. It was a very tough decision for me and definitely led to some tears of frustration on my part.

On another note, the raised seed bed you see here on the left was destroyed by other members of the community the day after we left. They stole the fencing and the eucalyptus rods. Although it doesn't look like much, these building supplies are actually very expensive. $5 for a piece of wood pole for the fencing might not seem like a lot, but it obviously is valuable to some people. This is heartbreaking for the women who put so much time into planting and preparing and for the community that does not see the long-term value of improving the lives of these beneficiaries.

Traffic jam. As you can see the ditches on the side of the road were redug after the rains, leaving piles of soil in the roadways and sidewalks. Behind the truck were two donkey carts, several bikes and motorbikes. Economic development for residents will mean the number of motor vehicles will continue to increase. These roads cannot handle the development. Unfortunately it looks like the situation will get worse before it gets better. Notice the mud spatters on the windshield.